Free Republic

California's gasoline taxes are 43 percent higher than the national average, according to a recent study by University of California and California State University economists. Since 1997, Californians have paid up to 60 cents more per gallon of gas than residents of other states. That is simply unacceptable. Major fuel consumers and employers in this state, like United Airlines, who rely heavily on affordable fuel prices, are being hit hard by these California-only fuel polices. What causes this disparity in fuel prices? It's simple: California prices are increasingly inflated by the state's policies, taxes and fees. These California-specific rules and...

Republican Assemblyman Mike "Spanky" Duvall's decision to resign over his open-mike bragging about his sexcapades with a Sacramento lobbyist was one of the dumbest moves I've ever seen. The minute his fellow Republican seatmate heard Duvall's comments, he should have gone to his party's leadership and told them. The leadership should then have called in Duvall, stripped him of his committee assignments and thus taken the sting out of what was bound to be an embarrassing situation. Instead, Duvall was a sitting duck when the tape was leaked. I know the leak didn't come from the Democratic side. For one,...

The latest dust-up over President Barack Obama's health care-for-all mission — Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., angrily calling Obama a liar during a nationally televised speech — underscored conservatives' fears that illegal immigrants would benefit from efforts to expand coverage. Obama insisted that the legislation would not give government subsidies to the nation's millions of undocumented residents. But if immigrant-rich California is any indication, considerable numbers of undocumented immigrants participate in taxpayer-supported health plans. Although most federal benefit programs bar those who cannot prove their citizenship, California has been more generous than other states. Its taxpayers contribute more than $1 billion...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will veto a pair of bills lawmakers passed early today to ratchet up California's renewable energy goals, a spokesman said this afternoon. The governor supports a requirement in the legislation that by 2020 at least 33 percent of all electrical power delivered to Californians come from solar, wind, geothermal, biomass or small-scale hydroelectric sources. But Schwarzenegger dislikes provisions that would limit the amount of energy utilities could purchase from out-of-California providers

Toward the end of his speech on health care Wednesday night, President Obama said that he had been thinking a lot about the phrase, "the character of our country." Too bad the president's speech had all the character of a free lunch. Obama argued for the moral imperative of providing quality health care for all Americans - but it's not such a moral imperative that most people should have to pay for it. In fact, he promised a load of goodies, starting with access to health care for America's 47 million-plus uninsured. House Bill 3200 would provide subsidies for families...

state sales tax would be eliminated along with taxes on corporate income in a sweeping proposal considered Thursday by a blue ribbon commission charged with finding ways to overhaul California's tax system. The Commission on the 21st Century Economy was convened in autumn by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in the midst of the state's worst financial crisis. The 14 commissioners - appointed by the governor and Democratic legislative leaders - have a Sept. 20 deadline to recommend a plan to stabilize the state's erratic revenue stream. "The overall objective ... is to help stabilize state revenues, reduce volatility, promote long-term economic...

A Senate bill gutted and then amended to require local governments to get state vetting before filing for bankruptcy threatens delivery of basic public services, opponents say. Cities, counties and special districts opposing the bill say the measure would thwart their ability to cope with the fallout from the sour economy and the state budget crisis. "Counties provide state health and human services for entitlement programs," said Jean Hurst of the California State Association of Counties. If the county cannot seek bankruptcy court protection to avert insolvency, she added, "something is going to have to be done. Some level of...

In the latest round of Capitol brinksmanship, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill honoring Vietnam veterans and threatened to kill 72 other proposals on his desk because he said lawmakers have ignored his priority issues. The Senate withdrew all of its 43 bills from the Republican governor's desk for temporary safekeeping. But in an act of defiance, the Assembly left on his desk a bill that would designate March 30 as "Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day." "I dare the governor to veto this bill," said Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico, D-Newark, before the close of Tuesday's session. Shortly afterward, Schwarzenegger...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has demanded that both houses withdraw 73 bills awaiting action on his desk as an apparent bargaining chip in the final days of the session. He has threatened to veto any bills that he must act on by the end of business Wednesday. Though an e-mail circulated to Senate chiefs of staff says the request is to provide the governor's office with more time to act on the bills, an e-mail sent to Assembly chiefs of staff and a statement by Schwarzenegger's communications director point to the host of large issues still looming over legislators' heads with...

This is not a celebratory Labor Day for California's workers, and that includes government employees who believed that labor contracts and civil service rules gave them bulletproof job protection. California is mired in one of its worst economic recessions, with unemployment approaching 12 percent and likely to rise higher, but even those with jobs are often pinched by wage freezes and reductions, furloughs and cuts in fringe benefits. The jobless rate is twice as high as it was a year ago, the California Budget Project points out, and the recession has wiped out the state's employment gains in the last...

