California Conference Committee on Water Charged with Solving States Water Woes
With only a matter of days left in the 2009 legislative year, lawmakers have formed a Legislative Conference Committee on Water. The conference committee is charged with creating a series of reforms that help reform and shape California’s antiquated water system and lead to a reliable supply of water for the state's water users.

California Insurance Commissioner and Gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner is making the media circuit right now. He’s getting peppered with questions about his evolving positions and political ideology.

 Is it ideological change or political expediency?

 Poizner is not making the political shift from Democrat to Republican; he is merely changing hard-core moderate positions to political positions more palatable to Conservatives:

• Pro tax on rich
• Moderate social, centrist Republican
• Anti-oil drilling
• Centrist married to a Democrat
• Large Donations to democrat candidates and the DNC

 He’s always played down the large donations to Al Gore and the Gore/Lieberman campaign and perhaps it’s merely because he can. Most people do not have the financial resources Poizner has; consequently we cannot play both sides of the aisle – the way nearly all of the very rich do.

 Poizner has explained that his wife wanted to attend a $10,000 Gore fundraiser; the reason for the largest donation. Most men will not only bow to their wife’s wishes, but will escort their wives in public. Is this so unusual?

 Has Poizner been over handled? As evidenced by the McCain/Palin campaign, handlers often do not have the stomach for strong positions and always steer the candidate right into wishy washy, moderation.

 We see this behavior in nearly all political newbies.

 Poizner has become increasingly staunch on conservative positions as he becomes experienced, yet still is reticent to take firm positions on offshore oil drilling, abortion, and taxing.

 His record with Proposition 39 and “Taxpayers for Accountability and Better Schools” and the subsequent hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, raised taxes on millions of Californians – an attempt to solve an educational problem, but a naïve mistake.

Poizner has changed his “No offshore drilling” position to the answer to the state’s energy, economic end employment needs. What are we to make of this huge shift? And if he is so supportive of offshore drilling, what about other energy resources such as nuclear power? He claims to support nuclear power, but what will he do about it?

 With candidate Steve Poizner, there are more questions than answers at this juncture.

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http://www.sacramentocitizen.com/index.cfm

Political elites are an interesting breed of animal. They claim to be in the know, cerebral, think-tankers, but are proved wrong time and time again.

Mayor Kevin Johnson is fighting the Sacramento City Council on when Sacramento residents will be able to vote for the Strong Mayor Proposal.

Reset Your Presidency Mr. Obama

By TED VAN DYK

Wall Street Journal

July 17, 2009

Time out, Mr. President.

As we approach the August congressional recess, it's clear that our economic distress is deeper than we thought, and thus your health-care and energy initiatives are in danger of stalling out. You could use a reset button for domestic policy.

Let's take it from the top.

Your presidential campaign was superb. You restored hope to millions -- including me -- who had been demoralized by the political polarization that characterized the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. You talked about reaching across party and ideological lines to get the public's business done. Your biography was appealing, and for those of us who entered politics motivated by the civil-rights struggle, your candidacy represented an important culmination.

You displayed an intellect and sense of cool that made us think you would weigh decisions carefully and view advisers' proposals with skepticism.

The first warning signals for me came with your acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. In it, you stressed domestic initiatives that clearly were nonstarters in the already shrinking economy.

I had greater concern when you staffed your administration and White House with a large number of Clinton administration retreads who had learned their trade in the never-ending-campaign culture of the Clinton years. Some appeared to represent what you had pledged to eradicate in the capital.

Many of the missteps that have followed flowed, in part, from your reliance on these Clinton holdovers. Your chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, defined your early strategy by stating that the financial and economic crises presented an "opportunity" to jam through unrelated legislation. To many of us, the remark was cynical and wrong-headed. The crises did not represent an opportunity. They presented an obligation to do one thing: Return our financial system and our economy to good health.

Since January, your advisers have compared your situation to those of Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson after their landslide victories in 1932 and 1964. In fact, your situation is quite different. Most centrally, FDR's and LBJ's victories and congressional majorities were far larger than yours. Thus their mandates were stronger.

