By that definition, California is one of the nation’s most liberal states. Annually, its governors and legislators enact hundreds of measures that purport to generate more prosperity and equity for its nearly 39 million residents.

Whether those efforts have had an overall positive effect – which is debatable – they unquestionably have a darker side. Each tax, each appropriation and each regulatory action has a financial impact, thus motivating those affected to seek favorable treatment.

A classic example is the California Coastal Commission, created by voters more than a half-century ago with the stated goal of maintaining public access to beaches and other coastal property by regulating development. The commission holds immense authority within a 1.6 million-acre “coastal zone” that runs from Oregon to Mexico, superseding the land use powers of local governments.

From the onset, the commission has been besieged by lobbyists for and against specific projects, and its actions have often been tinged by scandal. Three decades ago commission member Mark Nathanson, a Beverly Hills real estate broker, pleaded guilty to soliciting almost $1 million from Hollywood entertainment barons seeking building permits.

During the early years of its existence, meanwhile, the Legislature saw numerous attempts to revise the coastal zone’s dimensions because land outside its borders became more valuable. One state senator even carried a bill removing his own family’s business from the zone.

Another hoary example is California’s “tied house law” that supposedly battles monopolies in the liquor business by making it illegal for someone in the production, distribution or retail levels to engage in more than one.

The law has long outlived whatever rationale it once had and should have been repealed, but it remains on the books and thus generates a brisk trade in legislation to carve out exemptions for particular businesses.

Still another: If a Californian buys some off-the-shelf computer software – such as the TurboTax, for example – sales tax is added. But three-plus decades ago, the Legislature bowed to pressure from Silicon Valley and exempted custom software, which can cost millions of dollars, from taxation.

One more: Every year, the state allocates millions of dollars to the Southern California film industry for production inside the state. Why should California taxpayers subsidize them and not other businesses? Film executives, actors and their unions bedazzle politicians.

The California Environmental Quality Act is blatantly misused to block much-needed housing development and cries out for reform. The Legislature has taken some baby steps but routinely helps big projects such as sports arenas minimize CEQA’s effect.

A few years ago, the Legislature passed Assembly Bill 5, which requires millions of Californians who do contract work to be converted into payroll employees, but only after exempting certain categories chosen by legislative leaders.

Something of that nature happened again this week when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 610, which exempts certain restaurant employees from the state’s new $20 minimum wage for fast food workers. They include workers in hotels, theme parks, concessions on public property and gambling casinos.

Earlier, there had been a flap over an exemption for workers in restaurants that bake and sell bread. It appeared to benefit Panera Bread, one of whose franchise holders had been a major political contributor to Newsom. The controversy died down when Panera agreed to abide by the law.

AB 610 arbitrarily improves the bottom line for some restaurants while others will soon see their labor costs escalate. Politicians once again choose winners and losers.

Dan Walters can be reached at dan@calmatters.org.

A while back, I did a column that compiled a list of scam terms and today I’m going to feature one in particular: Smishing.

As I previously wrote, I hate this word. It sounds gross and feels gross to write and say. According to the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC, the term is a combination of SMS (Short Message Service, or texting) and phishing, a scam in which the perpetrator pretends to be a legitimate organization or company. In shorthand, smishing is just phishing but through text instead of email.

Recently, the United States Postal Service had to issue a warning because scammers pretending to be USPS are sending fake package tracking links to people that ultimately put malware on devices.

The target gets a text message from someone claiming to be with the USPS offering to provide free package updates, even though tracking is generally free to begin with through most legitimate carrier websites, and asks you to fill out an online form to see where your package is at.

You go to the website and at that point, the site can begin creeping nasty software to your phone or tablet. The form itself can even ask for personal information directly. The goal of these scams is to get as much information about you as possible to eventually commit some form of financial fraud.

In the case of the postal service, a statement was issued declaring that it would never send text messages or emails without the customer asking for it or agreeing to it beforehand.

Stay safe out there folks and enjoy the spring weather while we have it.

Scam of the Week generally runs every Tuesday. Readers are welcome to contact reporter Jake Hutchison to report scams and potential scams they have come in contact with by calling 828-1329 or via email at jhutchison@chicoer.com.

