Against this backdrop of human misery, what are the Democrats who control the Legislature doing? Focusing on (alleged) animal misery far more than (documented) human misery.

Why? Because animals are people, too — extra-special people.

This article is from the U-T San Diego:

“SACRAMENTO — Backed by strong emotional arguments and a passionate grassroots following, animal welfare advocates have steadily achieved milestone protections in California for cuddly household pets and shiver-inducing predators alike.

“The list of laws is as sweeping as it is long. Mountain lions cannot be hunted for sport. Dogs can be tethered in the yard for only so long. Chickens must have larger cages. And landlords cannot force renters to declaw their cats.

“Another big one may be added this year with the introduction of closely watched legislation to ban orca shows and their captive breeding at SeaWorld in San Diego — one of the state’s premier tourist attractions and a leader in marine mammal research.”

Raising minimum wage is not a job-creation policy

This is hilariously telling about the people whom California Democrats elect to state office. They care most about union members, urban professionals, trial lawyers and environmentalists, and their passions — like animal rights.

This is obvious to insiders who know how the Legislature works, but not to most people. Sure, millions of Californians buy the idea that Republicans are mostly driven by greed, based on what they’re told by the media, and at times by actual evidence. But if these folks looked past the window dressing provided by the Democratic Party — which often goes unchallenged by the media — then what would a hard look at Golden State Dems show?

An absolute lack of interest in helping create private-sector jobs or in trying to reduce the cost of living by making it easier to build housing.

In the Legislature, Dem oomph goes to the interests of union members, urban professionals, trial lawyers and environmentalists.

Yes, there is a push to raise the state minimum wage. But that won’t create middle-class jobs. Unfortunately, unlike the elected Democrats in America’s other megastates — Texas, Florida and New York — the ones in California by and large still haven’t figured out that helping free enterprise is a good thing because it leads to creation of such jobs.

Here’s another way to frame this screwy phenomenon: In California, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom stands out for pro-business views that would be absolutely banal in 98 percent of America. When Newsom argues that businesses are rattled by uncertainty about regulatory and tax changes, he is saying that in processing information, business owners act like human beings.

That this observation can seem like heresy to many in the California Democratic Party is a testament to its domination by sclerotic and slavish worshipers of the state’s screwed-up, anti-growth status quo.

Great, just great.

Alas, the mainstream media coverage of the report features the usual superficiality. There’s no context — no noting that most economists consider heavy taxes a drag on the economy, or that conservative think tanks have documented how California’s tax and regulatory culture is a big reason the Golden State has the nation’s worst poverty rate.

There’s also no contrasting of California and New York. In the Empire State, the liberal governor actually has the intellectual honesty to admit higher taxes damage job creation — and he wants to do something about it. Can we trade Jerry Brown for Andrew Cuomo?

A liberal state with lower taxes than Texas

There’s also this interesting angle: Whenever a libertarian or conservative grouses about how high taxes are in California, a liberal will sneer something along the lines of, “Well, why don’t you go to Texas/Mississippi/Alabama? Low taxes and such a great, great, great lifestyle.”

But it’s not just allegedly benighted Southern states that have far lower taxes than California. For the most striking example, consider Washington state. Its average annual state and local tax tab, according to the new survey, is $3,823. California takes in 150 percent more! Texas takes 34 percent more!

Do Californians have vastly better services than Washington staters? Of course not. Also, most “quality of life” indices put Washington far ahead of California.

One reason WA avoids traps seen in CA: ‘paycheck protection’ law

Why might this be? A key factor is that Washington state voters adopted a law requiring that union members give permission before their dues are used for political advocacy. I wrote about it here:

“Six states have adopted such a reform. Easily the most liberal of the six is Washington, where voters adopted this requirement as part of a popular campaign-reform push in 1992 that was opposed by unions but supported by many union members.

“What followed was a relentless 15-year campaign of subterfuge and sabotage by unions and their Democratic allies in Washington’s legislature and court system. But in 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for implementation of the law following its original intent.