FDR's first months in office were devoted entirely to financial and economic recovery. His big domestic initiative, Social Security, was not enacted until 1935. LBJ pushed an ambitious Great Society agenda into law in 1965. But the U.S. economy was growing robustly in 1965. Johnson referred to it as "an endless cornucopia" which would generate tax revenues to pay for the Great Society. When he learned in mid-1967 that the projected federal budget deficit was $28 billion -- almost twice the amount projected six months earlier -- he went to Congress to push for tax increases in order to prevent Vietnam War and Great Society spending from creating unacceptable deficits.

Your staff recently has compared your strategy in pushing health-care and energy initiatives to the way Johnson pushed his Great Society legislation. That's not a fair comparison. Johnson's initiatives were framed in the White House by his administration. But at every stage, congressional leaders of both political parties and financial, business, labor and other private-sector leaders were consulted. Johnson wanted to assure that his legislation was substantively sound and could get consensus support in the Congress and the country.

Your strategy, by contrast, has been to advocate forcefully for health-care and energy reform but to leave the details to Democratic congressional committee chairs. You did the same thing with your initial $787 billion stimulus package. Now, you're stuck with a plan that provides little stimulus until 2010. A president should never cede control of his main agenda to others.

This tactic has already had negative consequences. Frightened by the prospective costs of your health-care and energy plans -- not to mention the bailouts of the financial and auto industries -- independent voters who supported you in 2008 are falling away. FDR and LBJ, only two years after their 1932 and 1964 victories, saw their parties lose congressional seats even though their personal popularity remained stable. The party out of power traditionally gains seats in off-year elections, and 2010 is unlikely to be an exception.

What adjustments should be made?

- Cut back both your proposals and expectations. You made promises about jobs that would be "created and saved" by the stimulus package. Those promises have not held up. You continue to engage in hyperbole by claiming that your health-care and energy plans will save tax dollars. Congressional Budget Office analysis indicates otherwise.

It's time to re-examine these initiatives. Could your health plan be scaled back to catastrophic coverage for all -- badly needed by most families, but quite affordable if deductibles are set at the right levels? Should the Rube Goldbergian cap-and-trade proposals be replaced with a simple carbon tax, with proceeds to be allocated to alternative-fuels development?

The evolving health and cap-and-trade bills are loaded with costly provisions designed to gain support from congressional leaders and special-interest constituencies. In short, they have become an expensive mess. This legislation will not clear Congress by the August recess, as you have requested, and could be stalled for the remainder of 2009. Settle for incremental change: Do not press Democratic legislators to vote for something they fear will destroy them in 2010.

- Talk less and pick your spots. You are outdoing even Johnson and Mr. Clinton with your daily speeches in the capital and around the country.

Applause and adulation are gratifying. But the more you talk, the less weight your words will hold. Let voters see you at your desk, conferring with serious people about serious matters. When you do choose to talk, people will understand that it's important and they should listen.

-Conform your 2009 politics to your 2008 statements. During your campaign, you called for bipartisanship and bridge-building. You promised to reduce the influence of single-issue and single-interest groups in the policy process. Yet, in your public statements, you keep using President Bush as a scapegoat.

You have ceded content of your principal proposals to Democratic congressional leaders who in large part have yielded to special-interest constituencies and excluded Republican leaders from policy formulation. This certainly was the case with the stimulus plan. It has been the case with health and energy legislation, with the notable exception of Sen. Max Baucus's attempt in the Senate Finance Committee to develop genuinely bipartisan legislation.

You have an enormous reservoir of goodwill among Americans of all persuasions. They want you to succeed. Level with them and trim your proposals to what is practical in the current environment.

You had things right in 2008. Take a timeout. Get back to yourself. Make a fresh start.

Mr. Van Dyk was Vice President Hubert Humphrey's assistant in the Johnson White House and active in national Democratic politics over 40 years. He is the author of "Heroes, Hacks and Fools," (University of Washington Press, 2008)

According to the latest Federal data, there are 3,320,977 small businesses in California. It’s not enough any more to have a unique idea or recognize an unmet need to start a small business. Coming up with enough capital is always a challenge, but possible for the determined. However, in Sacramento the challenges just keep getting lobbed.

