How Government Thinks...

In California, anyway.  Five years ago, the state government passed legislation offering tax credits for investors in certain kinds of small businesses.  Recently, the California Supreme Court ruled those tax credits unconstitutional.  Now the state's Franchise Tax Board (the tax collectors) are assessing back taxes retroactively for all five years, to those claiming the tax credits.  And not just back taxes – interest and penalties, too.

No individual or business could ever get away with an obviously unfair practice like that.  Only the government...

The asylum really is being run by the lunatics...

California: You Will Earn 3% on Your Retirement Savings...

If I were still employed by a small business in California, this would really piss me off – the nanny state telling me that it knows how to save for my retirement better than I do.  The proof is their guaranteed rate of return: a whopping 3%. 

Oh, vey.

We gotta get out of here...

Transgender Children...

California Governor Gerry “Moonbeam” Brown has signed into law a bill (AB-1266) protecting transgender children enrolled in public schools.  Provisions in the bill allow transgender children to choose which gender's restrooms and locker rooms they will use, and choose which gender sports teams they'll participate in.

What does this actually mean?

The bill uses the term “gender identity”, which I found several definitions for out on the web – similar, but not identical.  The basic notion is that your gender identity is that gender that you deeply feel you are – even if that's different than your physical gender.  I couldn't find anything that defined (under California law) how one gets a particular gender identity under the law.  It could be that you simply declare it, or it could be that you have to have a psychiatric professional certify it.  I have no idea.

There really are people out there whose gender identity is different than their actual physical gender – transgendered people.  I've known two in my life.  The first was born a man (and that's how I first new him), but who thought of himself as a woman.  “Robert” became “Robin” while (s)he was an employee of mine.  That was quite an experience, on many levels.  The other was a person born as a woman (coincidentally, “Robin”) who thought of herself as a man.  She became “Al” several years before I first met him.  In this case, Al was an employee of the company I was CEO of, and I had another male employee who complained about Al's inappropriate advances.  Yes, transgender people can also be gay, as I got a quick education on.

I relate the preceding mainly to illustrate through my own experience that transgender people exist.  I have no doubt, personally, of the reality of this condition.  I also have no doubt that some transgender children exist, and in this day and age, they might well be recognized at a young age. 

So I don't doubt the sincerity of the bill's authors, nor the reality of the issue they address.

But I, like many others, am worried about the bill's imposition of potentially very uncomfortable situations on young people who already have enough social challenges.  Again like many others, I worry about its potential for abuse.

First the uncomfortable situations.  Imagine a 16 year old person who is physically male, but identifies as female.  That person, under AB-1266, has the right to choose to use the girl's restrooms and the girls locker room.  I suspect that even in these “enlightened”  times, there are still girls of high school age who are uncomfortable in the presence of nude men, and who would be uncomfortable being nude in the presence of a man (nude or not).  Basically this bill says “tough” to those girls (or the boys in an opposite situation, though the discomfort potential there is admittedly far lower :). 

Then there's the potential for abuse.  This mainly rests upon the requirements imposed by California law on establishing gender identity.  If those requirements are very loose – say, simply the declaration of the student – then it doesn't take much imagination to contrive situations where a horny and curious boy (that would be all of them) establishes gender identity as a girl and thereby gains admittance to about 80% of all teenage boy sexual fantasies.  Because I couldn't find the rules by which one establishes gender identity (under the law), I can't assess the probability of abuse.  I can imagine a fairly “tight” set of rules that would make it difficult for abuse to occur, but this is California; there's no telling what those idiots in Sacramento have actually done.  They probably don't know themselves!

Our Daily Entertainment...

While we were on vacation, catching up with the “Filthy” Filner news was our daily entertainment.  When we wandered into an area that had cell phone coverage (usually at least once a day), we'd jump on our cell phones and get the latest scoop.  Good old Filthy never let us down.