The food is magnificent, as authentic as anything I tasted when I lived in Paris — cue the accordion music. But even perfection has its tics.

Normally, service at this restaurant is sublime. But this night, I had a problem. After having a wonderful meal and then calculating a respectable tip of 20% on a pretty expensive bill, since the service was OK but not exceptional, I gave the waiter the money.

He disappeared.

Later on, while I was finishing my coffee, I noticed him glaring at me as he was flitting around the tables nearby.

Normally, I leave a tip between 30-40% because I used to work in a fast food joint and know that it isn’t exactly easy work.

However, I am also aware that nobody is owed a tip, and that it’s not my fault if the employer isn’t paying a decent salary. Just because I want to enjoy a nice salad doesn’t mean I am required to adopt the guy who brings it to my table.

So the glaring, and then the lack of a “thank you” for the tip was a little unnerving.

Then I did what I normally do whenever I have an experience that can fit into into a couple of short sentences: I hopped on Twitter.

Surprisingly, my complaint got a lot of “likes,” which goes to show you I’m not the only one who has had to deal with an ungrateful little whippersnapper. Of course, there were a bunch of current or former waitstaff who weighed in, calling me entitled, saying 20% was a pittance.

As I said before, I often tip up to 50% of the meal if the person serving it to me shows that they really appreciated my presence, albeit temporary, in their lives.

If they made me feel as if it wasn’t a burden to serve me and their name was not Job, it’s my default position to show gratitude with extra cash.

But the suggestion that a tip is owed, not earned, and the refusal to extend a simple “thank you” is a troubling commentary on something that has more to do with character than carbohydrates.

I’m tired of people assuming they have rights and privileges regardless of their own conduct. It’s not like I want a stranger to write me into her will if I hold the door open or let him go ahead of me in line.

Those are the normal reflexes of people who live in a civilized society.

I’m talking about the idea that if you extend yourself beyond what is expected in a particular social situation, that should be rewarded by the most valuable and least expensive of things: a smile and acknowledgment.

Waiters and waitresses have a hard job, but so do police officers, doctors, construction workers and even immigration lawyers. The last time I checked, no one was leaving money in a tip jar for me.

The assumption that even the most mediocre service deserves some kind of financial premium is wrong.

Sorry, but all of those kids who were raised by mommy and daddy to believe that they were special have morphed into presumptuous ingrates. That bread basket you just put on my table is not going to cure cancer.

That being said, I am still going to tip in a grandiose and generous manner when the person who is on the other side of the money acknowledges my humanity. There are a lot of young people who make my lattes, mix my Aperol spritzes and slice my pizza into exactly the correct size of slice who deserve not only a tip, but my genuine gratitude
for their genuine kindness.

As for those who think I owe them, this Karen — or Mademoiselle Carine, as the case may be — has better use for her hard-earned dough.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at cflowers1961@gmail.com.

That’s the surprising conclusion of a study by the RentCafe website, which tracks income vs. expenses for renters everywhere in America.

The survey’s surprising conclusion: If you’re a renter, chances are you can live better in Sunnyvale, just north of San Jose, than anywhere else in California.

Even with prices for necessities like utilities, food, health care and transportation consistently higher than just about all other California locations, the typical Sunnyvale renter, ensconced in the heart of Silicon Valley, spends a smaller fraction of income on the basics than counterparts everywhere else in California.

Yes, rents are sky high in Sunnyvale, once considered a very ordinary San Francisco Peninsula suburb. The typical monthly cost of an apartment or house there is $3,013, RentCafe reports. But the average renter’s household income tops $145,000 a year, about $35,000 more than in San Francisco, where rents are higher, at $3,297 – or $39,200 per year. Utilities in Sunnyvale, taken as a fairly typical Silicon Valley ‘burb, are also lower, by about $1.000 per year than in San Francisco. But health care costs a bit more, at an average of $516 per month in Sunnyvale, compared with $489 in San Francisco.