THE CALIFORNIA PUBLIC Employees Retirement System is trying to tamp down public concern after its chief actuary candidly said last month that government pension costs are "unsustainable." The portfolio value of the nation's largest public pension fund, battered by the stock market and the real estate downturn, declined about 24 percent, or roughly $58 billion, in the fiscal year that ended June 30. The system serves 1.6 million public employees, retirees and their families across the state. They need not worry. Their pensions won't be affected. Instead, state and local governments across California will have to cut services — or,...

BEFORE THE GOVERNMENT takes over more of our health care system, the least it can do is make a decent sandwich. ...The U.S. Senate Rules and Administration Committee oversees a network of restaurants, cafeterias and coffee shops throughout the Senate complex on Capitol Hill. Its crown jewel is the ornate Senate Dining Hall, where senators and their guests are served by waiters wearing jackets and ties. But there was a problem: The restaurant operation was losing lots of dough. Why? For starters, the food stunk. Many Senate staffers preferred to flock across the Capitol to lunch at the privately managed...

Logic gives you what you need. Passion gives you what you crave. In the end, it's passion that feeds your dreams or part of you dies. When it comes to logic, it makes financial sense to keep all state parks open. Last year, state parks had 79.6 user visits that generated $2.6 billion in spending during those trips. For every dollar the state put into parks, it generated $2.35 in tax revenue. Yet in his last-minute line-item budget cuts, Gov. Schwarzenegger slashed general fund money to state parks. ...., yet could close 100 parks starting in September. When it comes...

Love it or hate it, San Francisco is known for being unique. And it's not just in our heads: The city's lefty politics and involved citizenry have translated into a city government that's as extraordinary as its characters. San Francisco's current $6.6 billion budget - the largest in city history - dwarfs the annual spending of some small states and pays for everything from police officers to art exhibits to solar panels. But its size comes at a price: If you own a home, run a business or spend money in the city, you probably pay more in taxes than...

When University of California President Mark Yudof announced a massive furlough plan last month, the idea was that almost all UC employees would have their salaries reduced this year by taking some days off without pay. But a third of UC's 180,000 employees haven't faced the furloughs yet. They're represented by about a dozen labor unions that are fighting Yudof's plan. Speaking Thursday to the Sacramento Press Club, Yudof said UC's unionized workers received 4 percent raises this year, while non-union employees are taking pay cuts ranging from 4 to 10 percent. He said the university would lay off some...

As the Cold War wound down and new military technology emerged two decades ago, Washington politicians were compelled to acknowledge two realities: It was time to shrink the nation's military establishment, and Congress couldn't bring itself to close outmoded military bases that were high-profile components of local economies. The answer to the dilemma was called the Base Realignment and Closure Commission, an independent body that would decide which military installations would be closed or merged and allow Congress only to veto an entire list, not cherry-pick it. In a sense, it was similar to the decision to make the Postal...

MARTINEZ — Contra Costa County District Attorney Robert Kochly said Thursday that his office has been looking into the activities of county Assessor Gus Kramer, who was the subject of a series of stories in the Times about his private property investments and actions as an elected official. Kochly, who stressed the probe is not a criminal investigation, said he would not reveal the focus of the inquiry. Kramer's attorney said the inquiry began about six months ago. In a series of stories in June, the Times revealed that Kramer is an active property investor who in 2004 bought a...

At a recent Colorado town hall, University of Colorado at Boulder student Zach Lahn asked President Obama how private insurers could be expected to compete with a public health care plan. Lahn, 23, also told Obama, "I'd love to have a debate just all out, anytime, Oxford-style, if you'd like" on health care. Obama answered that "UPS and FedEx are doing a lot better than the Post Office." (If I were Obama, I wouldn't mention the post office while touting public health care.) Then the president observed, "It's good to see a young person who's very engaged and confident challenging...

Below Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck explains the Apollo Alliance on his July 28 show. Beck mentions the Obama administration’s “stimulus” blueprint, “The New Apollo Program: Clean Energy, Good Jobs,” which you can read here.

A wave of anger over a threatened BART strike, averted hours before a Monday walkout, carried a sobering message to employee unions and politicians: In hard economic times, voters in the liberal Bay Area can run out of patience over the demands of organized labor. The palpable outrage at the 900 rank-and-file members of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555 - expressed in Internet forums and on SFGate.com, The Chronicle's Web site - helped settle the impasse after politicians, other unions and political leaders pushed for a last-minute deal. But the politics of the BART settlement present a challenge for...

