Because of your support, we remain California’s top-ranked political blog and investigative news site.

California has too few journalists covering what is really going on in Sacramento and throughout the state. That’s exactly why CalWatchdog exists – to report to you, straight down the middle, with no sensationalism and not pass off opinion for general news. 

Your tax-free contribution will help us in 2018 to focus on a digital video program and increase our social media marketing dollars to increase our civic engagement. 

CalWatchdog is a non-profit (501)c(3) that is supported by individual donors like yourself. If you like our work, would you please consider donating online?

You may donate securely online at https://calwatchdog.com/donate/  or address a check payable to CalWatchdog, 505 Montgomery Street, Suite 1100, San Francisco, CA  94111. Your contribution is fully tax deductible.

Thank you for your support.

The CalWatchdog Team

Because of your support, we remain California’s top-ranked political blog and investigative news site.

With the proliferation of fake news and the media bias that is continually called out, supporting CalWatchdog could not be more timely.

California has too few journalists covering what is really going on in Sacramento and throughout the state and that’s exactly why we exist — to report to you, free of ideology or worldview. So far, this year CalWatchdog has produced more than 625 original stories as well as our daily Morning Read since January.

CalWatchdog is a non-profit (501)c(3) that is supported by individual donors like yourself. If you like our work, would you please consider donating online? Every little bit helps us sustain our core writers and expand our audience to increase civic engagement.   

You may donate securely online at https://calwatchdog.com/donate/  or address a check to CalWatchdog, 505 Montgomery Street, Suite 1100, San Francisco, CA  94111. Your contribution is fully tax deductible.

Thank you in advance for your support.

The CalWatchdog Team

Overtime for farmworkers bill nearing vote

Good morning! It’s almost Friday and almost the end of session, with legislators hard at work. 

After a staged, 24-hour hunger strike, proponents of a bill to increase overtime pay for farmworkers announced on Wednesday the once-dead measure will be on the Senate floor next week. 

The hunger strike was designed link the legislators’ sacrifice of food with the farmworkers’ sacrifice of some overtime pay while plucking the food, bringing attention to the issue in the process.

As the eight or so hunger strikers broke their fast, the bill’s sponsor, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez tweeted — after handing out bread — that Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon reportedly agreed to call the bill to the floor on Monday (a de Leon spokesman could not immediately confirm the timing). 

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• When the mayor of South El Monte resigned last week after admitting to taking bribes for seven years, it highlighted the wave of local corruption that’s plagued cities in Los Angeles County over the past few years. CalWatchdog has more. 
• “Two Democratic lawmakers unveiled a $7.4-billion transportation plan late Wednesday, the latest effort to break through a yearlong logjam over the state’s funding woes,” which includes a 17-cent-per-gallon hike in the gas tax. The Los Angeles Times has more.  
• “A vehicle trade-in program for low-income families and projects in poor communities would be among the chief recipients of money from California’s cap-and-trade program under a Senate proposal unveiled on Wednesday amid an attempt to win enough votes to extend the climate program,” writes The Sacramento Bee. 
• A roundup of legislative action from the Senate yesterday includes a bill requiring bartenders and servers to take a responsible beverage servers course. Capital Public Radio has more. 
• “Nearly three-quarters of California’s previously uninsured adults have gained health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act — and most of them, like last year, say their health care needs are being met,” writes The San Jose Mercury News. 

Assembly:

• In at 10 a.m. Two hearings.

Senate:

• In at 10 a.m. One hearing on gambling legislation. 

Gov. Brown:

• No public events announced.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New follower: @davidsiders

Assemblyman under domestic violence restraining order goes reclusive

Good morning! 

After being placed under a three-year restraining order from his wife over domestic violence allegations and subsequently stripped of his committee assignments, including a chairmanship, Assemblyman Roger Hernandez has become reclusive.

First, the West Covina Democrat made his official Twitter account private sometime in July, and then on Monday he went on medical leave for a week or two to start the last month of the legislative session.

A spokesperson for the Hernandez did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but both his office and the office of Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Paramount, confirmed to The Sacramento Bee on Monday that Hernandez requested medical leave that would likely extend through this week and much of next week.

CalWatchdog has more.

In other news:

• “California’s largest state employee union has taken the first step to strike, authorizing a membership vote amid contract negotiations with the Brown administration,” reports The Sacramento Bee.
• California push for coal divestment raises concerns, reports CalWatchdog.
• “Twice in recent decades CalPERS fell below 100 percent of the funding needed for promised pensions, and twice CalPERS climbed back. But since a $100 billion investment loss in 2008, the CalPERS funding level has not recovered. Now with about 75 percent of the projected assets needed to pay future pensions, CalPERS has had low investment earnings during the last two fiscal years. Experts expect the trend to continue during the next decade.” Capitol Weekly has more. 
• The Los Angeles Times reports that the largest teachers union has given more than $13 million in the effort to extend the Prop. 30 tax on the highest incomes (now called Prop. 55), while the committee for Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s gun control ballot measure has substantially outraised the measure’s opponents. 

