Every year in California’s state capital, 120 full-time lawmakers, 2,000 full-time staff, and 130 legislative committees, introduce an average of 5,000 bills each legislative session, thus creating a booming industry for California’s 1,100 registered lobbyists. They do this with a $150 billion annual budget. And they do this while simultaneously managing to keep out most of the public.

In… Read More

Part ll – California’s Political Water Wars Heating Up. Part l is HERE.

Despite some nice rainfall this year, the more than two dozenState Water Contractorsthroughout the state have been told to expect 45 percent water allocations.

A recent Daily… Read More

Despite all the evidence that increasing the minimum wage does little or nothing to reduce poverty, California Gov. Jerry Brown and the Democrats in the State Legislature just passed another minimum wage increase. Not one Republican in the Assembly or Senate voted for the bill, and all Democrats, save two, voted for the minimum wage increase.

The minimum wage has always been an arbitrary figure. If the arbitrary minimum wage is inflated, this also inflates prices, leaving low-wage workers spending more on everything.

This political decision by Brown will likely come back to haunt California, much as the 1999 political pension deal signed into law by Gov. Gray Davis… Read More

Water wars are historic undertakings in California. Countless other publications have written recently about the proposed ballot measure that would redirect High Speed Rail bond money for water-related projects and prioritize the use of water, But what makes this story interesting is the coalition of opponents, their motivations and techniques being employed.

The Committee to Stop the Special Interest Water Grab, led by David Guy, president of the Northern California Water Association,… Read More

By Megan Barth and Katy Grimes

“A lot of the other candidates have gone out of their way to smack him (Trump) with a two-by-four and said some really nasty, vicious things. I’ve sung his praises. He’s bold, he’s brash, and I think the support he’s gaining right now in the polls is because people are looking for someone willing to stand up to Washington.”

~Senator Ted Cruz

Several recent news articlesreported a number of Washington D.C. Republicans have told Bret Baier at FOX News that they may vote for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump.

Self-described “lifelong Reagan Republicans” are appalled and repulsed by him, dismayed that the Republican Party let his potential candidacy happen. They are simply projecting their own failures and fears… 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 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

“If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

~Ronald Reagan

Despite California’s highest-in-the-nation taxes, a couple of Assembly Republicans have allegedly agreed to vote for Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax on health plans in the State of California.

Even if Brown is able to convince health insurers, he needs a two-thirds majority vote from the Legislature. And this is where Republican votes come in. Currently, Democrats do not have a supermajority, and need to peel off a couple of Republican votes for tax increases.

Predictably, Brown has been trying to convince Republicans his health plan tax is really “tax reform.”

“This is not a tax increase, no matter what anyone tells you,” he said during his State of the State address.

“It will be pretty easy to tell if this is a tax increase, or some sort of revenue neutral swapping of one tax for another,” said Jon Fleischman, publisher of the Flash… Read More