SB 1 would brand ‘inefficiency’ as blight

  Should government get into the business of judging people on the “efficiency” of their property?  SB 1 would grant government that capacity — along with the power to take that property if officials decide it’s being “inefficiently” used. SB

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Judiciary Committee kills civil liberties bills

  SACRAMENTO — Two Republican members of the California Assembly recently authored resolutions encouraging Congress to halt the eavesdropping on the America people by the National Security Agency. Both resolutions were smacked down Tuesday in the Assembly Judiciary Committee, whose

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Blame sequester theater, not sequester, for threat to CA beach

Sequestration theater — the Obama administration’s attempt to make a de facto freeze on overall government spending as painful and inconvenient as possible — is absolutely real. It’s not an invention of the president’s GOP critics. Just look at the

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Corporatist state takes over telecom

America really doesn’t have a free-market economy. Rather, it has a corporatist economy — that is, the union of state power and big business. The latest example:, from the Wall Street Journal: “The U.S. government has used the merger-approval process

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Capitol Weekly Top 100 List snubs women

No sooner had Capitol Weekly announced its list of “the most powerful movers and shakers in California politics” than Sacramento insiders were griping about who’d been snubbed. The list is considered the barometer of Capitol power, and as such, it’s

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Will CA trust SF Bay Bridge re-opening?

After months of controversy over the 36 cracked bolts on the new eastern span of the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge, the Toll Bridge Program Oversight Committee made the decision in July to delay the Bay Bridge opening. But that decision was

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Water Policy: ‘New normal’ for lower Colorado River lakes is, actually, normal

It is being proclaimed that there is a “new normal” of historic low water levels for reservoirs along the Lower Colorado River due to “climate change.” But a closer look beyond the photos of bathtub rings along the banks of

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Fossil fuel ‘divestment’ may add to CA pension funding nightmare

If any state in America displays more of a need for a consistent commitment to pension “best practices” than California, I’m not aware of it. Some states’ main retirement systems may be in worse shape than the California Public Employees’

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‘There’s no state tax in Houston’

The Houstan Texans fielded a young team last year that won through the first round of the playoffs, then lost to New England in the divisional round. They’re looking to make it all the way to the Super Bowl this

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Brown still a friend of unions; signs SB 776

While Gov. Jerry Brown may have averted a strike by the Bay Area Rapid Transit workers, he’s no union buster. Brown just signed today, SB 776 by Sen. Ellen Corbett, D-San Leandro, which will eliminate independent monitoring and enforcement of prevailing wage laws.

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