California: Sacramento

The federal ruling to reduce the prison population by over 40,000 is the result of a years-long, if not decades-long process, where the failed leaders run amok in Sacramento have let the corrections system grow completely out of control, preferring to warehouse prisoners into modified Public Storage units instead of embarking on same, smart policies that would save us money and make us safer.  In response to this damaging comment on the state's failure, the political leadership has... signed up for more failure:
Attorney General Jerry Brown said in an interview that the order is probably not appealable, but eventually the state will have to consider going directly to the U.

It was Christmas in August for Democratic legislators Tuesday as a trio of federal judges gave them the gift of political cover.

The order to cut California’s prison population by more than 40,000 over the next two years – and the short, 45-day window to come up with a plan – will ease of pressure on Democrats facing some ugly political choices later this month.

There wasn’t a Democrat in the Assembly or state Senate who was looking forward to coming back to Sacramento to face a raucous debate on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan for slashing the prison budget through a combination of early releases and sentencing changes.

Taking 27,000 inmates out of the prisons – and releasing many of them back into their communities – was guaranteed to bring out the loud chants of “soft on crime” from conservatives, local police chiefs and plenty of everyday voters.

read more

California spends $25 billion a year on employees and many billions more on the employees of contractors and vendors.  Then you have the 50% of the budget spent on education, of which 82% is salaries.

Bottom line, we could actually save close to $10 billion a year by doing just two things:

1.  Get rid of prevailing wages.  This is a union demand to raise costs and give a monopoly to firms that are forced to hire workers who pay bribes in order to work.
2.  End mandatory unionism.  Is it right in a free nation to tell workers that unless they pay bribes to a union they can not work?

These two actions would lower the cost of government.

On May 19, voters decisively rejected Proposition 1B, which would have given schools $9.3 billion in additional funding in coming years when revenue rebounded. The 62 percent to 38 percent vote against 1B was a plain rejection of the Sacramento...