|
Court pick echoes Jerry Brown’s worldview
San Francisco Examiner
By: Steven Greenhut
7.31.2011
Gov. Jerry Brown’s decision to nominate Berkeley Law Professor Goodwin Liu to California’s Supreme Court is a highly partisan poke in the eye at Republicans, given that GOP congressional criticisms led Liu, in May, to withdraw his name from contention for a slot on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal.
Read more
|
|
|
We Can Be Leaders in E-Learning
Albuquerque Journal
By: Lance T. Izumi, J.D.
7.31.2011
Expanding virtual learning opportunities is a critically important step for New Mexico. Virtual schooling was a critical component of the “Florida Model” for education reform, which helped transform achievement across student subgroups there from nearly worst to first within a decade.
Read more
|
|
|
Obamacare threatens solvency of Colorado health plans
The Pueblo Chieftan
By: John R. Graham
7.31.2011
Obamacare encourages state politicians to increase their interference with health-insurance premiums. In 2008 Colorado passed a law giving the Division of Insurance the power to deny premium hikes. To enhance this power, known as "prior approval," Obamacare gave Colorado a $1 million grant last year to hire more insurance analysts to review rates.
Read more
|
|
|
Jerry Brown picks his kind of judge
OC Register/North County Times
By: Steven Greenhut
7.29.2011
Gov. Jerry Brown's decision to nominate UC Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu to the California Supreme Court is a highly partisan poke in the eye at Republicans, given that GOP congressional criticisms led Liu, in May, to withdraw his name from contention for a slot on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Read more
|
|
|
How’s ‘Jerry Brown’s charter school’ doing?
Orange County Register
By: Lance T. Izumi, J.D.
7.28.2011
In the state Capitol, bills hostile to charter schools, which are deregulated public schools independent of school districts, have snaked their way through the Legislature. If they reach Jerry Brown's desk, it will be interesting to see what the governor decides to do, since he founded a successful charter school, the Oakland Military Institute (OMI).
Read more
|
|
|
Court cools global-warming controversy
Providence Journal
By: Steven F. Hayward, Ph.D, Michael Noffsinger
7.28.2011
The U.S. Supreme Court recently rebuffed environmentalists in their bid to get the judiciary to intervene in the global-warming controversy by invoking the old common law of nuisance, as though global warming could be solved through an injunction.
Read more
|
|
|
Give A Convict A Job
Fox & Hounds Daily
By: Katy Grimes
7.28.2011
Never has it been more evident that California is in a downward spiral on the verge of economic, social and political collapse — San Francisco is now pushing to make convicted criminals a protected class so that prospective employers cannot inquire about criminal records. An already precarious business climate in the state is about to get worse.
Read more
|
|
|
Making public pay for budget cuts
OC Register
By: Steven Greenhut
7.22.2011
Sacramento – Last year, one of my reporters and her adult son were walking in downtown Sacramento when a couple of young toughs tried grabbing her purse. She pulled back her purse, and the robbers lunged at the two of them, leaving the son's face covered in blood.
Read more
|
|
|
The Truth About Energy Profits
Sonoran News
By: Lawrence J. McQuillan, Ph.D
7.14.2011
America's largest oil and natural gas companies recently reported quarterly earnings, and as expected, profits were up. But the caricature of fat-cat energy executives lining their pockets at the expense of the everyman doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
Read more
|
|
|
Spectacular Waste in Redwood Forests
San Francisco Examiner
By: Steven Greenhut
7.13.2011
As I took the nearly six-hour drive from the Sacramento area, past Ukiah and up to Eureka, through the heart of California’s redwood- forested North Coast, I was reminded of the spectacular beauty of California. Driving through Mendocino and Humboldt counties also reminded me of the spectacular ways the state government wastes taxpayer dollars even at a time when officials are crying poormouth.
Read more
|
|
|
Taking the Initiative
City Journal
By: Steven Greenhut
7.13.2011
A series of bills pending in California’s state legislature would severely curtail the use of voters’ initiatives and referenda—and have already sparked a long-overdue debate about the virtues of direct democracy.
Read more
|
|
|
Follow the State's Lead to Better Medicaid
Forbes.com
By: Sally C. Pipes
7.13.2011
By any objective measure, Medicaid is a failure. It provides substandard care at an ever increasing cost to taxpayers. When a Republican Congress and a Democrat president worked together to end another failing program – welfare as we knew it — we achieved something rare in public policy: success.
Read more
|
|
|
Land deals protect fake threats
Orange County Register
By: Steven Greenhut
7.8.2011
Driving through Mendocino and Humboldt counties also reminded me of the spectacular ways the state government wastes taxpayer dollars even at a time when officials are crying poormouth.
Read more
|
|
|
Legislators Cry "Less Power to the People"
North County Times
By: Steven Greenhut
7.5.2011
California legislators ---- who seem unable to come up with an honest balanced budget, who always seek tax increases, and who won't pass even modest reforms to the state's unfunded pension system or to anything else, for that matter ---- want to blame the government's problems on voters, rather than themselves.
Read more
|
|
|
Medicaid Mess-up
The Daily
By: Sally C. Pipes
7.5.2011
Last week, government officials discovered that up to 3 million middle-class Americans — with annual incomes as high as $64,000 — could qualify for Medicaid, the government health insurance program for the poor, thanks to Obamacare.Medicare’s chief actuary, Richard Foster, summed the situation up nicely: “[T]hat just doesn’t make sense.”
Read more
|
|
|
Small-Business Health Care Tax Credits Are having a Miniscule Impact
Forbes.com
By: Sally C. Pipes
7.5.2011
The Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council recently surveyed 304 small business owners about how satisfied they were with the new healthcare reform law’s tax credits. Nearly 90% had not applied for the credits. Some had no idea they existed, others were deemed ineligible, and more than a fifth found that they “offered no real benefit.” Only 7% of small businesses were actually using the tax credits earmarked specifically for them.
Read more
|
|
|
California Amazon Tax Will Kill 25,000 Small Businesses
The Washington Examiner
By: Katy Grimes
7.1.2011
With the California legislature having just passed a flawed budget full of accounting tricks, budget gimmicks and money grabs, one area of small business is about to be taxed right out of business - just so that the state can fill a budget hole instead of making necessary and substantive cuts. One of the budget trailer bills contains three formerly separate Internet tax bills now wrapped into one, to tax all Internet purchases made in California.
Read more
|
|
|
