Subtitle: The Fleecing of Sacramento’s Taxpayers

Sacramento’s City Manager John Shirey released the proposed 2015/2016 budget last week. It’s clear that this city manager, the mayor, and the city council members are cavalier with their spending of other people’s money.More is never enough. And the word “austerity” is not in their vocabularies.

The other important issue to note is even with his latest attempt to become a strong mayor squashed (again) by the voters last year, Mayor Kevin Johnson is the driving force anyway behind this… Read More

The California Democratic Party claims to be for the poor and middle class, but killed a bill Monday which would have cut California’s highest-in-the-nation gas tax.Californians pay 68 cents tax on every gallon of gasoline – the highest gas tax in the nation.

Not content to be the first state in the country to tax the air we breathe, California is the first in the nation to impose a cap and trade tax on transportation fuels.

In response, Assemblyman Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, and more than 20 other Republican lawmakers, introduced AB 23, theAffordable Gas for California Families Act,legislation to exempt transportation fuels and natural gas from the California Air… Read More

The latest poll from USC Dornsife and the Los Angeles Times would have you believe California voters give Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature their highest approval ratings in year — despite “soaring taxes, high unemployment, costly illegal immigration, escalating crime rates, substandard roads, record power and gas prices, underwater home values, and dismal schools.”

This is what happens when smart people like to be right and defend bad ideas.

Amedia conference call withUSC Dornsife discussed the poll results.

The… Read More

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson’s signature showed up on a letter to state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, expressing support for raising the statewide minimum wage to $13 by July 1, 2017.

And then it didn’t. An announcement from the mayor’s staff said that “staff miscommunication” was to blame for Johnson’s signature on the letter.

What happened? Is Johnson for or against a minimum wage increase? Did he sign the letter or not?

Perhaps because Johnson is president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which supports raising the federal minimum wage, his staff got their letters mixed up. (Big 10 mayors letter.pdf)

Either way, the discussion should be about negative impacts on employment and income growth caused by minimum wage increases.

Signature ‘Miscommunication?’

The Sacramento Bee… Read More

While California’s drought conditions are actually historically normal, California’s current drought is being billed by government and media as the driest period in the state’s recorded rainfall history. Scientists who study the Western United States’ long-term climate patterns say California has been dry for significantly longer periods — more than 200 years.

However, it only takes reading the weekly California drought water-wise tips in statewide newspapers and local government websites to know the information the environmentalists are foisting on us is hogwash. While California is in the middle of an historic drought, radical environmentalists are not letting a good crisis go to waste.

… Read More

Shasta College in Redding, California has a diesel engine mechanics class, which gives students entry-level job skills into a diesel technology career. But the college had to destroy all of its diesel engines following implementation of the California Air Resources Board’s diesel regulations, which were based on bogus science.

California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, passed under AB 32, requires cutting greenhouse gas emissions in California to 1990 levels by year 2020.

Under AB 32, the California Air Resources Board has demanded trucking companies, construction firms, supply chains, and all other businesses which use diesel trucks, retrofit or replace their diesel equipment.

But there are problems with these regulations in the Golden State.

CARB Missed the ‘Coordination’ Phase

In November 2013, the Alliance for California Business filed a complaint in Glenn County Superior Court over the mandated diesel particulate filters that… Read More

The Golden State of California has been dubbed “Crazifornia” and “La-la land,” and called “the land of fruits and nuts.” Furthermore, California’s governor, Jerry Brown, is known as “Governor Moonbeam,” a moniker from which he’d like to disentangle himself.

The rest of the country believes California has earned and deserves these disparaging names. And unless something changes in this batty state, Governor Moonbeam is on track to meticulously and completely destroy the state’s economy and bankrupt the government.

But hey… who’s going to stop him? The media?

Gov’s Agenda – Not Voters’… Read More

Taking a page from the experienced,aging Jerry Brown political playbook, Democrats in Congress and the Obama White House appear to have been trying to destroy the economy and bankrupt the government given their policies the past six years. However, they’ve been stopped in their tracks, thanks to American voters, who in November resoundingly thrashed President Barack Obama, together with the Democrats in Congress, and their destructive policies. By defeating Democrats across the country, voters ushered in a Republican controlled House and Senate.

If only California could be so charmed.

I met with California Congressman Tom McClintock, of California’s 4th District, following completion of the first week of the new Republican majority Congress. McClintock, a prudent, stalwart Conservative, cleared up several falsehoods being repeated in the media about Republican and Democratic leadership, and clarified the Constitutionality of the President’s recent actions. And McClintock smiled when he said that with former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid no longer in power, Congress can finally get to work and deliberate.

Congress had quite a first… Read More