As recent testimony confirms, the Internal Revenue Service has been singling out groups for extra scrutiny and abuse based on their political views. At the same time, the IRS has been singling out people who are not even supposed to be in the United States for special convenience. For example, in 2011 the IRS…
Read More »
On June 5, some 8,000 government employee union members rallied at the California capitol. “We’re letting them know this is our house!” said union boss Yvonne Walker of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), California’s largest government employee union. As it happens, Walker is right. Government employee unions do own the place, and members…
Read More »
As we have noted here, surveillance issues are not new. When the Senate and House recently reauthorized the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), Senate majority leader Harry Reid said the measure was imperfect but necessary to “protect us from evil in this world.” California Sen. Dianne Feinstein claimed that FISA had led to 100…
Read More »
The California senate has approved seven new bills dealing with firearms. SB 47 bans so-called “bullet buttons” allegedly used, according to one report, “to get around existing laws banning detachable magazines.” SB 374 bans detachable magazines in rifles and SB 396 prohibits possession of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. SB…
Read More »
In California between 1974 and 1978 property taxes increased 120 percent and people worried they might lose their homes. Enter Proposition 13, which amended the state’s constitution to limit the growth of property taxes—appropriately enough, as 35 years ago the state was running a budget surplus. The measure capped property tax rates for residential…
Read More »
The federal government is not short on scandal these days. The IRS has been cracking down on groups who want to make the country better, or monitor government spending. The Attorney General is going after news reporters and the Benghazi cover-up endures. In such an atmosphere embattled Americans should not forget another scandal that…
Read More »
“I’m not going to sit here and promise that there will not be cost growth.” That was Dan Richard, chairman of California’s high-speed rail authority, at a May 28 congressional hearing at Madera in California’s central valley. Richard’s non-promise was in vain because as rail subcommittee chairman Jeff Denham noted, enormous cost growth is…
Read More »
The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state’s $3 billion stem-cell institute, continues to put on a clinic on how to redistribute money to politically connected insiders. A recent federal review by the Office of Medicine, a division of the National Academy of Sciences, found CIRM rife with cronyism and conflicts of interest. Almost…
Read More »
Since the Sandy Hook massacre last year, California has introduced more than a dozen gun-control measures, headed by SB140 from state senator Mark Leno a San Francisco Democrat. This bill will confiscate handguns and assault rifles from some 20,000 Californians who acquired them legally but then through criminal convictions, restraining orders and mental illness…
Read More »
Tesla Motors Inc. is paying back its government loan of $465 million in full, and nine years early. This is being billed as “a huge boost for the Obama administration and clean energy firms.” Actually it isn’t. It is customary to pay back loans in full, so that is hardly a news item, and…
Read More »
 |
 |
 |