A public pension crisis of epic proportions is brewing in California. The state’s public pension disaster is the greatest financial challenge California has faced since the Great Depression.

A new book by economist Lawrence McQuillen, exposes the true magnitude of the unfunded liability disaster, and focuses on the critical policy actions that drove California’s public pension debt to these heights. In California Dreaming: Lessons on How to Resolve America’s Public Pension Crisis, McQuillen, Senior Fellow at The Independent Institute, also examines the perverse political incentives of elected lawmakers and pension officials that reward them for not fixing the problem, rather letting it… Read More

Two weeks ago, a Democrat on the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee defiled the legislative committee process again by forcing another job-killing bill through without full debate.

Senate Bill 3 by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, calls for repeated automatic increases in the state’s minimum wage, and is just one of his many attempts to force costs on employers that their businesses cannot bear.

Committee Chairman Assemblyman Roger Hernández, a Democrat from Los Angeles, abruptly cut off a witness midsentence. Before taking another breath, Hernándezquickly called for a vote on the bill, even though members of the public had not testified, and other lawmakers on the committee wished to speak.

When Committee Vice Chairman, Assemblyman Matthew Harper, R-Huntington Beach, tried to speak, Hernandez shut off Harper’s microphone. When Harper objected, Hernándezreached across the desk of an Assembly staff member, and physically tried to shut off Harper’s microphone. Then Hernándezordered Assembly Sergeants to remove Harper’s microphone. Hernándezimmediately forced the vote on the bill, ending along party lines.

Assemblyman Jim… Read More

Imagine a way to extract water from humidity in the air, and turn it into a glass of pure drinking water. I just saw a machine do this.

Pacific AirWell provided a water-making demonstration this week on the dead lawn at the Capitol.

With many communities around the state running out of water, and some chronically challenged with very little or contaminated water, these water making machines could be a portable, cost-effective answer for communities, businesses and homes.

“Today’s Capitol demonstration is the hands-on part of ongoing discussions with State officials toexplore innovative ways to reduce the demands upon surface and ground water, and effectivelymitigate California’s drought by improving the State’s drought resiliency,” said Matt Gray, Pacific AirWell CEO. “We are grateful for the support of lawmakers and look forward to bringing reliefto the people of California.”

One of the Pacific AirWell techs filled me in on the operational processes of the machines. Atmospheric water generation is a technology-based process used to condense water… Read More

A bill in the California Legislature is blazing through to mandate the reduction of 50 percent in the use of petroleum-based fuels, 50 percent reduction in energy use by existing buildings and increases the Renewable Portfolio Standard from 33 percent renewables to 50 percent — notably as California is well ontrack to meet the 2020 goal.

SB 350 is authored by Sen. President pro Tem Kevin de Leon. “Do we have the courage to press forward,” asked De Leon, to legislative committee members at Monday’s Assembly Natural Resources Committee hearing on SB 350.

De Leon was long on drama about the “threat of climate change,” but short on verifiable data, and never broached what California can do alone if indeed climate change is the scourge of the entire world.

Radical activists have wormed their way into positions of government authority to implement carbon… Read More

Can California really reduce petroleum-based fuels by 50 percent and still have any sort of economy? Most of California’s businesses and residents rely on oil and gas for day-to-day transportation needs. But a bill currently in the legislative committee process, SB 350, would compromise the availability of transportation fuels.

TheRenewable Portfolio Standard, passed in 2011, called for 33 percent of electricity retail sales be served by renewable energy resources by the year 2020.

However, the President of the California State Senate, Kevin de Leon, no student of economics, is pushing a bill through the… Read More

The biggest labor dispute in California just got more interesting. Hundreds of farm workers from Gerawan Farms went to Sacramento last week to demonstrate outside of the Stanford Mansion where Gov. Jerry Brown and members of the Agricultural Labor Relations Board celebrated their 40th anniversary. I was told by several people who attended the event that pro-United Farm Worker union representative Dolores Huerta attempted to intimidate Gerawan workers, and got physical with anti-UFW leader Silvia Lopez. But the Gerawan workers stayed strong and demanded, “Count Our Votes!”

At the Sacramento celebration last week of the 40th anniversary of the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, one of the radical left’s most notorious UFW union labor leaders tried to prevent the new labor leader of the non-union farmworkers from taking a photo with the governor.

Many people at the gala witnessed 85-year-old Dolores Huerta strong arm anti-union farm worker Silvia Lopez.

Darling of the left and an openly socialist admirer of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Huerta has said publicly she believes that “Republicans hate Latinos.” Huerta encourages illegal… Read More

Nearly every climate change and clean energy expert admits that California will achieve the legislatively mandated policy goals of AB 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which said the state has to reduce carbon emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020.

So why is the California Air Resource Board and Legislature seeking to move the target before the deadline?

The Assembly Select Committee on Clean Energy was asked to address how Californians can reduce on-road petroleum use by 50 percent, by 2030. Assemblyman Bill Quirk, D-Hayward, the Committee Chairman,… Read More

State superior court delivers a stunning rebuke to Agricultural Labor Relations Board’sTop Staff Attorney Sylvia Torres Guillén, citing “deficiencies in its investigation” and staff “embroilment” in worker termination.

An employee whistleblower at the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board has exposed wrongdoing by the activist attorneys in the state agency responsible for protecting the rights of farmworkers. The charges, made by an insider who participated in an ALRB investigation of Gerawan Farming, were brought directly to the office of the Board’s chairman, William B. Gould IV. The whistleblower employee alleges that the ALRB General Counsel and staff submitted false or misleading sworn statements to the Board in order to get agency authorization to file enforcement proceedings against Gerawan.

These charges could reveal the extent to which theGeneral Counsel TorresGuillénand staff manipulated evidence in administrative and legal proceedings in order to tip the scales – even perhaps illegally – in favor of the United Farm Workers.

The ALRB General Counsel’s… Read More