Governor Jerry Brown returned to the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce to give a similar speech to the one he gave last year– seeking support for his tax plan. Last year, his proposal was in the legislature, this time he had an initiative to sell. However, the business people I talked to in the audience were non-committal on the taxes, especially if the taxes were not accompanied by other reforms such as spending limits and pension reform.

In fact, the first applause line for the governor came when he called for pension reform. He received no major applause when discussing the taxes.  He did not mention spending limits but acknowledged at the beginning of his talk that California spends more money than it collects.

Controller John Chiang got a nice little present from Democratic legislators this week when Assembly Speaker John Perez and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg decided to sue him.

Lawsuits, especially one aimed at an ambitious young politician, typically fall into the no-fun-at-all category, leading as they can to pricy court battles that can bring up issues that no one with eyes on higher office wants to deal with.

But that’s what’s so great about the suit by the legislative leaders. They’re attacking Chiang for his decision last year to strip lawmakers of their pay for not passing a balanced state budget by the June 15 deadline.

Here’s the most interesting thing about the new PPIC poll: One of the most popular ideas with voters is something that almost nobody talks about.

The pollsters ticked off a series of potential tax increases and asked if people favored or opposed each: higher income taxes for the wealthy, a split roll for property taxes, increasing the sales tax on products or extending it to services, and higher taxes on corporations. Not surprisingly, the most popular idea is to tax the rich, which is basically an evocation of Russell Long’s famous motto of American taxation: Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax the fellow behind the tree.

In today’s political environment–at least on the GOP side–”moderate” has become a pejorative.  With the same venom that Nixon used to denounce Communists–real or imagined–Newt Gingrich has leveled the “moderate” charge against Mitt Romney.  This says a whole lot about what is wrong with politics and governance these days.

The attributes that make government work–pragmatism, compromise, collegiality, civility and cooperation–are derided, not valued in the political arena.  Today’s candidates seem to be driven to be shrill and unbending.  Politicians who back themselves into rhetorical corners during the campaign are then hamstrung when they are elected–ending up looking like incompetents and/or hypocrites. This is all reinforced by the cult-like pressures of party caucuses in the legislative branch.

Dear Business Leader:

We all agree that California faces fundamental problems.  These include a $15 billion budget deficit, $500 billion in unfunded pension liabilities, a tax and regulatory climate that drives businesses away, wasteful and ineffective use of our tax dollars and a political system unduly influenced by special interests – most notably the public employee labor organizations.  The mismanagement of this state and the pursuit of harmful policies have led to the following:

Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker John Perez took a big risk filing a lawsuit yesterday to prohibit the Controller from deciding if legislators should get paid when an unbalanced budget is passed. If they lose they will have helped establish the California State Controller as a new superpower in the political firmament. If they win, legislators are on the wrong side of the perception issue.

A court validation of the controller’s power to determine if the legislature passed a balance budget swings influence and power to the controller’s office. Who knows how detailed a controller will be in dealing with future budgets?

Trigger cuts are on their way to becoming a staple of budgets.

So why not trigger taxes?

Republicans have opened the door to such a discussion with their arguments against Gov. Brown’s initiative to hike income and sales taxes for five years. The GOP talking point is that tax revenues are already coming back and the tax hikes are unnecessary.

Whoever invented the class action lawsuit is probably sipping martinis on his or her 200 foot yacht. The class action gimmick seems to be the lawsuit of choice and it is earning trial lawyers a pretty penny under the guise of consumer protection.

Recently, Carol Williams with the Los Angeles Times wrote an article titled, “Small Cases are Big Business in California Courtrooms“. The main premise of the article was to point out that lawyers reap huge rewards in petty class action lawsuits. She cited the recent Nutella class action where a woman was surprised to learn that Nutella was full of fat and sugar and was not exactly the good breakfast she thought she was feeding her 4 year old.

Governor Jerry Brown’s hope of clearing the field of all other tax increase measures except his own ran into trouble with the release of the newest Public Policy Institute (PPIC) poll. The poll indicates that proposals that simply tax the rich may fair better than Brown’s plan of income and sales tax increases giving proponents of the tax the rich proposals incentive to carry on.

While the PPIC poll did show Brown’s overall plan scored a 68%-31% edge amongst likely voters, breaking down the proposal showed a glaring weakness. Voters do not like the idea of raising the sales tax. Brown proposes raising the income tax on those earning more than $250,000 and raising the sales tax a half-cent. The idea of raising the sales tax was opposed by 64%.