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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For more than a decade, according to David Jensen of the California Stem Cell Report, the $3 billion California Institute for Regenerative Medicine “has given away money at a rate of $22,000 an hour, seven days a week, 24 hours a day.” Donald Kohn of UCLA got $52 million from CIRM, and his treatment…
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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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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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Governor Jerry Brown wants to drill two massive tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and calls this project “a fundamental necessity of California’s current and future prosperity.” Now Ellen Hanak, director of the Public Policy Institute of California’s Water Policy Center, and PPIC fellows Brian Gray and Jeffrey Mount want the state to drill…
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Back in the day, Jerry Brown earned the nickname “Governor Moonbeam” for proposing that California launch its own communications satellite. “I didn’t get that moniker for nothing,” Brown recently proclaimed, adding, “if Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellite.” The governor did not indicate what this satellite might cost,…
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Back in 2011, when students were peacefully protesting steep tuition hikes, UC Davis cops pepper sprayed them. This abuse resulted in a $1 million settlement, more than half of it going to consultants, who reported to a panel headed by Cruz Reynoso, a Jerry Brown pick California voters booted off the state Supreme Court…
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