by Richard Rider, Chairman, San Diego Tax Fighters

Version 1.821 Revised: 17 August, 2012

Updated version online at:http://open.salon.com/blog/Richard_Rider

Phone: 858-530-3027

Facebook blog page:www.Facebook.com/Richard.Rider

Here’s a depressing but documented comparison of California taxes and economic climate with the rest of the states.The news is breaking bad, and getting worse (twice… Read More

Katy Grimes: The plastic bag activists are at it again, and they are nothing, if not persistent. With the eleventh bill regulating plastic bags in less than 10 years, grocery stores don’t have a chance in California.

Passed today by the Assembly, SB 1219, the latest plastic bag regulation bill, by Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, will require grocery stores to implement, manage, and report on the “At-Store Recycling Program” to the Cal Recycle state agency.

Besides imposing more rules and regulations on privately-owned grocery stores, SB 1219 which appears to be aimed at large grocers like WalMart, Target and other large supermarket chains, will require that stores “place recycling bins in a readily accessible location for consumers, assure the collected bags are recycled, and provide reusable bags. Additionally, stores track the collection, transport, and recycling of plastic carryout bags and regulated manufacturers provide educational materials to assist in recycling (see requirements).”

This could be the work of a… Read More

All of the talk in the Capitol is that a deal is afoot. That the cosmic forces of the world are coming into alignment. Translation — the taxpayers of California had better watch their pocketbooks!

It is important that you read Assemblywoman Diane Harkey’s column on the FlashReport today.

A quick reminder — Democrats do not need Republicans to cut any deals — with one big exception. Still (barely) out of reach of the ever-greedy hands of the majority party is the two-thirds vote protection in the State Constitution to raise taxes. So let’s be very clear — any deal that Republicans strike with Democrats by definition includes a tax increase.

The problem is that Republicans can (and do) cut deals in good faith, and then Democrats reneg on them. I wrote an entire column on Monday which went into great detail on many of the handshake deals that were subsequently undone. And in almost every case, to get… Read More

Mental health professionals call it “the Stockholm syndrome” where hostages feel empathy and have positive feelings for the captors, feelings which have been described as “irrational” in light of the danger they face. It is a form of “traumatic bonding” like battered wife’s syndrome, or even the Sadist/Masochist relationship. Welcome to Sacramento, where the entire business community (and a couple of Republicans) is now suffering from Stockholm syndrome.

I wrote last week about how untrustworthy the business community can be in politics, and why Republicans cannot be “pro-business” but must be pro-free enterprise. Republicans have married themselves (in politics) to the business community. Democrats have married themselves to unions of all types. Unions are the Democrat’s loyal spouse, but the business community is the political equivalent of an unfaithful wife. They will sleep with anyone if they think they will get something out of it.

The so-called Lumber tax bill is the best example of just how untrustworthy the business community is. The support list for that bill reads like a who’s who… Read More

San Diego Politics & Media Mashup

If you believe Governor Jerry Brown, all of us are going to suffer if we don’t agree to tax ourselves more this November.

It’s a tired sales pitch we hear too often from California lawmakers, but that didn’t stop Brown from trying to play on our fears when he visited San Diego on Monday.

The first paragraph in the U-T San Diego’s story on Brown’s press conference framed the governor’s hyperbole this way:

Jerry Brown on Monday in San Diego peddled his tax measure to raise $6 billion annually for education and other state services, promising “real suffering by you and really our whole future” if the proposal fails in November.

There is a lot I admire about the governor, but he is on the wrong side of this issue and his messaging isn’t exactly the stuff of legend.

Maybeno one told him San Diegans… Read More

Last week I wrote a tough column extremely critical of the votes cast by Republican Assemblyman Brian Nestande and Republican-turned-Independent Nathan Fletcher for Assembly Bill 1500, legislation by Speaker John Perez that would arbitrarily shift about a billion dollars from the private sector into the coffers of California state government by hitting with a big tax increase multi-state companies that that sell services and products to Californians, but don’t have a lot of real estate assets or employees in the state. Californians depend on reliable and predictable availability of the services and goods which they consume in order to keep costs low and quality high. It is pretty a pretty established economic reality that when you increase the costs of goods and services, you create a scarcity and thus drive up the costs. Simply put, a billion dollar (plus) tax increase ultimately hurts the California consumer.

To the extent that the liberals running California state government continue to make it more expensive and difficult… Read More

Today there is a very important article for you to read in the FlashReport by longtime FR contributor Bruce Bialosky. Bruce, a certified public accountant, pens a lot of sobering material bringing into question the sanity of many policies enacted by politicians at both the state and national levels. In his column today, Bruce shines a bright spotlight on a particularly egregious piece of bad legislation that has almost finished winding its way to the Governor’s desk — only a State Senate floor vote remains for Assembly Bill 2451. AB 2451 represents a giveaway to public safety unions that reminds me of SB 400 back in 1999 which allowed for the outrageous practice of granting retroactive pension increases.

Bruce goes into some detail on AB 2451, and this blog post should be read after you read his column. But the gist of the legislation is that current law says that if a public safety worker dies within a five year period of retiring, except in some minor exceptions, their survivors can file a workers’ compensation claim, if there is either a nexus to the… Read More

There was an article in the Los Angeles Times yesterday about how the city is losing the core of its television production to other states. The article talks about how just two of the twenty-plus fall and midseason shows shows will be shot in L.A. County. It says that, “Fewer than 10% of new network dramas this season are based in Los Angeles, down from 50% in 2010 and nearly 80% in 2005.”

Most of the article is really focused on anecdotal, tragic stories of people in the television production business who are being very hard-hit by this circumstance. It is mentioned that other states are luring away the business.

First of all, I want to make it clear that I have an enormous amount of sympathy for those being hard hit economically. These are real people, with families, who are in dire straights.

That said, I will make the political observation that in some respects “Hollywood” is reaping what it has sewn. Whether you look “in front” of the… Read More