Free Republic

So far this year, three California cities have filed for bankruptcy protection, and it's likely they will be joined by at least a few others in the not-too-distant future. That's not merely journalistic speculation. Moody's Investment Service, which closely monitors state and local governments for the huge municipal bond industry, issued an unusual public warning the other day that other California cities may be headed down the same path. "To summarize," Moody's said, "we expect … more bankruptcy filings and bond defaults among California cities, reflecting the increased risk to bondholders as investors are asked to contribute to plans for...

UC has reached a $1 million settlement with UC Davis students who were pepper sprayed at an Occupy-inspired Nov. 18 demonstration to protest rising tuition. UC will pay student plaintiffs $30,000 each, and the ACLU will pocket up to $250,000. Everything that is wrong in California resides in this story. For $30,000, I'll get pepper sprayed. Students think tuition costs too much, so what do they do? Sue the university - it has deep pockets. This episode began because students know that if they stood around smoking pot and demanding more money from Sacramento, the administration would be tickled pink....

A campaign finance measure on the November ballot is trailing among likely California voters, according to a new survey, although a sizable percentage remain undecided as dueling campaigns head into their final weeks. The poll, by the Field Poll and the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, shows 44 percent plan to vote no on Proposition 32 while 38 percent support the measure. The rest, 18 percent, said they haven't decided. "Opinions on this aren't fully formed yet," said Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo. Proposition 32 would ban unions and corporations from using payroll-deducted money for...

California's controversial high-speed rail project received a boost Wednesday when the Federal Railroad Administration approved the proposed Merced-to-Fresno route, clearing the way for construction to start early next year. A federal record of decision signed by Administrator Joseph Szabo represents the final bureaucratic hurdle for the California High-Speed Rail Authority. The decision gives a federal blessing to the 60-mile route and to thousands of pages of environmental review for the project. Backers of the project hailed the decision as historic for the development of the first high-speed train project in the nation and the start of construction in the central...

Probation department division chief arrested in fraud case Former Assemblyman Carl Edward Washington is accused of filing false identity theft claims, the latest in a series of arrests at the troubled agency. The arrests seem to be piling up at an unusual pace. Two weeks ago, a six-year employee of the Los Angeles County Probation Department was charged with persistently filing false workers' compensation claims. Earlier this month, police arrested a probation officer for allegedly shooting a man in a Covina bar. Those cases came on top of the dozens of drunk driving, drug possession and theft arrests that seemed...

Jerry Brown fancies himself a futurist, exhorting us to act now to ensure a better tomorrow – with a bullet train and a more dependable water system his prime examples. Their merits notwithstanding, making decisions with long-term benefits is precisely what politicians should – but rarely – do. One wonders, however, how Brown squares his self-appointed role as progressive pathfinder with his regressive and potentially disastrous approach to the state's chronic gap between revenue and spending. While making some reductions in spending – although how permanent is questionable – the first two budgets that Brown signed during his second stint...

"Please don't feed the animals." That phrase makes sense when talking about bears and deer, turkeys and elk in the Great Smoky Mountains. It's quite another matter when discussing whether to give food to human beings who need help because circumstances have left them wanting for one the most basic of aspects of life. That is unless you are David Fowler, president of the Family Action Council of Tennessee — ironic, that name. Fowler, a former Tennessee state legislator, posted on his personal Facebook page recently that the National Park Service's "stated reason for the policy is because the animals...

Did we all get suckered last week by the governor's office and the state Legislature on pension "reform"? Within a 72-hour period, Gov. Jerry Brown released sketchy details, the 60-page bill was posted on the Internet, a committee hearing was held and the Legislature approved it. We scrambled to decipher the highly technical and complex language. The Legislature and governor's office put out summaries that were incomplete and misleading. Outside experts had no opportunity for input. It was an outrageous charade. A missing word here, an added clause there -- it didn't take much to change the meaning and effect....

A $100 million annual tax break for California motion picture companies would be extended under legislation headed to Gov. Jerry Brown.

The compromise hammered out between Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic leaders of the state Legislature appears to be "pension reform lite." But it's hard to know for sure. Three days before the Legislature's deadline to vote on the plan, the governor's news release announcing the grand deal lacked details needed to evaluate it intelligently. It was merely a skeletal outline of a supposed strategy to fix one of the state's most complex financial problems. On Friday, legislators will vote on the complex bills that include the details. Most lawmakers will have no idea what's in them. It's an abhorrent way...

