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

San Diego Politics & Media Mashup

Cross-posted at San Diego Rostra

I want to highlight a story in Thursday’s U-T San Diego: “Tax Group to Oppose San Diego School Bonds”It’s worthyour attention because it does a nice job of laying out a financial crisis similar to the one in Poway that has received national attention.

In short, the San Diego Unified School District is Poway By The Sea.

In Poway, a $105 voter-approved tax is going to cost $1 billion to pay back.In San Diego, Proposition S, which voters approved four years ago for $2.1 billion, is going to end up costing $10 to $14 billion with interest. That’s not a typo.

As the U-T story notes, “thedistrict has issued $530 million of the Proposition S bonds, which will… Read More

cross posted at CalWatchdog

A standard of the Republican Party platform is “no new taxes and less regulation.” But last week, at the very end of the two-year legislative session, the Legislature was faced with a bill containing a $2.3 billion car tax increase–and it had Republican votes.

Senate Bill 1455 by Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, would extend the extra fees on vehicle registrations, boat registrations, smog surcharges, and tire sales until 2023, in order to fund environmental state programs for production, distribution, and sale of alternative fuels, green vehicle technologies, and carbon emissions reduction plans.

Billed as an environmentally-friendly bill, SB 1455 was gutted-and-amended, the tax increase surprisingly materialized only last week, and the bill received only one policy hearing. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association warned, “the regulatory relief can be altered in the future by a majority vote, while this tax extension against vehicle owners will last another… Read More

Apparently the Board of Directors of the California Chamber of Commerce is meeting tomorrow at the posh Casa Del Mar Resort located right on the beach in Santa Monica. It’s a stunning property, I attended a wedding there once. Marble floors, vaulted ceilings, magnificent artwork and stunning beachfront views make this one of the finest resorts in the Golden State. I hopped online, just to see what it would cost if one wanted to stay there for one night — tomorrow night — to find that a standard room (with a “partial ocean view”) was going for a paltry $650 a night — before all of the taxes and resort fees are applied. Of course I’m sure that the CalChamber has gotten a great deal, as the Chairman of the CalChamber’s Board of Directors, Timothy Dubois, is the CEO of the Edward Thomas Collection, which owns this luxury property (among others).

According to a several emails that I have received, like this one, there are taxpayer and tea party groups from all around Southern California looking to come and picket and… Read More

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa probably thought today would be another easy day in the limelight in Charlotte with lots of great national exposure wielding the gavel at the Democratic National Convention.

Yet, as this video shows, the Mayor is flummoxed when he’s forced to call for a vote three separate times on whether to amend the Democrats’ national platform to add recognition of Jerusalem and God back into the party’s platform.

One would think that adding back in language concerning Jerusalem, which has been in the platform almost continually since 1972, and a reference to God, which has always been in the party’s platform, would be a no-brainer for the Democrats. Yet, it’s clear that most of the delegates from the party of “tolerance” and “diversity” would have none of it.

Watch and listen to the video: do you think two-thirds of the delegates voted for the amendment?

Republicans successfully pounded the Democrats for days over the party’s decision to remove multiple pro-Israel planks from their platform, together with any… Read More

We have all “rolled our eyes” at some of the statements over the years by John Burton, the former California Senate President Pro-Tempore who is currently the long-time-serving State Chairman of the California Democrat Party. The former San Francisco legislator is so prone to say inane and provocative things that I have had reporters tell me that it’s always entertaining to interview him because, well, you just never know if he is going to step in it again.

Of course by now, most people have heard about latest inappropriate comment made by Burton, for which the word “inappropriate” may be the understatement of the century. Burton is, of course, back in Charlotte, North Carolina where he is heading up the California delegation to the Democratic National Convention. He gave an interview to CBS radio’s Doug Sovern that was rude, disrespectful, and so incendiary that it made the Drudge Report, and dozens of news stories, and ultimately had even President Obama’s campaign distancing themselves from it. John Burton compared the Republicans, and Congressman Paul Ryan in particular, to infamous Nazi Joseph Goebbels, who served… Read More

The California Senate killed Assembly Speaker John Pérez’s AB 1500, which would have taxed out-of-state businesses. Ding dong, one more tax measure is dead… for now.

Perez worked like a mad man on Friday to try and nab enough Republican support for his “middle class scholarship” bill. But it wasn’t about the scholarship–it was just one more attempt to tax businesses for another type of California welfare program.

When Perez saw that he didn’t have the votes at the eleventh hour, he gave in.

Single Sales Factor

AB 1500 was a $1 billion tax increase on out-of-state businesses that create jobs, pay taxes on their property, sales and payroll receipts, and have thousands of employees in California.

As California Employers Against Higher Taxes correctly pointed out, “Proposition 24 sought to make this change in 2010, and California voters overwhelmingly rejected it by two million votes.”

Perez said that a tax loophole is costing California $1 billion per year. But it was not really a loophole: Until the 2011 tax year, corporations had been calculating income taxes using property, payroll and sales for more… Read More

Here’s a superb SAN DIEGO U-T op-ed on California HSR — especially the “outing” of the generally ignored “private” HSR boondoggle from Victorville to Las Vegas. The piece is authored by my friends at the REASON Foundation.

I had not previously seen this expose’ of the Vegas HSR scheme. Turns out it’s a gigantic taxpayer loan subsidy. More crony capitalism.

Subsidized HSR (there is no other kind) is a pet peeve of mine. One of hundreds, actually. But the madness surrounding HSR moves it easily into the top five.

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http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/aug/30/train-seeks-taxpayer-money-in-hopes-of-private/

By Wendell Cox & Adrian T. Moore

Thursday, August 30, 2012

San Diegans are being asked to pay for a couple of costly trains they likely won’t ride very often. State and federal taxpayers are picking up the bill for… Read More