Survey Results: You haven’t heard from me in a while. No need to check the obits, I’m still here. What with 2 national conventions, a busy month home in the district, and some vacation on my part, I thought I’d give us both a little break. Not that either of us could avoid the non-stop national campaigning.

When I last wrote you, I included a survey with various proposals on what to include and not include in a potential income tax reform bill next year. The results are detailed below. But, here is my “executive summary and analysis”:

• A majority of you agreed with all of my proposals.

• The most popular proposal with you all (76.9%) was to eliminate all deductions and credits except charitable contributions, home mortgage interest and non-elective medical expenses.

• The least popular proposal, albeit still over 50% at 56.3%, was to go to only 2 tax rates, one for incomes below $100,000 and one for incomes above that amount. 27.2% of you believe that we will need more rates than that, and 15.2% of you want only one rate.

• You may recall that I had a joke answer… Read More

www.ballotpedia.orgcan be an extremely useful source on elections — especially on propositions. It includes who are the backers and opponents, and who the big contributors are. But Ballotpedia “edit trolls” can alter or omit facts to suit their purposes. I just got involed in one such Ballotpedia situation on a California proposition.

Ballotpedia is very similar to Wikipedia in operation. Hence caution is advised.

I just corrected numberous errors in their post on California’s Prop 30 (on this November’s ballot) — the “Jerry Brown” MASSIVE statewide increase in taxes (income and sales taxes). http://www.ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/California_Proposition_30,_Sales_and_Income_Tax_Increase_(2012)

EVERY error I found understated the cost to taxpayers, or just outright omitted damaging information concerning the prop. Coincidential or intentional?

I found that EVERY calculation on the income tax understated the… Read More

San Diego Politics & Media Mashup

Cross posted at San Diego Rostra

At a fundraiser for Carl DeMaio on Wednesday I heard the mayoral candidate make some points I hadn’t heard him make before.

Speaking to members of the San Diego County Apartment Association, for whom I am privileged to do some work, Councilman DeMaio said someday he would like to write a book about how he helped turn San Diego around, and the positive affect government reform has had on local neighborhoods. He said he wants to tour the world to discuss his book.

He said he would not have a Chief Operating Officer as mayor. Instead, he said, he would appoint a handful of deputy mayors. The Republican councilman and fiscal hawk also said there would be some Democrats at high levels in his administration.

The latest polling shows he and Congressman Bob Filner in a statistical dead heat, DeMaio said. It also shows, he said, that if he’s able to share his primary messages with… Read More

It will not surprise anyone reading this that serious problems persist in the housing sector. Many solutions have been proposed, including several pieces of legislation I have introduced in Congress, to help homeowners, completely reform our housing finance system and fix the housing crisis. Most of the proposals out there are focused on struggling homeowners trying to make the next payment and are about the greater good of the country. However, you may or may not be surprised that a couple of California cities have decided to not waste a good crisis, to paraphrase the now infamous axiom, realizing there is a lot of cash to be made off underwater homeowners.

In an astonishingly expansive and untenable interpretation of eminent domain authority, several local governments, notably San Bernardino, have proposed plans to override private property rights through a scheme that is specifically designed to make money for over-leveraged cities. This scheme is being sold as assistance for hurting homeowners, but it is purely a ploy to use federal tax dollars to seize distressed home loans and force unconventional, yet profitable loan modifications.

However, not only will… Read More

cross posted at CalWatchdog

Most of us would think that wealthy people would be more interested in sponsoring ballot initiatives to cut taxes, not to increase them. But of the three tax-increase ballot initiatives on the November ballot to significantly raise taxes, two were sponsored by very wealthy individuals, Proposition 38 by attorney Molly Munger and Proposition 39 by hedge-fund manager Tom Steyer.

The third is the Gov. Jerry Brown’s Proposition 30 tax increase.

Prop. 39 is getting noticed. But it’s is just another retread of the 2010 Proposition 24, which voters killed.

Prop. 39 would require businesses headquartered out of the state to use the “single sales factor method,” in which their tax liability is based solely on their amount of sales in the state.

They would no longer be allowed to use the other option, known as the “three-factor method,” which bases tax liability on a combination of the sales, property and number of employees a business has in the state. That option was a tax-cut part of the budget deal in 2009… Read More

Last Friday, I penned a column where I pointed out that the Board of Directors of the California Chamber of Commerce would be meeting at the posh Casa Del Mar beachfront hotel in Santa Monica, where among other things they would be considering whether to take a position on Proposition 30, Governor Jerry Brown’s measure to hit Californians with higher income and sales taxes in order to preserve the status-quo. The CalChamber officially took a neutral position on the measure. We spoke with a number of friends on the CalChamber Board who confirmed with us that a secret ballot was taken, and that the 60% threshold to oppose the tax increase was not achieved.

… Read More

CA State Assemblyman Ben Hueso and other liberal state legislators want to impose a social security requirement on any California city that establishes a “defined contribution” (a 401k-type) plan for new hires. Such a mandate will greatly reduce the money available for the employees’ retirement fund. In the city of San Diego, that would mean that instead of having 9.2% of pay of nonsafety employees put aside in an earmarked account and fully matched by the city/taxpayer, only 3% would go into the worker’s retirement investment fund. Ask young new hires which option they would prefer, and you’d find that probably 90% would rather have the money in their account rather in some D.C. Ponzi scheme that’s doomed to fail. The REAL goal of Huesoet alis to make the 401k-type plan less attractive for cities to adopt, encouraging the perpetuation of the insane defined benefit plans that are bankrupting one California city after another. Worker welfare or preference is NOT a consideration — never has been.

But to my point: There is a TERRIFIC… Read More

San Diego Politics & Media Mashup

Cross-posted at San Diego Rostra

Logan Jenkins blew Neil Morgan a big fat kiss in today’s U-T San Diegoand I enjoyed every word. Jenkins, a longtime columnist at the paper, starts by telling us the venerable Morgan, at 88, isn’t doing well. He then goes on to write an inspirational and moving tribute (In postwar San Diego, Neil Morgan stood taller)fitting for one of San Diego’s finest journalists.

We don’t hear as much about Morgan, a giant in his day, as we used to in San Diego. When I arrived in 2005, for a job at the Union-Tribune,Morgan’s presence was evident even though he had been fired a year earlier. Like most reporters at the paper I occasionally spent time in Morgan’s old office which was called, “The Reading Room.” It was lined with newspapers, books, magazines and comfortable leather chairs. No… Read More