Assembly:

• Next floor session is Thursday. 
• The Assembly Committee on Elections and Redistricting is holding two briefings to discuss a proposal that would streamline the vote-by-mail process, according to The Sacramento Bee.

Senate:

• Next floor session is Thursday. No hearings scheduled.

Gov. Brown: 

• No public events announced.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New followers: @Johnson40687884 @T_Mac202

By CALWATCHDOG STAFF

Good morning and happy Friday!

Last week’s ruling by an appeals court that overturned the Vergara decision — which upended teacher tenure laws in the state — has only fueled the conflicts in education that make reform so difficult.

“For now, the decision puts California students and teachers in a precarious, and possibly untenable, position. On the one hand, the current Vergara ruling has denied that students have a right to an education that trumps teachers unions’ interests in protecting failing teachers…

“On the other hand, the new … ruling has denied that students — this time backed by unions — have a right to an education that meets some qualitative standard.”

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• Counsel for the Legislature said that Gov. Jerry Brown exceeded his authority last year when he extended the provisions of AB32 — a greenhouse gas reduction law — beyond 2020 without legislative approval, reports The Sacramento Bee. 
• Senate Pro Tem Kevin de León and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom are fighting over who gets to pass gun control measures, both Democrats. Newsom is pursuing a ballot measure, which De León says could “derail” his efforts in the Legislature. The Los Angeles Times has more. 
• Southern California has the highest gas prices in the country “by far,” reports the LA Weekly. The average price per gallon in the region exceed that of Hawaii ($2.60) by 20 cents, although prices are easing. 
• The state rail authority announced on Thursday plans to link Merced to the initial segment for high-speed rail, which could add more than $1 billion to the project, reports the Los Angeles Times.
• Senate Republicans plan to announce a package of bills on Tuesday, which could focus on veterans issues, among other things.

Assembly:

• Gone ’til Monday.

Senate:

• Gone ’til Monday. 

Gov. Brown:

• Attending a climate change event at the U.N. Headquarters in New York.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com 

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New followers: @willshuck @Triphackr

By JOHN SEILER

New reports show how both the U.S. and California governments have imposed severe anti-manufacturing regulations impeding economic recovery and growth. President Obama and Gov. Jerry Brown pay lip service to creating good middle-class jobs. But their anti-manufacturing bias belies their statements.

Ever since the Industrial Revolution began more than two centuries ago, manufacturing has been the key to middle-class prosperity. China, Vietnam, India and other countries have realized this and are promoting manufacturing. They sloughed off decades of socialist penury to embrace industrial capitalism, catapulting themselves into prosperity.

America once understood that. And the U.S. and California manufacturing sectors remain large, although declining.

The New York Times described how a decade ago Apple shifted its manufacturing from California and other states to China: “Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

“A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

“’The speed and flexibility is breathtaking’,” the executive said. ‘There’s no American plant that can match that’.”

These formerly were high-paying, middle-class jobs right here in the Golden State.

‘Arsenal of Democracy’

And it was America that showed the world how to build industries that can retool so quickly. The greatest example was the retooling during World War II. A manufacturing base that was almost entirely geared toward civilian production almost overnight became the Arsenal of Democracy.

Even in the 1970s, the auto industry quickly adapted to new environmental mandates from the federal government.

Today, that fast-change capability has been hampered by literally tens of thousands of pages of preposterous regulations, absurd tax policies and policy uncertainty.

In California, this anti-manufacturing attitude is at its worst. The belief of Brown and others among the Democratic Establishment that runs the state is that desirable private-sector jobs are those performed on a laptop. That makes California a utopia for computer nerds with 180 IQs. The rest of us — the folks who once supported families on middle-class manufacturing incomes — don’t have a place here.

This was shown dramatically during the November 2010 election. Proposition 23 would have overturned the anti-jobs AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. Opponents branded it the “Dirty Energy Proposition.” The opposition included then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who signed AB32 into law. His  personal worth was $700 million, which kept him insulated from the damage his policies did to ordinary people.

“Dirty Energy” means “dirty jobs” in manufacturing. The anti-23 campaign conned voters it believing that unless the “dirty jobs” were killed, it would “Jeopardize 500,000 jobs and $10 billion in private investment in California clean energy businesses.”

Well, where are those 500,000 jobs? Instead, of course, the state suffered the Solyndra scandal. Solyndra ripped off $535 million from federal taxpayers and $25 million in tax credits from California taxpayers.