“Since then, the politics of the state have evolved in interesting ways. While voters embraced gay marriage and the legalization of marijuana in 2012 initiatives, they are increasingly represented by more pragmatic and less ideological Democrats. In spring 2012, such Democrats teamed with minority Republican senators to pass a fiscally conservative state budget. Later in the year, two Democrats decided to caucus with minority Republicans in a coalition running the state Senate in an attempt to force a more centrist course for Washington, which has had Democratic governors continuously since 1985.

“Perhaps these moderating developments would have happened without paycheck protection. But they would have been less likely. In Washington state politics, the same as everywhere, money talks.”

Here’s another survey placing Washington at the low end of taxation.

Some California gun owners say they’re confused about the new gun laws that will take effect in 2014. 

The law causing the most confusion doesn’t take effect in 2014.  It will ban lead ammunition for hunting when it takes effect in 2016.  

At the Just Guns store in Sacramento, Troy Alvarez was picking up three boxes of ammunition for target shooting over Christmas break.  The ammo is legal, but the magazine he currently has for his pistol will be illegal July 1st.  A new law bans magazines with more than ten bullets.

“I’m not real familiar of, with the new law as it applies to maybe grandfathered pistols and clip size,” Alvarez says.

All sales of ten-round clips will be illegal January 1st.

The group Gun Owners of California says it will likely take legal action to prevent  enforcement of the law. 

Also in January, people who buy long guns must register them and pass a safety test.

New York state has imposed such a law on long guns for several years now. When it further tightened gun laws with its “SAFE” law, the gun registry lists were used to go out and seize the formerly legal guns of citizens. Gov. Andrew Cuomo promised the seizures wouldn’t happen because of the law. But the Blaze reports:

Despite promises from the president and a host of other politicians who are pushing for more gun control that nobody is coming for your guns, the confiscation of guns and gun permits has apparently started in some form in New York State. One attorney representing several people who have been forced to surrender their guns spoke with TheBlaze and alerted us to some disturbing facts:

• Gun owners are losing their 2nd Amendment rights without due process.
• HIPAA Laws are likely being compromised and the 4th and 5th Amendments are being violated in some of these cases

How did confiscation start happening so quickly? Apparently the gun grabbing was triggered by something inside the NY SAFE Act — New York’s new gun law — that has a provision apparently mandating confiscation of weapons and permits if someone has been prescribed psychotropic drugs.

People considered “insane” include those who have been prescribed anti-anxiety drugs. Such drugs also are part of some dieting regimens. So someone needing to lose a few pounds after holiday feasting could end up with his guns seized.

By John Seiler

Well, we still enjoy better weather. But our colleague Steven Greenhut makes the case that California is worse even than New York State under Gov. Andrew “Worse Even Than Pops Mario” Cuomo:

Whenever a free-market research or business group releases a “best and worst” list of states, my eye goes straight to the bottom: To see whether California is last or was edged out for the lowest rank by one of the other mismanaged liberal bastions. Illinois seems to exist to boost the self-esteem of Californians.

I can raise a glass of zinfandel to California’s great victory in the Mercatus Center’s recent “Freedom in the 50 States” study. The state didn’t place last. That distinction went to New York, thanks to its highest-in-the-nation tax rates and entrepreneur-crushing economic regulations. I owe an apology to residents of the Land of Lincoln.

For all the study’s detail about tax rates and regulation, this information jumps out as the most telling about New York: “9.0 percent of the state’s 2000 population, on net, left the state for another state between 2000 and 2011, the highest such figure in the nation.” Moving is the surest sign of dissatisfaction, especially when people relocate from a state that has long been an economic and cultural magnet.

Californians talk incessantly about high-tailing it to Texas or Nevada, yet New Yorkers flee at about double our rate. Migration numbers aside, I would still rank the Golden State as the Most Hopeless State. There are other studies that bolster that case, including Chief Executive magazine’s “2013 Best and Worst States for Business” that places California dead last, with New York in 49th place.

Read the rest here.

