I am fond of saying that the only good laws are the ones that begin with:

We really don’t need more laws, do we? Yet, for some reason, the state legislature is bent on regulating us more and more.

That is why you should read a great editorial in the OC Register that ran today, listing the editorial staff’s favorite new silly laws.

Several of the laws making the Register’s list pertain to conferring the right on certain consumer groups to cancel contracts with those from which the consumer agreed to purchase goods or services. In my book government has become far too big when it starts taking sides in private contractual arrangements to permit one side to undo an otherwise legally binding contract.… Read More

I served as former state Sen. John Lewis’ press secretary from 1991 to 1994, and taming the SCAQMD was one of his top legislative priorities. The recession of the early 1990s had hit California especially hard, and the state emreged from it much more slowly than the rest of the nation.

Not that that mattered to the pollutocrats running the SCAQMD, who cared not a whit that they were heloing to drive businesses across the state line into the welcoming arms of Nevada, Arizona and other states that were actively recruiting California businesses to their friendlier climes.

After reading a Lance Izumi op-ed published in the Orange County Register a few days ago, it seems clear that while the personalities on the SCAQMD Board of Directors may have changed, the agency’s culture hasn’t.

I thought then, and I still believe, that a powerful regional government like the AQMD, which combines executive legislative… Read More