Other than passing two state budget revisions that failed to close a chronic deficit, the California Legislature has done almost nothing so far this year. For that and other sins of omission and commission, the Legislature finds itself with a historically low approval rating of just 17 percent among California voters in a recent Public Policy Institute of California poll. However, lawmakers will redeem themselves with a burst of energy and creativity during the final four weeks of the 2009 session that begins this week, startling constituents and pundits alike. And pigs will celebrate this political miracle by taking flight....

Sometimes it's a good thing that I cannot reach into my newspaper and pull out a person quoted in a story and rip his larynx out. I mean, not that I would ever do that, because larynx ripping takes a long time and I'd probably calm down before I did any serious damage, and it would be a messy and distracting business. For instance, last week the New York Times had a story about how banks, having been given emergency bridge loans to tide them over after the unholy mess they made of the entire financial system with their greed-driven...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration has filed court papers claiming a federal marriage law discriminates against gays, even as it continues to defend the law.

Al Gore buys them. So do the Grateful Dead, Hollywood celebrities and, increasingly, many climate-conscious executives and consumers. For those who travel the world by air but don't want to contribute to global warming in the process, compensating with so-called carbon offsets has become a fashionable solution. The sale of these credits for environmentally friendly activities, investments in everything from wind energy to carbon stored in forests, jumped from $97 million in 2006 to $331 million worldwide in 2007 – about a quarter of it in the United States. But one global green leader does not offset its travel, even...

California's government is in a state of civil war. The battlegrounds: courtrooms from San Francisco to Sacramento. The fight: furloughs. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration spent $228,000 on furlough litigation as part of an eight-month contract that ended in June with Kronick, Moskovitz, Tiedemann & Girard, a Sacramento-based law firm. "These legal costs wouldn't be so high if people weren't fighting the furloughs," said Lynelle Jolley, spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger's Department of Personnel Administration. "That's ludicrous," said Yvonne Walker, president of Service Employees International Union Local 1000, which represents about 95,000 state workers. "What audacity, to blame the very people they're hurting...

First, a confession: I've never flown on a private jet. I've never flown on a Gulfstream. Never flown on a private 737 "office in the sky." So it could be that I am missing the good reasons why the House padded the $636 billion defense budget by adding two additional C-37 Gulfstreams and two additional C-40s (the military version of a Boeing 737) - even though the Department of Defense never requested the planes. The good news: This week Defense Appropriations Subcommittee boss Jack Murtha, D-Pa., announced that the $330 million for the four planes would be pulled from the...

A battle is brewing among consumer groups, car dealers and the government over the use of contingency agreements in the Cash for Clunkers program.At issue is who is left holding the bag if a transaction goes awry.Under the Car Allowance Rebate System, a consumer turns in a qualified clunker and gets $3,500 or $4,500 off the price of a new car. The dealer must make sure the clunker and the new car meet program requirements and get the proper documentation - including proof of insurance and registration - from the owner. After the buyer drives off, the dealer must electronically...

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, filed suit Monday in San Francisco Superior Court to block nearly $500 million in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's July line-item budget vetoes. Steinberg asked the court to prevent Schwarzenegger and state Controller John Chiang from imposing cuts to programs ranging from Healthy Families to the Department of Parks and Recreation. Chiang, a Democrat, is named in the suit as a formality because he is responsible as controller for carrying out Schwarzenegger's vetoes. The Republican governor, in signing the vetoes, said he was forced to cut a wide range of programs because the Assembly sent...

Before leaving for the August recess, before health care town halls became the story, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would use her successful defeat of former President George W. Bush's Social Security overhaul as her "template" for pushing health care reform. "We went out there on Social Security to dispel misrepresentations of the Bush administration about what their privatization would do and then to reverse the impression through our grass roots mobilization and message campaign," she said. When Democrats started the attack, Pelosi said, 60 percent of seniors supported Bush's plan, and "after we were finished 70 percent supported...

UNSATISFIED WITH the amount of spending reductions agreed to by the Legislature, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger used his line-item veto to cut another $489 billion out of the state budget. It may well be that even more drastic spending cuts need to be made, but the governor may have overstepped the law with his vetoes, not to mention the additional hardships that could be placed on needy Californians. The extra budget spending reductions he made at the end of July took nearly $80 million that pays for workers who help abused and neglected children and $50 million from Healthy Families, which...

Twice this year, as revenues dropped and deficits widened, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislators reopened and revised the state budget. In many respects, the dynamics of both exercises were similar. First, there would be a public acknowledgment of the immediate crisis, then a flurry of competing approaches, ...However, the final throes of the February and July episodes were very different. The February "solution" – the quotation marks denote its ephemeral quality – was centered on raising income, sales and automobile taxes, which put Republicans, most of whom had signed an anti-tax pledge, on the spot. Ultimately, a bare minimum of...