If I want to start my own small manufacturing company in Sacramento, I must first deal with a staggering the twenty-one agencies for permits, licenses and regulatory controls:

• City of Sacramento City Finance, Revenue Department
• City of Sacramento Fire Department: Fire Prevention Inspection
• City of Sacramento Planning Department Land Use Permit/Zoning Clearance
• City and County Police Department Police Regulations/Public Safety Issues
• County Assessor Business Property Statement office
• County of Sacramento Treasurer Tax Collector's Office
• County of Sacramento Environmental Health Department Hazardous Materials/Waste
• Sacramento Metropolitian Air Quality Management District
• California Department of Industrial Relations Air Tanks Permit
• California Secretary of State Corporation, Company or Partnership Filings
• California Department of Fair Employment and Housing
• California Department of Toxic Substances Control Hazardous Waste Facility (two different permits)
• Cal Environmental Protection Agency Industrial Activities Storm Water General Permit
• California Department of Industrial Relations: (OSHA)
• California Employment Development Department (EDD)
• Franchise Tax Board
• US Department of Treasury Internal Revenue Services
• Department of Industrial Relations (Workers' Compensation)
• US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)

It is not enough that a small business owner must apply to and work with each of these agencies before starting a business; surprise inspections and unannounced visits regularly occur. Any business owner can enumerate from memory, the audits and inspections they are subjected to: Annual inspections by the Fire Department and/or Fire Marshall, OSHA, safety and liability inspections by Insurance carriers, EPA and Cal-EPA toxic substances inspections, and Sacramento Air Quality Management District for emissions tests, to name just a few. There are surprise spot checks for permits and licenses by the city, county and state, even if there are current permits and licenses in place, as well as highly disruptive unannounced inspections.

One manufacturing owner shared that recently he has been subjected to increased permitting, licensing mandates, pop inspections, and required to obtain additional insurance coverage (terrorism insurance?). The Fire Marshall recently decided that the annual inspections by the Fire Department are not enough, and has conducted several surprise inspections, consequently announcing that he needs to purchase additional permits for paper storage and propane tank usage, replace existing EXIT signs with larger EXIT signs, change the open/close direction of interior doors, stop using extension cords, and the like. The redundancy of their request with Sacramento County and State licensing and permitting is of no concern as long as fees are associated; it is as if orders are coming from the top down in all city agencies to step-up permitting, fines and fees collection. This is mafia-style extortion for hapless business owners to operate in certain areas of certain counties and cities – such as Sacramento.

Another business owner told me that during a recent unannounced insurance inspection to his business, the Insurance company Risk Assessment Manager “recommended” the company move large rolls of paper away from the printing presses, and to take sales reps off the road if they have any moving violations or spotty driving records. City of Sacramento Parking Enforcement department keeps ticketing his trucks… parked on his property.

This is all in addition to all of the annual audits conducted by the IRS, the Franchise Tax Board, the bank, State sales tax audits, Worker’s Compensation insurance audits, payroll audits, and EDD audits, all totaling hundreds of hours of employee time.

The business climate in California is treacherous and unfriendly. The City of Sacramento is no better and is bullying more and more business owners with no concern whatsoever for the cumulative impact of their demands. Existing businesses are struggling to keep their heads above water in an ever-increasing regulatory nightmare, not to mention a particularly hostile economy. Given this miserable climate, who would want to start a business in California, and equally important, who wants to continue doing business in this city and state?

Katy Grimes is a long-time political activist, writer and columnist.

The ADA defines a covered disability as "a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity." The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was charged with interpreting the 1990 law with regard to discrimination in employment. Its regulations narrowed "substantially limits" to "significantly or severely restricts".

Police Officers, Fire Fighters and members of the Military are often called brave and valiant Heroes. And they should be; much of what they do is dangerous and requires a degree of courage, selflessness and valor.

They are also, public (government) employees.

