The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) is in the news again, but this time it’s not slick ad copy masquerading as journalism, with the goal of shaking down taxpayers for more money. This time its Joe Rodota, former cabinet secretary to Gov. Pete Wilson, and Bernard Munos of the Innothink Center for Research…
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This just in: Sacramento City Unified School District has actually fired an administrator, but as Loretta Kalb notes in the Sacramento Bee, this rare dismissal is not an example of accountability. The administrator, Felisberto Cedros, is embroiled in a sexual harassment case against African American school worker Delecia Sydnor, whom he had threatened to…
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California maintains a state Board of Equalization that, contrary to its name, does not equalize anything. Board of Taxation would more accurate because the state body collects taxes, and as Adam Ashton notes in the Sacramento Bee, board members use some of the tax money they collect to promote themselves in their districts. In…
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Taxpayers in the northern California capital region wonder why their roads remain full of potholes, fire stations close down, and overall services decline. As Brad Brannan of the Sacramento Bee explains, this happens because of “rising pension costs.” An employee of the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District can retire after 30 years, at the age…
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Back in 2012, California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing installed Houdini, a $640,000 computer system designed to automate the filing of complaints. In November, 2013, Jon Ortiz of the Sacramento Bee reported that Houdini was failing to deliver improved efficiency and the DFEH “has seen a decline in the speed and quality of…
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As Chriss Street of Breitbart News reports, California Governor Jerry Brown wants a 42 percent increase in the gasoline tax and seeks to hike Californians’ vehicle registration fees by 141 percent. These tax and fee increases are not to fix the state’s terrible roads, build more water storage, which the state desperately needs, or…
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Before anybody else climbs aboard California’s “high-speed rail” project, they might give a listen to Ralph Vartabedian of the Los Angeles Times, who has been riding herd on this boondoggle from the start. The reporter has obtained a confidential Federal Railroad Administration risk analysis charging that the bullet train could cost taxpayers 50 percent…
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California imposes some of the highest income and sales taxes in the nation, and Governor Jerry Brown’s own budget team says the state could face a budget deficit of $4 billion by the summer of 2020. Even so, the governor maintains the statist view that there is always money for everything. The Golden State…
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As the Associated Press reports, on Thursday, January 5, Shiloh Heavenly Quine, 57, “became the first U.S. inmate to receive state-funded sex-reassignment surgery.” The procedure cost some $100,000, so Californians might wonder what Shiloh Heavenly Quine did to receive such an expensive procedure on the taxpayers’ dime. In February of 1980 in Los Angeles,…
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“We are not now in deficit, we were never in deficit and we won’t be in deficit at the end of the year.” That was Susan Hansch, chief deputy director of the California Coastal Commission last August, explaining that the CCC had received almost enough money to repay $1.45 million from the state Department of Finance. According…
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