No surprise for my readers, but the Jerry Brown La-La Land budget revenue projections come true only in Disney’s Fantasyland — if there! The Legislative Analyst’s Office says Governor Brown is billions and billions of dollars off — guess which way.

Below is the “hot off the press” article, but consider this comment I added first:

The eagerly awaited Facebook California capital gains tax windfall is largely illusionary. We are talking about folks who find themselves with a ONE-TIME capital gain windfall of many millions. If they get ANY tax advice at all, they will consider relocating out the state to make the sale. Indeed, they only have to live outside CA for over HALF a calendar year to qualify (well, there are other hoops like registration, etc. — but the big one is moving).

If a Facebook computer programmer takes a one-time $10 million capital gain in California, he/she will pay about $1,000,000 extra in state income tax. If Brown’s retroactive tax increase passes, he would pay about $1.2 million. If the union tax increase passes, he would pay over $1.5 million in tax.… Read More

This afternoon is the only scheduled State Senate floor session before the Governor’s nomination of CSU Board of Trustees President Herb Carter reaches it’s one year anniversary, and Carter’s appointment will expire. Before Wednesday the State Senate needs to bring up his confirmation vote which must pass by a two-thirds vote. The Los Angeles Times has a solid write up on it here.

Senate Republican Leader Bob Huff has made the opposition to Carter’s reconfirmation his first line drawn in the sand, and this vote will be an indicator of his ability to unify his… Read More

It’s a wrap. The 2012 California Republican Party Spring Convention, held on the San Francisco Bay Area peninsula, is over. As is typical of these semi-annual confabs, I give them my all – and they take all I have to give and more. We’ll pen a post-convention write with an overview of the highlights for publication as early as tomorrow morning. That having been said, I wanted to share with you that at the general session of the convention, by an overwhelming voice vote, the delegates to the convention adopted the 2012-2016 CRP Platform. I am very pleased to share that the document that was approved, while far from ideal, is more or less a re-adoption of the conservative platform document that we adopted back in 2008. I could go on at length about what is in the final document, but instead I will attach it here for you to read.

… Read More

It’s tragic how some desperate states experiencing runaway state government spending are raising their income taxes to soak the rich. But for those states such as California, it’s MORE tragic that many other states are now moving to cut or eliminate their state income tax on corporations and/or individuals. This little-reported tax cutting trend rates wider publicity.

Why would states CUT their income tax collections? Could it be that they want our refugee millionaires and businesses, and don’t want to lose theirs? Or maybe they are just stark raving mad (the dismissive liberal explanation).

Here’s the obvious reason — low tax states do better economically than high tax states. Below is the latest quick bottom line comparison:

… Read More

Somebody send some Tums to the Governor’s office, stat. I can only imagine what’s going on in the horseshoe today after legislative Republicans turned out to be the Governor’s unlikely ally in the pension reform fight. In a move that’s not only good policy, but also smart politics, Senate and Assembly Republicans introduced the Governor’s pension plan verbatim – they didn’t change a word, period or comma. They’re asking for no strings attached and only want Democrats to give it an up or down vote.

The Governor’s plan isn’t perfect but it’s a step in the right direction and it contains many of the same ideas that Republicans have… Read More

Today I released a dynamic analysis by the Board of Equalization showing that the Governor’s proposed sales tax increase will cost California jobs.

According to the analysis, a higher sales tax rate will take money out of the pockets of working Californians, destroying more than 23,000 jobs and $267 million in business investment.

These projected job losses are equivalent to every worker in a medium-sized California city like Glendora or West Sacramento losing their jobs.

When considering tax increases, policymakers often rely on static analyses that ignore behavioral changes by consumers and business owners. A dynamic analysis estimates the likely behavioral changes that could result from a higher tax rate.

The BOE analysis projects that nearly all of the proposed sales tax increase would be passed along to consumers. The state would receive $222 million less in revenues than projected by a static analysis, an 8% loss in potential revenue.

Since July of last year, lower tax rates have enabled Californians to keep more of their hard-earned dollars, and our economy is… Read More

[This is part one of a series exposing the political class in California, and how they will say or do anything to try and keep from having to go back into the private sector and live under the laws they create…]

Once again the Sacramento politicians and powerful special interests are attempting to subvert the will of the people and sabotage the public’s support for strong term limits for state legislators.

They tried it before with the slimy Proposition 93 in 2008, which would have kept the ethically-flawed Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez in their powerful positions as… Read More

Lawless. That’s the right word for the Supreme Court’s decision in the redistricting case. Lawless, in that it ignored the law to reach a decision the Court was explicitly prohibited from reaching.

The background of this case is probably well known to anyone reading this blog. A referendum petition was circulated to challenge the Citizens’ Redistricting Commission’s approved maps of the State Senate lines for the coming election. The petitioners gathered over 711,000 signatures and, therefore, the Court recognized, the petition is “likely to qualify” for the ballot. But this likelihood creates a problem. According to the California Constitution, the existence of a referendum “likely to qualify” for the ballot – which the Court accepts that we have here – operates to “stay” the Commission’s lines. If the lines are “stayed,” though, and the election is coming, what lines should be used? That is the question the Supreme Court had to answer.

The most important point to note is the explicit text of the Constitution. Under our form of government, the Constitution, coming as it does from the sovereign people, is the supreme law of the land.… Read More