NOTE:This is an updated, expanded article — using December, 2018 numbers.

A common misconception is that Prop 13 protects only the “old people” — that the new home buyers gain little benefit from Prop 13. It’s an educational (and scary) exercise to calculate what California homeowners’ property taxes would be if Prop 13 had NOT passed in 1978 — and no subsequent reforms in property taxes occurred (a fair assumption, given Democrat dominance of the state legislature since 1970).

Most people have forgotten the following crucial aspect of the old CA property taxes: In 1977, the average property tax rate in California was 2.67 percent.Proposition 13 fixed the rate at 1 percent of the purchase price[plus a 2% annual increase, or the COL, if it’s less].

On top of the 1% base property tax rate are whatever additional taxes are approved to cover indebtedness, such as bonds — plus annual assessments for special districts. Although the additional taxes rate varies around the state, it generally runs at about two-tenths of 1 percent, setting the overall Proposition 13 rate… Read More

California’s health care system is struggling with an acute shortage of nurses, so industry professionals were puzzled by the Jan. 10 vote of a little-known state committee to limit enrollments at one of the state’s most successful nursing schools.

The Board’s Education and Licensing Committee voted 2-1 to recommend that the Board of Registered Nursing cap enrollments at West Coast University. The board is expected to consider that recommendation during its next meeting, Feb. 13-14 in Redondo Beach.

The unusual action left health policy experts puzzled.

Attendees at the Jan. 10 meeting said the committee majority offered no public explanation for the vote. And while the meeting agenda listed seven members of the Education and Licensing Committee, the West Coast University recommendation passed without a quorum.

Neither Donna Gerber, vice president of the committee, nor member Michael Jackson responded to requests for comment on the meeting. The meeting was not recorded and received no media coverage. Minutes have not yet been posted.

But attendees say they were surprised and… Read More

For decades — since about 1992 — there’s been an annual net outflow of people from California to other states. As a result, it’s always cost much more to rent a U-Haul from a CA city to some other state than to rent that same U-Haul on the reverse trip. Over the years, I’ve found that driving a U-Haul out of the Golden State can cost 2 to 4 times more than driving that truck back into CA.

But now in the San Francisco region, that ratio has exploded to a 19 to 1 difference. Here’s the latest (2/2019) U-Haul figures. Kudos to Economics Professor Mark Perry for providing this information on his blog.

http://www.aei.org/publication/thursday-afternoon-links-31/?

… Read More

SUMMARY:

Underestimated life expectancy is yet another hidden cost of the nation’s guaranteed public employee pension plans. For decades these plans have systematically used outdated mortality tables — tables that assumed that retirees would die years earlier than is actually occurring. Of course, this “miscalculation” results in bigger pension payouts and “unexpected” increases in the unfunded pension obligation.

If an honest public pension actuary (government employee or “independent” auditor) tried to be more realistic with their mortality projections, they could count on being replaced in short order. The entire public pension actuary role as been a systematic fraud for generations, and only now are we facing the inevitable consequences.… Read More

Mass transit — especially trains — are LOVED by politicians. There are several special interest groups that support passenger trains (and therefore they support allied politicians) — while there’s no organized opposition. Mass transit makes for GREAT photo ops for the politicos — and the train (or even bus) is always heavily used the day a new line is opened.

The only niggling problem is that the more we spend on mass transit, the fewer people use the service! This decline has been occurring for many years, but this pronounced drop does nothing to deter politicians. They gleefully spending billions of dollars annually on 19th century technology that commuters don’t want to use. The same is true for the badly run bus systems, but at least those operations cost only a tiny fraction of the cute commuter trains — both to build and to operate.

The full article is below, but here’s a salient excerpt:

Nationwide… Read More

Every year, towards the end of January, most Americans gradually start to get involved in their annual rite of Spring — beginning to prepare their IRS income tax returns. For some it’s relatively easy. For others, it’s a laborious process that can often require filing a 15 April tax extension while all the needed documentation and compilations arecollected.

Personally I haven’t filed my 1040 income tax package “on time” in over 20 years. Normally I file in July or August.

I have a suggestion for you this year: Once you have a fair idea of approximately what your tax and deduction numbers are, take your estimated figures and plug them into theTax Foundation tax calculator. Unlike most such guesstimating calculators, this one takes your figures and calculates your taxestwoways:

It shows you how much more or less you’ll be paying under the new tax law. Try some “what if” scenarios to see… Read More

BOTTOM LINE:California’s relatively low murder rate is NOT the result of our gun control laws. It’s primarily due to the fact that our state has a small black population and a large Asian population.

When CA progressives tout our low gun death rate compared to other states, they like to attribute our low murder rate to our state’s stringent gun control laws. But they are ignoring the single biggest correlation with our nation’s murder rate — the percent of blacks in a state. In addition, consider the INVERSE correlation — the percent of Asians in a state.

On average, blacks commit murders at a rate about four times higher than their percent of the population. The overwhelming number of these deaths are with guns, and the overwhelming number of these gun deaths are committed with illegally owned firearms.

In the U.S, blacks constitute 12.6% of the population.

https://statisticalatlas.com/United-States/Race-and-Ethnicity

In CA, blacks constitute 5.9% of the… Read More

To my fellow Republicans – happy 2019!

In the wake of November’s disastrous California election results, we clearly need to up our game if we are going to rebuild from here. Here are my resolutions for our leaders:

May our elected officials and candidates resolve to focus less on policy detail and more on the values behind – and the beneficiaries of – their policies. Too many CA voters believe that the GOP does not share their values or care about them. This is in part because Democrats, universities and the media feed them propaganda, but also in part because our standard bearers often don’t explain our values or talk about who will benefit. We can do better!

May our candidates in “Top Two” races resolve to be team players. Until we get rid of the Top Two voting system, the GOP simply cannot afford delusional, selfish behavior by our candidates.

In Assembly District 76 we lost a longtime Republican seat in 2018 because the June primary ballot had two Democrats and six Republicans. The two Democrats made the top two, assuring a Democratic victory in November. Republican Phil Graham came… Read More