The appetite for more and more tax revenue by politicians in Sacramento is voracious. If you stand still while reading this column, there is a decent chance that some legislation will be drafted targeting your wallet or purse for a State Capitol “cashectomy” — so I would suggest you kind of move around while you read this.

In Governor Jerry Brown’s May Revision to his state budget, he proposed pretty much sticking a fork into the state’s nearly thirty year embrace of what are referred to as Enterprise Zones, or EZ’s for short, in what appears to me to be a back door de facto tax increase. What is an EZ? Mark Lifsher over at the Los Angeles Times succinctly describes them this way: “The 27-year-old enterprise zone program currently provides mainly large corporations but also small businesses with about $700 million a year in credits they can use to reduce the taxes they pay the state. The idea behind the 40 local enterprise zones is to create jobs in poor urban and rural areas by providing incentives to employers to hire local workers.”

In other words, EZ’s are an embrace of the idea… Read More

There is an old saying, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

Several years ago, voters in Poway agreed to let local officials borrow $100 million to complete modernization of aging schools. It sounded like a sweet deal because they were promised this would be done without a tax increase.

As it turns out, this was the sort of deal one would usually expect to be offered by a loan shark accompanied by “associates” who favor forty-five caliber automatics.

Normally, when local governments and school districts use bonds to borrow money, the repayment with interest amounts to approximately double the face value of the bond. Borrow $100 million and expect to repay $200 million dollars over 20 to 30 years. But when Poway school officials cut a deal with a financial institution to issue what is called a Capital Appreciation Bond (CAB), payments were not scheduled to begin for 20 years with the total to be repaid in 40 years. The cost to local taxpayers? $1,000,000,000! That’s right, one billion dollars, ten times the amount borrowed.

What would possess officials to make such a deal? Stupidity? Incompetence? Or… Read More

Last week, “community groups” protested in Los Angeles to stop the sale of the Tribune Company’s newspapers to the billionaire Koch brothers, known for their support of libertarian and conservative causes.

“In Los Angeles, members of CourageCampaign.org, Common Cause, SEIU, The Newspaper Guild (CWA – Communication Workers of America) and other groups will be attending the Los Angeles County Employee Retirement Association board meeting,” a protest flyer said.

The SEIU, and Newspaper Guild are hardly “community groups.” And neither is Courage Campaign. The “community groups” were specifically asking that “pension funds, (1) communicate concern to their investment managers regarding the long- term implications of a sale of the LA Times and other papers to the Koch Brothers; (2) recognize that a good return on the funds investment does not depend on a quick sale to the Koch Brothers, and… Read More

For those who are wondering, when we got hit by a Malware infection last week, it nuked our Open X ad software.

We’ll have new software in place in the next day or two. If you are reading this and you are one of our advertisers, you will be receiving a credit for the time you were “off the air.”

Flash… Read More

Recently United States Senator Ted Cruz traveled out to Orange County here in California where he delivered the keynote address to the annual Flag Day Dinner of the OC GOP. Just before the dinner I had the opportunity to sit down with Senator Cruz and conduct a wide-ranging interview on a number of issues. We chatted for nearly a half-hour, on issues ranging from immigrations reform, to gay marriage and more. The interview appears below. _________________________________________________

Jon Fleischman (JF): Welcome to California, Senator Cruz.

Senator Ted Cruz (SC): Thank you.

JF: It’s great that you’re here in Orange County to headline the Annual Flag Day dinner for the Orange County Republican party. I know that there are a thousand people coming tonight to hear your remarks although by the time we publish this interview, they will have heard them!

I guess first and foremost, if I recall, you have some family here in California, don’t you?

SC: I do, my wife is from California.

JF: So what part of California is she… Read More

As the first director of the Department of Consumer Affairs in California, appointed by then-Governor Ronald Reagan, I see a growing trend in the ticket industry that I believe raises serious consumer concerns. I’m talking about restricted ticketing.

California is the home to dozens of professional sports teams, popular Division I college sports and major concert venues. The live event industry is critical to our state’s economy. However, event producers and ticket companies have put in place – and in a rather sneaky way – anti-consumer restricted ticketing policies that strip ticket owners of their property rights, undermine the free market and needlessly restrict consumer choice.

… Read More

I got to re-live an old childhood memory this week.

Growing up in the Soviet Union, all three TV channels would cease regular programming from time to time to breathlessly announce a new five-year plan of government-imposed price controls, production quotas and intricate regulations.

Despite the promises of plenty, only poverty followed, until national bankruptcy forced the five-year plan onto the ash heap of history, saving its future TV mentions only for late-night comedy shows.

Or so I thought, until the House of Representatives took up the Farm Bill, in which it tied a reauthorization of the… Read More

It would be redundant to summarize recent revelations concerning just how big America’s national security state has become. Two reports, both written in the last two days, do a really good job: “The Making of a Global Security State,” by Tom Engelhardt, published by The Nation Institute, and “5 Alarming Things We Should Have Already Known About the NSA, Surveillance, and Privacy Before Ed Snowden,” by Brian Doherty, published by the Reason Foundation.

It is encouraging that both of these articles address the same topic and summon the same moral concerns, despite being published by top-tier think tanks – the Reason Foundation and the Nation Institute – that occupy opposite positions on the right/left continuum. What is discouraging is neither of these articles explore the connection between unionized government and the alarming police state trends they describe so thoroughly.

The centrality of patriotism and law-and-order priorities blinds many on the… Read More