Your cheeseburger and fries are going to cost more. So is the medical bill for treating the subsequent heartburn.

Two minimum wage bills Gov. Gavin Newsom signed already are digging in, worsening the inflation hitting consumers. The overall state minimum wage will rise from $15.50 an hour to $16 on Jan. 1. But Assembly Bill 1228 increased the minimum wage for fast-food workers even higher, to $20, effective next April 1, for those brands with 60 or more restaurants nationally.

Restaurants already are planning to pass the higher wage on to consumers. BJ’s Restaurant has 59 stores in California and its headquarters are in Huntington Beach. “We expect higher menu prices in restaurants throughout the state as operators look to mitigate the added costs,” CEO Greg Levin announced during an earnings call last week. “We are still finalizing our menu pricing plan for next year, but expect to be able to offset inflationary pressures.”

Senate Bill 525 increased the minimum wage for most healthcare workers to $23 an hour next July 1; $24 on July 1, 2025; and $25 on July 1, 2026. Great for those workers — if they’re not laid off. But the costs will be passed on to patients and taxpayers.

Gov. Newsom’s own Department of Finance just estimated the wage increase would cost the state government alone $4 billion more a year. Half would come from federal funds; but half will receive a transfusion from the state general fund, meaning California taxpayers. That would add $2 billion to the current estimate of a $14 billion deficit for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2024. The $4 billion estimate does not include costs to private health care offices and systems, which could be much higher.

“Increasing the minimum wage always results in higher prices to the consumers,” Raymond Sfeir told us; he’s the director of the A. Gary Anderson Center for Economic Research at Chapman University. He pointed out the $20 fast food wage won’t apply to brands with 59 or fewer places, giving them an advantage. Companies growing fast will have a strong incentive to not rise above 59. Many firms might not even come here, meaning fewer jobs in the Golden State.

A shortage of healthcare workers was the excuse Newsom made for increasing their wage. But if that’s the case, Sfeir pointed out, why were such workers defined as also including janitors, gardeners, drivers and gift-shop clerks? And how about helping health workers — and all workers — by reducing the cost of living in this state with tax cuts and more housing?

Sfeir warned, “When healthcare costs increase, families with limited means are affected more than anybody else, leading them to demand fewer healthcare services.”

Both these bills were pushed strongly by unions, especially the powerful Service Employees International Union. Laphonza Butler, gifted a U.S. Senate appointment by Gov. Newsom, is a former president of the SEIU State Council. Until union power over government is reduced in this state, expect everything to cost even more.

Yet that whole oversight process is working backwards in Anaheim, as the feds led a corruption investigation, followed by intervention from the California attorney general. Now, 1 ½ years after the resignation of Mayor Harry Sidhu following the filing of an FBI affidavit, Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer has confirmed an investigation into City Hall corruption. Better late than never.

As a quick recap, city officials began negotiating with the Angels baseball team in 2019 over the sale to the team of the stadium and surrounding 150 acres. Some of the dubious machinations over that sale were publicized in the media – e.g., questions about seemingly under-market pricing and concerns about City Council secrecy.

The state in 2022 asked for – and a judge agreed – to halt to the stadium sale. Anaheim City Council cancelled the deal and the team agreed. In a lengthy city-sponsored report released in July, independent investigators bolstered FBI allegations of a “cabal” of insiders who had outsized control of City Hall – a problem that went well beyond Sidhu.

Subsequent elections have yielded mixed results between reformers and those representing the usual city interests, which has stymied anti-corruption reforms. There’s still a key role for the DA’s office, which under Spitzer has operated in a professional and balanced manner, to sort through the mess. But we are left with a key question: What took so long?

A recent survey from The New York Times and Siena College found Trump leading Biden in the polls in five crucial swing states won by Biden in 2020 — Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

At least some of this is due to perceptions of Biden’s age, with 71% of respondents agreeing that Biden is “too old” at 80 to be president of the United States. This includes a majority (54%) of those who would vote for Biden over Trump.

This is not the first poll to show that concerns about Biden’s age are weighing him down.

In September, an NBC News poll found that 74% of registered voters surveyed had major (59%) or moderate (15%) concerns about President Biden having “the necessary mental and physical health to be president for a second term.” By comparison, 47% of those polled shared similar concerns about 77-year-old  Trump.

Whether people like it or not, Biden’s age is a problem for those who aren’t eager to see another Trump term. The previously mentioned NYT-Siena College poll noted that a generic Democrat would beat Trump by 8 points.