Police are at-risk every moment of every day they are on-the-job; from the cop on the beat to the patrol officer, every person they speak to, every car they pull over is a potential risk to their life. They serve voluntarily and selflessly, putting themselves in harms way every day.

Military personnel who serve in war-torn countries serve voluntarily and selflessly, and often give their lives in the course of defending democracy.  Stateside military personnel tirelessly train in preparation for the day they will be sent into battle.

Fire fighters are faced with treacherous work conditions when fighting fire. Of particular note are the California Department of Forestry (CDF) - fire fighters, who work tirelessly trying to prevent wild fires in our summertime parched state.

Missing from the discussion of selfless, tireless public safety workers, is the union representing the City of Sacramento Fire Department who of late, have been behaving more like hoodlums, than heroes.

Months ago when the City first started talking about the need for sizeable budget cuts due to a record budget deficit, the Sacramento Police Officers Association union (SPOA) almost immediately stepped up and agreed to make their $6.4 million budget work – cuts, salary freezes and all. The Fire Fighters union, Local 522 (an AFL-CIO union), instead turned on the machismo, did a few chest bumps, and began a months-long public tantrum played out dramatically in the media, by refusing to live with and manage their $5 million budget.

Remember the City of Vallejo’s recent Bankruptcy? It was their Fire Department that forced the city into the financial dire straights that led to insolvency, due to record and unsustainable salaries, benefits and pensions. This is a common theme in the state of California, and a severe lesson the City of Sacramento seems unwilling to experience.

The Sacramento Police Department and the SPOA actively educated members in order to get input and involvement on the inevitable budget problems the city was facing. Already down by 104 sworn staff officers since 2007, the Sacramento Police Department decided they could not afford any more police officer cuts. SPOA agreed across the board to accept the City’s budget, freeze salaries as of the last budget, and take cuts where deemed necessary in order to save jobs.

Contrast this with Local 522, the Fire Department union, and even city employee union Local 39: both unions propose sacrificing only lower paid workers, while insisting on raises for the older, more highly-paid workers. Many Sacramento residents are critical of firefighters for being hypocritical for claiming union “solidarity” with their firefighting “brothers” while rejecting a deal that will lead to the City laying off 50 of their “brothers.” Fire Fighters are behaving like thuggish teamsters, forgetting that they are city employees, and serve voluntarily.

Additionally, Fire Fighters have come under intense scrutiny for excessively high overtime abuse and ongoing abuse with sick-leave usage. With city fire fighters largely on-call while on duty, their antics are becoming intolerable.

What happened to the days when fire fighters called to a medical emergency showed up as a first-responder, in a two-person team driving a light-duty truck? The fire fighters’ demand for 4-man teams on every truck for every call, is unrealistic and absurd, and demonstrative of their refusal to prioritize staffing levels based on the nature of the emergency calls. Current staffing levels and call response tactics are purely to justify their pay, pensions and big budget.

This from the same local fire fighters union who recently threatened that they were considering sponsoring a ballot initiative that would seek to ban the City Council from ever reducing firefighters’ pension benefits without a vote of the public. 

This is all behavior inherent to Chicago-style unions, not most individual fire fighters. However, the fire fighters who consider themselves union members first and only secondarily fire fighters, made their voices clear at recent city council meetings.

When was the last time police or military personnel threatened using thuggish teamster tactics because they weren’t getting guaranteed pay and pension increases? Military and police personnel respect integrity and distinguished public service.

 Fire Fighters, police and military personnel choose their career paths voluntarily. Society honors those who choose careers that require courage and valor in the face of danger. But when Sacramento City Fire Fighters threaten tyranny while already receiving abundant wages, rich benefits and inordinately large pensions, while most of the rest of the city’s employers are laying off employees and cutting wages and salaries, we know that the union running the show has reached beyond usefulness and is moving into foolishness. Thus is the inherent problem with labor unions representing public employees.

Public employees work for the citizenry, but appear to work for the supremacy of the city, county or state. The law and the government are intended to serve American freedom and self-determinism — not the other way around.