Did you read about AB 119, signed into law by Governor Brown on June 27? Probably not, even though California voters clearly voiced their preference for transparency when they overwhelmingly approved Prop 54 last year, which was supposed to give the public a 72-hour notice before a bill became law. AB 119 was one of those goodies that legislators throw in at the 11th hour of final budget approval that the public hears little about.
What a boon the recent, fizzled, right-wing protests in San Francisco turned out to be in providing municipal authorities with a ready-made excuse to waste a bunch of taxpayer money paying overtime wages to government employees – "The fascists made us do it!"
SFIST reports that the excessive police response to the non-event cost the SFPD (read: the taxpayers) $775,000, with 98% of that expense going toward overtime pay for police officers.
When is your property not really your property? If you don’t pay your property taxes, you’ll soon discover a lien has been placed on your property by the county assessor, so in a sense, your property is only yours if you pay your property taxes. Now, what if you decide to rent out your property? By becoming a housing provider, a whole new nightmarish world is created whereby control over your property is severely limited by law: who you must rent to, the amount you charge, when you can change the amount of rent, how many roommates the renter can bring in, and most important when you can terminate the agreement and get the renter to vacate.
What is the City & County of San Francisco’s solution to the problem of its bloated bureaucracy? Consider cutting back to essential services and lowering taxes and letting The City’s residents pick and choose the projects they choose to support? No, our leaders feel hiring more bureaucrats and paying them high salaries makes more sense. We’ve seen this pattern again and again over the years, and they just did it again. Last month the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to create the Office of Cannabis, which is supposed to be a “one-stop shop” to handle cannabis business applications, serve as a “conduit” to state regulatory departments, and handle complaints.
Is the college algebra requirement a “civil rights issue”? Eloy Ortiz Oakley, Chancellor of California Community Colleges, thinks so. He wants to eliminate the requirement for non-STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) majors to get an AA degree or transfer to a four-year college in California. He said, “If you think about all the underemployed or unemployed Americans in this country who cannot connect to a job in this economy—which is unforgiving of those students who don’t have a credential—the biggest barrier for them is this algebra requirement. It’s what has kept them from achieving a credential.” Currently intermediate algebra is the lowest level of math needed at community colleges to graduate or transfer.
For a change, we have something good to report: SB 562, The Healthy California Act, a bill proposed to make single-payer healthcare a reality in California, was shelved by Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon on June 23 when he decided that the proposed bill will remain in the Assembly Rules Committee until further notice. The bill, which had passed the State Senate by a vote of 23-14, was supported by San Francisco politicians Scott Wiener and David Chiu (no surprise). Rendon, himself an advocate for single-payer, was nevertheless apprehensive about the bill and noted, “It certainly wasn’t a bill.
As usual, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors feels the need to act like our mothers and fathers. Recently they voted unanimously to ban the sale of flavored nicotine-based liquid used in e-cigarettes and flavored tobacco products in San Francisco. The justification of the ban is that nicotine masked in fruity flavors like cotton candy, banana cream, mint, and other flavors entices children into the sordid life of nicotine addiction. Another "Save The Children" law. Supervisor Malia Cohen, who represents the historically black Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood, also doesn’t think too highly of the intelligence of adults in black neighborhoods and the LGBT community since she said, "Big Tobacco loves vulnerable populations.
“From the first day of the first congress at the moment of the passage of the first law, we became weaker. The extra-large B. Franklin said it well that you can test the strength of a society by the paucity of the pages in its book of laws. Today we are surrounded by laws—Tax Law, civil law, criminal law, Statutes, and Bills. Laws that make large and small criminals of us all. And sometimes just doin’ something that you like to do that hurts no one is also criminal, or at least strongly discouraged. Seems we can’t be trusted to live well and safely on our own. On our own we would all probably descend quickly into mayhem, cannibalism, and ultimately shoplifting and jaywalking. If only we could all be trusted. It is good to have such wise fathers looking out for us... Isn’t it...?
The following conversation is fictional, but may not be too far from the truth. Let's listen in at a banquet event attended by various political insiders some years ago...
Lobbyist: How's the campaign going, Ed?
Senator: Not bad, but we're having to raise more cash this time around to guarantee our margin of victory. Even when you're the incumbent, it never hurts to out-spend them by 3:1 or 5:1 to be on the safe side.
A recent news item highlights the insanity of what the taxpayers are paying for when we employ the police. The police are supposed to be paid to protect life and property, but the sheer number of ridiculous laws gives the police the discretion and power to enforce those ordinances they choose to enforce since no government, save a 100% police state, can possibly enforce all the laws on the books.