“California is definitely back,” Governor Jerry Brown recently trumpeted. Brown then proclaimed the state a “job creation engine.” But the magical California job creation engine has shifted from a healthy manufacturing economy, to a service economy – from high-paying jobs with benefits and growth potential, to low-wage, nowhere minimum wage jobs.

Rather than creating policies to make California a healthy business state once again to incentivize businesses, politicians are instead focused on these low-paying jobs, and treating the symptoms instead of curing the disease.

The winter of our discontent

The growing discontent between politics, politicians, and the hard-working electorate could turn into anguish, misery and rebellion with the latest minimum wage increase proposal.

Before the last… Read More

I’ve finally got the hard proof I need demonstrating that an IQ test should be administered prior to being granted the privilege to vote.

In Tuesday’s election, 287,590California voters cast ballots for Sen. Leland Yee of San Francisco, in the Secretary of State race. Yee isunder indictment by the FBI since April, for arms trafficking and bribery. Yeewithdrew from the race, but it was too late for his name to be removed from the ballot.

Yee ended the night with nearly 10 percent of the votes. Of the top two winners, Sen. Alex Padilla, got only 884,857votes, 30 percent of the votes. Republican Pete Peterson… Read More

With the 2012 passage of Proposition 30, voters were assured the significant tax increase would go entirely to education. However, less than 50 percent actually does.

Now, a new bill is moving through the Legislature, claiming to tax oil and gas production for – ahem, you guessed it — education.

SB 1017, an urgency measure, would impose a severance tax on the extraction of oil and natural gas, effective immediately after being signed into law.

Pay attention to the taxman behind the curtain who wants to add more taxes onto oil and gas production.

However, if the California legislature doesn’t pass an oil severance tax this year, billionaire hedge fund manager, Tom Steyer, is preparing a ballot initiative for 2016.

Because Gov. Jerry Brown vowed that all new tax increase proposals would go before the voters, there are reports which say he’s largely rejected the oil tax this year. But NextGenClimate Action, Steyer’s political action committee, can do it for Brown instead, with the… Read More

Another Earth Day has come and gone, and with it, a great deal more environmental hypocrisy. Most of the practicing Earth Day disciplesare largely hypocritical, and are just as likely to be as significant consumers of the Earth’s resources as anyone else.

But hell hath no fury like a righteous environmentalist with a big budget and a… Read More

In my first two stories about Dr. James Enstrom, Ph. D., The firing of James Enstrom: the dangers of bucking fashionable science, and Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned,I explained about the attempt to muzzle scientific debate at UCLA, and the ultimate wrongful termination lawsuit of Enstrom, a scientist and professor at the university for more than 35 years.

Enstrom challenged the scientific research that the California Legislature and California Air Resources Board used to enact clean air policies including regulating diesel fuel emissions. And then he was fired.

Enstrom exposed the cover-up of “junk environmental science,” and exposed a phony… Read More

This is Part ll of my series on California’s dubious drought and water policies

National media coverage has largely confused reasons for the current drought. We are now being told that global warming has caused the drought.

Perhaps a more realistic cause for the drought can be found in natural climate change, agricultural inefficiency, poor water storage planning, and urban development in arid regions.

Most of the media and public officials paint California farmers and ranchers as the biggest water wasters in the state. Yet they have made huge strides in improving efficient water management over the years — it’s in their best interest to do so, not only economically, but to save and conserve natural resources. Farmers and ranchers are some of the best, most efficient and effective conservationists California has.

North Korean-style water… Read More

California used to be the fifth largest economy in the world. Today, we have slipped to ninth place. Many say this decline is self-imposed throughdetrimental tax policy, and even moredestructive state regulations.

As such, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 should have been called the “Bring California to its Knees Act of 2006.”

Under the control of Mary Nichols, the California Air Resources Board has been in total control of implementing AB 32,… Read More

The governor’s 2014-15 budget proposes to spend $850 million from cap-and-trade auction revenue on various projects — including the state’s high-speed rail project. However, this would defy the very purpose of cap-and-trade.

Under AB 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, cap and trade takes money from business owners and manufacturers who produce products, but are deemed “polluters” by the state.

It’s like being taxed for being a business that emits any greenhouse gas emissions.

That money is taken out of the economy, and given to the government to decide how it will be spent.

California business owners only know it is money they… Read More