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Fox & Hounds Daily

It's no secret that California has a spending problem. In fact, it has an outright spending addiction. 

When one lives in a state with a spending addiction, such as ours, the chances are they are also addicted to taxes and the over-regulation of small business. 

And when you're addicted to taxes and the over regulation of small business, you're probably addicted to bureaucratic red tape that stifles economic growth. 

More simply put California's growth problems can be boiled down to just a few simple issues. 

OAKLAND -- Bay Area regional transportation planning agencies' move into a 1942 former post office in downtown San Francisco will cost $48 million more than initially estimated.

Increased seismic retrofit costs, internal improvements and $15 million worth of furniture, fixtures and equipment for 390 Main St. will drive up the final price tag nearly 30 percent to $215 million.

CalChamber - January 29, 2013

A federal appeals court recently ruled that President Barack Obama’s “recess” appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) were “constitutionally invalid” because the U.S. Senate was not actually in recess at the time. The President made the appointments more than one year ago. The decision is Noel Canning v. NLRB.

Because the appointments were invalid, the court overturned an unfair labor practice decision that was made by the NLRB.

Under the Constitution, the President must send nominees for agency posts to the Senate for its “advice and consent.” If the Senate is in recess, however, the President has the power to fill vacancies temporarily. President Obama has made approximately 32 such appointments, including three appointments to the NLRB.

By Gary Richards - Mercury News.com

Faced with a potential $296 billion shortfall over the next decade to maintain and expand California's aging highway and transit systems, Bay Area leaders are throwing their full support behind an attempt to reduce the voter-approval threshold from two-thirds to 55 percent for transportation sales taxes.

In a memo to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, director Steve Heminger said: "While MTC has supported legislative efforts to seek voter approval to lower the vote threshold for transportation taxes, with Democrats now controlling two-thirds of the seats in both houses, 2013 is the first year that the proposal has some real potential to pass the Legislature and be placed on the ballot."

They are putting our energy, economy, jobs, living standards, health and welfare at grave risk

By Paul Driessen

Climate alarmists are meeting in Doha, Qatar, to hammer out a new international treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol that expires this year. The US Environmental Protection Agency is poised to unleash its first wave of carbon dioxide regulations. And Congress is teaming up with the White House to legislate taxes on hydrocarbon use and CO2 emissions, on top of pending tax hike on "the rich."

Agency incites air-quality fears

By Steve Milloy - The Washington Times

Fewer than 1 in 5 Americans has any use for cigarettes nowadays, but here's why the Obama Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has made smoking important to us all.

The EPA plans to issue in mid-December more stringent air-pollution standards for fine particulate matter (PM2.5), soot and dust roughly the width of a human hair. The agency has determined that any exposure to PM2.5 can cause death within hours or days of exposure, and there is no safe exposure to PM2.5. Those claims are not without controversy.

Fox & Hound Daily News

Not satisfied with a $60 billion new energy tax, disguised as a cap-and-trade auction and pegged to increase gasoline prices by 70 cents a gallon. Not satisfied with an untested “low-carbon” fuels regulation that will likely reduce refinery capacity in California (and we just saw how well that works out for California).

SFGate.com

For years, California has suffered sudden jumps in the price of gasoline. The latest price spike, which peaked this week, briefly saw some stations charging $5 for regular.

Now critics warn that one of the state's policies to fight global warming could make the situation worse.

Business groups are taking aim at California's "low carbon fuel standard," which is designed to cut the greenhouse gas emissions that come from making and burning fuel. Created in 2007, the standard forces fuel producers to lower the "carbon intensity" of their products 10 percent by 2020.

Oil companies can meet the standard by blending advanced biofuels into their gasoline and diesel. But those biofuels - such as cellulosic ethanol, made from grass, crop stubble or woody plants - are in short supply. If the oil companies can't get enough, prices at the pump could soar, critics say.

Less than 0.1% of vehicles on American roads burn the natural gas of any type today and the percentage sagged slightly from 2005 to 2010. Aggressive environmental regulations have pushed many governments, municipal vendors (trash and bus) and some businesses to seek ways to comply with stringent regulations to reduce emissions of their fleets. Natural gas has become an increasing appealing option especially with the assortment of opportunities to grant funding, according to report from Pike Research. The report forecasts steady growth for natural gas truck and bus sales.

Misconduct Widespread in Retracted Science Papers, Study Finds

By CARL ZIMMER - NYTimes

Last year the journal Nature reported an alarming increase in the number of retractions of scientific papers — a tenfold rise in the previous decade, to more than 300 a year across the scientific literature.

Other studies have suggested that most of these retractions resulted from honest errors. But a deeper analysis of retractions, being published this week, challenges that comforting assumption.

By Jon Coupal  - Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association

While voters’ attention is being diverted to the three major statewide tax increase measures on the November ballot, Propositions 30, 38 and 39, many taxpayers are about to be hit below the belt by local politicians, who are just as anxious to get their hands on more cash as are their Sacramento brethren.