I'm pretty sure that if someone submitted a Hollywood script that followed the course of this saga, that script would be rejected for implausibility.  The latest bit (Filthy's lawyer claiming he's entitled to city-paid legal costs because the city never sent Filthy to sexual harassment training) fits the pattern very well.  Real life beats Hollywood in this case :)

Most of my readers will know that while we live in the County of San Diego, we do not live in the City of San Diego (in fact, it's borders are 25 or 30 miles from us).  So Filthy is not our mayor; in fact, we live in an unincorporated area, so we have no mayor at all.  So we have no horse in this race, except by dint of being residents of a nearby area.  But for Debbie and I, the whole Filthy affair is emblematic of problems faced by all of California: ludicrously, improbably incompetent government with a twist of perversion.  This government happens to come with the label of “Democrat”, though I don't personally believe that the Republicans, were they in power, would be significantly different.  The problem really is the electorate.  Any electorate that would, for example, keep re-electing Nancy Pelosi (whatever her party affiliation) is asking for the government they've got.  Perhaps the re-election of Governor Moonbeam is an even better illustration of this.

So, to answer some reader's questions, we're not upset by FilthyGate at all.  We think of it as entertaining reaffirmation of our decision to leave California for a more sane state (which, by our reckoning, gives us about 45 states to choose from)...

Sacremento Politicians Beclown Themselves Again...

Now I realize that headline really isn't news.  Our low information, low IQ legislature beclowns itself on a near-daily basis.  But this beclowning is of a particularly delightful variety – the Democrats pulled a fast one on our budget (no news there), and it very well may be that by doing so, they permanently eliminate one of their beloved sources of “revenue”.  That would be a thing of beauty, that would!

Of Burgers, Bikinis, and ObamaCare...

How can you resist a headline like that?  Here's the sub:

Andy Puzder, the man who revived Carl's Jr., explains why he's not expanding in California and how the Affordable Care Act is hurting employment. Expect to order with an iPad.

You should definitely read the whole thing...

California Doom...

Here's the text of California Assembly Bill 1266, passed along by friend, reader, and Idaho real estate mogul Doug S. (I think he enjoys laughing at the sufferings of the denizens of his former abode).  The bill has already passed in the Assembly and is currently awaiting action in the Senate.  The key bit is in Section 1, amending Section 221.5 of the education code to include:

(f) A pupil shall be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records.

So...a high school boy who claims identification as female must be allowed to join a girl's sports team, must be allowed to use the girl's locker room, and must be allowed to use the girl's restrooms.

What could possibly go wrong with that?

Doom.  Doom.  Doom.  The sounds of the drums beat ever closer...

Ah, California...

Not long ago, California Senator Dianne Feinstein said (in the context of pushing her gun control bill, which failed) “All vets are mentally ill and government should prevent them from owning firearms”.  She didn't actually say those words, but that is how many understood her meaning.

Columnist Burt Prelutsky had this thought:

Frankly, I don't know what it is about California, but we seem to have a strange urge to elect really obnoxious women to high office. I'm not bragging, you understand, but no other state, including Maine, even comes close. When it comes to sending left-wing dingbats to Washington, we're Number One. There's no getting around the fact that the last time anyone saw the likes of Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Maxine Waters, and Nancy Pelosi, they were stirring a cauldron when the curtain went up on 'Macbeth'. The four of them are like jackasses who happen to possess the gift of blab. You don't know if you should condemn them for their stupidity or simply marvel at their ability to form words.

No other state even comes close.  Ouch.  What a sad statement that is...

The Drums of Doom Beat Ever Closer...

In California they do.  We're raising a generation on notions like this one: that a Swiss Army knife is an evil weapon:

A fifth-grader in Cupertino, California was suspended and threatened with expulsion for bringing a small Swiss Army knife on a school-sponsored, science-oriented camping trip.

We have got to get out of here...

I Shouldn't Be Surprised...

California's current political context, with Democratic super-majorities in both Houses and a leftist, progressive (Democratic, of course) governor, means that it's possible for California to advance outrageously crazy bills and get them signed by the governor.  For some reason, I keep getting surprised when they do so.

Here's another one in the works – it hasn't passed yet, but the oracles are predicting that it will.

The problem his new bill is addressing is one of those features of ObamaCare with supposedly unforeseen consequences – that were actually completely foreseen by many critics: the “employer mandate” that requires any employer of more than 50 full-time workers.  Many employers in the service sector (restaurants, movie theaters, hotels, etc.) will simply move as many employees as possible from full time to part time.  If you're running a business, this is an obvious tactic to avoid the (large) additional expenses of ObamaCare.  Of course they're going to move those workers to part time – and they should, in order to keep their prices low and competitive.  Any business that didn't would instantly become less efficient and less competitive than it should be.

