Posts tagged business
Brown Wants New Anti-Business Super-Agency
Jan 6th
Governor Brown’s proposed 2012-2013 budget – rushed out yesterday after a staffer inadvertently published it – includes what we’d expect from a liberal democrat governor … and more.
Sure, it’s got more spending (7 to 9 percent more, depending on who’s crunching) and class warfare (higher taxes on the “wealthy,” defined as $250,000 and up). But its real surprise is buried deep down: a new super-agency charged with making life even more miserable for California businesses … if such a thing can be fathomed.
The Daily Caller picked up my column on the budget and the new super-agency this a.m. It’s worth reading the whole thing – and I hope you do, because they count clicks! – but here’s the relevant material on the new super-agency:
Brown is calling for the creation of the Business and Consumer Services Agency, a new mega-agency that apparently will “service” businesses in the way male farm animals “service” female ones. The agency will combine habitually anti-business departments handling consumer affairs, “fair” employment and various business licensing and inspection functions, and into this fetid anti-business environment drop “the newly restructured Department of Business Oversight.”
Restructured from what? The department doesn’t currently exist, so it appears that Brown is creating an entirely new arm of government, surrounding it with anti-business zealots and charging it with increasing the amount of oversight of California businesses that are already suffering from too much oversight.
What lunacy is this? The five and a half companies a week that are leaving California are sending the clearest possible signal that California is death to business, but Brown still proposes to make things worse. Meanwhile, his budget barely tweaks public employee pensions and keeps the California High Speed Boondoggle Rail Commission alive and spending.
Oh … I’d better explain that picture of Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit. It’s about this, the column’s conclusion:
In reality, though, the governor’s proposed budget means virtually nothing. Even as Brown was announcing it, a judge ruled unconstitutional the health care cuts the governor had proposed in his budget last year. Then the Democratic Senate leader lined up against it, pledging to fight proposed cuts to social services. And of course, the state employee unions and their armies of lawyers and lobbyists are busy today planning their campaigns to force Brown into more spending and more taxes — which is sort of like forcing Brer Rabbit into the briar patch, where he’s right at home.
Barking Towards Oblivion
Aug 4th
Yesterday, the California Democrats unveiled their budget proposal, an utterly uninspiring amalgamation of new burdens on businesses and taxpayers, with no proposals to cut spending – not one.
Businesses would be scammed out of $2 billion by letting some rare California business tax breaks expire. Personal income tax and car fees (what got Grey Davis drummed out of office, for cryin’ out loud!) would both go up. There would be no cuts to welfare entitlements, no sanity injected into the state’s prison system, and certainly no purging of useless, duplicative state commissions, boards, agencies and departments – in short, there was no respect for the people of California.
Against all that, I give you my vet, Dr. Mike Eberhardt. I’m going to a Rancho Santa Margarita Planning Commission hearing on his behalf tonight, to speak in favor of innovation and against the expensive repression of business that goes on so routinely in Crazifornia.
Dr. Eberhart’s clinic is in an industrial park, not a neighborhood. An innovative vet, he built a fenced-in dog run behind the building, encircling it with an expensive wrought iron fence, in keeping with the design of other fencing in the park. He uses it to let dogs walk off anesthesia, and to better diagnose dogs. He found that dogs on a metal table in a vet’s treatment room will mask their symptoms, but if he and the owner go out to the dog run, in a few minutes, the dog will drop the mask and a better diagnosis can be made.
Ah, but the city of Rancho Santa Margarita has a policy requiring a Conditional Use Permit for dog runs like his. And they’re recommending that the Planning Commission deny his application. Overseeing dog runs may be a good idea if you’re attempting to regulate doggy daycare facilities, where such runs can create a lot of barking and a lot of poop. But his dogs are there for one-on-one observation, are never left alone, and are cleaned up after, so it’s … well … an entirely different animal.
What’s logical to you and me is missed in the regulation-addicted mindset of California government. How crazy is it? Well, Dr. E’s spent over $20,000 to date on attorney’s fees, and will ring up a bunch more as his attorney prepares for and sits through tonight’s hearing.
Welcome to business in California – where every good idea gets the bureaucratic bum’s rush, and every good business gets taxed into oblivion.
