Here’s an excellent letter to the editor by my good friend Paul King — concerning CA’s soaring gasoline prices (I updated and expanded the figures, and added verifying URL’s):

The Los Angeles Times correctly reported that refinery problems were the major cause of the supply problem on the West Coast. CA once had 14 refineries producing the state’s unique blend of gasoline mandated by its legislature, but that number has declined to 12. Among those 12, four are shut temporarily due to maintenance issues. With CA strict bureaucratic refinery regulations, we have not built any new refineries in 40 years.

Because of California’s unique fuel blend requirements, motorists can rely only on California’s refineries to correct their supply problem. They can’t solve the shortage by buying from their next door neighbors in Arizona or Nevada the way other states might. So now that the state legislature has effectively imposed an embargo on the citizens of California, we are all paying the price of our politicians’ stupidity.

But that’s not… Read More

In order to stimulate the inert economy, we now have the government investing in government. The public sector is trading public dollars for public dollars.

“How will you spend your future?” the California State Teachers Retirement System logo asks. I wouldn’t spend it on a solar plant. Nor would I voluntarily spend my future with CalSTRS.

‘Infrastructure investments’

Nearly every time I pick up the newspaper, the headline screams that another solar plant has closed and the business gone under. Yet I see that the California State Teachers’ Retirement System is investing $42.8 million in a large solar plant in Sacramento.

… Read More

Today, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association filed a class action lawsuit against Jerry Brown and the Legislature to overturn the unconstitutional Fire Tax.

As one of California’s elected tax officials, it’s my responsibility to use my elected office to ensure that taxpayers are treated fairly.

Accordingly, I commend the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association for bringing together Californians from every walk of life and region of our state to right the wrong that is the fire tax.

The Governor and Legislature’s willingness to impose such an unfair and regressive tax in direct violation of the Constitution should serve as a wake-up call for all freedom-loving Californians.

I am pleased to lend my full support to this lawsuit, and I look forward to seeing it prevail.… Read More

Voter fatigue is no longer an factor this election cycle because thoughtful voters appear instead to be tuning out entirely to media and polls, and instead tuning into reality television. There’s an irony.

“It’s getting much harder for pollsters to get people to respond to interviews,” wrote Michael Barone, in a National Review Online story today. “The Pew Research Center reports that only 9 percent of the people it contacts respond to its questions. That’s compared with 36 percent in 1997.”

Barone said that of that 9 percent of respondents, is is likely that the sample is not representative of the much larger voting public.

Duh… ya think?

He explained that everything from the decreasing number of landline phones, to implausible party identification, impacts poll numbers today.

“I don’t believe… Read More

With the latest session of the California legislature over, now is the time of year when various groups and organizations release their “scorecards” — assessing how legislators performed based on how they voted on key pieces of legislation that were of interest to that group or organization. Yesterday one such group to release its ratings of the legislature was the California Taxpayer Association — or “CalTax” as they are known in political circles. You can see their ratings here. If you peruse the lengthy list of bills that CalTax uses to rate legislators, they picked out a bevy of bills — many of them atrocious and worthy of being scored for a “no” vote — and many of them good, certainly appropriately scored as a “yes” vote. There is a lot of good information there, representing a lot of work to put together.

… Read More

**THIS IS AN EXCLUSIVE, BREAKING STORY**

This morning Landslide Communications filed a lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court against Republican Party U.S. Senate nominee Elizabeth Emken, and her campaign committee, for breach of contract, fraud and other charges. Landslide Communications, whose proprietor is well-known longtime conservative activist and leader Jim Lacy, featured Emken on 5.5 million pieces of direct mail to voters, but hasn’t paid the bulk of the money owed for those mailings – $65,000. (A review of Emken’s campaign filings shows significant outstanding debt to other slate… Read More

File this one under the law of unintended consequences: the ban on exotic animals that was proposed by Councilwoman Lorri Galloway — and pulled from the agenda just minutes before last week’s Anaheim City Council meeting — would, if enatced, have outlawed the Rally Monkey, the famous mascot of the Angels baseball team.

That, according to a reliable source, was the conclusion of Angels’ lawyers.

Galloway’s ban was directed at Ringling Bro. and Barnum & Bailey’s Circus, which comes to the city-owned Honda Center every year foor a 10-day run, generating $1.3 million in revenue for the city — not to mention delighting thousands and children and their parents.

Why would it have also outlawed the Rally Monkey? You can read more here at this post on theAnaheim Blog, a new project I am involved in.… Read More

According to a recent AP news article (“Calif. tax collector criticized for opposing fee”), several Democratic leaders, including a few of my colleagues, want me to stop my “high profile campaign” against the new “Fire Prevention Fee.” They argue that my role is to simply to collect taxes—not to speak out against them.

They’re right about one thing. I do have a responsibility to administer taxes. I’m doing everything in my power to ensure that this tax, and others, are administered effectively, efficiently and fairly. I’m also encouraging taxpayers to pay their taxes, so they don’t get caught up with penalties and interest.

There’s a reason California has elected tax officials, rather than bureaucrats, in charge of tax administration and appeals. We are elected to represent the taxpayers in our districts. Doing so involves speaking on their behalf.

Accordingly, I respect the right of my Democratic colleagues to speak on behalf of their constituents—even when they disagree with me.

The new “fire fee” is an… Read More