Here’s a LIBERAL biased summary of CA vs. the other states on taxes, from the California Budget Project – one of many “nonpartisan” front groups the Democrats set up, trying to con us into raising our taxes.

What is interesting is that even this slick left wing “think tank” can’t hide the fact that we Californians pay taxes well above the national average – even property taxes. It’s always nice to use THEIR stats for OUR side. It’s also fun to add a few cogent clarifications where necessary – I could have added MANY more! See below.

http://www.budgetchallenge.org/pages/ca_vs_other_states

BUDGET BASICS California vs. Other States

How does California’s budget compare to other states? California represents the ninth-largest economy in the world [RIDER NOTE: Down from fifth largest a decade earlier] and its 38 million residents give it the largest population in the United States. California is not alone in its fiscal challenges.

It was reported that for the 2012 fiscal… Read More

Episode VII – Education: In 1979, President Jimmy Carter created the Federal Department of Education. He did it to make the quality of education in this country better. This year, that department will have an administrative budget of $69 billion. That does not include the roughly $19 billion in federal dollars we will spend on education entitlements like Pell Grants and student loans.

The question is simple: Is American education better now than it was in 1979? Has spending trillions of federal dollars over the last 33 years led to America’s students consistently receiving a superior level of education?

The answer is painfully obvious. NO! So, why are we still trying to do what has failed for over 30 years expecting to achieve positive results?!

Sorry. I’ll calm down now. I have included education in this “Fix It” series on how to jump start two new decades of American hegemony, growth and prosperity because, like infrastructure, a strong education system is a prerequisite to growth and prosperity. So then, what is the state of education in America? In order to analyze our system, we have to break education into two… Read More

A “Memorable” Weekend for Some Candidates

byBarry Jantz

While readying its public system in advance of primary election night, the San Diego County Registrar of Voters released test election “results” on its website this past weekend for every race in San Diego County, although in actuality no such real data can be released until the polls close at 8:00 p.m. on June 5.

The Registar’s office confirmed this is standard procedure prior to each election. The resulting test report clearly indicates the information as being updated 07-04-76, a mock reference to the famous 1776 date.

However, one candidate, David Secor, reacted to the bogus results by churning out a press release, believing he was leading incumbent Duncan Hunter for Congress in “early voting” results. In turn,East County Magazinepublished the release andsubsequently corrected the information.

Another candidate, Rudy Reyes, running against incumbent Dianne Jacob for County Supervisor, said he was on the Registrar of Voters website Friday… Read More

Please note that these are my remarks as I prepared them for a recent speech.

I understand why people ask me to speak at events like this. I’m an elected official in Woodland that some people identify with the time I spent in Iraq with the Marine Corps.

Yet, these sorts of things are the hardest things that I do as an elected official.

My worst days as Mayor involved the deaths of SSGT Jimmy Arroyave and Highway Patrol Officer Andy Stevens. Giving condolences to family members is not something I am good at…. But all you can do is try.

I was at a Veterans event in Davis when Vince asked me to speak today. Clearly Vince has a memory problem. Two years ago when I was the Veteran’s Day speaker at the Court House I completely lost my composure as I spoke in front of the family of PFC Casillas.

PFC Casillas was a soldier from Arbuckle that was killed in Afghanistan. A hero. Watching his family mourn his loss was not the sort of thing I would wish on anyone. It got me. It got all of those around them.

These things are hard for me. Very hard. I know they are hard for many… Read More

While I’m not adding this electricity cost analysis to my dreary “Breaking Bad: CA vs. the Other States” fact sheet (this analysis is a hard item to condense into one sentence), it’s a situation my California readers need to understand. Our state’s residential electricity rates often are outrageous compared to the rest of the nation. And under AB32, these rates are predicted to go up as much as 30% or more — while the other states didn’t chose to commit such “cap and trade” economic suicide.

BTW, our state’s industrial electricity rates are even higher compared to other states — 59.8% higher than the national average as of December, 2011.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html . But this article will dwell on the cost of electricity for our homes.

For comparison purposes, I’m ranking homes with an average monthly usage of 1,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) — a common utility industry benchmark. I suspect that this usage level may be above average for a California home (we… Read More

It’s that time. Make your picks. Pick your seats. Will your picks be seated?

The rules:

Read the questions closely. No tricks, just read the durn questions. Send guesses to info@sdrostra.com ONLY. The Rostra peeps are assisting on this, so don’t send to my email. Do NOT post your answers here (you know who you are). Deadline to submit guesses: Election Day — Tuesday, June 5, 2012 — High Noon. No exceptions. That’s Pacific Time. If you’re reading this onFlashReportand don’t follow San Diego politics, don’t complain. Just DON’T ANSWER. See the title of a Milton Friedman book. I can’t ask about every race. Some of them don’t get interesting until the General. Deal. In the case of any close races (see Juan Vargas-Mary Salas 2010), the contest winner may not be determined until the chad are counted, the cows make it home, and/or any litigation follows its course. Yes, the plural of chad is chad.

The Questions:

1.San Diego City Council District 5 — NAME the winner. This is a… Read More

I mentioned in Episode V that infrastructure is important to secure and grow manufacturing. In fact, it is essential. You must be able to transmit energy, move goods and services, and have access to water and internet and all kinds of things in order to have an efficient manufacturing process. Regardless of what you are producing, infrastructure is key. And, at the risk of adding to the overusage of this trite phrase, our infrastructure is crumbling. One needs only to drive one’s car in Washington, DC or Los Angeles, California (as I do frequently) to feel that infrastructure crumbling beneath your tires. Our support systems in DC, LA, or wherever you live are in bad shape because the priorities for federal spending have shifted over the last 50 years. Social programs now eat up the bulk of government spending at the federal, state, and local levels. The cost of these social programs crowds out what used to be spent on infrastructure. In some cases, taxes or fees that were sold as “user fees” to pay for infrastructure have been diverted for social programs or used to try to maintain exorbitant government employee pensions. My home state of California has… Read More

The old political saying,”pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered,” may never be more true than in the upcoming election cycle. While its no secret that labor unions have had a run of the Capitol for a generation, a recent political development illustrates just how out of touch and blinded they are to what’s happening in the state — and the jeopardy it puts them in on their fight this fall against both the Stop Special Interest Money Now ballot measure and the Governor’s measure to hike income and sales taxes.

It all started a couple weeks ago when my friend Steve Maviglio – the Democrat political consultant and former adviser to Gray Davis and Fabian Nunez – reached out to give me a heads up on the California Forward budget reform initiative that is about to qualify for the November ballot.

Steve was letting me know that a little known provision in the measure would allow two things that conservatives should be very worried about — first, he said he had a memo written by Speaker John Perez office saying it would allow local governments to both undo key provisions of Prop 13 AND allow for local tax increases without… Read More