Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
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Your November ballot is going to be an orgy of tax increases that would make the Kama Sutra blush. In the main arena, we see that state lawmakers have unbuckled old restraints that have stopped local governments from taking on too much debt. The 1879 California constitution stated, "No county, city, town, township, Board of Education, or school district, shall incur any indebtedness or liability in any manner, or for any purpose ... without the assent of two thirds of the...
Gov. Gavin Newsom tweeted a video of himself signing a bill into law on an episode of HBO's "The Shop: Uninterrupted." He was seated in a barber's chair next to NBA superstar LeBron James, chatting with a group of star college athletes about how many college presidents called him and urged him to veto the bill. They all laughed at that. The new law is Senate Bill 206, the Fair Pay to Play Act. It requires California universities and colleges, beginning in 2023, to allow studen...
Let me tell you about the time Ruth Bader Ginsburg saved Donald Trump $355 million plus interest. It was Feb. 20, 2019, and Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the court in the case of Timbs v. Indiana. In that case, police in Indiana had seized Tyson Timbs' Land Rover SUV, which he bought for $42,000 with money he received from a life insurance policy when his dad died. The state sought civil forfeiture of the vehicle because Timbs had pleaded guilty to drug dealing...
New York City tried to make voting easier, and the result was chaos. City elections officials were overwhelmed with a flood of vote-by-mail ballots, more than 400,000, or ten times the usual number in a primary. Many ballot envelopes came in without the required postmarks. That problem may have been caused by processing errors at the post office. The envelopes provided to voters to return their ballots were postage-paid, which may have led to incorrect handling and missing pos...
The California Republican Party is like a big, empty aircraft carrier drifting along the coast. It could be powerful, if there were any people on it and if it had a plan to go somewhere. Here's a political messaging quiz: What did Republican candidates in California promise to do if elected? Take your time. Think of anything yet? There are millions of California voters of all party registrations who are looking for answers to the problems that are making their lives difficult...
First, in Los Angeles County, No on Measure W, a new property tax on homeowners, apartment buildings and businesses to pay for stormwater projects. It would raise $300 million per year, just enough to fill up a pot of money for politicians to spread around. No on Proposition 1, a $4 billion general obligation bond for affordable housing, including $1 billion for veterans' home loans. The veterans' loans cost taxpayers nothing but the rest of it will run $200 million per year...
One of the more depressing tricks employed by people who favor more government control of everything is this: Put government controls on a business, which causes problems, and then use the problems as a justification for more government controls. It's like trying to reverse a case of alcohol poisoning with a jug of moonshine. Nowhere is the "here, drink this," cure more discouraging than in the housing market. Just recently, Assembly member Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica) and...
If you take the politics out of it, all the current investigations in politics are about just one thing: Abuse of power. Forget whether crimes can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. It's not illegal to use a private server for government email. It's not illegal to talk to Russians. It's not illegal to dig for political dirt or to use that information to try to win an election. What should concern us most is the abuse of power for personal gain, followed by the abuse of...
Now that the tax reform bill has passed, big-spending California politicians have a problem. The state's General Fund receives 65 percent of its revenue from personal income tax collections, and 35 percent of the personal income tax revenue collected comes from just 0.4 percent of California households, about 60,000 of them, according to 2014 tax data. Until this week, California politicians could tell wealthy taxpayers, "It's deductible! Don't even worry about it!" And they...
Just the name of the case tells you we have a problem: Linchpins of Liberty, et al, v. United States of America. For anyone who thought the United States was on the side of liberty, not fighting against it in court, the IRS targeting of groups with "liberty" in their name was a disquieting thing. And it wasn't just liberty in the crosshairs. "Patriots," "Tea Party" and "political-sounding" names also were singled out for extra scrutiny, which included demands for the names...
The Kate Steinle case was always about more than just the Kate Steinle case. The 32-year-old was shot in the back while walking with her father along San Francisco's Pier 14. She collapsed and died in her father's arms. It was July 1, 2015. The bullet came from a gun stolen four days earlier from a federal ranger's official vehicle, where it had been left unsecured and loaded. But the story wasn't about carelessness. The gun was fired by a man who was living on the street,...
Why is homelessness increasing in Los Angeles? According to a count taken in January, homelessness is up 23 percent across L.A. County over 2016, a total of more than 55,000 people. News stories round up the usual suspects: high rents, low-paying jobs, drugs, alcohol, mental illness, domestic violence, and the release of prison or jail inmates without rehabilitation programs. But one reason for the exponential increase in homeless encampments is rarely mentioned: In 2007, the...
If you don't like illegal taxes, you can just fry in the dark. That seems to be the message from Los Angeles city officials to Department of Water and Power customers who are tired of being overcharged for the electricity that keeps the lights on and the air conditioners running. The city has reached a settlement in the lawsuit over the DWP's annual transfer of so-called "surplus" funds to the city treasury. If a judge can be persuaded to approve the settlement, the practice...
One of the more depressing tricks employed by people who favor more government control of everything is this: Put government controls on a business, which causes problems, and then use the problems as a justification for more government controls. It's like trying to reverse a case of alcohol poisoning with a jug of moonshine. Nowhere is the "here, drink this," cure more discouraging than in the housing market. Just recently, Assembly member Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica) and...