Gov. Jerry Brown and state lawmakers have reached a deal that will alter pensions for hundreds of thousand of local and state workers. Brown will announce an agreement that promises future employees less and requires many of them to pay more for it than their tenured colleagues, according to details of the plan leaking out this morning. Brown is scheduled to talk about pension reform tat an 11:30 a.m. Los Angeles press conference. The Democratic governor made cutting public pension costs a key piece of his administrative agenda and has insisted that voters insist on reform before they'll embrace a...

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is up with its second radio advertisement against Gov. Jerry Brown's November ballot initiative to raise taxes, comparing Brown's tax campaign to street robbery. "Hey, lady, hand over your purse or the schools get it," a voice at the top of the ad says. The ad, an issue-advocacy spot running statewide beginning today, comes as the Democratic governor begins in earnest to campaign for Proposition 30, his proposal to raise the state sales tax and income taxes on California's highest earners. The Democratic governor has characterized the election as a choice between higher taxes and...

The campaign of Rep. Pete Stark, the East Bay Democrat in a contested re-election race against fellow Democrat Eric Swalwell of Dublin, confirmed to the Chronicle that Stark’s children do receive Social Security benefits as allowed under the law, and that he has stopped paying his dues to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Stark campaign consultant Michael Terris wrote in an email that Stark “fought his entire career to protect Social Security from those who would dismantle it. Congressman Stark has been paying into the system for many years. And yes, like all Americans, he and his family intend to...

In a pointed letter critical of Gov. Jerry Brown's tax rival, California's two U.S. senators along with state legislative leaders called Thursday for a cease-fire from campaigns backing the two multibillion-dollar tax hikes on the November ballot. U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, as well as Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez, said in a letter to the California State PTA that the Proposition 38 campaign has "become increasingly negative" and "engaged in personal attacks against Governor Jerry Brown and Prop. 30." The PTA has joined wealthy attorney Molly Munger in backing Proposition...

Let's not mince words about what the state Senate's Democratic leader did Wednesday. It was self-serving censorship, the sort of thing that one expects from tinpot dictators, not from those who fancy themselves to be progressive civil libertarians. Someone acting for Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg suddenly cut off cable television access to a legislative hearing to air facts and arguments about pending ballot measures. The Senate Governance and Finance Committee called the hearing – as required by law – into three tax increases (Propositions 30, 38 and 39) and altering the state's budgetary procedures (Proposition 31). As it...

The back-to-back bankruptcy filings of Stockton and San Bernardino, following Vallejo's insolvency a few years earlier, have sparked finger-pointing about causes and speculation about whether more cities may go under. Those on the political right say the bankruptcies resulted from local politicians' caving in to pressure from unions for higher pay and more generous pension and health benefits. Those on the left – unions particularly – contend that the collapse of the real estate market, caused by rapacious Wall Street bankers, is to blame. The reality is more nuanced. All three cities on the suburban peripheries were facing urban decay....

VENTURA, Calif. -- The California Fish and Game Commission has removed its president after he was criticized for killing a mountain lion in Idaho. Commission members voted Wednesday to replace Dan Richards. Richards, who was appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2008, has said he plans to remain on the five-member commission until his term expires in six months.

Sorry About the Fake Bomb U.S. officials apologized today for mistakenly leaving a fake bomb attached to an embassy vehicle in Oslo and causing a bomb scare that led to the evacuation of the U.S. embassy, Norway's royal palace and part of downtown Oslo. The device had been placed beneath an embassy vehicle as part of a security drill and then mistakenly left there. It was spotted by security guards at the embassy's front entrance when someone tried to drive the vehicle onto embassy grounds just after 11 a.m. local time, triggering the evacuation of the embassy and the palace,...

As we told you a few weeks back, California’s unions are very worried about Proposition 32, which — if passed — would kneecap their political power. The measure would limit labor’s chief weapon for influencing the state’s politics – political donations – by preventing unions from using automatic payroll deductions from members without their permission. It would also prevent corporations from doing the same, but as we noted in our story a while back — they’ve got some serious loopholes. So that explains why the the 325,000-member California Teachers Association/Issues PAC dropped $7.5 miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiilllion Friday in opposition to the measure,...

California drivers pay fees for smog checks, vehicle registrations and new tires, all supposedly for programs that benefit roadway use. Consumers pay fees to recycle beverage containers, televisions and computers. Doctors and accountants pay license fees to regulate their industries. But for more than a decade, the special funds collecting these dollars have served a second purpose: helping California pay for schools, social services and prisons that are supposed to be funded by general taxes. California has 560 funds deemed "special" because in theory they're walled off from general state expenditures. In the face of two recessions, however, California reached...