Dateline Chicago – Mayor warns property taxes could be going up 150%.

Suppose the mayor of your city announced a property tax hike of 150% or, stated another way, two and half times your current tax. A homeowner accustomed to paying $2,000, would see their next bill increase to $5,000, while a bill of $4,000 would jump to $10,000. Coincidentally, these amounts roughly approximate the average property tax rate in California just prior to Proposition 13’s passage in 1978 – a tax burden so high many homeowners were forced out of their homes.

An increase of this magnitude may sound farfetched, but not to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who is seriously warning that in order to pay the mounting bill for government employee pensions — a bill that will triple in 2015 when a balloon payment comes due — property taxes could be forced to go up 150%. Needless to say, Chicago… Read More

Today, the Marin County Republican Party issued apress release announcing their support for same-sex marriage. The press releasestates that this vote was taken as part of the adoption of a broad three-year strategic plan to revitalize the Republican Party in Marin County.

If revitalizing the Marin GOP is their goal, formally adopting a pro-same-sex marriage position is foolish for several reasons. First, such a position directly conflicts with the official California Republican Party Platform. The CRP Platform states as part of the section on the family, “we support the two-parent family as the best environment for raising children, and therefore believe it is important to define marriage as being between one man and one woman.” What this means is that if a rank-and-file Republican voter in Marin calls the state party headquarters inquiring about where the GOP stands on marriage, he will get one answer, but if he calls the county party headquarters, he will get another… Read More

The Post-Obama age is here, but the state and national GOP have not noticed

The NSA scandal ushered in the Post-Obama age. This is the age in which the critical mass that elected Obama twice has evaporated. It’s been a long time coming. President Obama made it clear over time that he was not really an agent of change, but had in fact used his rhetorical skills and the historical accident of his race, as well as the foil of the Bush years, to project an intense charisma that had no relation to actual struggle in the policy arena. The liberal mind was entranced and mesmerized, only to see Obama shrink from all the big battles: climate change, the environment, the economy, guncontrol, foreign policy, the war on drugs- you name it. Obama ducks all skirmishes, and all real accomplishment. Relying on rousing rhetoric and skillful manipulation of a type available to incumbent presidents, he has been able to minimize the attrition of his image, so that his core support could almost ignore the loss. That ended, however, when Edward Snowdon released the documents that made plain the total… Read More

I have written this article several times over the last year, but I have never been satisfied with the final product. However, with the response to the George Zimmerman verdict in the Trayvon Martin killing, I came to the conclusion that it was more important to me to communicate the idea than worry about the style in which it was communicated. What happened to Trayvon Martin was a tragedy. What happened to George Zimmerman compounded that tragedy. What happened to Trayvon Martin was the result of the state of race relations in the country. What happened to George Zimmerman was the result of politicians and race baiters who profit from the state of race relations in this country. For 250 years, this country has argued about race, and there has always been people who profit from keeping the hatred between the races alive.

In the 18th and 19th century, slave traders and slave owners made money from that hatred. Politicians obtained power from perpetuating that hatred by reinforcing the slave system. When slavery ended with the national tragedy of the Civil War, Northerners perpetuated the hatred with the tragedy of Southern reconstruction. With the end of reconstruction,… Read More

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Imagine yourself entering a shopping mall: you walk into a store, select an item that you like and head to the counter. It doesn’t matter whether you came to the store from across the street or from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, the cashier simply charges you for your purchase and includes the local sales tax rate.

If the cashier were instead required to ask for each customer’s home address and charge sales tax at that rate, he could be faced with more than 9,500 different sales tax jurisdictions in 45 states, plus Washington, D.C. The storeowner would be forced to comply with each state’s complex sales tax rules, wasting precious time and money that could be better spent running her business.

If such a system were proposed, brick-and-mortar retailers would be outraged. No politicians could support such a plan because the local businesses that they rely on for support would turn against them in a flash. Yet that’s exactly what the federal government has in store for Internet retailers, if the U.S. House of Representatives follows the Senate in passing the “Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013.”

The act – which is inherently unfair – claims to… Read More

As the Grateful Dead would say: “What a long strange trip it has been.” Just when I think it can’t get any stranger, I’m wrong…again and again and again.

It was recently announced San Diego Sheriff Bill Gore will be setting up a “hotline” for anyone that wants to make a complaint of sexual harassment against Filner. This is unprecedented. But it does make a little sense. It wouldn’t be appropriate for it to be under the San Diego Police Chief since he reports directly to the mayor. And the Sheriff does have some of the best investigators around. Filner’s response to this… Read More

So today Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) proposed an amendment to the big Defense Omnibus spending bill that would basically preclude the NSA from grabbing up the cell phone data of American citizens without some actual justification.

The amendment failed 205-217.

As we are busy telling the American people that the Republican Party is about liberty, freedom and a limited role for the federal government, only 94 Republicans vote for this common-sense amendment and 134 Republicans vote against it. For those curious about the Dems, they voted 111 in favor, and 83 against.

Here is the roll call vote so you can see how your Member of Congress voted.

House Leadership in BOTH parties opposed this amendment. If only seven more Republicans had voted for the amendment it would have passed. Again we manage to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.

In case you are curious about California GOP members — of the 15 Republicans, four voted yes – La Malfa, McClintock, Miller, and Rohrabacher. Ten voted no Calvert,… Read More

Is “Open Government” Such a Hard Concept to Grasp?

There was an article online yesterday about the woeful state of public access to California’s database of lobbyists and their influence in state government. It was sad but not surprising. The Fresno Bee calls the system the “secrecy lobby,” and that pretty much sums things up.

By law, the people of California have the right to know who contributes to political campaigns, how much money lobbyists give to politicians, and who gives gifts to government officials. There’s a reason for the limits on those contributions and gifts, and we the people deserve to judge for… Read More