More Businesses Leave California ~ Carl’s Jr. (UPDATED)

This story comes from the Orange County Register and documents yet another company leaving the sunshine state:

California has changed dramatically since 1941, when Carl and Margaret Karcher scraped together about 325 bucks to start a hot dog cart in Los Angeles – a precursor to a drive-through restaurant they opened in Anaheim and which grew into the Carl’s Jr. fast-food empire. The Karchers were household names in Southern California, not just for their restaurants but for their activism in conservative politics and Catholic charities.

Whatever you think of the Karchers’ politics, you’ve got to love the entrepreneurial story that surrounds their success and what it said about California in its heyday. The Karchers – he died in 2008 and she in 2006 – came to the Land of Opportunity from the staid backwater of Upper Sandusky, Ohio.

California has beckoned many Midwesterners – and people from every part of America and the globe – not just because of its pleasant weather, but because of a culture of openness that allowed creative people to go as far as their ideas would take them. Unfortunately, people with energy and creativity are now likely to go elsewhere, to places where the state government has different attitudes toward the private sector.

Indeed, CKE Restaurants, parent of Carl’s Jr., is likely to move its headquarters from Carpinteria, near Ventura, to Texas and is undergoing a rapid expansion of restaurants in the Lone Star State. Right before the budget circus got going Wednesday, CKE CEO Andrew Puzder spoke at the California Chamber of Commerce, blocks from the Capitol dome. Like most of us, Puzder loves California and has no interest in leaving it, but he told harrowing tales about doing business in a state that has gone from an entrepreneurial heaven to a bureaucratic nightmare.

“It costs us $250,000 more to build one California restaurant than in Texas,” he said. “And once it is opened, we’re not allowed to run it.” This explains why Carl’s is opening 300 restaurants in Texas and only maintaining its presence in California. Texas has lower taxes than California, but the reason for the shift has more to do with regulation and with the attitude of the respective governments.

Puzder complained about the permitting process here, where it takes eight months to two years to open a new restaurant compared to an average of 1 1/2 months in Texas. In California, restaurants have to provide new curb cuts, new traffic lights, you name it. The company must endure so many requirements and must submit to so many inspections that it becomes excessively costly – and the bureaucrats are in charge of the project.

Once the restaurant is open, Puzder said, the store’s general managers are not allowed to run the business as if they own it. That’s the key to the company’s customer service approach – allowing general managers to do whatever it takes to make customers happy. But California’s inflexible, union-designed work rules, for instance, classify general managers as regular employees. They must be paid overtime for any work beyond an eight-hour day. They must take mandated breaks at specified times.

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The Carl’s Jr. CEO notes some of his reasoning in this decision that should alert Californian’s to the problems in creating a robust economy… or in killing it:

…“It costs us $250,000 more to build one California restaurant than in Texas,” he said. “And once it is opened, we’re not allowed to run it.” This explains why Carl’s is opening 300 restaurants in Texas and only maintaining its presence in California. Texas has lower taxes than California, but the reason for the shift has more to do with regulation and with the attitude of the respective governments.

Puzder complained about the permitting process here, where it takes eight months to two years to open a new restaurant compared to an average of 1 1/2 months in Texas. In California, restaurants have to provide new curb cuts, new traffic lights, you name it. The company must endure so many requirements and must submit to so many inspections that it becomes excessively costly – and the bureaucrats are in charge of the project.

Once the restaurant is open, Puzder said, the store’s general managers are not allowed to run the business as if they own it. That’s the key to the company’s customer service approach – allowing general managers to do whatever it takes to make customers happy. But California’s inflexible, union-designed work rules, for instance, classify general managers as regular employees. They must be paid overtime for any work beyond an eight-hour day. They must take mandated breaks at specified times.

If a busload of customers comes to a store, these general managers must sit back and do nothing if they are on a break period. Most states have 40-hour workweek rules, meaning employees are paid overtime after exceeding 40 hours of work in a single week. In California it is based on the day, which limits the ability of managers to work, say, six hours one day and 10 hours the next day. Puzder complains about these industrial-era requirements that impede flexibility and harm customer service.

And California law encourages “private attorney general” lawsuits against private businesses over overtime and other regulatory rules, which has created a huge financial incentive for attorneys to file questionable legal actions against restaurants.

“It’s not like we have kids working in coal mines or women working in sweatshops,” Puzder said. It’s not as if his workers in other states, where these regulatory rules don’t exist, are oppressed, he added. “How does this help us instill entrepreneurial values?” He wonders how all these nonsensical rules teach people about being independent from the government rather than dependent on it….

(O.C. REGISTER)

California-Losing Jobs Because of Unfounded Legislation by Eco-Fascists

This story comes from Big Government and made my jaw drop:

When Dwayne Whitney started his trucking business decades ago he had only one truck. Today he has eighteen and 20 employees. But that’s about to change.

“The State of California says my trucks are killing people,” says Whitney. “What do you say to that?”

In a few years, new air quality regulations approved by the California Air Resources Board will render Whitney’s entire fleet illegal.

“New CARB rules are putting me out of business,” he says.

CARB claims that diesel particulates, a type of pollution emitted from buses and trucks, contributes to 2,000 premature deaths in California each year. But UCLA epidemiologist Dr. James Enstrom says the number should be closer to zero.

In 2005 Enstrom authored an extensive study that found no relationship between diesel particulates and premature deaths. He says his study, as well as other evidence that agrees with it, have been ignored by an agency bent on passing ever more stringent regulations regardless of their effect on California’s economy.

Enstrom blew the whistle on CARB for, among other things, failing to publicize that the lead author of the study that was used to justify the new regulations falsified his education history (he purchased his PhD from an online diploma mill).

