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 Apr 29, 2013, Vol. 18, No. 31 • By THE SCRAPBOOK
California’s retread governor Jerry Brown traveled to China last week with some 90 of his closest friends. (According to Los Angeles Times columnist George Skelton, Brown’s party included “mostly special interests . . . willing to pay $10,000 each, plus trans-Pacific airfare.”) The vacation . . . sorry, the “trade and investment mission” included a lot of schmoozing and photo-ops. It also—serendipitously, we are certain—happened around the time of Brown’s 75th birthday.
As has become routine for a certain breed of technocratic liberal, Brown took care to praise China’s autocratic political system while he was there. Anyone who’s ever read a Thomas Friedman column in the New York Times knows the argument: The Chinese, in their infinite wisdom, know how to “get things done”—this in contrast to America, what with pesky annoyances like constitutional checks and balances and democratic accountability. “People here do stuff,” Brown rhapsodized. “They don’t sit around and mope and process and navel-gaze.” Call THE SCRAPBOOK old-fashioned, but it seems to us that while it’s one thing for a newspaper columnist to sing the praises of Communist “efficiency,” it’s rather more unseemly for an elected governor to do the same.
Brown really likes what he saw in China; compared with California, the Chinese are “moving at Mach speed,” he lamented. Then again, just last week, as the governor was junketing through the Middle Kingdom, a front-page story in the Financial Times sounded the alarm on “Out-of-Control [Chinese government] Debt.” The FT reported, “Provinces, cities, counties and villages across China are now estimated to owe between Rmb10tn and Rmb20tn”—that’s $1.6 trillion to $3.2 trillion, or “20-40 percent of the size of the economy.”
So take heart, Governor Brown: In at least one respect, China is following California’s lead—going into debt at Mach speed.
When antidiscrimination law meets infertility treatment mandates. Apr 15, 2013, Vol. 18, No. 29 • By WESLEY J. SMITH
Should health insurers be legally required to offer infertility treatment for gay couples? Yes, according to a bill (AB 460) filed in the California legislature by assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco). In fact, refusing to do so should be a crime.
Read more... When antidiscrimination law meets infertility treatment mandates. Apr 15, 2013, Vol. 18, No. 29 • By WESLEY J. SMITH
Should health insurers be legally required to offer infertility treatment for gay couples? Yes, according to a bill (AB 460) filed in the California legislature by assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco). In fact, refusing to do so should be a crime.
Read more... 30 California municipalities are on the bankruptcy watch list.4:13 PM, Mar 5, 2013 • By TWS PODCASTTHE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, hosted by Michael Graham, with Ken Grubbs on his cover story, Paradise Lost.
Read more... 30 California municipalities are on the bankruptcy watch list.4:13 PM, Mar 5, 2013 • By TWS PODCASTTHE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, hosted by Michael Graham, with Ken Grubbs on his cover story, Paradise Lost.
Read more... 12:45 PM, Mar 5, 2013 • By JEFFREY H. ANDERSONAmericans have long had to fight City Hall, but now they have to fight an almost endless list of government bureaucracies at both the state and federal levels. Occasionally, however, the little guy still wins.
Read more... California is not too big to fail.Mar 11, 2013, Vol. 18, No. 25 • By K.E. GRUBBS JR. and SHAWN STEEL
One early December morning, Las Vegas police moved in on the Silverton Hotel and Casino, just off the Strip and known for its 117,000-gallon aquarium. There, having located a getaway black Audi with no license plates, they arrested 31-year-old Ka Pasasouk—a Laotian immigrant with a violent history who had eluded deportation as well as imprisonment. The Dragnet-style work came less than 24 hours after police back in Northridge, a Los Angeles suburb known for a state university campus, discovered what they called a “very grisly tableau.”
Read more... 10:10 AM, Feb 20, 2013 • By JEFFREY H. ANDERSONFor three years, a private citizen named Steve LeBard has led the effort to build a privately funded memorial in Orcutt, California—a tranquil small town located on the Golden State’s gorgeous Central Coast—to honor military veterans. And for the better part of those three years, he has run into a toxic blend of political correctness, anti-Americanism, and bureaucratic senselessness. Today, the memorial, which was to be built with private funds on a small piece of public land, remains unbuilt.
Read more... 11:01 AM, Jan 28, 2013 • By GEOFFREY NORMANPhil Mickelson had a bad weekend on the golf course and was almost 20 strokes behind the leader, Tiger Woods, when play was suspended Sunday in the Farmers Insurance Open tournament at Torrey Pines.
Read more... 5:37 PM, Nov 20, 2012 • By DANIEL HALPERThe Associated Press reports that a homegrown terror plot was busted in California.
"Four Southern California men have been charged with plotting to kill Americans and destroy U.S. targets overseas by joining al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan, federal officials said Monday," reports the AP.
Read more... California votes for more: taxes, spending, debt, government Nov 19, 2012, Vol. 18, No. 10 • By CHARLOTTE ALLEN
On November 6 voters in California did something nearly unheard of during the past 30 years: They approved, by a margin of 54 percent to 46 percent, a ballot measure raising state income taxes on the most prosperous Californians and sales taxes on everyone, even though the state’s sales tax is already the highest in the nation.
Read more... California votes for more: taxes, spending, debt, government Nov 19, 2012, Vol. 18, No. 10 • By CHARLOTTE ALLEN
On November 6 voters in California did something nearly unheard of during the past 30 years: They approved, by a margin of 54 percent to 46 percent, a ballot measure raising state income taxes on the most prosperous Californians and sales taxes on everyone, even though the state’s sales tax is already the highest in the nation.
Read more...
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