Former State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, was just sentenced to only 5 years in prison for selling rocket launchers to Muslim rebels in the Philippines… while pretending to be a public servant. The real crime is that he wasn’t prosecuted for selling rocket launchers; Yee got a plea deal despite admittinghe was part of a racketeering conspiracy that involved planning to use his public office to cut deals for money, conspiring totraffic in weapons, and drug money laundering.

Yee was involved with Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, who was convicted of racketeering, murder and other charges in a huge corruption case that stunned San Francisco and the state’s Democratic Party… Read More

Part ll in a series. Part l is here.

The metastasis of statewide diesel truck regulations created by the California Air Resources Board has forced many large and small truckers out of business. The truckers still in business have had to spend $20,000 to $50,000 per truck retrofit with the CARB’s expensive, mandated Diesel Particulate Filter, or they have had to buy newer model trucks to meet the new regulations. New trucks are hugely expensive.

By the stroke of a pen from unelected career bureaucrats hiding behind layers of government, millions of trucks were suddenly deemed illegal.… Read More

While the state of California is extracting billions of dollars from businesses and utilities through the California Air Resources Board’s cap-and-trade program auctions, the Legislature can’t decide how to spend the billions.

Instead, lawmakers have been arguing over how to direct the monies into their own districts on some rather dubious projects, and predictably, on public transit and light rail trains.

Gov. Jerry Brown has his own dubious project: He carved out more than $1 billionof cap-and-trade revenue… Read More

California truck and business owners initiated a lawsuit against the California Air Resources Board because of exploding trucks and roadside fires, due to the CARB’s mandatory, faulty diesel particulate filters, they say. Ironically, the filters even fail at cleaning the air.

The Alliance for California Business, a voluntary group whose purpose is to protect and promote business interests throughout California, says Diesel Particulate Filters have started more than 31 fires in the last two years, including several in areas of the state parched by the drought. The Diesel Particulate Filters are the result of environmental regulations created by the California Air Resources Board, and were based on a… Read More

Genevieve Shiroma, long time member of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board, as well as a board member for the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District, is the subject of a legal brief to disqualify her from the ALRB for bias and conflicts of interest.

How could the SMUD board and the Ag labor board be tied together in a conflict?

ALRB board member Shiroma hired UFW lobbyist Richie Ross for her personal campaign the same year he successfully lobbied passage of the ALRB’s California Mandatory Mediation and Conciliation Statute. The MMC law empowers the board to write and force contracts on employers and workers.

In September 2002, then-Gov. Gray Davis signed into law SB 1156 and AB 2596, the first major amendments to the 1975 Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which was signed into law by then-Gov. Jerry Brown. The MMC law would compel Gerawan and its workers into a state-imposed “contract” that would saddle the employees with the UFW as their exclusive representative.

The UFW won an election to represent Gerawan Farming’s workers 25 years ago. But after only one bargaining session, the union disappeared and wasn’t… Read More

By Katy Grimes and Megan Barth

“Hands up don’t shoot” was a lie. The phony “Black Lives Matter” movement exists solely as atool for Democratsto create civil unrest and racial dividewhen they need votes and are recent,… Read More

California state budgets no longer require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to be passed, butthere are still budget games, deals and hinky promises that happen in the process.. However, tax increases do still require two-thirds vote.

This year, Gov. Jerry Brown had proposed tax increases – a gas tax hike, a road tax for miles driven, a car registration hike, and a health plan tax… to name a few.

In order to get these tax increases approved, Brown and his administration use arm-twisting and extortive tactics on lawmakers who show resistance.

In… Read More

Regardless what a punk Carolina Panthers’ quarterback Cam Newton may or may not be, the ugly news that he will owe $137,900 in taxes — for losing the Super Bowl – shouldn’t be the thanks he gets.

The thanks is courtesy of California’s highest-in-the-nation tax rate of 13.3 percent, known as the “jock tax” – the nonresident income taxes that states and cities enforce on athletes performing in their jurisdictions.

As Kurt Bedenhausen explained in Forbes last week, “Newton will pay California 86.3% of his Super Bowl earnings if the Panthers win. Losing means his effective tax rate will be a whopping 172.2%. Oh yeah, he will also pay the IRS 40.5% on his… Read More