Free Republic

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday vetoed seven bills that could have charged Californians more on vehicle and port shipping fees, saying that such fees should be approved by local voters, not the Legislature. "Many of these proposals have been well-intentioned, with proposed fees related to the impact motorists have on roads and the environment," Schwarzenegger wrote in his veto message of Assembly Bill 2681, which would have allowed counties to increase the annual registration surcharge from $1 to $2 to fund abandoned vehicle abatement programs. "However, I consistently held that fees such as these should be approved by the voters."...

The writer is an attorney and president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. Now that football season has begun, optimistic fans dream of winning the big game and a world championship. Coaches devise game plans that will keep the opposing team off balance and maximize their chances of victory. For the unlucky teams who don’t have the best talent, deception and misdirection plays are the only chance they have to succeed. The same is true in the California Legislature. The beginning of games on the gridiron also signals the end of games under the Capitol dome, where politicians seek to...

California businesses have been hit hard by this past legislative session. First, they have been forced to swallow a minimum wage increase and caps on industrial emissions of greenhouse gases as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger seeks to bolster his centrist stance in an election year. Now, there are dozens of other bills on the governor’s desk that could impose additional costs on doing business in California. Meanwhile, only a handful of bills supported by business made it through. But it could have been worse. Dozens of other bills dubbed “job killers” were defeated in the closing weeks of the session. Among...

The Oregon State Legislature will soon be considering a bill that would outlaw semiautomatic "assault rifles" and large-capacity magazines and require registration of these items purchased before the bill's effective date. However, any attempt to prohibit an individual citizen's right to own a firearm represents a gross misunderstanding not only of U.S. Constitutional Law, but also of the basic principles of human nature that caused the Framers to specifically pronounce that right in the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Every constitutional scholar recognizes that the Framers composed the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution as a reaction to the...