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Serving in the Legislature for six years, I had a front row seat to the culture in Sacramento where operatives strategize and execute plans to continuously raise your taxes to fund an ever expanding state government. For the first time in years, our state budget is running a surplus, and yet the demand for more of your money never ceases. The lobby for bigger government is alive and well in California, backed by creative think tanks and pressure groups dedicated to finding new ways to further separate you from your income. While your paycheck doesn’t buy what it used to, neither do your ever-increasing tax “investments.”

Most of us expect our “investment” in government to provide transportation and water infrastructure to keep up with the growing population. We expect our schools to be funded such that the money actually reaches the classroom. We expect safe neighborhoods through well-funded public safety enhancements. However, we don’t seem to getting a very good return on our investment. We pay higher rates for scarce water and power and remain stuck in traffic as the state attempts to change our behaviors by redirecting our road and highway improvement… Read More

Did you know that there was an election last Tuesday? Not many voters did, and the tax-and-spend crowd likes it that way. In this little publicized election, 29 out of 40 local tax increase measures passed.

Michael Coleman, Founder of the California Local Government Finance Almanac, notes the significance: “There were more local revenue measures on ballots this November than any of the four prior gubernatorial or presidential elections,” he said. “More were passed than ever before…”

Some might interpret these election results as a new acceptance of taxes by California voters. But for those of us who have observed government behavior for more than a few decades, we see a more sinister explanation. Specifically, that the tax raisers have become expert at gaming the system to pass tax and bond measures.

To read the entire column click here http://www.hjta.org/california-commentary/%E2%80%8Btax-raisers-like-non-voters%E2%80%8B/… Read More

Here’s a breaking bizarre news story, the result of anAssociated Press Investigationjust released today (Thursday, 11/5/15). Apparently CA Governor Jerry Brown sought and received extensive geological services from a government agency, mapping out the prospects for finding oil on his family’s land. According to this write-up of the facts by Breitbart, these services are normally never available to private individuals. Of course, Brown’s push to all but outlaw the use of fossil fuels makes this story even weirder.

Here’s the Breitbart story: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/05/shock-jerry-brown-used-state-experts-to-seek-oil-on-family-land/

The South Coast Air Quality Management District is one of the state’s most powerful and least accountable government agencies. It enacts and enforces air quality rules and regulations affecting millions of people and thousands of employers in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties. From its enormous, gleaming headquarters overlooking the 57 Freeway in Diamond Bar, the AQMD’s power and reach extend from oil refineries to manufacturing facilities down to neighborhood gas stations, leaf blowers and beach fire pits. It sustains itself with money harvested from fees for permits businesses are compelled to obtain and fines AQMD regulators levy on those businesses.

The American system of government is based on the separation of the legislative, executive and judicial powers into independent… Read More

Preliminary results for the November 3, 2015 elections held in some California counties indicate that voters approved eight of the nine bond measures proposed by a total of eight California school districts. Voter approval means that the districts are now authorized to borrow a specific maximum amount of money for facilities construction by selling bonds to investors. The districts will pay back the investors over time, with interest, by collecting property taxes designated to paying off the bonds.

At this link is a chart (depicted to the right in miniature) that provides the latest preliminary data about the nine bond measures, the election results, and the… Read More

California’s largest state/local government employee pension system, CalPERS, has posted a page on their website called “Myths vs. Facts.” Included among their many rather debatable “facts” is the following assertion, “Pension costs represent about 3.4 percent of total state spending.”

This depends, of course, on what year you’re considering, and what you consider to be direct cost overhead for the state as opposed to pass-throughs from the state to cities and counties. But CalPERS overlooks the fact that most of California’s government workers who collect pensions do not work for the state, they work for cities and counties and school districts. As can be seen on the “view CalPERS employers” page on Transparent California, there are 3,329 distinct employer retirement pension plans administered by CalPERS, and the vast majority of these are not state agencies paid from the state budget, but local agencies.

In a study earlier this year, “… Read More

Personally in this day and age, I’d never start a business in California — certainly not one that hired many employees. The risk/reward ratio is TERRIBLE. One gets FAR better odds at a casino.

Below is yet another trap for hapless employers who are “employee intensive” in their business. One or two of these groundless lawsuits can eat up much or all of a year’s profits.

CA is a litigation lawyer’s “workers’ paradise.” And the collusion between workers and attorneys seeking windfall profits (the profits of others) is bound to grow as word gets out.

http://calwatchdog.com/2015/09/30/cumulative-trauma-law-bdevils-employers-hands-fired-employees-payday/

30Sep, 2015Steve Miller

The Monteleone family opened… Read More

Like inattentive students who dread having their parents see their unsatisfactory grades, most members of the California Legislature would just as soon not have their constituents see the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association Legislative Report Card documenting their votes on issues important to taxpayers.

Of the 120 members of the Legislature, 73 received a grade of “F” while only 36 earned an “A” grade.

The Report Card is a non-partisan tool for citizen taxpayers to hold legislators accountable based on actual legislative votes. It was Will Rogers who said, “If you ever injected truth into politics you have no politics.” While a satirist is allowed to paint with a broad brush, there is still more than a grain of truth here. Many in the political class dishonestly attempt to present themselves as standing for the interests of average folks. They pay lip service to low and moderate income Californians, while voting to make getting to work more expensive by increasing the already tops in the nation gasoline tax. They claim to be supporters of homeownership, but support measures that would increase the tax burden on property owners.

To read… Read More