This website recently posted articles criticizing Fullerton’s newly passed COIN ordinance, the Fullerton Transparency and Accountability in Labor Negotiations Ordinance. The author used Supervisor John Moorlach’s earlier writing to guide his criticism of our achievement. For the sake of clarity, I use the same template to correct the record. Supervisor Moorlach’s essential elements are, in...

Monterey County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wills ruled on June 26th that the 2002 ordinance enhancing public-safety pensions was legally enacted, and therefore could not be voted on by the citizens of Pacific Grove. To put the decision in perspective, Judge Wills encouraged the citizens to Appeal his decision. His decision was based on his opinion...

The French economist Thomas Piketty has achieved worldwide fame by promoting a thesis that capitalism is the cause of growing economic inequality. Unfortunately, he is partially right. However, the important distinction missed by Piketty and all of his supporters is that state capitalism, not free market capitalism, has reigned supreme in recent decades in the world’s...

Those who see the current era as the New Normal also have one logical action: sell now at the top and wait for the smoke to clear in 2016. In “The Generational Short, Part One,” I addressed how generational changes in values could affect the stock market. That values change over time is common sense, and...

If Gen-Y cannot afford to buy Boomers’ houses at bubble-level prices, then what will keep housing prices at these elevated levels? Last month the Brookings Institution published a study by scholars Morley Winograd and Dr. Michael Hais on changing generational values: “How Millennials Could Upend Wall Street and Corporate America.” The gist of the report is that Gen-Y...

Here is a postmortem on the final passage on June 17th of the Fullerton version of a “Civic Openness in Labor Negotiations (COIN) ordinance: During the council meeting a few of citizen activists tried valiantly to persuade two other Fullerton council members in addition to Council member Bruce Whitaker to reject the City of Fullerton’s...

Orange County Sheriff Union Protests County Secrecy on Billing Records By Norberto Santana Jr., June 24, 2014, Voice of OC Just as county supervisors prepare Tuesday to consider a measure seeking to make labor negotiations more transparent, Sheriff union officials are protesting efforts to keep county legal bills on negotiations secret. Under the Civic Openness...

The Planning Commission for the City of Petaluma, California (in Sonoma County) experienced the full brunt of union abuse of environmental laws (“greenmail”) at its meeting tonight (June 24, 2014) to consider approving a prominent proposed development project. Calling themselves “Petaluma Residents for Responsible Development,” the Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake Counties Building and Construction Trades...

… but the war is just beginning. Despite a landmark education decision in California favoring children over teachers unions, how much will really change? On June 10th, Judge Rolf Treu issued an unequivocal decision in the Students Matter (Vergara v California) case which revolved around the tenure, dismissal and seniority statutes in California’s education code....