The California State Lottery Commission approved a $185 million design contract for a new building. $185 million. The Legislature has already approved going asking voters to chnage management of the Lottery.

Why do we need this huge new building now. The cost per office is aorund a half a million pieces. I just put in Legislation to stop the contract and divert the money to education.

The money saved will be diverted to help our public schools.

During this budget crisis, the last thing we should be doing is wasting money and time on a building we don’t need.

How can we justify this spending, while schools are sending layoff notices to our teachers? Children in classrooms need the money more than the lottery bureaucrats need a new building.

Taxpayers should feel insulted when they pick up the newspaper in the morning and read stories about stuff like this.

It’s unconscionable and this bill will stop it.… Read More

For 2008, former eBay CEO and ersatz Governor Meg Whitman made $634,400 in political contributions reportable to the Fair Political Practices Commission, according to the form she will file today (h/t to her team for sending us a copy).

Who were the recipients of her generosity?

Last week Americans United for Life (AUL) released its sixth annual ranking of the most pro-life states in America. Unsurprisingly, California ranked dead last. This ranking is well deserved considering liberal California legislators are notorious for their blind allegiance to the abortion lobby.

A perfect example of this devotion was last session’s SB 850, Senator Abel Maldonado’s bill to give still birth certificates to mothers with still-born children. I recall during a committee hearing on the bill the gut-wrenching testimony of several mothers who described the excitement about their pregnancies, the anticipation of their sons or daughters’ birth and then the devastation at what should have been a joyful moment. No sooner had the mothers finished their testimony than Planned Parenthood, NOW and ACLU lobbyists marched forward to protest the bill’s attack on Roe v. Wade. (It would be unconstitutional to acknowledge the child was alive before it left… Read More

Over on the Capitol Alert blog of the Sacramento Bee, Shane Goldmacher has penned a piece on a "place holder" resolution that I have submitted to the State GOP Convention for its potential consideration in a few weeks. Goldmacher’s piece doesn’t mention that there is another companion resolution that praises our GOP legislators for holding the line on taxes, to go along with mine that is a framework for censuring GOPers in the Capitol that vote to impose higher taxes in Californians in response to our state’s overspending crisis.

The resolution was submitted yesterday because the State GOP rules require that resolutions be submitted three weeks prior to the convention to be considered timely.

I really have no reason to believe that legislative Republicans plan on being enablers for higher taxes here in California. If, as some have said, there are Republicans who think there is a better "deal" for taxpayers in the form of some sort of spending cap and other concessions from the left, I guess if that ever develops and is voting for by… Read More

I have added up the reported unpaid taxes by various Obama Cabinet nominees and note that without penalties and interest they amount to over $210,000. With penalties and interest, I think Obama’s cabinet owes or owed the Treasury about $300,000. We haven’t figured in what Bill Richardson owes in addition, as his own pay-to-play scandal works itself out in New Mexico.

What were these people, these Ivy League guys in Obama’s cabinet, thinking?

I recall in 1989 when Senate Democrats stopped cold Bush Senior’s Republican-nominee Senator John Tower from being Secretary of Defense, just because they could. Their biggest argument was that he liked to take a drink every few days of what Tower himself termed "beverage alcohol." Not a very apt description, but still, it was not that big a deal. He just liked to drink. (He also liked normal female companionship.) So does everybody else in Washington. And Republican Tower paid his taxes.

Bush Senior nominee Clarence Thomas was almost defeated from his nomination to the Supreme Court because of an alleged statement he made to… Read More

(If this post seems familiar, we’ve used the "Disneyland" analogy below before, as this isn’t the first time that the liberals in the media have "lept" onto a briefly worded survey to assert informed public opinion.)

As FR contributor and public opinion pollster Adam Probolsky likes to say, a poll is only as good as what you ask, and to whom you ask it. So I was quite amused to see so much enthusiasm erupt from the liberal media and left-wing Democrats when the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) released their latest survey response — where PPIC declares that the public supports (hold onto your chair) HIGHER TAXES.

If you go to Page 27 of the full report of the PPIC survey, you can see the actual questions asked to those surveyed. What is most instructive if you read it is… Read More

Per the San Diego Reader, 14 of San Diego County’s 18 cities are attempting to manage upside down budgets, with nine having shortfalls in the millions.

Since that Jan. 21 story, the Chula Vista City Council has voted 4-1 to conduct a May mail ballot for a one percent sales tax increase. John McCann was the lone nay vote. The special election will cost the region’s second largest city $250,000.

Chula Vista joinsthreeother citieswith recent local sales taxes measures, El Cajon, La Mesa and National City, all of them passing.

Don’t expect any of this to change soon. Underlying the fiscal problems is a dysfunctional system in which cities must rely mostly on sales tax revenue while the bulk of the locally-generated property taxes flow into state coffers. Anytime the economy turns sour and sales taxes are down as a result, municipalities suffer, while Californiagovernment continues to have its own blind-to-reality problems, often resulting in further State actions to transfer local monies to cover its fiscal ineptitude.

Theother… Read More

(If this post seems familiar, we’ve used the "Disneyland" analogy below before, as this isn’t the first time that the liberals in the media have "lept" onto a briefly worded survey to assert informed public opinion.) As FR contributor and public opinion pollster Adam Probolsky likes to say, a poll is only as good as what you ask, and to whom you ask it. So I was quite amused to see so much enthusiasm erupt from the liberal media and left-wing Democrats when the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) released their latest survey response — where PPIC declares that the public supports (hold onto your chair) HIGHER TAXES.

If you go to Page 27 of the full report of the PPIC… Read More