Assembly District 73 – 2014′s Primary is a Year Away

Well, just when you’ve recovered from the 2012 election, it’s about time to start studying for 2014.

Yep, I said it. The first election (*cough* primary *cough*) is June 3, 2014. That’s one year away (and not very long to build up your Twitter following, by the way).  The top two contestants (I mean candidates) will go to the final round in November.

Assembly District 73 looks pretty full already according to the post I read from “Around The Capitol.”

#AD73 Probables: @SteveBaric19 @Anna_Bryson @bill_brough @JessePetrilla and @paulglaab bit.ly/YTZPJf via @scottlay #OCGop—
Bridget Willard (@gidgey) May 14, 2013

Of the five listed there, four are city council members.  This is a good reminder that we should pay attention to local politics.  Every vote counts in local elections and these people always seem to move up the food chain.

For example, Diane Harkey (termed out for AD73 but running for BOE, District 4), used to be my mayor (Dana Point).  She ran for Assembly after it was vacated by Mimi Walters (who was the mayor of Laguna Niguel and is now a State Senator).

I’m not sure what your deal breakers are but I am interested in someone who is a fiscal conservative.  After all, this is a person we’ll send to the California Legislature who, in my opinion, already overtaxes and overspends.

Bill Maher gets the bill for the government he voted for, now threatens to leave California

Hypocrite:

Liberal HBO “Real Time” host Bill Maher says he may leave California, due to the state’s high tax rate.

“Liberals,” he said, during a recent broadcast,” you could actually lose me.”

He made the comments during a panel discussion of current Capitol Hill budget policy that included the participation of MSNBC Rachel Maddow, who blasted Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposal as beneficial to the rich.

“The Ryan budget is a document that says the big problems in American right now are that rich people do not have enough money. They need relief from confiscatory tax rate,” she said, Newsbusters reports.

Mr. Maher answered: “You know what? Rich people — I’m sure you’d agree with this — actually do pay the freight in this country.”

No kidding, Bill? Welcome to your California. Soon you’ll have no place to escape to when the bill comes.

New laws California gets to deal with in 2013

Via Californiality

The State of California has many new laws for 2013, so what are the new California laws that everyone’s buzzing about?

Let’s see what is legal and illegal in 2013 while examining the very long list of new California laws signed by Governor Jerry Brown.

The following new California laws are effective on January 1, 2013 unless stated otherwise.

Read them all

h/t KFI

Los Angeles! You voted for higher taxes? Guess what? They want more.

In the Nov. 6 election, LA voted to tax its “rich” friends and neighbors to pay for all the city’s overspending and wasteful ways:

Well that was just the rich. This is you:

The Los Angeles City Council agreed to place a half-cent sales tax hike on the March 5 ballot to avert new cuts in city services, drawing immediate opposition from critics in and outside city government.

Voters would decide the measure, which will boost collections by an estimated $215 million a year, on the same day they choose a new mayor. And there were signs the proposal already is influencing the race, which is expected to focus heavily on resolving the city’s chronic budget crisis.

Go ahead and vote for it. You know you want to. After all, you voted for “fairness” when it was someone else’s money. Be fair. Vote to give them yours, too.

Throttle to the floor now, California, the hard left turn is probably here

Forget about Propositions to raise your taxes by you voting them on yourselves, the Democrat legislature now has (or soon will) a super majority:

The main check on Sacramento excess has been a constitutional amendment requiring a two-thirds majority of both houses to raise taxes. Although Republicans have been in the minority for four decades, they could impose a modicum of spending restraint by blocking tax increases. If Democratic leads stick in two races where ballots are still being counted, liberals will pick up enough seats to secure a supermajority. Governor Jerry Brown then will be the only chaperone for the Liberals Gone Wild video that is Sacramento.

Mr. Brown can blame himself for this predicament, after he drove more young voters to the polls by threatening to cut $500 million from higher education, which would have brought on large tuition increases. Voters between the ages of 18 and 29 made up 28% of the electorate, up from 22% in 2008 and 15% in 1996.

Unions also ramped up their turnout machine to kill a ballot initiative that would have barred unions from automatically withholding money from worker paychecks for political spending. The high Democratic turnout in moderate and right-leaning districts helped the party pick up three seats in the senate and four in the assembly.

So now Californians will experience the joys of one-party, union-run progressive governance. Mr. Brown is urging lawmakers to demonstrate frugality and the “prudence of Joseph.” As he said the other day, “we’ve got to make sure over the next few years that we pay our bills, we invest in the right programs, but we don’t go on any spending binges.” That’s what all Governors say. Trouble is, merely paying the state’s delinquent bills will require tens of billions in additional revenues if lawmakers don’t undertake fiscal reforms.

Read the rest -

The only thing good about this development is leftism will be on full display for the rest of the nation to see – and they’d better pay attention, because not only can what’s about to happen to California happen to them, it will.

Meanwhile, conservatives in California can only hope the more conservative Governors somehow hold the line in their respective states to give us someplace to retreat to. No liberals allowed.

No new jobs at Intel in ten years – think it’ll get better, California?

If you do, what have you been smoking?

Intel’s Paul Otelini was interviewed by WSJ, and spoke aloud what many, many soon to be ex-California business people are thinking.