The message misled voters sent to industry was: “We don’t need your stinkin’ dirty jobs! Send them all to China! We can live on welfare.”

‘Everything Else’

Bloomberg also ran a report on why America is anti-manufacturing. The author interview a Silicon Valley businessman:

“ ‘I’d love to make this product in America. But I’m afraid I won’t be able to.’

“My host, a NASA engineer turned Silicon Valley entrepreneur, has just conducted a fascinating tour of his new clean-energy bench-scale test facility. It’s one of the Valley’s hottest clean-technology startups. And he’s already thinking of going abroad.

“ ‘Wages?’ I ask.

“His dark eyebrows arch as if I were clueless, then he explains the reality of running a fab — an electronics fabrication factory. ‘Wages have nothing to do with it. The total wage burden in a fab is 10 percent. When I move a fab to Asia, I might lose 10 percent of my product just in theft.’

“I’m startled. ‘So what is it?’

“’Everything else. Taxes, infrastructure, workforce training, permits, health care. The last company that proposed a fab on Long Island went to Taiwan because they were told that in a drought their water supply would be in the queue after the golf courses’.”

Get that: The problem isn’t high American wages. We can compete there. I remember management guru Peter Drucker pointing out in the late 1980s that, when manufacturing drops below 15 percent of cost, it doesn’t matter where you locate a manufacturing facility. That’s because shipping costs are about 15 percent.

But what matters is government attitudes toward manufacturing: pro or con.

As was noted at the beginning of this article, the Chinese are obsessed with greasing the skids of manufacturing. You need it? They’ll do it. They’re gung-ho.

In America, manufacturing is “dirty.” You need it? Forget it! You’ll just pollute the environment. Besides, giving a decent wage to middle-class families just means they’ll procreate more polluters.

Detroit on the Pacific?

Except for Silicon Valley, California’s economy still is limping along. Will it become Detroit on the Pacific, a rusted-out hulk of a formerly great industrial state?

It probably won’t get that bad. The weather here is just too good. It’s like saying Cuba will become North Korea. Both have extreme socialist systems. But North Korea has harsh winters and tree bark to eat during a famine, while Cuba has beautiful tourist beaches year-round and the world’s best cigars.

Still, elements of Detroit obviously are washing across California. Our unemployment rate, although improving to 11.1 percent in December 2011, remains worse than Michigan’s at 9.3 percent. And the “hollowing out” of the manufacturing sector continues apace in both places.

A new documentary coming out in a couple of weeks is “Detropia,” about the industrial decline of the once great Motor City. Here’s a five-minute preview:

Think it can’t happen here? The preview shows scavengers grabbing steel and copper in abandoned buildings in Detroit. In a time of soaring gold prices leading to inflation, commodities are a hot item. The scavengers explain that raw materials used to make things in Detroit factories. Now, the wreckage of the previous prosperous civilization is salvaged, shipped to China, then returned to America and stocked on Wal-Mart shelves.

That’s also happening in California. According to CreativeSecurity.com, “Over the past several years, copper theft has reached epidemic proportions both in California, and nationwide. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, copper theft is a $1 billion problem that’s only getting worse.

“Increasing worldwide demand for copper and short supply has caused copper prices to skyrocket, reaching all-time highs within the past five years. At specific locations, such as commercial buildings and construction sites, copper metal can be found in abundance and is relatively easy to steal. Once stolen, it’s virtually impossible for authorities to track or recover from recyclers, making copper theft a low-risk, high-profit crime that many thieves can’t resist.”

Where’s Our Deng?

While researching this article, I came upon a report by the government’s National Public Radio about how China transformed itself from starving Maoist socialist paradise to global capitalist economic powerhouse. In 1978, a group of farmers in the village of Xiaogang agreed to defy the socialist authorities and regulations and re-establish competition. Soon, the farmers went from starving under socialism to prospering under a nascent capitalism.

They feared reprisals, even death, from the socialist government of China. But new Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping was eager to switch to capitalism. Reported NPR, “So instead of executing the Xiaogang farmers, the Chinese leaders ultimately decided to hold them up as a model…. The government launched other economic reforms, and China’s economy started to grow like crazy. Since 1978, something like 500 million people have risen out of poverty in China.”

Something similar will have to happen in America to revive manufacturing. Small bands of producers will have to band together and defy the regulations and taxes of Brown, Schwarzenegger, Obama and others — Republicans as well as Democrats.

So far, in California there’s no Deng to grasp the importance of capitalism and lead reforms that ditch the bureaucratic model. Instead, we have Brown, first elected to state office as Secretary of State in 1970, when Mao’s Cultural Revolution still was ripping up China. His obsession is to raise taxes to pay for the pensions of government workers.

