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

Actor Robin Williams’ suicide is considered tragic and horrific. But many of the same people who expressed horror over Williams’ suicide say legally assisted suicide is acceptable, beneficial, and even “honorable.”

Rather than waiting for recently proposed assisted suicide legislation to work through the legislative committee process, a new lawsuit filed Wednesday asks the California Superior Court to find that physicians who provide a assisted suicide prescriptions should not be subject to criminal prosecution for assisting another to “commit suicide.”

The lawsuit wants the court to declare that patients facing the end of life have a “civil right” under the California State Constitution “to make their own decisions about their bodies.”

“If the lawsuit succeeds, terminally ill Californians, like Brittany Maynard, would not have to leave the state to receive legal aid in dying,” the press statement said. Filed by Californians with cancer, physicians, and a national nonprofit disability rights advocacy group, Disability Rights Legal Center, the lawsuit is attempting to “clarify the ability of mentally competent, terminally… Read More

Almost immediately following a hearing of the Environmental Protection Agency last week on upping authoritarian smog regulations, Democratic Senate President pro Tem Kevin de Leònannounced plans for “historic” climate change legislation, adding more regulations to force Californians to cut gas consumption — rather than legislation to help the state’s economy.

The goal is to cut up to 50 percent of gas consumption in California by 2030… rather than improve the state’s economy by up to 50 percent.

Clean Air

The air we breathe today in California is the cleanest since the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Air Act was passed in the 1970s. Despite this fact, the day before Thanksgiving, the EPA released its proposal to “strengthen” ground level ozone emissions known as smog.

Current EPA ozone regulations set the nationwide limit at 75 parts per billion. The EPA is considering lowering it to 60 parts per billion,making theNational Ambient Air Quality Standardsfor… Read More

Is it true “Latinos remain hard to find on the councils of city and county governments throughout the state,” as Sacramento Bee columnist Marcus Breton says? Given that the California Legislature is fed by city and county governments, it is notable that the Legislative Latino Caucus has 22 members – all Democrats — out of 140 total California legislators. Even more notable, the Democrats won’t let the only Latino Republican, Assemblyman Rocky Chavez, join the caucus.

Rather than bemoan the numbers of Hispanics in government, Breton should have identified the real source of the problem: California.

Hispanics thrive more in Texas than in California. Why?

California and Texas stand for two completely different faces of the Hispanic experience in America

“Hispanics enjoy much better statistics across the board in the Lone Star State than in the Golden one,” according to Mike Gonzalez with the Heritage Foundation.… Read More

Why would a Los Angeles Unified School District board member ask the board to influence a legal battle between a large Fresno fruit grower and the United Farm Workers labor union?

Rather than offer support to the Gerawan Farming companyworkersin their fight to oust the United Farm Workers labor union from their Fresno area farming employer, Steve Zimmer, a LAUSD 
Board Member
has authored a Resolution calling for… Read More

The 2008 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ozone regulations were halted in 2011, and have not been implemented. Yet the EPA is planning to push forward even stricter smog rules, demonstrating that public hearings allowing public testimony are just window dressing.

The air we breathe today is the cleanest air since the Clean Air Act was passed in the 1970s. Despite this fact, the day before Thanksgiving, the EPA released its proposal to “strengthen” ground level ozone emissions known as smog.

Current EPA ozone regulations set the nationwide limit at 75 parts per billion. The EPA is considering lowering it to 60 parts per billion,making the… Read More

Environmentalists claim global warming can be mitigated, but only by if humans are forced to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This pseudo-science is what the California Air Resources Board has adopted to control human activity.

If this sounds a little woo-woo, remember the CARB is the state agency which, under Assembly Bill 32, the California Global Warming Solution Act of 2006, expanded its mandatein order to link up in a cap and trade scheme with Quebec, and Canada’s international Ecosystem Marketplace offset… Read More