Following last Tuesday’s hotly contested San Diego City Council election for District 7, interest was piqued over the weekend when Friday’s count of late absentee and provisional ballots showed front-runner and Republican Scott Sherman’s portion of the vote tally slipping from about 51 percent to 50.59 percent.

With about 88,000 votes left to count across the county, it’s unclear what proportion of those remaining ballots are in the City of San Diego or even the 7th District, for that matter.

Yet, what’s clear is that it takes at least 50 percent plus one vote to secure an outright victory in the primary. With Sherman’s margin at last count heading towards that magic 50 number – even if only for a day or two — twitter recently sprang to life with a few self-annointed mathematicians, including yours truly (although I’d say I’m more of a wannabe in the arithmetic department than an anointed one).

The second place finisher in the primary race, Democrat Mat Kostrinsky, has no chance of catching Sherman, since he’s trailing by more than 10 points. Yet, political watchers know if Sherman falls below 50 percent, a forced top-two finisher… Read More

California is broke. We all know that. But one component that deserves at least passing notice is the state unemployment fund.

Surprise! It’s broke. So broke that it’s borrowed federal funds to keep paying people not to work. Now CA has to charge CA employers a payroll surcharge to pay the money back.

It’s not a huge tax per employee, but it’s unlikely to go away for years. Moreover the size of the “fed loan” employer tax will surely grow annually.

It’s just one more reason for businesses to relocate elsewhere. The only good news on this front is that there are 22 states with similar problems (Texas ain’t one of ’em).

http://taxfoundation.org/article/trend-7-collapsing-unemployment-insurance-systems… Read More

The League of California Cities tracked voting outcomes of the California local tax and bond measures. The brief SACRAMENTO BEE story and a direct link to the League’s results are here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2012/06/nearly-two-thirds-of-local-tax-and-bond-measures-pass.html

I found one aspect of the story a pleasant suprise. It’s refreshing that only 22 of the 34 school bond measures passed — 64.7%.

Since the bar for passing school bonds was lowered from 2/3 to 55% voter approval, I seem to recall that over 90% of such “55% majority” bonds usually pass. This growing taxpayer reluctance to be the government’s ATM machine is a hopeful sign.

BTW, for some reason the League didn’t include in their compilation of results our local Mountain Empire School District bond. This measure barely failed to pass — even though there were NO opposition ballot arguments. I love rural voters, independent cusses that they are.… Read More

I know that no politician will say this, but failed candidate that I am — I publicly encourage people NOT to vote — if they don’t know what or whom they are voting for.

And just because one chooses to vote, it doesn’t follow that one has to cast a vote for EVERY issue or candidate on the ballot.

It’s especially amazing how some people worry about the judges races, asking someone — anyone — to simply tell ’em how to vote. I get queries even on the UNOPPOSED judges races.

If ya don’t know, there’s nothing wrong with not voting. And I think we’ll all be better off if voters made that “abstain” choice when appropriate.

Hmmm . . . maybe I should have imparted this cracker barrel wisdom BEFORE the election. My bad.… Read More

It’s June, the primary elections are over, there was a change in term limits, so the current crop of Legislators have relatively secure jobs for the next 12 years. The top two primary has come and gone, and it changed some things, but not very much. Now the Legislature has to get back to work. It now has a week to enact a budget. The challenge, there is a deficit.

This is not news. By all accounts, this year’s deficit is small in comparison to say, 2001-02, where there was a $48 billion deficit in the general fund on a $74 billion general fund budget. Or even 2003-04, where there was a $25 billion on a $78 billion general fund budget. The state got through both of those budgets without a tax increase. Heck, a $15 billion deficit on a $110 billion general fund is child’s play. Quite frankly, that kind of budget deficit is almost what we call “budget dust.” It certainly is just leftovers on the lavish table of our current ruling class.

But do not expect them to say that. Expect much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Expect legislative leadership to cry and moan about the difficulties of balancing the budget, and demand that the… Read More

Question: What do California Republican Congressmen Brian Bilbray, Jeff Denham and Dan Lungren all have in common?

If you answer this question saying that they are all in tough re-elections this year in districts that are very competitive, you would be correct. But unfortunately, they all have something else in common. All three of them (along with California Republican David Dreier who is retiring after being “drawn out” of a district) were the only Republicans from California to vote last night against a floor amendment to the Energy and Water Appropriations Bill to cut spending in the bill by 0.27% across the board. Yes, you read that correctly, while California GOPers Wally Herger, Tom McClintock, Devin Nunes, Kevin McCarthy, Elton Gallegly, Howard McKeon, Ed Royce, Jerry Lewis, Gary Miller, Ken Calvert, Mary Bono Mack, Dana Rohrabacher, John Campbell, Darrell Issa and Duncan Hunter all voted with a significant majority of House Republicans (140 Republicans voted for the amendment), Bilbray, Denham and Lungren voted with every Democrat from California to oppose the cuts (in total 95 House Republicans voted no). [See the roll call vote … Read More

This morning Governor Jerry Brown and his allies of inconvenience the, state’s massive public employee unions, must be looking at the results of the June election with much dismay. Governor Brown will be wincing at the looking-most-probable defeat of Proposition 29, the major tax increase on tobacco products. The union bosses will be keenly dismayed that voters in two of the state’s largest cities, San Jose and San Diego, passed ballot measures that curtail many of the lavish retirement benefits of the employees in those cities.

If Governor Brown is now keeping a tally, the magic number is eight. The last eight times that California voters have had to decide at the ballot box whether to raise taxes (of any sort), they have decided against it. For liberals like Brown who see that the path to balancing the state’s budget should come by reaching further into the pockets of the very wealth creators on whom we need to depend for private-sector wealth creation in this state, the defeat of Prop. 29 comes as a heavy blow. After all, despite Brown’s prior stated concerns about California’s over-dependence on personal income taxes from a… Read More

Too Big to Fail: There is a lot of talk these days about the $3 billion loss at JP Morgan Chase. There is a lot of hand-wringing, concern, and investigation into what happened. We are asked about it on Capitol Hill, we have an opinion, and we all care about it. And, that is the problem. We shouldn’t have to care.

The only reason we are all in a tizzy over this is because JP Morgan is too big to fail. If Apple announced it lost $3 billion tomorrow, the shareholders, Wall Street and some trial lawyers would care, but it wouldn’t be any of Washington’s concern. That’s the way it should work with private companies. They take risks to make money. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.

Dodd-Frank did not fix this problem for the banks. Arguably, a provision in Dodd-Frank was part of the cause of the JP Morgan loss. Dodd-Frank requires disclosure of trading that was previously private. Hedge funds saw JP Morgan taking big positions (which just a few years ago would not have been made public) and decided to play the other side of the trade. The hedge funds won and JP Morgan lost. However, in this case, we all lost. That’s why… Read More