As we recently noted, the California Department of Transportation employs 3,500 full-time engineers who do little more than sit at their desks. The state’s Legislative Analyst wants to cut these positions, but Caltrans executives cried foul. So did union boss Bruce Blanning, executive director of Professional Engineers in California Government. Blanning told reporters the…
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As Lawrence McQuillan has noted, unfunded pension liabilities have soared to $4.7 trillion nationwide and California accounts for $550 billion to $750 billion of the total. A case outlined by Brad Branan in the Sacramento Bee shows why California is a leader in this field. In Loomis, near Sacramento, town councilman Brad Wheeler was…
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Arne Duncan is stepping down as federal Education Secretary, but the Washington Post news story of almost 3,000 words left out some key details. Duncan, one of the president’s Chicago pals, has been the federal point man against school choice. As we noted, the current president, like Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter before him,…
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Politicians and pundits like to decry predatory lending, the practice of private banks and credit card companies preying on poor and vulnerable people. Indeed a new federal agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, was recently established to ride herd on private lenders. As Brad Branan of the Sacramento Bee shows, the worst offenders would…
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In California Dreaming: Lessons on How to Resolve America’s Public Pension Crisis, Lawrence McQuillan discovered that California accounts for $550 billion to $750 billion of the $4.7 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities nationwide. The biggest player is the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) which in 1999 assured legislators that its investment earnings would…
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The Pentagon deploys the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS) to guard the nation from cruise missiles and other low-flying threats. JLENS primary contractor, Raytheon, says the system is proven capable and performing well right now, but as David Willman notes in the Los Angeles Times, taxpayers might have…
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California is the least tax-friendly state according to new rankings from Kiplinger. Much of that unfriendliness is due to the 2012 Proposition 30, which imposed the highest income tax rate in America, 13.3 percent, and also raised the sales tax to 7.5 percent, also highest in the nation. Proposition 30 was pitched as a…
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As we noted in 2013, California’s government employee unions are so confident of their power that they demonstrate in front of the capitol chanting “This is our house!” They were right then and are still right now, as a Sacramento Bee editorial explains. Senate Bill 376 by Ricardo Lara is “a sop to the…
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As Lawrence McQuillan has observed, unfunded pension liabilities have soared to $4.7 trillion nationwide, and California accounts for $550 billion to $750 billion of the total. CalPERS, the Golden State’s biggest public pension fund, has authorized 99 types of special payments that count in pension calculations, but the only one that drew any objection…
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In 2012, California assemblywoman Fiona Ma backed AB 2482, a bill to license, yes, interior designers. Backers of the measure claimed it would protect consumers from unqualified home decorators, but as Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee notes, “it was quite evidently aimed at limiting who could offer design services to potential clients –…
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