Many Reasons Why Businesses Close Down or Leave California

Near the top of the website of California’s Senate Republican caucus are five boxes labeled “Pension Reform,” “AB32 Global Warming Tax,” “California Jobs First, “The Red Line” and “Budget 2010.”

The brief description of “The Red Line” says:

“Weekly report of companies already escaping California’s anti-business climate and the jobs being lost.”    Read more »

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A Profile of South Carolina’s Democratic Senate Candidate…

(Editor’s Note: Don’t miss Paragraph 21.)    Read more »

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Examining the Tentative Agreements With Six State Unions

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger touts several recent, tentative agreements with six of the state’s 12 employee bargaining units as “significant first steps toward pension reform and reining in the state’s growing pension costs.”

The tentative agreements affect roughly 37,000 employees, including the 6,660 employees of the California Highway Patrol, according to Schwarzenegger’s Department of Personnel Administration.    Read more »

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Despite Court Ruling, Controller Won’t Cut State Worker Pay

Despite a July 2 ruling by a Sacramento appellate court and a written request from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, State Controller John Chiang said he would not reduce the pay of more than 314,000 state workers to the federal minimum wage of $7.25.

In its 43-page ruling, the Third District Court of Appeal said that the law requires Chiang to reduce employee pay if a budget authorizing payment isn’t in place.    Read more »

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July 2: Is a Two-Thirds Vote Required to Pass Talking Points?

(Editor’s Note: It’s the second day of a new fiscal year. The state constitution says the Legislature must deliver a budget to the governor by June 15.)

To which California Republican Party Communications Director Mark Standriff says this:

“Two weeks after missing their constitutionally mandated deadline, the Democrat(ic) leadership has now produced a worthless document void of any details on how to close the growing, multi-billion dollar state budget deficit.    Read more »

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BIll to Ban Bisphenol A in Baby Products Passes the Assembly

On the first day of the new fiscal year, the state Assembly spent 45 minutes debating a bill that would ban the use of bisphenol A in sippy cups, baby bottles, and formula containers used by infants up to the age of three.

More than 15 lawmakers spoke on both sides of the bill, SB 797, which was defeated last September by the lower house.    Read more »

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Guest Post: Of Yogi Berra, John Burton, Wind and Whitman

Yogi Berra was born in St. Louis in 1925, John Burton in Cincinnati in 1932.  One would think the similarity between these two men would end there, other than Burton’s fanaticism for baseball.

Not so.

Berra became known for turning a phrase that even Norm Crosby had trouble understanding.  Like being asked at a pizza joint if he wanted his pizza cut in six or eight slices.    Read more »

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