No matter how high taxes are increased, it’s never enough for public officials and bureaucrats who live off taxpayer funded paychecks. According to these people, there is always one more dollar that is needed to make government “whole.” And being made “whole” in California means maintaining the highest paid government employees in all 50 states.

So it should come as no surprise that the tax-and-spend interests have already begun banging the drum and shaking the tambourine on behalf of extending Proposition 30, the “temporary” tax increase approved by voters in 2012. Proposition 30 imposed the highest income tax rate in America. It also bumped up the sales tax – a tax that hits lower income families particularly hard — to tops in the nation.

The sales tax component of Proposition 30 is set to expire at the end of 2016 and the higher income tax rate will sunset in 2018, so those who feed off taxes are starting to panic.

Please click here to read the entire column… Read More

These dubious “conversations on race” are becoming exasperating because they aren’t real conversations.

In Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle, former California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown weighed in on the Ferguson, Missouri conflict between police officer Darren Wilson and Michael Brown, a Ferguson street thug who was shot and killed following a convenience store robbery, and confrontation with Officer Wilson.

Willie Brown advocated for having a “conversation about a legal process that has district attorneys, who work with police every day,… Read More

A frequent and entirely valid point made by representatives of public sector unions is that their membership, government workers, need to be able to afford to live in the cities and communities they serve. The problem with that argument, however, is thatnobodycan afford to live in these cities and communities, especially in California.

There are a lot of reasons for California’s high cost of living, but the most crippling by far is the price of housing. Historically, and still today in markets where land development is relatively unconstrained, the median home price is about four times the median household income. In Northern California’s Santa Clara County, the median home price in October 2014 was $699,750,eight timesthe median household income of $88,215. Even people earning twice the median household income in Santa Clara County will have a very hard time ever paying off a home that costs this much. And if they lose their job, they lose their home. But is land scarce in California?

The answer to this question, despite rhetoric to the contrary, is almost indisputably no. As documented in an earlier post, “… Read More

On Monday, Assemblyman Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, Sen. Andy Vidak, R-Hanford, and more than 20 other Republican lawmakers announced the introduction of theAffordable Gas for California Families Act,legislation to exempt transportation fuels and natural gas from the California Air Resource Board’scap-and-trade program.

“We struck a nerve!” Patterson told me. Patterson said he was surprised at the media response, and how many in the media did not know the gas tax is starting Jan. 1 – next month.

Patterson is working on issues like… Read More

I’ve written before about how — for many Californians — the Golden State income tax is LOW. It’s not as low as the 7 states with zero state income tax, but for many it’s lower than MOST states. That’s because CA has the most “progressive” income tax in the nation. As my 2013 example showed, a family of four (two minor kids) making a modest $50,000 salary and taking only the standard deduction pays a whopping $73 CA state income tax. Most states levy a higher tax — often MUCH higher. If that family makes $40K, they actually pay LESS than zero state income tax — they get exemption credits back (like the federal EITC credit program). http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=966111884939957147#editor/target=post;postID=4138464434125132809 But I thought I’d take it a step further — comparing the CA progressive income tax with the FEDERAL progressive … Read More

“In politics, a big tent or catch-all party is a political party seeking to attract people with diverse viewpoints and thus appeal to more of the electorate. The big tent approach is opposed to single-issue litmus tests and ideological rigidity, conversely advocating multiple ideologies and views within a party.” – Wikipedia, “Big Tent“

Something is happening in California. An unstoppable movement for reform is building, attracting support from conscientious Californians regardless of their age, income, race, gender or political ideology. The metaphor of a “big tent” aptly describes the approach that reform leaders are finally embracing.

The fabric of this big tent is supported by two poles, one representing restoring quality education, the other representing restoring financial health to California’s public institutions. But the big tent metaphor breaks down somewhat if it describes a political party. Because most of California’s reform leaders no longer care who gets it done, or what political party takes credit. They just want to Californian children to… Read More

This morning I’ll address conservative legislators from across America at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) States and Nation Policy Summit in Washington DC. My topic: the 2014 election results and lessons for the future. Since it’s a national group, I’ll focus on the big picture. Yet, there are very important lessons to be learned from what happened in California. Let’s take a look.

Even in a strong “wave” election year like 2014, the wave itself is not the dominant force in driving outcomes.

For all of the “major” changes resulting from the wave, the strongest force on Election Day was that of incumbency. The vast majority of elected officials who sought re-election, of either party, won.

Looking nationally, even with a strong pro-Republican wave, the total number of Democrat governors defeated on Election Day was exactly…one: Democrat Pat Quinn of Illinois. Meanwhile, eight Democrat governors were re-elected. The remaining three governor seats Republicans picked up were races where no incumbent appeared on the ballot: Arkansas, Maryland and Massachusetts.

In California state elections,… Read More

“In this season ofThanksgiving, please don’t blame taxpayers if they are distracted by the injuries being perpetrated against them by our political class.” These words were the preface of this column at the beginning of the holiday season in 2008 and, sadly, little has changed. In fact, in many ways taxpayers are worse off now than they were then.

Six years ago, California’s tax burden was ranked 6th nationally.Todaywe trail only New York as the worst state for taxpayers. We now rank first in state sales tax, first in marginal income tax rates, first in gasoline tax and, even with Proposition 13, we rank in the top third in per capita property taxes. Because Proposition 13 makes it harder for California to overtake New York as our nation’s number one taxpayer hell, one can expect new efforts by Sacramento politicians to undermine its protections in the new legislative session.

Some of our state leaders like to chirp happily about California’s declining unemployment rate, but only three states are worse off and our 7.3 percent rate is much higher than the national rate of 5.8 percent. Still, all these figures are suspect because they… Read More