First the good news. After 4 September, we are FINALLY ending the federal “stimulus/unemployment” payments. It’s time to get people returning to the job market.

But, sadly, I don’t think that — as a result — everyone will be returning to work. This is ironic — as Labor Day is coming up this weekend.

Many “unemployed” may already be working — but not on the books. They are getting comfortable in the subsidized underground economy.

Working in the cash economy (or not working at all) will remain popular as long as all the OTHER benefit programs pass out free goodies. People today know much more about how to get (and STAY) on the dole than they knew in pre-COVID days. And few states are more anti-employment than California.

At this stage, CA will still pay the STATE unemployment benefits —up to $450 a week— $23,400 annually. No social security and other payroll deductions. No state income tax. Apparently the recipient does not even need to pretend that they are seeking… Read More

People move for more freedom. States that have more freedom attract more businesses, more jobs and more workers.

According to the John Locke Foundation, freedom is based on fiscal policy, which measures taxes and budgetary measures, and generates 50 percent of a state’s score. Twenty percent each goes to education and to regulatory policies, and 10 percent to health care policy.

The ‘least free’ state according to the John Locke Foundation is New York, closely followed by California, then New Jersey, West Virginia, and Kentucky.

This would explain why California has a record number of residents who left the Golden State for other states during the last decade, according to new tax return data from the Internal Revenue Service. “About 5 million Californians left between 2004 and 2013,” the Sacramento Bee reported. “Roughly 3.9 million people came here from other states during that period, for a net population loss of more than 1 million people.”

The IRS said this also resulted in a net… 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

The feminists’ bogus “war on women” took a beating in the November elections. That’s why they’ve been so quietly lately.

The phony war on women narrative was only ever really a war on those who believe women should have to pay for their own birth control, and those who are opposed to abortion. But the war was ginned-up with thenon-existent pay gap,and thephony campus rape crisis.

The beat-down is largely because feminism does not live up to its definition. And it does not represent most women.

Today’s feminism is victimization; it encourages blaming other people for mistakes, bad choices, and failures. The problem today is that feminists now push public policy.

Last week a feminist professor said that America should stop putting all women in jail, for any crime.

Campus Reform reported, “Patricia O’Brien, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois’s Jane Addam’s College of Social Work, contends that the majority of women in prison are merely non-violent, poorly educated, unemployed, and abused, according to her op-ed in… Read More

Diapers, diapers, diapers for everyone!

If ever there was evidence of the need for a part time Legislature in California, it is now: California Democrats are pushing a diaper subsidy program for welfare parents.

The rationale for this idea is right out of the welfare-state handbook: low-income parents cannot take advantage of free or subsidized child care if they cannot afford to leave disposable diapers with their child at care facilities.

This is nothing more than an increase in welfare payments to welfare recipients, without actually identifying it as an increase. California taxpayers would be livid if Democratic lawmakers were honest about increasing welfare payments.

There are more than 15 different welfare and assistance programs for needy Californjia… Read More

A common fallacy of “our side” is to endlessly repeat the mantra that “government doesn’t work.” It DOES work. Just not as promised.

Our welfare state works. Pay women to have babies out of wedlock? That works. A new study found that today over half of U.S. babies born to women under age 30 are born out of wedlock. http://www.newser.com/story/139982/most-babies-to-young-moms-born-out-of-wedlock.html

Pay people not to work? That works. More choose not to work — by postponing their return to work (well, returning to “on the books” work). Here’s the URL for the latest WALL ST JOURNAL article on unemployment insurance — aptly named “Paid Not to Work”: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203824904577217792498104980.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h#articleTabs%3Darticle

As of December, ten counties in North Dakota have under 2%… Read More