So imagine you're a California legislator.  What do you do in the face of this?  Well, of course what you do is outlaw moving workers to part time!  Make it illegal for a business to run efficiently, or to compete effectively – yeah, that's the ticket!

The drums of doom beat ever closer.  Especially in California...

Shameless...

The little people in California are being screwed again.  No surprise there, really, though this is a little more blatant than usual.  Consider:

– California, under Jerry Brown's “leadership,” decides to build a high-speed railroad.  Not between two cities that could conceivably need such a thing, as California has no such pair of cities.  Not even between two large cities, as we can't possibly raise the gargantuan sums required to do this.  No, instead we're building a high-speed “demonstration” railroad that has no intent of actually making sense.  It's just a way to muster the political will to get this turkey started.

– The job is put out for bid under a set of rules designed to balance technical merit and price.  Fair enough.  But the initial set of rules would have eliminated the California-based firm Tutor Perini, along with a Swedish firm.  So the California High-Speed Rail Authority quietly, secretly changed the rules in mid-process, to allow Tutor Perini's bid to be considered.

– Tutor Perini was declared the winner.  Their bid was the lowest price (by a wide margin), and also scored the lowest on technical merit (also by a wide margin).  Something to note: Tutor Perini has been frequently accused of “lowballing” their bids – deliberately submitting unreasonably low bids to win, then finding ways to jack up the price as the job proceeds.  In fact, they have been remarkably successful at doing so.

Now the part where we get screwed: the principal owner of Tutor Perini is Richard Blum.  If you don't know that name, you will most likely recognized the name of his wife: Diane Feinstein, one of our California Senators.  The political operators would say here that the optics look bad.  I say something else: there's no way this happened without corruption, however subtle and soft.

Rope.
Tree.
A whole bunch of politicians.
Some assembly required.

I Am Ashamed of My State...

Again...

California: Trying to Set a Record for Speed of Decline...

That thing we call “health insurance” doesn't much resemble actual insurance any more.  The piling on of state mandates makes the problem even worse.  California is considering yet another new mandate: coverage for treatment of infertility, including things like artificial insemination, surrogate mothers, etc.

That doesn't sound all that surprising; just another way to redistribute some wealth (we'll all end up paying for those couples who need infertility treatments).  But there's a twist to the California law: its definition of infertility is very carefully written: it says that any couple who has active sex for a year without producing a pregnancy is by definition infertile.  Any couple.  Including homosexual couples.

So the effect of this new mandate (if passed) would be to allow any gay or lesbian couple who wanted a kid to have the entire tab for “infertility treatments” be picked up by the rest of us.

Every time I think that our California legislators have found every possible way to demonstrate their craziness, they prove me wrong.  They've done it again.

We gotta get outta here...

California's Net Worth...

We're talking about the net worth of the state government, not of all the people and businesses in the state.  The net worth of the state government is the sum of all its assets (buildings, land, cash, investments, taxes due) minus the sum of all the liabilities (debts, pension obligations, etc.).  For most of California's history, the net worth of the state has been somewhere between a few billion dollars negative to several hundred billion positive (the latter during Ronald Reagan's term).  Today: -127.2 billion dollars.  That's over $3,000 for each man, woman, and child in the state.  Sheesh...

Yet Another Reason to Leave Southern California...

We're living in a fourth amendment exclusion zone...

Corruption, California-Style...

Via CoyoteBlog, this post from SLO Leaks:

Like me, [Steve Blank] is in the high tech industry. Like me, he has started several high tech companies....

After Steve sold his last startup company he applied for a permit to build a house in the California Coastal Zone in 2000. And, just like me, Steve’s land use permit was appealed to the California Coastal Commission. The reason for the appeal was “sensitive habitat” issues. (I don’t have any sensitive habitat issues because my proposed house is in the middle of a field of non-native weeds.)

Unlike me, Steve’s appeal to the Coastal Commission went pretty smoothly. He had his hearing in only 8 months – start to finish. It has taken me a year and a half, after waiting a year and a half for SLO County to issue the permit in the first place. And there were no onerous “Special Conditions” imposed on Steve by either San Mateo County or the Coastal Commission.

Here is the list of “Special Conditions” that the Coastal staff wants to impose on me.