By Chris Reed

Democratic lawmakers have been a bit more likely to discomfit the status quo and show high expectations than normal this year. A Senate committee report strongly suggesting that school districts were stealing federal school lunch funds for inappropriate uses used to be the best example. But this week’s decision by a freshman Democrat assemblyman to embarrass a veteran Democratic pol over her poor performance in statewide office is without recent precedent. Here’s Brian Joseph’s account in the Orange County Register:

“Brought before legislators to explain a six-week backlog of business filings in her office, Secretary of State Debra Bowen offered this week a small window into state operations.

“It was not, as Assemblyman Tom Daly, D-Anaheim, said afterwards, encouraging.

“She explained how the her agency’s Sacramento office building, constructed in 1995, has ‘maxed out’ on available electrical outlets and how the state’s tortured procurement process virtually ensures that whatever software she orders will be obsolete by the time it’s delivered.”

It’s 2013, and a lack of electrical outlets is used to explain a major shortcoming at a state agency. Feel free to laugh, groan, guffaw or cry. Or all four simultaneously.

“She blamed budget cuts, staffing shortages and a generally unresponsive and inefficient government system for embarrassing delays that businesspeople say is costing them money.

“‘I almost needed smelling salts the first day I took a tour of the Secretary of State’s office,’ said Bowen, a former Marina Del Rey legislator who was first elected California’s chief elections officer and business records clerk in 2006. ‘It was just so incredibly paper-driven.’

“Bowen’s office has taken heat in recent days after it was revealed that her staff was taking 43 days to process business filings. As Assembly Budget Committee staff reported, this backlog delays businesses from starting up or hiring employees and postpones business tax payments.

“New York processes such documents in seven days, committee staff found. Texas, five days.

“‘There is a scoreboard,’ Daly said, referring to the other states’ better turnaround times. ‘At some point, the time for excuses is over.'”

How un-Sacramento: Expecting competence, rejecting excuses

This is a “wow” moment, given how Sacramento has worked for years. But it shouldn’t be. Lawmakers shouldn’t go easier on statewide officials just because they’re in the same party.

Especially now that Democrats’ power has reached hegemonic levels, taxpayers have to hope Dem lawmakers will make like Tom Daly going forward.

As for Bowen, I got to know her a little bit a dozen years ago when she was a state senator during the 2000-01 blackout crisis/debacle/scandal. I found her and another Democratic state senator, Joe Dunn, to be impressive and smart. I find it confounding that as secretary of state, she’s been so low-key and passive.

But maybe she just harbors hopes of following the Bill Lockyer route, moving from powerful statewide office to powerful statewide office without ever going for the governor’s job.

But at least Lockyer occasionally makes waves and gives a middle finger to the Democratic status quo.

By John Seiler

From the NY Post:

“The city’s hedge-fund executives are flying south — and it’s not for vacation.

“An increasing number of financial firms, especially private equity and hedge funds, are fed up with New York’s sky-high city and state tax rates and are relocating to the business-friendly climate in Florida’s Palm Beach County.

“And they’re being welcomed with open arms — officials in Palm Beach recently opened an entire office dedicated to luring finance hot shots down south.

“’Florida is a state of choice,’ said Thalius Hecksher, global development chief for Apex Fund Services, who moved many of his operations to Palm Beach. “=’It’s organically grown. There’s no need to drag people down here. It’s a zero-income-tax jurisdiction.’”

The improvement in weather also is significant. By contrast, wealthy folks fleeing California for Florida (or Texas) move into worse weather.

Still, the New York situation is another blow against Gov. Jerry Brown’s contention that rich people won’t flee tax slavery in California for someplace that treats them better.

As the tax receipts come in for the state government over the next few months, we’ll know.

More from the Post:

“Federal tax rates are the same in Florida and New York.

“But there’s no state income tax in the Sunshine State. Compare that to New York, where the state and local governments took $14.71 of every $100 earned in 2010, according to state records.

“The only state with a higher rate is Alaska.

“And Florida residents lost 3.31 percent of their income in total taxes, versus New Yorkers, who pay just over 5 percent, according to the National Tax Foundation’s latest report, which used 2009 Census figures.

“That’s a substantial difference in bottom line for those who stand to make millions of dollars a year in income.