Los Angeles renters could be excused for eating their hearts out at hearing those salary and expense figures and the disposable incomes that go with them. In fact, if the Bay Area numbers were completely typical, it’s safe to guess there would have been no California exodus over the last few years, as it would have been just as comfortable to stay put.

But the typical Los Angeles renter draws annual pay about $87,000 less than their Sunnyvale counterpart, in part because of the disparity between high tech pay levels and those in other jobs.

So where rent eats only about 25 percent of the average Sunnyvale renter’s income, the typical Los Angeles rent of $2,745, or almost $33,000 per year, takes 56 percent of the average income. Even with utilities averaging a couple thousand dollars a year less and healthcare and transportation costs far lower than in the Silicon Valley, the Los Angeles renter winds up with much less disposable income than counterparts on the Peninsula.

Meanwhile, tenants in Central Valley locales like Fresno, Modesto and Bakersfield stand out for having far lower average rent, food, transportation and healthcare costs than their coastal counterparts, but their average salaries, all in the mid-to-high 40 thousands, are so much lower that the reduced costs don’t help much.

Overall, Stockton has the lowest utility costs among major California cities, but among the lower salary levels. Fresno has the lowest food and transportation costs, while Los Angeles and San Diego are at or near the top in food and transportation expenses and near the middle in salaries.

The Orange County city of Anaheim stands near average in all these costs among California urban centers. With a typical monthly rent of $2,331, or nearly $28,000 per year, and income of about $66,000, the typical Anaheim renter should be able to handle expenses like utilities, food, healthcare and transportation and still have some disposable income left over.

But nothing like levels enjoyed in the Silicon Valley. Which makes it somewhat surprising that much of the population leaving California over the last five years, with a total of about 3 million emigrants, were from the Bay Area.

That trend is now slowing, and much of the population loss was made up for with births and legal immigration. But it’s still a lesson that in long-distance moves, money has not been the only factor pushing people out of California, even if it is the biggest part of the picture.

With much of the exodus coming during the peak pandemic years of 2000-2002, the bottom line is that most emigrants were folks who began to seek more space once it became clear they could work outside offices and not worry about having to make long commutes.

Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com.

Saying we can’t have “unity again” implies we once were unified. But who is the “we” and what does it mean to be “unified”? Was that when women couldn’t vote? When African Americans were slaves? Or when American citizens of Japanese descent were held in internment camps during World War 2? White men might, in her phony nostalgic dream, have once felt “unified” but maybe that’s because they were the only ones with a voice and power.

Perhaps most troublingly, Nava appears to promote a narrative mocking the trans community, speaking wistfully of a time when “boys became men and … girls became women,” demeaning people who “ignore biology to promote feelings over facts.” Such statements promote a narrative that hurts and marginalizes human beings (particularly trans kids), leading to spikes in bullying, depression, and self-harm.

Nava’s plea for unity rings hollow to my ears.

— Rob Davidson, Chico

Years ago, I contested a parking ticket in Judge Rutherford’s court. I KNEW I’d put money in that meter across from the Bear. The case before mine involved a guy who’d been cited for running a stoplight, which he swore he hadn’t. Rutherford said, “You know how you know that you’ve come to a full stop? You feel it in the small your back. Did you feel it?” He said “No,” and she let the fine stand.

When it was my turn:

SM: “I just know I put a quarter in the meter.”

AR: “How do you know?”

SM: “I felt it in small of my back.”

Everyone in the courtroom cracked up.

AR: “Get outta here,” she said laughing, and dismissed it …

— Steve Metzger, Chico

I wish I could say the two are related, but such is life in the Golden State these days.

Look: By now, you’ve made up your mind on the fast-food wage issue, and I’m not going to try to change it. You have your reasons for favoring (or opposing) the law, and I’ve got mine.

I do, however, think my reasons might be a little different than yours.

The experience I gained at my first job — which paid $3.15 an hour — taught me so much about life, there’s no way I’d go back to exchange it for anything more lucrative. Sometimes a real-life education is the best long-term investment you could ever hope to make.

At least, it was for me.

I got my start in this business as a freelancer while I was still in high school. The pay was 25 cents per column inch. That meant if I wrote a 10-inch story, I got $2.50. I quickly figured out if I wrote a 40-inch story instead, I got 10 bucks. (Thus began a habit of overwriting that continues to this very day.)