But UCLA didn’t come to Enstrom’s defense. In fact, officials informed him that, after 34 years at the university, he was out of a job.

“The environmental regulation machine in powerful in California,” says Adam Kissel of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which is defending Enstrom in the fight to keep his job. “When Dr. Enstrom went up against that machine he was retaliated against.”

A hearing that begins on April 4 will determine whether Dr. Enstrom keeps his job, and the final decision rests with UCLA Chancellor Gene Block.

Says Kissel, “If Dr. Enstrom loses his job because he exercised his academic freedom, then it’s a message to other researchers that you’d better not rock the boat because you might be next.”

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Liberal Inconsistencies~HAMAS

Libertarian Republican has a post that got me thinking.Since liberal Democrats (progressives) got these radical chieftains voted in by “poo-pooing” the Republicans concerns about Hamasd and the Palestinians, you get to see how illiberal these “liberals” really are:

According to the Telegraph, “Gaza’s elected Islamist rulers crack down on secular community” the List of some activities now banned by Hamas in Gaza, include:

1. Novels it deems offensive to Islam
2. Bars
3. Cinemas
4. Women walking outside in Western clothes
5. Male hairdressersFrom the Telegraph:
In recent years, hardliners have burned down the cinemas. Their charred remains are still visible in Gaza City. Militants blew up the last bar in 2005.

Gaza women, whose attire once varied from Western pants and skirts to colourful traditional embroidered robes, began donning ankle-length loose robes.And don’t even dare walking outside with your wife without the correct documentation.

Continuing:

Today, plainclothes officers sometimes halt couples in the streets, demanding to see marriage licenses.

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Talk about an inconvenient truth.

…After all the furor over alleged racist signs or words at Tea Party rallies, the media is ignoring the shocking fact that 12 of the 25 groups endorsing Delaware Democrat Chris Coons for the United States Senate over Republican Christine O’Donnell have turned up on the quite official list of the “One Nation Working Together” rally — as formal co-sponsors with supporters of the terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas. And, no kidding, the Communist Party.

Did I mention the Coons 12 are also holding hands with the International Socialist Organization? Plus the Democratic Socialists of America?

You read that right.

And Chris Coons is not the only Democrat receiving this same election support either.

Which groups is Coons accepting endorsements from, knowing full well the same groups have deliberately and quite publicly tied themselves to supporters of terrorism, Communism and socialism?

That would be these groups:

The UAW
SEIU
Communications Workers of America
AFL-CIO
Planned Parenthood
People for the American Way
International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers
Stonewall Democrats
United Food and Commercial Workers International Union
National Education Association
Human Rights Campaign
AFSCME

All to be found hidden in plain sight on both the official listing of sponsors provided by the One Nation Working Together rally organizers listed here and then over here as part of the 25 groups endorsing Chris Coons supplied by the official Coons for Senate website. Twelve of Coons endorsers — that would be one shy of half — signed onto the recent rally that listed the Communist Party USA as a co-sponsor. And ANSWER, the radical supporters of Hezbollah and Hamas. And the International Socialists. And the Democratic Socialists.

All of this — and not a peep, not one peep — from the media. CNN’s Howard Kurtz still maintains that Coons’ “Bearded Marxist” self-description was some sort of college prank that Sean Hannity somehow got wrong?  Hello? Earth to Howard.

Let’s take a look at these groups the Coons campaign supporters have linked themselves to and which the media simply isn’t reporting. Let’s see what they believe and what others have said about them.

ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism): Here’s what the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has to say about the charming folks at ANSWER who have been holding hands with The Coons 12. ANSWER  has “repeatedly expressed support for terrorist groups determined to dismantle the state of Israel, including Hamas and Hezbollah.

Got that? Hamas and Hezbollah. Groups sworn to the destruction of Israel. Terrorists responsible for who knows how many repeated and extraordinarily violent and murderous attacks killing Israeli men, women and children.

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Code Pink Democrats Aid and Abet Terrorists, Obama and the Democrat Party

House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn (SC)  recently accused Republicans of “aiding and abetting terrorism” because of their support for the Tea Party movement. With all due respect, Rep. Clyburn needs to clean out his own party first before he has standing to say anything on the subject.

Top Democrat Party activists Jodie Evans and Medea Benjamin, through their group Code Pink, have spent the past eight years terrorizing soldiers, their families and public officials on the homefront while working with terrorists and state sponsors of terrorism abroad. Rather than being condemned and disowned, Code Pink is embraced by President Barack Obama and leading Democrats while being celebrated by the media.

The Code Pink Democrats have harassed wounded soldiers and their families at military hospitals in Washington, D.C. and San Diego; they have repeatedly targeted military recruiting centers for abuse; they cruelly taunted the children of military families at a White House Halloween party; they have terrorized government officials at their homes and they have led a campaign for the kidnapping of former President Bush and his wife Laura (for this they enlisted the support of the Muslim Brotherhood).

Abroad, the Code Pink Democrats have worked with state sponsors of terrorism including the governments of Saddam Hussein, Cuba’s Castro brothers, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syria’s Bashar Assad as well as the anti-American governments of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega and Bolivia’s Evo Morales.

In December 2008, the Code Pink Democrats led a shoe throwing protest in front of the White House to celebrate an incident in Baghdad when an Iraqi “journalist” threw his shoes at President George W. Bush. This encouragement of violence against Bush was a propaganda bouquet by the Code Pink Democrats to their terrorist allies aroud the world.

These Code Pink Democrats have also worked with terrorists including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, Sunni terrorists in Iraq and the father of Islamic terrorism: the Muslim Brotherhood. The Code Pink Democrats have bragged about giving cash and humanitarian aid to terrorists who target Americans, Israelis and free Iraqis.

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