“Also, commercial property values are much cheaper in Florida, and New York City will likely become even less friendly to businesses when Mayor Bloomberg leaves office next year, hedge-fund executives said.”

As with leaving California, moving from New York to the Sunshine State means getting a much bigger home, albeit with a little worse weather. But if the bugs and hurricanes get you down too much, with all the money you save moving there, you can take a long vacation in California, then leave before Gov. Jerry shows up to grab your taxes.

Florida, here they come.

By Chris Reed

With the op-ed in last week’s Wall Street Journal about California’s enormous potential for a fracking-driven energy boom, it’s beginning to look like how Gov. Jerry Brown deals with the issue will be a national story. It’s one that will test the narrative about Brown being the ultimate pragmatist, a liberal who raps regulation and a Democrat who sees tight-fistedness as akin to good government.

Bard College professor Walter Russell Mead is no conservative, but he’s a very thoughtful critic of modern liberalism and its essential unaffordability. He too thinks how the Golden State deals with its oil shale is a huge story. Still, he joins the long list of East Coast pundits who have no feel for California politics:

“California’s greens are sure to raise a fuss over any new drilling in America’s greenest state, but their fears are misplaced. Drilling for shale oil doesn’t risk water contamination in the way drilling for shale gas does, and much of the drilling will be done on existing oil fields. …

“Rather than pushing against any and all new drilling in California, smart greens should be looking for ways to move forward with drilling while ensuring that environmental concerns are taken care of.”

Such “smart greens” do not exist in California. Opposition to fracking has been reflexive and strident. The Golden State’s greens and their bureaucratic allies are so dogmatic that they have actually talked themselves into believing higher energy prices, specifically those created by AB 32, are good for the economy.

The advice from Pennsylvania’s governor

The question for Jerry Brown is whether he will heed the green hysterics — or Ed Rendell, the former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, who saw fracking create jobs and economic growth in his state without the downside warned of by enviro groups.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has a late-February deadline for deciding whether to extend his state’s ban on fracking. This New York Post story from Nov. 30 would leave one assuming that Rendell would offer Gov. Brown the same advice he offers Gov. Cuomo:

“‘New York would be crazy not to lift the moratorium’ imposed by former Gov. David Paterson in 2008, Rendell told The Post.

“‘I told Gov. Cuomo I would come to testify before any legislative committee,’ Rendell added. ‘I told [Cuomo] it’s a good thing to do.’

“Rendell’s strong pro-fracking comments are a coup for the drilling industry and for economically depressed upstate New York, which is clamoring for jobs.

“The no-nonsense Rendell, a former head of the Democratic National Committee, has a lot of credibility on the issue. … Rendell’s former environmental commissioner suggested it’s outrageous for New York to continue buying natural gas from other states without drilling for its own.

“’I do find it stunningly hypocritical to buy gas that comes from fracking wells somewhere [else] in the US and then say fracking is bad,’ said the former commissioner, John Hanger.

“He argued that natural gas is less polluting than coal or oil. …

“Rendell noted he barred the dumping of fracking water into wells and imposed fracking-well fees to hire 100 additional environmental inspectors.

“’The environmental harm can be significantly reduced or limited,’ by putting safety regulations in place ahead of time, he said.”

Rendell, like Jerry Brown, enjoys a rep as a blunt pragmatist. But Rendell also has a regular-guy populist vibe about him. That’s not our Jerry. Whatever his other qualities, I challenge anyone to point to any single event of his most recent four years as governor that suggests he has empathy for the long-term unemployed. Brown seems unlikely to use Rendell-style rhetoric in touting what fracking will do for hurting Californians.

As for Cuomo, he’s also not a populist. Instead, the New York governor is considered a clever straddler, someone who can win liberal votes by stressing cultural issues like gun control while governing as a pro-business centrist.

It’s hard to imagine how either Brown or Cuomo can finesse fracking, which threatens green dreams of a massive shift to renewable energy sources. Cuomo also wants to be president someday. So it is going to be intriguing — and, at least for political junkies, fun — to watch how fracking and the brown energy revolution play out this year in America’s two most influential states.