I also learned if I was going to keep gas in the tank of my Dodge Charger, and make those daily drives up to Shasta College, I’d need a second source of income. So, at 18, I started working the late-night shift at Craig Brothers Shell in Corning.

If you were going to work in a gas station in those days, the Craigs were the guys you wanted as bosses. They not only paid higher than minimum wage ($2.65 in those days) — they were the most kind, ethical and considerate people you’d ever want to be around. Plus, we’d work six days on, then two days off — ensuring that every week, we’d get eight hours of overtime pay on our check. And overtime was more than four dollars an hour!

The gas tank of my Charger had never been happier.

In those days, there were actual full-service gas stations, and that’s what we did. Every time a car pulled up, we’d go out and pump the gas. We’d also check the oil, wash the windshield and do anything else the customer requested, including checking the air pressure in the tires. It didn’t matter if it was a 115-degree summer day (perfect for dealing with overheated radiators) or a cold winter night with rain and 40-mile-per-hour winds; when a customer pulled up, you went outside and did your job.

Life lesson number one: If you’ve got a job with a roof over your head, be thankful.

My first day on the job, the price of regular gas was 66 cents a gallon. Exactly one year later, with talk of an “oil shortage” (remember that?) dominating the media, the price had skyrocketed to $1.66. Like anyone who did this job in those days, I got called every name in the book by sticker-shocked customers. The kindest, I think was “communist.” The worst? Use your imagination, and I can pretty much promise you’d be right.

I remember one especially angry guy grabbing a fistful of pennies from his pocket and firing them at me from five feet away, screaming, “Here! This is for you and your buddies in Washington!” (Yes, pennies can hurt.)

Life lesson number two: There’s nothing harder to deal with than people, and no matter what you do, or how well you do it, some people aren’t going to be happy. Learn to deal with it. Grow some thicker skin, because life isn’t easy.

Through it all, though, I learned to appreciate the overwhelming majority of customers who were kind. I learned to value the importance of co-workers who had your back and the invaluable gift of having employers who cared about you as people. I’ve had a lot of great bosses, but I’ve never had any better than Bill or Angus Craig. Their kindness was something I never forgot and something I do my best to emulate with employees even today.

Call those life lessons three, four and five.

Of course, at the time, nobody had yet invented the term “living wage.” It was just understood we were starting at the bottom of the economic food chain and if we wanted to climb up, well, the way to do that was by working hard and learning.

But now? We have politicians enacting laws that could only be conceived by people who have never had to operate a business, much less meet a payroll. And how they’ve determined that fast-food workers should be paid $4 an hour more than millions of other people doing often-critical jobs is beyond me.

And how have businesses reacted to California’s new wage law? By slashing thousands of jobs. Gee. Didn’t see that one coming.

I understand there are plenty of billionaires on this planet who could stand to be a little more generous with their money, especially in terms of wages. I also wonder how many of these people first got ahead in life because of lessons — including a strong work ethic — that they gained after some employer was kind enough to offer them a job.

Feels to me like something pretty big is being lost here. You really can’t put a price on that.

Mike Wolcott is the editor of the Enterprise-Record. He’ll be on vacation next week, and his column will return April 14.

(Voice of Inigo Montoya): “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

By voting down a project of 2,777 houses (when completed years from now), you have successfully squashed the dreams of 2,777 families seeking to find a home. Progress?

For decades, anti-growth “progressives” have masqueraded as protecting Chicoans from wannabe Chicoans.

Wildland/Urban interface: Their bogus arguments against building due to the risk of fire were grossly exaggerated, and not supported by firefighting professionals. The fact is that many houses already exist beyond the perimeter of the proposed project.

Water: The claim that Butte County would face a shortage of water due to the development is simply absurd. If it were true, then all building in the entire county should be prevented, and Oroville Dam should quit sending our excess water to needy areas to the south.

Affordable housing: All houses – including yours and mine – were affordable at the time of purchase, otherwise we wouldn’t own it. Housing value is determined by the buyer/seller agreement, and “affordable” is determined differently by each buyer.