But as China’s example shows, people can put up with a lot until they finally decide they’ve had enough and insist on a return to prosperity and freedom.

Meg Whitman continues running commercials based on disproved assertions about Jerry Brown and taxes. It’s especially grating that she is using a Bill Clinton quote attacking Jerry from the 1992 presidential campaign.

First, Clinton is a notorious liar. That’s why he’s called Slick Willie. And if Meg had been paying attention to politics and voting, instead of making billions, she might have noticed that Bill Clinton said, “I have not have sexual relations with that woman, Monica Lewinsky” — when he had.

Second, whatever Jerry’s other many faults — and I could fill a phone book with them — he always has been open to tax reform and reduction. In 1992, his flat-tax proposal was designed by none other than Art Laffer, the supply-side guru who helped design both Prop. 13 and President Reagan’s tax cuts. In fact, the flat-tax idea was Jerry’s main one back in 92, and the only thing anyone remembers about his campaign that year. Meg might remember that if she weren’t a rank amateur about politics.

Come to think of it, what of substance does anyone remember about Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign? Only his proposed “middle class tax cut.” Another lie. Once in office, he promptly raised middle-class taxes.

Oh, and who is Meg’s campaign charman? None other than Pete “Record State Increase in 1992” Wilson. And from where did many of her top campaign aides come? From the regime of Arnold “Record State Tax Increase in 2009” Schwarzenegger-Shriver Kennedy.

And although Meg took a “no new taxes” pledge, after swamping Poizner in the June primary, she started trimming:

One of the first actions that Republican Meg Whitman took upon declaring her candidacy for governor was signing a pledge never to raise taxes — but on Tuesday she added a hedge to that vow.

The candidate suggested that she might consider a tax hike in the event of an extreme natural disaster. It seemed a subtle step back, but among the anti-tax crusaders who have persuaded almost every GOP state officeholder and top-ticket candidate to sign the pledge, there is no hedging allowed.

Right. That’s because the hedgers end up being like Wilson, Schwarzenegger-Shriver-Kennedy, and George H.W. “Read MyLips: No New Taxes!!!!!” Bush, and driving a pick-axe into the backs of taxpayers.

January 6, 2010

Ex-OC Weekly investigative reporter Anthony Pignataro has joined the staff of the new Sacramento-based CalWatchdog.com which launched its website yesterday.

Controlled by ex-Orange County Register editorial writer Steven Greenhut on behalf of a libertarian-leaning California think tank, CalWatchdog carries a motto: “Your eyes on California government.”

Greenhut has been a vocal critic of entrench political and government forces–especially public employee unions. He is the author of a new book, “Plunder! How Public Employee Unions are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation.” Art Pedroza over at orangejuiceblog.com welcomed Greenhut’s operation, but you can imagine that union bosses despise Greenhut.

As a staff writer at the Weekly for seven years until he became editor of an alternative weekly newspaper in Hawaii, Pignataro won numerous journalism awards on a variety of topics, dominated coverage of the proposal international airport at the old El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Irvine and regularly entertained colleagues with his wit. I know his talents well. Advice for dirty politicians in Sacramento: beware. Pignataro is relentless.

Katy Grimes, a veteran journalist who has worked at such places as The Washington Examiner and The Sacramento Union, is also on Greenhut’s staff as a news reporter.

–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

By Melanie Turner

January 6, 2010

Think-tank Pacific Research Institute has launched Sacramento-based investigative reporting Web site www.CalWatchdog.com.

CalWatchdog plans to serve as a one-stop-shop for information on California government, with original news content, investigative reports and a collection of relevant news stories.

“As the new legislative session opens in California, it’s no secret that the state continues to face massive budget deficits and endless problems,” editor-in-chief Steven Greenhut said in a news release.

The San Francisco-based institute last year retained veteran journalist Greenhut to establish and lead the nonprofit, non-partisan news site.

Greenhut most recently served as deputy editor and columnist for The Orange County Register. He authored the 2004 book, “Abuse of Power: How the Government Misuses Eminent Domain,” and in 2005 won the Institute for Justice’s Thomas Paine Award for his writing promoting freedom.

Like other nonprofit journalism ventures that have emerged in recent years, CalWatchdog aims to fill the gap left by declining newspaper coverage of state issues.

Veteran reporters Anthony Pignataro and Katy Grimes have joined CalWatchdog as part of its investigative team. Pignataro has been a reporter for the OC Weekly and Maui Time Weekly. Grimes is a longtime political analyst writer and journalist whose columns have appeared in papers such as The San Francisco Examiner and The Sacramento Bee.

–Melanie Turner/Sacramento Business Journal ]]> 723