Expect public employee union strikes

Newspapers are reporting that public employees have struck in Ecuador, Greece, Spain, France and Portugal. Look for them to strike in California if their wages or benefits are cut.

It's alive!

This is the first post since December 2009. Whether this marks a return to regular posting remains to be seen. Here are a few things that bug this old fool. Perhaps they'll be subjects for future posts:

• California's budget deficit
• California's inept government
• California's inept governator
• California's misguided Democratic legislators
• Unions that represent California's public employees

Come to think of it, those are all one subject -- except for the inept governator. California's public employee unions finance the election campaigns of Democratic candidates for the legislature. Once elected, the legislators are beholden to the unions. Legislators structure legislation to require more workers or higher pay or both. Unions collect more dues and use a portion to elect more friendly legislators who vote to increase public sector payrolls. As a result, Californians get more government than they need and bigger deficits than they can afford.

As for the governator, he's simply incompetent. Ostensibly a Republican, he's often gone along with legislative Democrats and he refuses to defend Prop. 8. Each year he signs roughly three quarters of the thousand or so bills that the legislature produces.

Small businesses

The Economist this week argues that what small businesses need is credit. Wrong. What small businesses need is to be left alone and not to be penalized for success.

Reduce regulation. Simplify and cut taxes. Eliminate the estate tax. Eliminate wage and hour laws. Reduce the minimum wage.

More government, courtesy of Barney Frank

Thanks, Barney. Just what we needed. More rules and regulations, more hoops to jump through, more government, less freedom. The partisan legislation that the House passed yesterday without a single Republican vote likely will create more problems than it solves if it ever becomes law, which isn't likely. But something similar will.

It's what voters should expect when they elect Democrats to Congress.

Obama speaks as Bush

Most kids learns in the school yard that bullies will come and take your marbles unless you defend yourself. Bush knew that instinctively. Obama had to learn it. Yesterday in Copenhagen he spoke as if he had.

The alarming expansion of government

It's not just the Obama administration and the current Congress that are trying and generally succeeding in expanding government. California's legislature produced roughly a thousand bills in the recently concluded legislative year, most of which were signed by the governor. They did the same the year before.

The California legislature is dominated by Democrats, mostly liberal ones. The same is true of the current U.S. Congress and the Obama administration, as most everyone knows.

Liberals see the United States as needing a lot of work. Health care needs to be reformed. Energy policy is lacking. Americans pollute the atmosphere, forests and rivers. We're too bellicose. If we were kinder to Iran and North Korea we'd have less to fear. Our main enemies are on Wall Street. People who work there make too much money, and besides they're dishonest. Insurance and drug companies and banks make too much money, and their executives are way overpaid.

To correct these perceived problems, liberals think we need lots of new laws and regulations. Until the next election, expect more government.

TARP: Slush fund

TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Fund, has become a $700 billion slush fund. Originally authorized by Congress to buy troubled assets from banks, it has transitioned to a fund to supply capital to banks, then to a source of capital for AIG, GM and Chrysler. Now people propose using the leftover funds for more stimulus, a jobs creation program and financing the war in Afghanistan, among other ideas.

Enough already. Return the money to the Treasury, from whence it came.