Increased traffic: This one ignores future road changes. Unless the anti-everything “progressives” block that, too. In the meantime, traffic from surrounding communities will necessarily increase.

Selfishly voting against “sprawl” of an extremely well-designed, thoughtful, contained community will result in actual sprawl of a haphazard non-existent growth plan. Voting with “progressives” simply crushes dreams.

— Barry Johnson, Chico

My first love was, is, and always will be firefighting even though I’m retired now. My wife kind of understands but requested the scanner stay in the garage.

The Pleasant Grove community had no fire department and in the 1960s was still dependent on a one-0man volunteer rig that was stationed at Johnny Wise’s general store in East Nicolaus some 10 to 15 minute drive away on a good day. Johnny had to close the doors of his general store, rely on the honesty of anyone still shopping, and jump on the rig just to get the process started. He would rely on any community member available to lend a hand once he arrived, if there was anything left to save.

One mid-summer day Johnny responded to a grass fire along Highway 70 and as he was putting it out, an inattentive driver slammed into the back of that rig and it was destroyed. And with this accident, there was no longer any fire service in the southern end of Sutter County. The community members of Pleasant Grove were not pleased; they petitioned the board of supervisors, donated land, time, effort, and money and with the help of a conscripted crew from the Yuba City jail built the three-stall cinder block  building that still stands today.

The equipment was all hand-me-down and all past its prime but we didn’t care. We had our own fire department. Every first and third Tuesday evening most of the folk could be found training on something at the station. Even though I was too young (sans drivers license, therefore unable to drive to any emergency and never mind I was in school) I could be found there with dad.

I was a station rat. I’d do whatever was asked of me just biding my time waiting to turn 16 with a driver’s license in my hand. When that day hit (March 6, 1965) I was in!

Because our home was approximately one quarter mile from the station, in the summer it was not at all uncommon to find me behind the wheel, window down, elbow on the sill driving Code 3 hoping against hope that some girl would see me. Once at scene I would be joined by whoever could get off their tractor and join me. I was a driver/operator before I even knew they existed. Life was good.

One of the rigs we had was an old water wagon (we call them water tenders now). It had a thousand gallon water tank mounted on an old Dodge truck chassis. (There were no hydrants so we had to bring the water we might need with us or we got very good at drafting out of irrigation canals.) With all the years of use and rust catching up that old tank developed pinhole leaks just about everywhere and it was decided that something must be done to make it last.

A plan was hatched. To prep for the work to be performed the truck was taken out of service, the tank was drained and then allowed to dry out. After our next Tuesday evening drill my dad, who was assistant chief, and Norm James, a captain and I drove it over to our shop. There several gallons of tar awaited our arrival. Because I was a scrawny kid, my job was to shimmy down the top loading shoot, into the tank and roll the tar on the inside walls of the tank. What could possibly go wrong. (Today this is referred to as a confined space and a really dumb idea.)

After a few minutes I can’t remember anything but I was told that I was very loudly singing any popular rock song of the day with somewhat questionable lyrics made up by me. Not sure how they got me out because they couldn’t get in. Fortunately I didn’t pass out. So, how does dad keep from being lectured by mom? “What were you thinking?”

A fan was found in the shop and placed in front of me. Coffee was brewed and administered to sober me up, I was left to recover on my own in the barn while they took the unfinished job back to the station and, I’m convinced, to get their story straight.

The next day was a school day and I had one hell of a headache. The job was eventually completed by someone other than me with oxygen flowing from a cutting torch tank hose because we didn’t have small backpack compressed air tanks back then.

Because of the work done that old truck served the community for years to come and I earned the right to be called a fireman because of my work ethic. That little episode made me a brother with the men and I was in for 44 more years retiring in 2009 with the City of Chico Fire Department. And mom? She never found out until years later when it was accidentally mentioned.

Loren Dunlap can be reached at dunlapl@comcast.net.

The bartender, looking upon this pathetic pair of lagomorphs, asks, “Rough day, gentlemen?”

“What? I can’t hear you,” replies one bunny.

