Governor Jerry Brown’s new budget proposes an additional $10 billion for K-14 education, but he also wants public school districts to increase and improve services for low-income students, foster youth, and other at-risk children. While commendable, there is bill in the State Assembly that seeks to address the needs of some of these same students in a much different and more innovative way.

AB 943, the Education Investment Incentives Act authored by Assembly Member Brian Nestande (R-Palm Desert), would increase educational opportunities for at-risk children by giving parents greater school choice and by improving the quality of education in low-income areas. Under the bill, corporations would be allowed to claim a tax credit for charitable contributions to education scholarship organizations (ESOs) that fund scholarships for school children. The scholarships would provide tuition or fee assistance for children with special needs and for foster youth to attend private schools that address their specific learning situations. These scholarships could also be used to cover transportation costs to attend a qualified public, charter or private school.

Arizona enacted… Read More

Shortly after Jerry Brown was first elected governor, nearly 40 years ago, he famously said, “This is an era of limits and we all had better get used to it.”

In keeping with this theme, it is now taxpayers who look at Governor Brown’s proposed 2014-15 budget with reduced expectations. In fairness, there are aspects of the budget plan that taxpayers can endorse. The budget reflects at least some measure of fiscal restraint and austerity. Brown’s desire for no new taxes,… Read More

I would characterize my relationship with longtime newspaper columnist and now Sacramento Bee Editorial Page Editor Dan Morain as a good one. I appreciate him for his willingness to take on anyone or anything if he smells a rat. He is also an exceptional writer. I think he appreciates me for my candor and my consistency. We disagree mightily on a number of policy areas — but that is to be expected since he part of the media’s liberal elite (Dan LOVES it when I generalize about him – not). Yesterday he had a column in the Bee entitled, Missteps on candidate questionnaires can cost elections, in which Dan offers up a shellacking of special interest groups, especially public employee unions, for their lengthy and specific candidate questionnaires, and takes a big issue with the fact that they are all filled out in secret — the public has no idea about what commitments or promises have been made by the people before them on the ballot. He does note an exception, which is the Americans for Tax Reform No Tax Pledge. In the second paragraph of his column… Read More

The prevailing challenge facing humanity when confronted with resource constraints is not that we are running out of resources, but how we will adapt and create new and better solutions to meet the needs that currently are being met by what are arguably scarce or finite resources. If one accepts this premise, that we are not threatened by diminishing resources, but rather by the possibility that we won’t successfully adapt and innovate to create new resources, a completely different perspective on resource scarcity and resource policies may emerge.

Across every fundamental area of human needs, history demonstrates that as technology and freedom is advanced, new solutions evolve to meet them. Despite tragic setbacks of war or famine that provide examples to contradict this optimistic claim, overall the lifestyle of the average human being has inexorably improved across the centuries. While it is easy to examine specific consumption patterns today and suggest we now face a tipping point wherein shortages of key resources will overwhelm us, if one examines key resources one at a time, there is a strong argument that such a catastrophe, if it does occur, will be the result… Read More

Here’s a new link to my latest and greatest “CA vs. the Other States” fact sheet. This just-updated version is MUCH better formatted and organized than my clunky effort — posted up by the California Public Policy Center. As many of you know, it’s a dreary compendium of facts concerning California’s tax, spending, regulatory and litigation climate.

I’m told that yesterday on the CPPC Facebook post on this got 3,000 reads in two hours.

http://californiapublicpolicycenter.org/unaffordable-california-january-2014-update/

Share this with friends. And enemies!… Read More

This week, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was presented with an unexpected opportunity to show people how he responds to a crisis. News that some of his top aides were involved with creating traffic problems in Ft. Lee in retaliation for its mayor not endorsing the governor’s re-election bid contained all the ingredients for a serious scandal for a national figure.

While even the worst details of the “bridgegate” scandal don’t come anywhere close to Watergate, Iran-Contra, or Whitewater, history shows that how a leader responds to a crisis can have a bigger impact than the crisis itself. Recall that in Watergate, it wasn’t the June 17, 1972 break-in… Read More

A budget that demonstrates fiscal restraint is essential for California to stay on track. Yet the Governor’s high speed rail funding plan shows his funding priorities are off track.

Our increased revenues are primarily the result of temporary tax increases that will soon expire. A successful, comprehensive plan will prepare for the ending of the increases Californians imposed on themselves to get out of the fiscal hole of overspending and recession.

California cannot solve its long-term budget problems by relying on temporary solutions that undermine job creation and economic growth.

It is also vital to set aside reserves for future shortfalls, or the Legislature may push to make temporary tax increases permanent. A strong rainy day fund is an important part of ensuring our state’s fiscal stability.

Ultimately, California’s budget challenges will only be truly solved when a strong and healthy private sector is able to create jobs and opportunity for more Californians.… Read More

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said: “Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.”

I agree. I don’t mind paying taxes, or government spending on defense, education, infrastructure, public safety, or to give a helping hand to those in need.

What I mind is OVERPAYING taxes because government recklessly overspends, and overspends, and overspends.

I mind paying HIGHER taxes because government wastespublic money in an oftentimes spectacularly stupid manner.

I mind well-paid bureaucrats allowing that waste to continue because fixing the problem might be hard.

I mind my taxes being diverted away from vital services, programs and infrastructure to subsidize the extremely lazy, the extremely wealthy and the politically connected.

I mind paying year-after-year-after-year to subsidize those with a sense of entitlement so deep that they make no effort to better the lives of their own children.

I mind paying over 1/3 of what I earn while government racks up an exploding debt that will hobble my children – and their children – and limit their future… Read More