By Wayne Lusvardi

Last week Bloomberg News reported that California has the highest paid state workers in the 12 largest states by population.  But that didn’t tell the entire story.

Sure, California has the highest paid public workers. But it also has the highest median income. Adjusting for median income levels, California still has one of the highest levels of public employee pay, as shown in Table A below.

But that doesn’t tell the bigger story about the huge submerged public pension iceberg approaching California.  It isn’t only pay levels, but benefit levels that are going to overwhelm California local government budgets.

Table A: Public Pay Levels by State as Percent of Median Income

Let’s estimate the amount of investment that need to be set aside per public employee to generate just the underfunded portion of their future pensions. California has the highest unfunded pension liability per public employee of the twelve largest states.

Moreover, it would require providing a separate investment fund of about $453,980 at 5 percent annual interest for each public employee just to close the gap for the unfunded portion of their pension, as shown in Table B.

But once again, this needs to be adjusted by the average pay for each state to consider different standards of living.

Table B: Amount Needed to Fund Unmet Pension Liability by State

Accurate picture

Now, to get a more accurate picture, let’s divide Table B’s numbers by the average pay in each state. We do this in Table C. The key is Average Salary Years: that is, the total salary of that year dedicated to one thing.

Table C – Number of Salary Years Needed to Fund Unmet Pension Liability

It would take 8.9 Average Salary Years in Ohio to fund the unmet pension liability, 7.6 years in Georgia and 7.5 years in California.

By contrast, it would only take 3.2 years in New York, 3.9 years in Virginia, and 4.6 years in Texas.

So, no matter how you cut it, California still has one of the highest levels of unmet pension liability.

Dangerous combination

California politicians and unions tend to pooh-pooh the large unmet pension liability in California by saying that California also is the wealthiest state and thus pays its public employees higher.  But even if we spread the estimated $516.3 billion of unmet pension liability over the 12,433,172 households in California, that would reflect a staggering added debt burden of $41,526 per household (without considering interest, which would make the sum about three times greater).

Bloomberg is right that California public employees are paid the highest wages. And unions can argue back that California also has the highest median income. But California has not only high average wages, even when adjusted for state median income, but it also has the highest pension levels even after adjusting for the higher average wages.

California has a dangerous combination of the highest pay levels and the highest unmet pension liability.  States such as Texas and New York have relatively high pay levels, but correspondingly much lower unmet pension funding gaps. Closing their pension gaps by lowering pension levels is more reachable.

Pay levels for public employees can’t be considered in isolation from benefit levels. Bloomberg.com has exposed that California public employees are living in high-income state. But it missed reporting on the state’s looming crisis of unsustainable pensions.

—————————————-

DETAILED TABLES

Detailed Table B: Amount Needed to Fund Unment Pension Liability by State

Detailed Table C: Unmet Pension Liability Adjusted for Pay Level by State

By John Seiler

Hollywood’s leftist elite are big supporters of such causes as raising taxes and President Obama. The president is planning more events there in the fall to troll for campaign cash among the glitterati.

Despite their socialist preening, the Hollywood bigshots still like to make a buck. Which is why they’re fleeing California for states with fewer left-wing policies:

“The five broadcast television networks will be rolling out 23 new one-hour dramas for the upcoming season. That would normally be good business for Hollywood’s hometown industry — with bookings for soundstages and plenty of work for the costumers, camera operators and caterers needed to put a show on the air.

“But not this year. Just two of the 23 new fall and midseason shows will be shot in Los Angeles County, as cost-conscious producers seek tax-friendly production havens in New York, North Carolina, Georgia and other states….

“Fewer than 10% of new network dramas this season are based in Los Angeles, down from 50% in 2010 and nearly 80% in 2005.”

When rainy, snowy, cold, high-tax New York is a better place to produce a TV show than California, you know the business climate here is toxic.

Editor’s note: This is cross-posted from our friend Larry Sand. The NEA is the parent union of the powerful California Teachers Association.