But of course it’s not just Joe Biden’s age that’s a problem. While the White House has tried to spin “Bidenomics” as a win for the American people, most Americans aren’t buying it. NBC News polling shows that only 28% are satisfied with the state of the economy and 59% of America disapprove of Biden’s handling of it. While Biden entered office wanting to be a big-spending, transformative president like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the results have been more akin to the inflation-riddled presidency of Jimmy Carter. Though at least with Carter America saw deregulation — yes, deregulation — in major sectors of the economy (from airlines to trucking to telecommunications) which helped the economy boom down the line. Many Americans will vote with their bank and retirement accounts in mind.

It’s no wonder Biden now finds himself under pressure from all sides, drawing a primary challenge from moderate Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota as other Democrats, like Gov. Gavin Newsom, are obviously waiting for a chance to jump in.

It’s clear Biden failed in his mission to be either transformational or unifying. His age is just one surface-level reason people don’t want him to run again.

This week, Carrillo announced her candidacy for Los Angeles City Council, ending speculation about whether she would drop out. We weren’t impressed with her post-arrest statement: “As a public servant, I am aware that I must adhere to a higher standard that demands personal accountability for my conduct.” She accepted responsibility and apologized “for any actions that might have fallen short.”

She has not been convicted and hasn’t admitted to having been intoxicated, although she has vowed to “seek the necessary help and support.” We’d prefer if lawmakers had the self-control and judgment to avoid these situations. In Sacramento, lawmakers could easily get a ride from Capitol staff. Elsewhere, they can do what ordinary people do — grab an Uber or taxicab.

Voters ultimately will decide, but it would be nice if lawmakers would put the public above their political ambitions and take a break from the spotlight after they beclown themselves. That’s apparently too much to ask. State Sen. Dave Min, D-Costa Mesa, continues his run for Congress even though he was sentenced to three years of probation after a DUI arrest in Sacramento in May. Riverside Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes is also still running for Assembly after her second DUI conviction.

Public officials are human and make mistakes. If they stay in politics, they must at least show humility when they write laws everyone else must follow.

The Claremont Institute, which purports to fight “to restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life,” was once a reputable home for conservative thinkers and activists.

Over the last several years, following the trend away from a conservatism centered on free markets and limited government, the Claremont Institute has become a hotbed for far-right fever dreams.

The institute has been at the forefront of seeking to provoke fear in Americans about a so-called “Great Replacement” of Americans with “Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty.”

The institute has strenuously defended former Chapman University law school Dean John Eastman, one of the key architects of former President Donald Trump’s schemes to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Eastman is a fellow at the institute.

Now, the institute is set to honor Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco this week in, of course, Huntington Beach.

Former United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions is slated to speak at the event, which is perfectly consistent with Claremont’s revulsion toward liberty. As AG, Sessions worked to expand the unconstitutional practice of civil asset forfeiture, desired a revival of the War on Drugs (“good people don’t smoke marijuana”) and even fought against President Trump’s criminal justice reform effort (the FIRST Step Act).

With judgment like this, it is no wonder Claremont thinks it’s a good idea to honor Sheriff Bianco.

Bianco has made the rounds over the past few years on right-wing media outlets, from Fox News to the Epoch Times, endearing himself to some on the right with his criticisms of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

But a look at Bianco’s actual track record shows he’s not the sort of politician one should be celebrating.

First, it’s essential to remember that Bianco was elected to the role of sheriff after being recruited to run by the local deputies union and with the support of several public sector unions.

On Bianco’s watch, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department has been in crisis.

The department is under state investigation after a historic spike in jail deaths last year. It is now facing calls for independent oversight, including from former Democratic Assemblyman Jose Medina and former Supervisor Bob Buster.

In recent months, deputies have been arrested for crimes ranging from “sextortion” to drug trafficking.

Yet in the eyes of the Claremont Institute, Bianco is a “longtime patriot and tireless defender of America’s founding principles.”

This editorial board hopes for a time when the American right can return to coherent principles. But we suspect we’ll be holding our breath for a while longer.

Former Vice President Mike Pence’s announcement in Iowa last week that he is exiting the GOP race for the presidency wasn’t surprising. He polled near 4 percent in a contest that had his former boss, Donald Trump, dominating. Pence’s campaign suffered many flaws — including difficulty in criticizing a front-runner who routinely mocked him — but ultimately was undone by shifting attitudes within his party.

Pence’s brand of conservatism often conflicts with our libertarian approach, but when push came to shove, the former vice president did the right thing. He refused to abet Trump’s cynical — and probably illegal — plan to overturn the election. “(M)y oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not,” he explained.