VALLEJO -- After almost a year of legal wrangling, Vallejo's labor unions have dropped their appeal of the city's bankruptcy filing, removing one of the final obstacles to the North Bay city's financial restructuring. The city's fire and electrical workers' unions withdrew their appeal to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco late Thursday. The unions had challenged the city's accounting, saying that money was shifted from the general fund into other accounts to give a false appearance of financial ruin and as a means to scrap its labor contracts. Union officials did not return phone calls...

You know that American voters aren't feeling the love for ObamaCare when House members hold town-hall meetings in their districts, only to be heckled and booed. No worries for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco. On Tuesday, she ditched the town-hall concept in favor of a friendlier closed-to-the-public "roundtable" with health care professionals and consumers at San Francisco General Hospital. At a news conference afterward, Pelosi proclaimed that "health care is a right, not a privilege." The House health care bill, she said, would mean Americans could receive health care with no restrictions on pre-existing medical conditions, more benefits for...

San Francisco -- A federal court panel ordered California on Tuesday to reduce the population of its bulging prisons by 40,000 over the next two years to meet constitutional standards for inmate health care, and said it could be done without releasing dangerous prisoners to the streets. "The convergence of tough-on-crime policies and an unwillingness to expend the necessary funds to support the population growth has brought California's prisons to the breaking point," the three-judge panel said. Unless the courts intervene, the panel said, inmates will continue to suffer and die needlessly because prisons lack the space and the staff...

California is just one of three states that require supermajority votes to enact state budgets, and while that constitutional provision has been in effect for nearly eight decades, only in the past quarter-century has it become a major political impediment. The state's socioeconomic evolution, term limits, gerrymandered legislative districts, volatility in the state's revenue and the concentration of fiscal power in Sacramento have made the budget process infinitely more complex and, in turn, turned the two-thirds budget vote, once a formality, into a major factor. Much of last month's machinations over overhauling the deficit-ridden budget stemmed from the legal requirement...

California's largest state employee union has voted to allow job actions including a strike, officials said Saturday. A spokesman for Service Employees International Union Local 1000 said no strike is imminent. Union leaders will meet in the coming week to decide what steps to take, spokesman Jim Zamora said The union announced that 74 percent of its membership approved the strike authorization in votes counted Saturday. President Yvonne Walker said the overwhelming support shows employees are outraged at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's decision to unilaterally furlough state workers three days each month. The three furlough days effectively reduce pay by about...

The IRS just released some interesting tax information -- the Top 1% of taxpayers is now paying more in taxes than the bottom 95%. Scott Hodge from the Tax Foundation created the chart nearby that graphs the new data. Perthaps the CD-10 candidates can advise at what higher rate do you tax the “rich” in order to make the tax code even more progressive and supposedly more “fair?” Once Obama and the Democrats in Congress get done with us, only politicians and public employees will be the rich. Yummm, pass the BBQ sauce. Who says turnabout isn’t fair play? Hmmm…DeSaulnier...

The Secretary of State's office has given the green light to begin gathering signatures for a ballot initiative to lower the vote requirement for passing a state budget or increasing taxes from two-thirds to a three-fifths supermajority. The man behind the initiative, Berkeley-based attorney and editor Robert Denham, says he figures that a three-fifths majority would prevent gridlock over the budget but still be palatable to voters wary of dropping the requirement to a simple majority. "I thought voters are more likely to sign off on something that doesn't make it too easy," said Denham, a Democrat. "That sort of...

The plan signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this week to balance the state's budget could leave California facing shortfalls in future years of more than $15 billion, according to an analysis released Thursday by a major Wall Street credit rating firm. Moody's also criticized California's plan to take more than $1 billion from counties' redevelopment agencies this year to help close its $24 billion deficit, saying that could jeopardize those agencies' credit ratings. Moody's is one of several firms, including Fitch Ratings, that downgraded the state's credit ratings this month after legislators failed to pass a budget by the June...

A California vendor sued state officials Wednesday for paying bills with IOUs, calling the notes an unconstitutional dead weight on small businesses everywhere. The lawsuit, filed one day after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a new budget agreement, highlights California's continued cash problems. Despite the budget deal, state Controller John Chiang will continue issuing IOUs to pay certain bills until he's convinced the state has sufficient cash, said his spokeswoman Hallye Jordan. Since July 2, Chiang has disbursed more than 222,000 IOUs worth a combined $1.1 billion to vendors, taxpayers owed refunds and local governments that deliver social services with state...