Superficially Steve’s house and my house are similar. I have a main house and a barn on 37 acres, Steve has a main house, two barns, and a farm labor house. But Steve’s house is 15,780 sq. ft., with a swimming pool, and a 2,500 sq. ft. barn, and another 3,040 sq. ft. barn 31 ft. high, and a 1240 sq. ft. farm labor house all on 261 acres. So Steve’s house is around 3 times larger than my proposed house (and much taller). Steve also got to have a fence and there was no requirement for public access. And Steve was able to build his house to look anyway he wanted. No “rural agricultural theme” architecture for Steve, that’s for sure. Steve can also plant in his yard pretty much any damn thing he wants.

Steve is pretty proud of his house. A picture of his house is the banner to his web page, which ishere. You can see the front gate of his house here. And this is an overhead view.

Steve Blank is one of the current California Coastal Commissioners.

This is the sort of thing one expects in a third-world country, or Russia, or Chicago.  Not here.

Proof Positive...

Californians elected Nancy Pelosi to the House of Representatives multiple times, continuously since 1987.  Most recently, 85.1% of her district voted for her.

Frequently Ms. Pelosi does something to add to my sense of wonder at her election.  The fact that Californians (in San Francisco) continue to elect Ms. Pelosi is proof positive of something.  I'm not entirely sure what it's proving, but I'm absolutely positive it's something bad.

Now she's done it again.  Consider this statement she made on Valentine's Day, on the subject of a proposed cut in Congressional pay:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that she opposes a cut in congressional pay because it would diminish the dignity of lawmakers' jobs.

"I don't think we should do it; I think we should respect the work we do," Pelosi told reporters in the Capitol. "I think it's necessary for us to have the dignity of the job that we have rewarded."

You likely already know that Ms. Pelosi is one of the wealthiest members of Congress (her net worth is about $58 million, primarily through her husband).  She keeps getting re-elected.  She was the House Majority leader, and is now the House Minority leader.  You'd be forgiven for thinking “She must have something on the ball!”

Then you read her statement.

You try to parse her statement.

You try to figure out what it's even attempting to say.

You have to conclude she's an idiot.

What else could explain her apparently belief in the dignity of a member of Congress – the most despised politicians in America? 

Or her belief (if my attempt to parse her sentence is on the mark) that members of Congress deserve some kind of reward?

She's an embarrassing idiot, or better, an obliviot.  And my fellow Californians keep re-electing her, every two years.  That definitely proves something.  And reinforces my already firmly settled inclination to get the hell out of Dodge...

Well, That Didn't Last Long...

The lead on this WSJ ($) article pretty much sums it up:

Well, that didn't take long. The pension reforms that California Governor Jerry Brown signed in September have been in effect for all of a month, and Democrats are already seeking a partial annulment. The Kim Kardashian-Kris Humphries marriage had more staying power.

State assemblyman Luis Alejo (D., Teamsters) wants to exempt some 20,000 mass transit workers on the pretext that the new pension law violates the 1964 Urban Mass Transportation Act...

California – a shining example of how socialism (in the guise of “progressivism”) can reduce a vibrant symbol of human success to a smoldering economic ruin.  Quickly, too.

Doom...

Another Step Backwards...

Every year we need fewer farmers and more engineers.  This is a natural consequence of the world's economy evolving toward mechanization and automation.  The jobs available in the evolving economy are more intellectual, less manual.  So naturally, our schools need to better prepare students for this new world, by equipping them with the skills to get jobs in it.  Right?

Wrong.  California has decided that math needs less emphasis.

Doom...

Legislative Frenzy...

Now there's a phrase finely crafted to strike fear into my heart.  The Democratic party has complete control of both the legislative and executive branches of state government (Governor Moonbeam is of course a Democrat, and both the Senate and the Assembly have Democratic super-majorities that render the few Republicans there completely toothless).  Even worse, California's politicians include a more than generous selection of loons and creeps – think Nancy Pelosi, minus the IQ, charm, restraint, and physical attractiveness.

Now they're talking about even stricter gun controls than we already have here.  One of the least objectionable proposals is to require a license (at $50 a year!) to buy ammunition.  It goes downhill from there.

I weep for my state (and I'm leaving).  I weep for my country.  Then I think about revolution...