In recent years the vaunted University of California has been bulking up its vast bureaucracy and imposing steep tuition and fee hikes on students. As we noted last year, when students responded with peaceful protests, campus cops pepper-sprayed them in the face at point blank range. Lt. John Pike, who deployed the spray, claimed…
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Its safety is still in question, and parts remain unfinished, but the eastern span of the Bay Bridge connecting Oakland and San Francisco is slated to open on September 3, the day after Labor Day. The Bay Area Toll Authority approved $5.6 million for a celebration, but California taxpayers might want to take an…
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In 2004, nearly 54 percent of California voters approved Proposition 63, the Mental Health Services Act. State senate boss Darrell Steinberg, the measure’s original sponsor, wants President Obama to use it as a model for the nation. That is a bad idea, just like Proposition 63 itself. The measure slapped an additional 1 percent…
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Its academic reputation may fall short of Berkeley, UCLA and Stanford, but the University of California at Davis boasts a fine department of viticulture and enology. UC Davis also teaches how abuse can generate waste. The UC system, now headed by former Homeland Security boss Janet Napolitano, a politician and bureaucrat with no academic…
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Government waste occurs in schemes such as the federal stimulus, the GM bailout, Obamacare, and so forth. Government waste also occurs as a result of nepotism and sinecures, as in the case of Gil Cedillo Jr. In 2011 California’s Central Basin Municipal Water District hired Cedillo as a “business development manager,” a position the…
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We recently noted that government employee unions call the California capitol “our house.” Evidence is mounting that government unions do indeed own the place. Their mass rally in June was for a pay raise and to the surprise of nobody the politicians they worked so hard to elect gave them exactly what they wanted…
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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…
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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…
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“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…
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Taxes are not the only way government wrings money out of the workers. Governments also impose fees, and the Sacramento Bee has recently exposed one of California’s favorite tricks: Government establishes fees, which the Bee describes as “targeted assessments to people who participate or benefit from a state program for the purpose of funding…
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