Yet it’s long been obvious that Pence represents a Republican Party that no longer exists. “This is not my time,” he said during his exit speech. He’s recently offered pointed warnings to a party that once celebrated the principles of Ronald Reagan, who championed free markets, international trade and a hawkish foreign policy. In Iowa, he urged the GOP to reject “the siren song of populism” — a welcome message even if it’s too little, too late.

Pence’s “Time for Choosing” speech (and Wall Street Journal column) last month was even modeled on Reagan’s famous 1964 speech. In it, Pence warned if the GOP chooses populism it will place America’s liberties at risk given the nation will no longer have a major party devoted to advancing freedom.

The GOP’s traditional opponent, he argued, was progressive socialism — and its dominance in the Democratic Party. But GOP populists would also “substitute our faith in limited government and traditional values for an agenda stitched together by personal grievances and performative outrage.”

These populists “would abandon American leadership on the world stage, embracing a posture of appeasement in the face of rising threats to freedom.” Although we advocate for a more restrained foreign policy than the one embraced by Pence and Reagan conservatives, we generally agree.

Pence also took a swipe at a “leading candidate” — who could that be? — who once “called for the ‘termination’ of ‘all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,’ while his imitators have demonstrated willingness to brandish government power to silence critics.”

Furthermore, he said populists “would have us trade in our time-honored principles for passing public opinion.” That’s spot on. Republican populists echo the Left by wanting to use government to advance their cultural preferences. Populist intellectuals openly challenge traditional conservatives who insist on playing within the rules established by our founders.

Pence is correct the divide between the two groups is unbridgeable: “Like our founders, we know the imperfect nature of men and women and that granting them unlimited power imperils liberty. That is why we have a brilliant system of checks and balances, divisions of authority, coequal branches of government and sovereign state governments.”

After seven years of Trumpian showboating, it was refreshing to hear a Republican speak for the GOP’s long-held limited-government principles. Typical of Pence, however, his comments come late in the game. The party already made its choice, but at least he left a forward-looking blueprint for Republicans once the populist fever breaks.

American troops in Iraq and Syria have come under increased attack with drones and rockets from Iranian-backed militias, says United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin.

In response, the U.S. has attacked facilities in Syria used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“The president has no higher priority than the safety of U.S. personnel, and he directed today’s action to make clear that the United States will not tolerate such attacks and will defend itself, its personnel and its interests,” said Austin last week.

If that is indeed the case, what, exactly, are United States military personnel doing in Iraq and Syria?

“There’s no applicable authorization under U.S. law for U.S. forces to be in Iraq or Syria,” noted former Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan on Twitter. “Keeping bases and troops there puts Americans at risk and sets the stage for a war that the American people did not and do not approve. Bring them home.”

That’s right.

Still on the books are the authorizations for use of military force passed by Congress in 2001 to go after the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks and in 2002 to give President George W. Bush the green light to fight the government of Saddam Hussein.

Here we are around the corner from 2024, and these authorizations are decades beyond their relevance. And yet, American troops still find themselves stuck in the Middle East with no congressionally-debated and approved reason for being there.

With the ongoing crisis in  Gaza, it is not in America’s interests to risk getting sucked into a broader Middle East conflict. It is irresponsible for President Biden alone to be empowered to put troops in harm’s way and for Congress to be totally AWOL.

“If the case were important enough to require reprisal, and ripe for that step, Congress must be called on to take it; the right of reprisal being expressly lodged with them by the Constitution, and not with the Executive,” wrote Thomas Jefferson.

Over the last two decades, Congress has totally abdicated its constitutional responsibilities and ceded warmaking entirely to the executive branch. We can only hope that America doesn’t get sucked into more wars.

Various state laws, one of them passed fully eight years ago, had already made such sharing illegal in California — and yet various law-enforcement departments were doing it anyway.

So this week Bonta issued two rulings sent to all policing agencies in the state reminding them “of their obligation to ensure that the storage, collection, sharing, and use of this information is consistent with California law.”

This reminder likely never would have happened without the dedicated work of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which in May sent out a reminder of pervasive law-breaking by the supposed law-enforcers: “Seventy-one California police agencies in 22 counties must immediately stop sharing automated license plate reader (ALPR) data with law enforcement agencies in other states because it violates California law and could enable prosecution of abortion seekers and providers elsewhere.”

The EFF was joined by state chapters of the ACLU in its effort.

The foundation, using hundreds of public records requests, found that police and sheriff’s departments in the state use ALPR camera systems to collect and store location information about drivers, “including dates, time, and locations. This sensitive information can reveal where individuals work, live, associate, worship — or seek reproductive health services and other medical care.”

