Steven Greenhut, the onetime editorial writer at The Orange County Register and a man loathed by public employee union bosses, and state Senator Lou Correa recently met with 12 food truck owners who claim Santa Ana police and California tax officials are harassing their businesses.
According to Greenhut's July 13 Reason.com report of the encounter, the businesses are run by hardworking individuals who have become the targets of people who don't like the sight of the trucks on public streets and for bureaucrats at the state Board of Equalization desperate to boost government revenue.
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Greenhut, who is now the vice president for journalism at the right-leaning Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, says he's found a couple of ironies in the mess:
–The food truck owners say government harassment is hurting their businesses more than a lousy economy;
–Callous bureaucrats told at least one owner that he should quit and join the ranks of welfare recipients;
–These
businessmen know that the state squeeze for more tax revenue is fueled
by government employee unions who want to protect money sources for
their own pensions.
Here's Greenhut's reasoning:
“These
business owners understood that the state is shaking them down to come
up with money to pay for its lavish overspending, on programs including
six-figure pensions for government employees . . . The state Capitol is
controlled by liberal Democrats, who frequently invoke the poor,
working-class people and immigrants to justify their latest government
spending ideas. Yet here is the latest example of how these officials put
the demands of the well-paid and powerful unions over the needs of
hard-strapped immigrants and working people.”
Go HERE to read Greenhut's entire Reason.com column, “California's Food Truck Shakedown.”
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.