Steven Greenhut
Business & Economics
Vallejo Goes for Broke
Can bankruptcy save California’s cities from staggering pension obligations? As California cities and counties struggle to fulfill the generous pay and pension commitments that they made to public employees during flush economic times, some politicians have taken comfort in a usually forbidding word: bankruptcy. Top officials in Los Angeles and ...
Agriculture
Enviros trade in human misery
SACRAMENTO – One of the most unusual vote-buying scams the Obama administration may have used to pass its health care socialization plan was an alleged promise to two Democratic congressmen to increase federal water supplies to the San Joaquin Valley. It’s the nation’s most fertile farm region, but a region ...
Business & Economics
Vallejo’s Painful Lessons in Municipal Bankruptcy
Two years after going broke, the California city still isn’t free of its crushing pension obligations. In 2008, Vallejo, Calif., was nearly broke. Faced with falling tax revenues, rising pension costs, and unmovable public-employee unions, the city was unable to pay its bills and declared bankruptcy. Now, as it prepares ...
Business & Economics
Legends in their own minds
SACRAMENTO When people ask why I moved to Sacramento to write about California’s notoriously dysfunctional government, I say that, in the next two or three years, the government here is likely to (figuratively) crash and burn and that, as a journalist, I want a front-row seat for the action. ...
Business & Economics
No roads to recovery in sight
With California teetering on insolvency, government union activists and liberal legislators are trying to whip the public into a “please tax us more” frenzy by scaring people about the consequences of spending cuts. At a union rally in Sacramento recently, one protester hoisted a “Raise Our Taxes” sign, which typifies ...
Business & Economics
Who could blame us for cussing?
SACRAMENTO California’s union-dominated, Democratic-controlled Legislature is temperamentally incapable of fixing the state’s structural budget deficit, given that such a fix would require reduced government spending and the granting of fewer benefits to the state’s class of government workers. As Rome burned, legislators last week debated a meaningless “no-cussing” measure, which ...
Business & Economics
The Road To Serfdom
Steven Greenhut appeared on Fox Business’ The John Stossel Show to discuss the road to serfdom and public employee pension programs.
Business & Economics
Retreat from pension reform fight
SACRAMENTO Anyone who thinks that gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman offers much hope for fixing the state’s structural fiscal mess should now wonder whether the billionaire former eBay chief executive might end up being nothing more than another Arnold Schwarzenegger a governor who sometimes talks a good game but who, ...
Business & Economics
State not exactly the well-oiled machine
SACRAMENTO A new report from the California State Auditor should throw cold water on those who believe that the best way to solve the state’s problems is by expanding government power, increasing government funding and creating new regulatory powers and agencies. The auditor has released its annual report analyzing how ...
Business & Economics
Insurance czar’s cheap political ploy
One of the best ways to evaluate the merits of any politicians’ proposed new rule or power grab is to first consider whether it’s something you would support if your political foes were in power. Unfortunately, Republican Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner apparently hasn’t employed that (or any other) common-sense test ...
Vallejo Goes for Broke
Can bankruptcy save California’s cities from staggering pension obligations? As California cities and counties struggle to fulfill the generous pay and pension commitments that they made to public employees during flush economic times, some politicians have taken comfort in a usually forbidding word: bankruptcy. Top officials in Los Angeles and ...
Enviros trade in human misery
SACRAMENTO – One of the most unusual vote-buying scams the Obama administration may have used to pass its health care socialization plan was an alleged promise to two Democratic congressmen to increase federal water supplies to the San Joaquin Valley. It’s the nation’s most fertile farm region, but a region ...
Vallejo’s Painful Lessons in Municipal Bankruptcy
Two years after going broke, the California city still isn’t free of its crushing pension obligations. In 2008, Vallejo, Calif., was nearly broke. Faced with falling tax revenues, rising pension costs, and unmovable public-employee unions, the city was unable to pay its bills and declared bankruptcy. Now, as it prepares ...
Legends in their own minds
SACRAMENTO When people ask why I moved to Sacramento to write about California’s notoriously dysfunctional government, I say that, in the next two or three years, the government here is likely to (figuratively) crash and burn and that, as a journalist, I want a front-row seat for the action. ...
No roads to recovery in sight
With California teetering on insolvency, government union activists and liberal legislators are trying to whip the public into a “please tax us more” frenzy by scaring people about the consequences of spending cuts. At a union rally in Sacramento recently, one protester hoisted a “Raise Our Taxes” sign, which typifies ...
Who could blame us for cussing?
SACRAMENTO California’s union-dominated, Democratic-controlled Legislature is temperamentally incapable of fixing the state’s structural budget deficit, given that such a fix would require reduced government spending and the granting of fewer benefits to the state’s class of government workers. As Rome burned, legislators last week debated a meaningless “no-cussing” measure, which ...
The Road To Serfdom
Steven Greenhut appeared on Fox Business’ The John Stossel Show to discuss the road to serfdom and public employee pension programs.
Retreat from pension reform fight
SACRAMENTO Anyone who thinks that gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman offers much hope for fixing the state’s structural fiscal mess should now wonder whether the billionaire former eBay chief executive might end up being nothing more than another Arnold Schwarzenegger a governor who sometimes talks a good game but who, ...
State not exactly the well-oiled machine
SACRAMENTO A new report from the California State Auditor should throw cold water on those who believe that the best way to solve the state’s problems is by expanding government power, increasing government funding and creating new regulatory powers and agencies. The auditor has released its annual report analyzing how ...
Insurance czar’s cheap political ploy
One of the best ways to evaluate the merits of any politicians’ proposed new rule or power grab is to first consider whether it’s something you would support if your political foes were in power. Unfortunately, Republican Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner apparently hasn’t employed that (or any other) common-sense test ...