That’s the abortion angle here. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade and sending abortion policies back to all 50 states, some states have made it illegal not only to have abortions in their jurisdictions — but even to do so in pro-choice states such as California.

Idaho legislators passed a law making helping a pregnant minor get an abortion in another state punishable by two to five years in prison, for example.

“Law enforcement officers in anti-abortion jurisdictions who receive the locations of drivers collected by California-based ALPRs may seek to use that information to monitor abortion clinics and the vehicles seen around them and closely track the movements of abortion seekers and providers,” the EFF wrote in May in its demand to see state law enforced. “This threatens even those obtaining or providing abortions in California, since several anti-abortion states plan to criminalize and prosecute those who seek or assist in out-of-state abortions.”

Even though it has been unlawful since 2016 to do so, some California police agencies have been sharing ALPR data with law enforcement agencies across the country, including in Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas — and Idaho.

EFF Director of Investigations Dave Maass said this week that the two new Bonta rulings have “confirmed what we’ve been saying for years: It is against the law for California law enforcement agencies to share data collected from automated license plate readers with out-of-state or federal agencies. This guidance will protect abortion seekers, immigrants and indeed anyone who drives a car in the Golden State from abusive surveillance.”

In our area, police agencies that have shared such data with out-of-state agencies and so received the letters insisting they stop doing so from the EFF include the departments in Alhambra, Burbank, Desert Hot Springs, Downey, Hermosa Beach, Laguna Beach, Orange and Pasadena — and the Riverside and San Bernardino sheriff’s departments.

Stop sending such surveillance data out of state — now.

“Do as I say, not as I do” is a catchphrase for hypocrisy. There’s even a book about it, “Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy,” by conservative muckraker Peter Schweitzer.

One example among dozens: In 2002 Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the future House speaker, was given the Cesar Chavez Award from the United Farm Workers. This was despite the fact that she and her husband, Paul, owned a plush Napa Valley vineyard employing non-union farm workers.

And who could forget the countless liberal politicians, from Pelosi to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who were caught violating coronavirus restrictions they themselves promoted and imposed on millions of others?

Here’s a 2023 example should there be a new edition of the book.

Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed Senate Bill 54, by state Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley.

It mandated venture capital firms in the state must file with the state Civil Rights Department yearly, detailed diversity data on the “founding team,” meaning the original owners and major original contributors, such as researchers.

Categories include race, ethnicity, gender identity, disability status, LGBTQ+ identification, veteran or disabled veteran status, California residency and anyone who refused to respond to a questionnaire.

“This bill resonates deeply with my commitment to advance equity and provide for greater economic empowerment of historically underrepresented communities,” he said upon signing the bill.

But in a brazen act of hypocrisy Newsom vetoed Senate Bill 702, by state Sen. Monique Limon, D-Santa Barbara. The bill would have required the governor’s office, beginning in 2006, to provide similar information on his appointees to state boards and commissions.

In his veto message, he said the reporting required by the bill is “optional and self-reported by candidates,” so it “would not necessarily accurately reflect the diversity of appointees.”

But it would have given us some information. It would also give insight into whether Newsom himself is capable of living up to the standards he is apparently comfortable imposing on others.

This also is troubling because the public sector ought to live by higher standards than the private sector because it uses the public’s money and the law to coerce results.

The private sector does not. Indeed, the SB 54 mandates on venture capital firms are an unnecessary burden that will drive such firms from the state.

Federal, state and local laws already ban discrimination, and are enforced by the Civil Rights Department and other entities.

Newsom knows this, of course, but he values virtue signaling above everything else. This was made clear by his veto of SB 702.

The courts ultimately sided with Mencken given the First Amendment, but the episode led to the phrase, “Banned in Boston.”  The term became a recommendation rather than a warning. If a work of trashy fiction was banned there, then it certainly would draw readers. Soon we might see the term “Banned in Huntington Beach” used in a similar fashion if the City Council continues on its current path.

The council majority, energized by the latest moral panic common in conservative circles, voted 4-3 to set up its own version of the Watch and Ward Society to police books that are available to children in the city’s public libraries. The council has created a 21-person citizens’ panel to review new and existing books for sexual references or content and assure they meet “community standards.”

It also may lead to lawsuits. The resolution “would impose an unconstitutional censorship regime on the people’s right to access library books and materials protected by the First Amendment,” wrote a group of free-speech advocates in a letter to the council.

Typically, librarians use their professional judgment. They don’t always get it right, but it’s better than having politicians and their appointed Karens make those choices. To understand why, we’d urge the council majority to read Mencken, but we doubt his books would make it past their book banners.