Watching California’s swift descent into fiscal insolvency and the seeming inability of its dominant political class to accept the measures necessary to reverse it, one can easily feel a mixture of despairing frustration and awe. On the one hand, despairing frustration seems the only logical response to an insoluble budget crisis, but on the other, one can only react to Sacramento’s audacious decisions to ignore reality with something approaching awe.

The question of whether it’s better to share the pain of state budget reductions through furloughs or go cold turkey with layoffs will soon be in the hands of California’s highest courts.  But for the lives of hundreds of thousands of state workers, it’s more than just a legal matter.  Some California employees have seen their salaries decreased by as much as 15 percent because of furloughs.  And for many of them, it is a breach of an unwritten agreement (sometimes called a

President Obama signed a one-year extension of several key provisions of the Patriot Act.  Obama's signature follows passage in both the House and Senate, as CAIVN contributor, Thomas Sbrega, pointed out on Friday. 

Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) is proposing legislation that would give the Food and Drug Administration sweeping new authority over the dietary supplement industry. If passed into law, The Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA) of 2010 would dramatically drive up supplement costs, allow the FDA unchecked discretion on which supplements to allow on the market and thus severely limit access to existing non-prescription disease remedies.

Thank God (can I say that?) the legislature is on it when it comes to the big issues.  No cussing week is finally a reality in California.  About time, dammit.  Too many potty-mouth Californians are probably at the heart of our serious problems:  the budget crisis, poor educational results throughout the state, massive traffic jams.  If only that driver hadn’t cursed before he shot the guy who cut him off on the 5. 

It was only a year ago that President Obama was inaugurated in what some commentators hailed as a sweeping endorsement of socialism: more European-style central economic planning, federal regulation, and entitlement programs. But it would seem that the pundits misread the Democrats' victories in 2006 and 2008.  America didn't want more, it wanted less.

Last December, when several provisions of the Patriot Act were set to expire, Congress instead extended the sunset clause to the end of February.  With this extension, as with any extension, one would assume that further debate was their primary motive.  As with previous extensions of the Act, serious debate addressing public grievances was never undertaken. 

David Provost, former professor at Cal State Fresno, recently took on advocates who favor a one term limit in the state legislature.  In short, Provost isn’t fond of the one term notion.  Rather, he favors a 12 year limit system allowing for politicians to come back after sitting out a term.

Everyone is worried about the skyrocketing national debt, yet no one wants to cut spending. Both Republicans and Democrats warn of a national debt crisis just over the horizon, yet both parties continue to spend record amounts on the military and domestic entitlements.  China, formerly our biggest creditor, is slowly beginning to dump US bonds as it grows increasingly concerned with America's profligate policies.

Reforming the health insurance industry has occupied Washington lawmakers and dominated the news for a better part of a year.  Why we need reform has become all too obvious.  Forty-five thousand Americans die each year because they don’t have health insurance.  Each day, 14,000 people lose their health insurance coverage.  Insurance premiums have risen 131 percent over the past decade while the number of employers that offer health insurance to their employees has dropped to just 60 percent.   Workers have seen their contributions to their health insurance