When the Senate passed a federal hate-crimes measure by a 63-28 earlier this month, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, proclaimed, "This legislation will help to address the serious and growing problem of hate crimes." I'm baffled. Washington passed the first federal hate-crimes bill in 1968 and 45 states have enacted hate-crime laws. This latest bill, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, expanded the list of hate crimes - which originally focused on attacks based on the victims' race, color, religion or national origin - to include those targeted because of their gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. If hate-crime...

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has sunk to an all-time low among Californians in a new survey that also finds that residents, while strongly in favor of environmental regulations, want to slow down on environmental reforms while the economy is still taking a beating. Schwarzenegger's job approval rating is now at 28 percent, according to a poll by the Public Policy Institute of California, comparable to the ratings faced by former Gov. Gray Davis before he was recalled in 2003. The poll of 2,501 adults was taken July 7-21, at the height of budget negotiations but before the $26 billion...

Even the most cockeyed optimist in the Capitol, if there is such a thing, would not contend that the much-revised state budget that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Tuesday is the final fiscal word. Even Schwarzenegger, who usually puts a positive spin on events, was subdued, reminding reporters that "we are not out of the troubled waters yet" and pledging that "if our revenues drop further, (we will) make the necessary cuts in order to again live within our means." Not that the revised 2009-10 general fund budget exactly "lives within our means." The $84.6 billion budget is balanced on paper...

Lawmakers have outstanding budget issues to resolve when they return in mid-August, not the least of which is how to cut prison spending by at least $1.2 billion. Lawmakers on Friday reduced the corrections budget by that amount, with a wink and a nod that Democrats probably would pass the most controversial cuts having to do with reducing the inmate population on their own with a majority vote. But other issues are cropping up. Redevelopment agencies already are threatening to sue the state for taking $1.7 billion, so expect a court battle over that. Advocacy groups are carefully eyeing the...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a package of budget bills Tuesday he said contained "the good, the bad and the ugly," including no new tax increases and deep cuts in education and health care. He said he was forced to make additional cuts in parks and child welfare services because lawmakers sent him a package that was $156 million in the red. "We are not out of the troubled waters yet," he said."We are ready if our revenues drop further to make the necessary cuts to again live within our means." Line items totaled $656 million, including cuts in the Office...

The Capitol's political machinations have become increasingly convoluted as the state's fiscal crisis has deepened, with the latest deal, another mélange of gimmicks aimed at once again postponing the day of reckoning, typifying the trend. In the aftermath of last week's dealmaking, confusion, conflict and angst, politicians are chanting the mantra of reform. "We will be tackling tax reform, to rid our system of its volatility and reliance on capital gains," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said. "And we will take on pension reform to cut down on unfunded liabilities and save the state billions of dollars." The president pro tem of...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to line-item veto more than $600 million in state programs to rebuild California's reserve fund when he signs a budget revision today. The cuts will not include a fourth state worker furlough day, Schwarzenegger's office said Monday. The governor's signature on an $85 billion general fund budget should conclude California's months-long dispute over how to bridge its latest shortfall and, leaders hope, ultimately end the state's reliance on IOUs. Schwarzenegger will exercise his line-item veto authority after the Assembly last week rejected nearly $1.1 billion in solutions that legislative leaders and the governor had negotiated...

A Solano County sheriff's correctional officer has been arrested on suspicion of workers' compensation fraud, authorities said. Aaron Janes, 29, of Vacaville man was booked Monday at the Solano County Jail on eight counts of insurance fraud. Janes is accused of making a claim to the county in which he said he hurt himself while struggling with an inmate. An investigation determined that "Janes' version of how the injury occurred is false," said a statement released by Sheriff Gary Stanton and District Attorney David Paulson. Authorities said Janes had been treated for the same injury by his personal doctor two...

Sacramento, Calif. (AP) -- Human services advocates say more cuts to health and welfare programs are likely this week when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issues line-item vetoes before signing California's revised budget. State officials also are analyzing the plan passed by the Legislature to see if it will be sufficient to allow the state to get short-term loans and stop issuing IOUs.

The strike ballots may come back "yes," but history says "no." With a Friday deadline looming, members of California's largest state employee union have been voting on whether to give their leaders permission to call a strike. And another union that represents California's correctional officers may soon send strike-authorization ballots to its members. No state employee union has ever called a general strike, and it's unclear what would happen if one did. Government officials say that a walkout by Service Employees International Union Local 1000, which has mailed strike-authorization ballots to 95,000 state employees, would violate labor agreements and that...