Last December, California governor Jerry Brown signed AB 1570, authored by former Republican assemblywoman Ling Ling Chang. Chang’s measure alters the state’s “autograph law,” formerly limited to sports memorabilia, to include any signed item worth more than $5, including books. As Anastasia Bolden of the Pacific Legal Foundation notes, this makes it “extremely risky,…
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California government employees represented by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) will soon be getting “bonus checks” of $2,500. It remains unclear what this “bonus” is for, but it is not tied to any performance measure such as greater efficiency or accountability. The office of California’s state controller, which sends out the checks, had…
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During winter storms back in February, the emergency spillway of the Oroville dam failed, forcing the evacuation of nearly 200,000 people. Engineers had known for decades that the rock-and-soil spillway was unreliable but did nothing. California Rep. John Garamendi said the spillway “worked fine until it had to be used.” Governor Jerry Brown said,…
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Last month we suggested that California’s Board of Equalization deserved a stop on the California Corruptour, modeled on the one now functioning in Mexico. The BOE, which does not equalize anything, has misallocated nearly $50 million in tax revenue. BOE members have been spending public funds to promote themselves, staging useless events, and dishing…
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As any motorist can easily verify, California’s roads are a disaster. Governor Brown and the legislature are running to the rescue with a $5.2 billion deal that will raise the tax on gasoline, raise the tax on diesel and raise user fees on motorists. California taxpayers, the most embattled in the nation, have good…
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After the 2016 election, California governor Jerry Brown showed signs of early onset Trump Derangement Syndrome, pledging resistance and warning that California would “launch its own damn satellite” if President Trump backed off on climate research. On his trip to Washington this week, Brown toned down the defiance and held out the begging bowl….
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Residents and visitors alike know that getting around the Bay Area is not exactly a walk in the park. A $2.4 billion Transbay Transit Center is slated to open in December, but as San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross note, this highly touted “Grand Central Station of the West,” will wind up…
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February 28 marked 20 years since bank robbers Larry Phillips and Emil Matasareanu engaged in a full-blown firefight with police outside the Bank of America on Laurel Canyon Boulevard in North Hollywood. Both deployed fully automatic rifles illegal to possess at the time. They sprayed anything that moved, firing even at television news helicopters….
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Despite contrary claims by law enforcement, looting did take place during the evacuation of more than 150,000 people in the wake of the spillway failure at the Oroville Dam. As the Los Angeles Times reported, in one case looters blasted the doors of a market with a shotgun and attempted to ransack the business….
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A massive spillway failure at Northern California’s Oroville Dam prompted an evacuation order that sent 200,000 people running for shelter anywhere they could find it. As the Sacramento Bee reported, the dam itself “has not been compromised. But experts say that if the emergency spillway collapses, it wouldn’t be much different than a total…
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