Speaking on stage this week at the Intel Capital Global Summit in Huntington Beach, Calif., an annual gathering for executives of companies that Intel has invested in, Otellini was responding to a question from former California Republican Congressman Tom Campbell on whether he was “bullish” on California.

“Oh, God,” Otellini said, “I was born and raised here. I’m fifth or sixth generation. It’s one of the nicest pieces of real estate on the planet, and we’re so close to screwing it up, it’s pathetic. I’d like to be bullish, but I worry that we have to hit the abyss before we can fix things, and I worry that the abyss will be more like Greece.”

Intel, Otellini continued, has not added a job in California in 10 or 12 years and closed its last factory in the state around six years ago.

“Employees have a hard time buying houses, and they have complaints about the schools,” he said. They’re drawn to California despite the state’s high housing costs, heavy traffic and high tax rates because of “the allure of Silicon Valley, but then they get married and have kids, and they’re begging us, ‘Can you transfer me to New Mexico or Arizona?’ We’re not an outlier here.”

Read the rest, and then ask yourself why you keep voting Democrat? It can’t be because you hope for new jobs to magically grow in the unicorn poop that the state uses for job growth medium.

Is it because you believe there’s an inexhaustible supply of rich people to suck from? If so, there’s bad news for you on that front as well:

What has caused California’s transformation from a “pull in” to a “push out” state? The data [from this study - eb] have revealed several crucial drivers. One is chronic economic adversity (in most years, California unemployment is above the national average). Another is density: the Los Angeles and Orange County region now has a population density of 6,999.3 per square mile—well ahead of New York or Chicago. Dense coastal areas are a source of internal migration, as people seek more space in California’s interior, as well as migration to other states. A third factor is state and local governments’ constant fiscal instability, which sends at least two discouraging messages to businesses and individuals. One is that they cannot count on state and local governments to provide essential services—much less, tax breaks or other incentives. Second, chronically out-of-balance budgets can be seen as tax hikes waiting to happen.

Hypocrisy alert! SF Democrats fighting AGAINST the environment – when it affects THEM, that is

You know, it’s funny, San Francisco Democrats like Feinstein and Pelosi are all for economy-killing policies when their own constituents aren’t directly affected: all in the name of “Saving the Environment™.” President B. Hussein Obama has no problem killing job-saving bills that would bring water to California’s parched Central Valley if it saves an ecologically-challenged minnow at the expense of our nation’s fertile farmland, our food supply, and jobs.

Hetch Hetchy Valley before the flood (via Wikipedia)

Well the infamous San Francisco Dems Pelosi and Feinstein are currently blocking a plan to actually restore part of Yosemite National Park that was flooded by the construction of a dam back in 1923, providing not only water, but electricity to the city of San Francisco over 190 miles west.

On one side are Republican lawmakers and environmentalists, including Ronald Reagan’s former interior secretary, who want the dam removed and valley restored. On the other are Democratic San Franciscans, led by Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, fighting to hold onto the city’s famously pure drinking water in a drought-prone state.

“Eventually it will be broadly understood what an abomination a reservoir in a valley like Yosemite Valley really is,” Donald Hodel, the former interior chief, told The Associated Press. “I think it will be hard to quell this idea (of restoration). It is like ideas of freedom in a totalitarian regime. Once planted they are impossible to repress forever.”

Hetch Hetchy Valley today (same general area – via Wikipedia)

Over the past decade, studies by the state and others have shown it’s possible for San Francisco to continue collecting water from the Tuolumne River further downstream.

But the city never seriously has considered giving up its claim to the valley.

“This is a ridiculous idea,” Mayor Ed Lee said. “It’s a Trojan Horse for those that wish to have our public tricked into believing we have an adequate substitute for the Hetch Hetchy reservoir. We do not. There isn’t any.”

The gravity-fed system serves 7 percent of California’s population, city water officials say. Turbines from its dams generate hydroelectric power for city buildings, streetlights and traffic signals, the airport and the transit system. And two-thirds of the water from the system is sold to neighboring municipalities.

And this at a bargain! [Emphasis mine]

All of this for just $30,000 a year. That was the rent set by Congress when it passed the Raker Act in 1913, giving San Francisco exclusive control and use of the Hetch Hetchy valley, despite opposition by 200 newspapers across the country and after a week of contentious debate.

Read the rest -

Now here’s where it gets weird – I agree with the SF Democrats: keep the valley flooded and provide water and power to the people. The damage was done years ago and would cost billions to reverse.

And here’s where it gets impossible to conceive: that Democrats would learn from this and STFU when it comes to people needing water in other areas, like the Central Valley farmers. And since I’m dreaming here anyway, maybe they’ll rein in their EPA and stop them from destroying people’s lives?

No, they’ll never do that. The only thing for it is to cause the Democrat to become endangered and finally extinct.

Crossposted to A Tow Dog

Related articles

• S.F. to vote on restoring Yosemite’s lost valley (fresnobee.com)
• Yosemite’s lost valley will be subject of vote (foxnews.com)
• Vote Could Expose Lost Yosemite Gorge to Public (foxnews.com)
• Bring back Yosemite’s lost valley? Voters to decide (msnbc.msn.com)