The following op-ed ran in my local paper today – The Desert Sun —

Union bossTyrone Freeman has stolen a lot of money from low wage union members. According to the the Los Angeles Times (link) in a Pulitzer-worth piece, reporter Paul Pringle will not be invited to the next SEIU Christmas Party. This SEIU local, 6424 United Long-Term Care Workers, is controlled by its organizer Freeman. It has some 190,000 workers paying each month into his local. Local 6424 sees itself as the "poor helping the poor" union. Like many such unexamined unions, this one became Freeman’s personal bank. … Read More

Union bossTyrone Freeman has stolen a lot of money from low wage union members. According to the the Los Angeles Times (link) in a Pulitzer-worth piece, reporter Paul Pringle will not be invited to the next SEIU Christmas Party. This SEIU local, 6424 United Long-Term Care Workers, is controlled by its organizer Freeman. It has some 190,000 workers paying each month into his local. Local 6424 sees itself as the "poor helping the poor" union. Like many such unexamined unions, this one became Freeman’s personal bank. … Read More

The IRS doesn’t want charitable organizations to have links to political campaigns on their websites, and on July 28, the director of IRS Exempt Organization Examinations issued a ukase on "Political Campaign Activity on the Internet."

The IRS will now open examinations of charities that have a direct link to a political action committee or candidate website on the charity’s website. They will also open an examination if they find a charity has linked to an unrelated501(c)(4) advocacy organization or commerical sitethat itself links to a candidate or PAC site whereit isintended by the charity to indirectly link the viewer to the political site.

Cases involving "related" 501(c)(4) organizations are more complicated and the IRS is less likely to take action to indirect links to political sites by that route. However, a "fact and circumstance" is how many clicks it takes to get to the political site. If it is really easy, that is a problem.

I’m sure IRS agents love this duty, siting in front of a computer 8 hours a day and websurfing. Must be… Read More

Well, here’s a bright spot in the phenomenally late, phenomenally messy 08-09 budget writing process: the Governor kept his word about taking whatever step necessary to compel Controller Chiang to implement his executive order. The Governor’s Department of Personnel Administration filed suit Monday afternoon in Sacramento Superior Court just a couple of hours after a wishy-washy, non-committal response out of Chiang’s office.

Let’s be clear: if Chiang were working as chief financial officer for any business, rather than for state government, he would have been fired long ago for even suggesting that we spend hundreds of millions of extra dollars on Wall Street for high-interest loans just so we don’t have to temporarily lay off 4 percent of our bloated workforce. He would have been fired long ago for failing to update his computer system so that it can easily comply with a 5-year-old court ruling.

The Governor did the right thing by suing to force him to comply with the state constitution, the state Supreme Court, common sense, and fiscal responsibility. We have a serious cash crisis coming – on that point, no one disagrees. And separate… Read More

It would be a tough call to find a politician in Orange County (or elsewhere, for that matter) to who has the candor, directness, and the straight-forward style of Assemblyman Todd Spitzer. I’ve known Todd for many years, and as someone who writes (a lot) about politics locally and in Sacramento, I am always looking to get input from the Assemblyman because he, frankly, is very provocative in his prose.

So I was quite excited when the Assemblyman approached me about making his own foray

No pressure here to raise taxes in this years budget.I amfirm on this point as is our caucus.

We seek a true spending limitation so we don’t keep doing this everytime the state economy and subsequently, tax revenues are down. The economy and most other things [global temperature]run in something called cycles. We cannot always count on high revenue to sustain year over year new spending. The rainy day fund, which should really be called a drought fund is an important tool to help in budget drought years. However, we won’t see many deposits into such a fund as rainy day/high revenueyears are less likely without a spending limitation on budget spending.

As it is, I don’t see howwe will see the type of excess revenue to sweep into the "drought fund" fora while. Not this year, not next, and probably not 3 years out. Which makes the chatter about a rainy day/drought fund as this years bigfix, bogus. It’s not a fix without a spending limit. It’s as simple as that.

If you want to prolonga stale economy, go ahead and raise taxes to… Read More

Assemblymember Spitzer, Chief Republican Whip, sent over this statement regarding the budget:

“I want to make it unequivocally clear: I will not be voting for any budget that includes a tax increase of any kind or any gimmicks to put tax increases on the ballot.

The fact is Sacramento needs a responsible, permanent budget process that stops overspending. In the last four years, state expenditures have grown by 44% – or $31 billion. The fact that Democrats want to raise taxes after such a large growth in spending is ludicrous.

What bothers me the most is that Democrats support raising taxes over $9 billion but, at the same time, propose cutting local public safety funding by $218 million from last year’s budget. Government’s most important role is to protect the public’s safety. The irony is that the majority party would rather support bureaucratic social programs instead of keeping neighborhoods safe.”… Read More