Author Archive: K. Lloyd Billingsley

K. Lloyd Billingsley is Communications Counsel at the Independent Institute.
Full biography and recent publications

FasTrak Fakery Preys on the People


Tuesday May 22nd, 2018   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 10:11am PDT   •   0 Comments

Back on March 19, this writer put in his typical Monday workday and never left his neighborhood in California’s capital city. That schedule is somewhat at odds with a notice I received from FasTrak, California’s freeway tolling agency.  “Immediate Attention Required—Official FasTrak Notice,” read the outside of the envelope, mailed on May 14. “Violation…
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Thirteen Plus Forty


Wednesday May 16th, 2018   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 1:58pm PDT   •   0 Comments

June 6 will mark 40 years since California voters passed the People’s Initiative to Limit Property Taxation, more commonly known as Proposition 13. As its primary backers recall, “property taxes were out of control. People were losing their homes because they could not pay their property taxes, yet government did nothing to help them.”…
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George Deukmejian and the Protection of Taxpayer Dollars


Friday May 11th, 2018   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 2:05pm PDT   •   0 Comments

Former governor George Deukmejian recently passed away at 89. Many Californians have little memory of the Golden State’s 35th governor, who served from 1983 to 1992. Millennials and such may be unaware that Deukmejian was the last California governor to return surplus funds directly to taxpayers in the form of a check. In 1987,…
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The Sexual Abuse Inherent in the System


Wednesday May 9th, 2018   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 9:43am PDT   •   0 Comments

New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman is the latest target of the #Me Too movement, with four women charging that Schneiderman abused them, calling one his “brown slave” and making her say that she was “his property.” Schneiderman, a self-proclaimed advocate for woman, dismissed it as “role playing,” and says he never crossed the…
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Deadly Government Education Abuse


Tuesday May 8th, 2018   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 4:47am PDT   •   0 Comments

Back on February 14, violent criminal Nikolas Cruz opened fire in a Broward County, Florida, high school, killing 17 students and wounding another 17. Superintendent Robert Runcie said this deliberate mass murder was an “accident,” and denied that Cruz had any connection with PROMISE, the “Preventing Recidivism through Opportunities, Mentoring, Intervention, Support, and Education,”…
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California BANANA Republic Punishes Workers


Tuesday May 1st, 2018   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 4:36am PDT   •   0 Comments

California is not short on people, but many have a tough time finding an affordable place to live. The state’s housing crisis is particularly acute in cities such as San Francisco, so state senator Scott Weiner thought he would do something about it. He teamed with fellow senator Nancy Skinner to write SB 827,…
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Why Government Employee Pensions Will Be Taxpayers’ Main Squeeze


Friday April 27th, 2018   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 4:00am PDT   •   0 Comments

Even Jerry Brown knows that government employee pensions have put California in a bad place. Prospects for reform recently took a hit when the Senate Public Employee Retirement Committee killed John Moorlach’s SB 1031 and 1032, which would have let local governments avoid CalPERS termination fees and limited cost-of-living hikes for future employees. The…
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Groupthink the Key to Success in Government “Science”


Wednesday April 25th, 2018   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 5:11pm PDT   •   0 Comments

Scientific studies must be reproducible because replication allows others to examine the data and methodology, and the possibility of reaching different conclusions. If a study is not reproducible it is not really science at all, and that is now common, according to David Randall and Christopher Welser, authors of The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern…
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An Earth Day Meditation for Millennials


Friday April 20th, 2018   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 4:08am PDT   •   0 Comments

April 22 marks Earth Day and millennials might think it goes back at least 100 years, or maybe all the way to the nation’s founding. Actually, Earth Day started only 48 years ago in 1970, but it was an occasion of significance. As Randy Simmons, Ryan M. Yonk and Kenneth J. Sim showed in…
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Government Fat Cats Bulk Up on Taxpayer Dollars


Tuesday April 17th, 2018   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 4:29am PDT   •   0 Comments

Many taxpayers have seen little economic gain in recent years but the salaries of government education bureaucrats “have exploded” as the Sacramento Bee reports. Sarah Koligian of the Folsom Cordova Unified School District gets $240,000 and Christopher Hoffman of Elk Grove Unified bags $330,951, more than the $324,029 of Sacramento State University boss Robert Nelson….
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