SEPT. 2, 2010 As entertainment goes, the final regular-season episode of the Budget Show in the Capitol was shoddy. The actors – the Assembly members and senators – are B-rate. The speeches, despite their strained attempts to sound Kennedy-esque, were pretentious. Those of us in the audien...

AUGUST 30, 2010 I've frequently argued that, as the state faces an unfunded pension liability that's as high as $500 billion, legislators are not doing anything about a problem that is depleting public services and imposing additional debt and tax burdens on Californians. In fact, the state...

AUG. 23, 2010 It's always entertaining watching various tax consumers fight with one another over a shrinking revenue pie, which makes the Proposition 22 campaign a spectacle. Despite the chatter from supporters about "saving local services" and stopping Sacramento from "raiding" local treasu...

AUGUST 16, 2010 As of Tuesday, legislators were 41 days past the constitutional deadline for passing a state budget, yet the state's majority Democrats weren't even holding budget hearings. Why bother? The state is $19 billion in the red, but the two sides aren't even close to coming to terms. Re...

AUGUST 9, 2010 While walking though the supermarket the other day, my wife and I began playing a game I call Unintended Consequences. We tried to guess how things will really work after some new law is put in place. Our governments continually pass legislation that promises to fix every probl...