“Yeah, my butt hurts,” says the other.

OK, go ahead, roll your eyes. My family does every year when I tell this silly joke.

Speaking of chocolate bunnies with missing parts, every Easter there is an alarming surge of rabbit auricular amputations. Sounds horrifyingly deranged but in the common vernacular all it means is biting off the ears of the 90 million chocolate bunnies manufactured every year which is what 78% of Americans do after unwrapping the holiday treat. It’s feet-first for 16% of the imbibing population with  6% bringing up the rear, so to speak, eating the tail end first. That leaves 2% who don’t seem to care which part of the anatomy they start with so long as the chocolate gets into their mouth. I’m a 6 percenter.

An unquestionable majority of Americans, 86% in fact, prefer having a chocolatey delicious coney instead of a live one. Well duuuuuuuh these are the true believers in the goodness to be found nestled in the plastic grass of Easter baskets. I have to question the judgement and tastebuds of the remaining 14%. I mean seriously who can live without chocolate? Is life even worth living without chocolate? I think not.

Perhaps these folks prefer Peeps. Heaven only knows why but someone must as 700 million of these dyed egg white and sugar crimes against the tongue are stuffed into Easter baskets every year. How they gained popularity is a mystery to me. But despite their grossness factor people seem to love them.

My grandmother bought them by the basket load every year when they went on sale for half-price the Monday after Easter. I would accompany her to the various grocery stores to stock up and when we got home it was my job, which I gleefully undertook, to punch holes into their plastic wrapping. Once my task was complete, grandma would stack the boxes on top of the refrigerator so they could properly “cure” until the perfect state of staleness for eating was reached.

My darling daughter, who has refused to eat Peeps since she took her first, last and only bite of one when she was 3 years old, thoroughly enjoys “super sizing” them by putting them into the microwave and watching them swell and balloon up to enormous proportions into what she calls “Godzilla Peeps.” The delight, the sheer glee she gets out of this hasn’t diminished in the 25 years we’ve been doing it and, I must admit, it has become one of my favorite holiday traditions, second only to eating bunny tails.

The number of Peeps that come hopping down the bunny trail every year pales in comparison to the 16 billion jelly beans that roll off the assembly line to take their place in baskets. Although jelly beans may be a more holiday appropriate treat than chocolate bunnies or marshmallow chicks since it’s believed their center is a variation (an abberation?) of the Middle Eastern confection known as Turkish delight which dates back to biblical times, I don’t like them, never have never will, especially the licorice ones which my mother used to put by the pound full in my basket. Took me years to realize she put them in there because she knew I didn’t like them and would give them all to her. Sneaky, very sneaky.

While Americans commemorate the holiday with various confections held in baskets hidden by giant, mutant rabbits, in Bermuda, the holiday is marked with kite flying; in Corfu, Easter is a smashing holiday as resident celebrate by throwing ceramic objects — plates, jugs, casserole dishes, etc. — out their windows; and, in Norway it’s all about Påskekrimmen, the tradition of reading, watching and listening to crime stories and detective thrillers.

In addition to symbolizing the whole spring fertility re-birth stuff; Easter eggs dyed and inscribed with a person’s name and birthdate were honored as birth certificates in 19th Century German courts of law. They switched to paper certificates after several judges stamped the evidence with such vigor that it was smashed to smithereens and made the courtrooms stink of sulfur. Pee-you, or in this case, no more you.

In Czechoslovakia during Easter week it’s supposedly good luck to beat your wife or your girlfriend with a “pomlázka,” a braided whip. This tradition originated with Orthodox Christians’ spring blessing of the house observed by using a whip or a single branch to lightly hit livestock or family members. While the morphed Czech tradition may sound either abusive or kinky, depending on your perspective, apparently, it’s not. In fact pomlázka, means “make young” and the idea behind the tradition is that anyone hit with the whip will be healthy and happy during the upcoming year. Sure they will, right after they’ve healed from their Easter whooping.

While I enjoy learning about and participating in others’ customs, when it comes to Easter, I’m a traditionalist, perfectly happy to stick to chocolate bunny butts and exploding Peeps, thank you very much