Steven Greenhut
Business & Economics
We’re increasingly ruled by rules
To the extent that anyone still thinks about the former Soviet Union and its satellite communist states, they understandably think about the suffocating oppression – the Berlin Wall, the gulags, the KGB, the political prisoners, the persecution of religious people and minorities. Yet, in talking to refugees from that nightmarish ...
Business & Economics
Frosting on an already-sweet pension deal
When people have an entitlement mentality, enough is never enough. Even though government employees enjoy absurdly generous defined-benefit pensions that often allow them to retire with 80 percent to 90 percent of their final year’s pay guaranteed forever, employees game the system by taking advantage of various pension-spiking schemes. A ...
Business & Economics
Derailing public pension gravy train
Orange County Register (CA), November 22, 2009 Defenders of government employees’ current retirement system depict critics as haters of government workers who want public “servants” to spend their retirement years eating cat food and living in dire poverty. That’s the response I always get when I point to the absurdity ...
Business & Economics
Sheriff Joe no role model
Former Orange County Sheriff’s Lt. Bill Hunt should know a thing or two about the dangers of an abusive law enforcement culture. He was a victim of now-disgraced Sheriff Mike Carona, who demoted him to deputy after Hunt ran for sheriff against Carona in 2006. Hunt even made First Amendment ...
Agriculture
Pork, water policy don’t mix
SACRAMENTO – Advocates for government “solutions” for everything from health care to education argue that some aspects of life are just so darn complicated that only a centralized authority with taxing and spending power can handle such matters. Yet whenever we look at those areas of life dominated by the ...
Business & Economics
Sneaky way to murder Prop. 13
Easier tax increases and budget approvals seems to be the primary goals of a proposed state constitutional convention. SACRAMENTO — There ain’t no such thing as bipartisan, nondivisive reform. Any real change to California’s dysfunctional political structure and culture must gore somebody’s ox, stir up contentious battles and draw vicious ...
Business & Economics
Fight for soul of GOP in OC
If you want to know what’s wrong with Sacramento, you need look no further than Orange County. That’s where Republican Party insiders have cast aside one of the GOP’s most principled members in its drive to fill the 72nd Assembly District seat vacated by disgraced Assemblyman Mike Duvall, who resigned ...
Business & Economics
Budget fixes, no; blueberries, yes
SACRAMENTO – Elected officials would have us believe that the world would not go around if they weren’t busy addressing the “big” issues in city councils and state legislatures. But, in reality, most of what elected officials do ranges from the nonsensical to the malevolent. How many readers believe that ...
Business & Economics
I’m heading to Sacramento, but don’t celebrate yet.
The Orange County Register, September 19, 2009 Many readers, especially those who receive large public pensions, will no doubt be thrilled to hear the news. This is the penultimate column I’m writing for the Register as a staff member. I’m heading to the belly of the beast, Sacramento, to start ...
Business & Economics
The Left’s pension dilemma
You know the pension tsunami is getting close to shore when the mainstream media are filled with hard-hitting stories about the coming crisis, such as the front-page article April 11 in the Sacramento Bee and Fresno Bee, documenting the manner in which huge pension costs for retired public employees “threaten ...
We’re increasingly ruled by rules
To the extent that anyone still thinks about the former Soviet Union and its satellite communist states, they understandably think about the suffocating oppression – the Berlin Wall, the gulags, the KGB, the political prisoners, the persecution of religious people and minorities. Yet, in talking to refugees from that nightmarish ...
Frosting on an already-sweet pension deal
When people have an entitlement mentality, enough is never enough. Even though government employees enjoy absurdly generous defined-benefit pensions that often allow them to retire with 80 percent to 90 percent of their final year’s pay guaranteed forever, employees game the system by taking advantage of various pension-spiking schemes. A ...
Derailing public pension gravy train
Orange County Register (CA), November 22, 2009 Defenders of government employees’ current retirement system depict critics as haters of government workers who want public “servants” to spend their retirement years eating cat food and living in dire poverty. That’s the response I always get when I point to the absurdity ...
Sheriff Joe no role model
Former Orange County Sheriff’s Lt. Bill Hunt should know a thing or two about the dangers of an abusive law enforcement culture. He was a victim of now-disgraced Sheriff Mike Carona, who demoted him to deputy after Hunt ran for sheriff against Carona in 2006. Hunt even made First Amendment ...
Pork, water policy don’t mix
SACRAMENTO – Advocates for government “solutions” for everything from health care to education argue that some aspects of life are just so darn complicated that only a centralized authority with taxing and spending power can handle such matters. Yet whenever we look at those areas of life dominated by the ...
Sneaky way to murder Prop. 13
Easier tax increases and budget approvals seems to be the primary goals of a proposed state constitutional convention. SACRAMENTO — There ain’t no such thing as bipartisan, nondivisive reform. Any real change to California’s dysfunctional political structure and culture must gore somebody’s ox, stir up contentious battles and draw vicious ...
Fight for soul of GOP in OC
If you want to know what’s wrong with Sacramento, you need look no further than Orange County. That’s where Republican Party insiders have cast aside one of the GOP’s most principled members in its drive to fill the 72nd Assembly District seat vacated by disgraced Assemblyman Mike Duvall, who resigned ...
Budget fixes, no; blueberries, yes
SACRAMENTO – Elected officials would have us believe that the world would not go around if they weren’t busy addressing the “big” issues in city councils and state legislatures. But, in reality, most of what elected officials do ranges from the nonsensical to the malevolent. How many readers believe that ...
I’m heading to Sacramento, but don’t celebrate yet.
The Orange County Register, September 19, 2009 Many readers, especially those who receive large public pensions, will no doubt be thrilled to hear the news. This is the penultimate column I’m writing for the Register as a staff member. I’m heading to the belly of the beast, Sacramento, to start ...
The Left’s pension dilemma
You know the pension tsunami is getting close to shore when the mainstream media are filled with hard-hitting stories about the coming crisis, such as the front-page article April 11 in the Sacramento Bee and Fresno Bee, documenting the manner in which huge pension costs for retired public employees “threaten ...
