Posts From John Seiler
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Brown budget drops Friday
Gov. Jerry Brown’s Inaugural Address, delivered yesterday, promised frugality while advancing ambitious goals on climate change, health care, education and the high-speed rail program. Rhetoric aside, the rubber hits the road on Friday with the numbers in his budget proposal for
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Can GOP stop FCC attack on the Internet?
The Federal Communications Commission, controlled by Obama Democrats, is poised to impose a 1930s telephone-regulation model on the Internet. It makes no sense in a time when Internet costs drop by half every year to 18 months. They call it
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Message for CA: France dumps 75% income tax
Back two years ago when France jacked up its top income tax rate to 75 Percent, it was compared to California’s almost 52 percent rate (combined federal and state). The pro-tax New York Times said high-taxes didn’t drive away the
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Brown’s 4th Inaugural looks to CA past, future
Gov. Jerry Brown’s unprecedent fourth, and final, inaugural address had an aura of “Back to the Future” about it. Given at 10 a.m. this morning before the assembled Legislature, he looked back to his first inaugural address 40 years ago;
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Will ferrets finally be free?
“Ah, nice marmot,” the Dude says in “The Big Lebowski” just before the nihilists dump it into the tub while he’s taking a bath. Actually, it’s probably really a ferret. And as Walter says later on, it’s not legal. To which the Dude
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Seniors join ‘new’ homeless
I’m gettin’ up there in years myself — 60 in June. So I’m sympathetic. The latest crisis to hit California is that its massively high cost of living is pushing seniors out onto the streets. Social Security checks, small pensions
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Retirement will be painful for most
In an excellent column in the U-T San Diego, Dan McSwain paints a grim retirement picture for almost everybody: For most Americans, it’s tempting to live in denial or outright fantasyland when it comes to paying for retirement. That’s because
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Pension reformer Chuck Reed will fight on
San Jose is in the center of the world’s economic pulse, Silicon Valley. By all rights, its city treasury ought to be overflowing with digital wealth. Instead it has flirted with bankruptcy because of its burgeoning pension problem — a problem
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Mary Nichols the ‘rock star’ bureaucrat
America is supposed to be a democracy ruled by “We, the people.” Actually it’s rule by bureaucracy. The vast bureaus of federal, state and local governments run our lives, and there’s not much that can be done about it until
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