By Jon Coupal
Press-Telegram Opinion
April 7, 2019

Every day it seems like the California Legislature careens further off the rails, and we’re not just talking about the state’s infamous high speed rail project. The rapidity of tax increase proposals that would punish both citizen and business taxpayers is breathtaking. Particularly astounding is the fact that new revenue simply isn’t needed given our highest-in-the-nation income tax rate, state sales tax rate and a litany of other tax metrics that cause residents of other states to fall to their knees in gratitude that they don’t live here. (That is especially true for the millions of former Californians who have escaped to lower tax states).

Even more ironic is that these tax increase proposals are being advanced in a state with a massive $15 billion budget surplus and a recent series of corporate IPOs that will bring billions more into state coffers. When is enough enough?

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Lincoln Network
Lincoln Letters
April 5, 2019

Google recently invited Kay Coles James, president of the Heritage Foundation, to be a conservative voice on their new ethics advisory board. In short order, more than 1,200 employees signed a petition calling on the company to withdraw the offer. According to Lincoln Network’s co-founder, Garrett Johnson, Google has put itself between a “rock and a hard place.” Cat Zakrzewski, a tech policy reporter for The Washington Post, explains that the company included James as a means of addressing conservative concerns of bias in the search engine. If Google gives into the internal pressure and removes her from the board, it will give the appearance that it does, in fact, have an anti-conservative bias. Johnson said of the controversy, “if tech companies claim that they want to build platforms that encourage thoughtful debate and empathy, but they cannot achieve that within their own workforces, what does it say about their ability to build these forums?”

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By Nina Salarno Besselman
Special to CALmatters
April 2, 2019

Under current California law, more than 20 clearly violent crimes aren’t classified as violent, including rape of an unconscious person, trafficking a child for prostitution, assault with a deadly weapon and domestic violence.

You can pimp a child for sex, beat a spouse or rape a young woman who passes out at a frat party, and it’s not considered a violent offense under state law, and that’s offensive.

This was a dangerous flaw with Proposition 57, which California voters approved in 2016 by a wide margin, after being reassured by its proponents that the measure would apply only to non-violent offenders, and that only those inmates who posed no threat to public safety would be released from prison early.  

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