July 24, 2012

By Larry Sand

The teachers union uses bogus numbers to con the public into believing that education needs more funding.

The National Education Association is relentless in its quest to raise taxes. In its latest gambit — “Massive Budget Cuts Threaten America’s Children” — the union claims that “…America’s schools have added 5.4 million students since 2003.” The only documentation for this outlandish number – an 11.1 percent increase – is a link to another article where they state the same fiction.

However, the National Council for Educational Statistics, an organization without an agenda, tells a far different story. NCES says that in 2003-2004 there were 48,540,375 K-12 students enrolled in the nation’s pubic schools. In 2010-2011, that number climbed to 49,484,181, an increase of just under 944,000 students – a 1.9 percent gain.

NEA also tries to convince us that severe spending cuts are dooming our children to an inferior education. But Mike Antonucci offers a realistic look at spending data culled from the U.S. Census Bureau. He came up with a chart which shows that between 2004-2005 and 2009-2010 per student spending increased 22 percent nationwide (9.3 percent after correcting for inflation.)

However, as Antonucci points out, the spending flattened out toward the end of that five year period. And in all likelihood we will be in for a decrease in the near term. But, what must be determined is how spending correlates to student achievement.

Compared to other countries around the world, we are fourth in spending after Luxembourg, Switzerland and Norway. Yet,

“The three-yearly OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report, which compares the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds in 70 countries around the world, ranked the United States 14th out of 34 OECD countries for reading skills, 17th for science and a below-average 25th for mathematics.”

Not much of a correlation there. What about individual states? A recent study about the U.S. failure to close the international achievement gap released by Education Next finds nothing at all convincing.

“No significant correlation was found between increased spending on education and test score gains. For example, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey posted large gains in student performance after boosting spending, but New York, Wyoming, and West Virginia had only marginal test-score gains to show from increased expenditures.”

Class size

The spendthrift teachers unions and their fellow travelers insist that we need more teachers because small class size is an essential component to a good education, but there is no evidence to back up this assertion. In fact, in a wonderfully contrarian op-ed, Cato Institute’s Andrew Coulson makes his case that “America Has Too Many Teachers” and other school employees.

“Since 1970, the public school workforce has roughly doubled—to 6.4 million from 3.3 million—and two-thirds of those new hires are teachers or teachers’ aides. Over the same period, enrollment rose by a tepid 8.5%. Employment has thus grown 11 times faster than enrollment. If we returned to the student-to-staff ratio of 1970, American taxpayers would save about $210 billion annually in personnel costs.”

Referring to the NAEP tests, also known as the nation’s report card, Coulson says that in spite of the increased workforce,

“These tests, first administered four decades ago, show stagnation in reading and math and a decline in science. Scores for black and Hispanic students have improved somewhat, but the scores of white students (still the majority) are flat overall, and large demographic gaps persist. Graduation rates have also stagnated or fallen. So a doubling in staff size and more than a doubling in cost have done little to improve academic outcomes.”

Ah, but what about the kids who do get lost in larger classes? A story in the Huffington Post addresses this, focusing on a sweet eight year old girl in New York City who is having a tough time in school because, due to budget cuts, her 3rd grade class now has 32 students. To be sure some students are hurt by being in bigger classes. But despite the appeal to sentiment, it is hardly a universal truth.

Teacher-pupil ratio

Hoover Institution senior fellow and economist Eric Hanushek has devoted much of his time studying this issue. In 1998, he released the results of his impressive research.

“Examining 277 separate studies on the effect of teacher-pupil ratios and class-size averages on student achievement, he found that 15 percent of the studies found an improvement in achievement, while 72 percent found no effect at all—and 13 percent found that reducing class size had a negative effect on achievement. While Hanushek admits that in some cases, children might benefit from a small-class environment, there is no way ‘to describe a priori situations where reduced class size will be beneficial.’”

In our fiscally tough times it is more important than ever not to be swayed by emotion, demagoguery, and plain ol’ BS. Americans must do their due diligence and not be conned by the hucksters. And be especially wary of the teachers unions; the snake oil they sell is particularly venomous.

About the author: Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network  — a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.