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Dallas editorial chortles over Toyota departing CA for Texas
Monday’s announcement that Toyota is moving its North American headquarters from Torrance to the suburbs of Dallas prompted the usual schizophrenic approach in California: Some editorial writers and pundits lamented the loss of 3,000 middle-class jobs, but Gov. Jerry Brown
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Honors belie years of gloom-and-doom talk about UC system
For at least seven years, we’ve heard University of California officials and Democratic lawmakers describe budget “cuts” at UC as being so devastating they threatened the system’s elite reputation. I recall hearing surrogates for Jerry Brown say in 2010 that
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Alleged CA budget renaissance: Yet another hole in narrative
The readiness of the Sacramento and East Coast media to accept the narrative that Gov. Jerry Brown is a genius who has solved California’s previously immense budget problems is everywhere. An accountant — as opposed to a journalist or a
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CA vies with other states’ film tax credits
The market for movie and television production is now an incentive-laden free-for-all. Faced with fierce competition from statehouses around the country, two California assemblymen have introduced a new bill upping the stakes in the tax credit arms race. Assembly Bill 1839 has been introduced
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Latino assemblyman: Asians not ‘people of color’
The increasing rift between Latino and Asian Democrats over Latinos’ newly revived interest in gutting Proposition 209 took a funny twist in the Sacramento Bee. So much for the Rainbow Coalition — it turns out that one lawmaker thinks Asian-Americans
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Economist called genius by left backs Prop. 13-style wealth protection
It may seem wonky and obscure now, but I bet it’s going to emerge as a strong, enduring counterpunch to Proposition 13 critics. I refer to the fact that French economist Thomas Piketty — the hottest, in the media sense,
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Push for sharp minimum-wage hike under way in San Diego
California’s second-largest and the nation’s eighth-largest city appears sure to have a six-month-plus debate over whether to raise the minimum wage much more than the state government has in store. The Democratic majority of San Diego’s City Council is going
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Trash train fiasco illustrates private vs. public double standard
This story in the Orange County Register illustrates a common CalWatchdog theme: In the private sector, incompetence leads to companies failing and people getting fired. But in government, all too often incompetence comes without consequence: “The Sanitation Districts of Los
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LAT: All hail ‘economic stability,’ surpluses achieved by Gov. Brown
The ability of Gov. Jerry Brown to convince the state press corps that he has righted California’s listing ship continues to amaze. The Golden State has by far the highest poverty rate in the nation. One in six adults can’t
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Santa Ana considers taxing … free Skype calls! Oh, the insanity
California is known as the world leader in lots of things — pop culture, technology and wacky lifestyles. Now the Santa Ana City Council is helping the Golden State be seen as the world leader in Maniacally Stupid, Excessive Taxation.
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