Author: Dan Logue

When Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed AB32 [assembly bill 32] in 2006, California’s unemployment rate was a modest 4.8%. This past Friday we learned that it now stands at 12.5%.

AB32 requires a massive reordering of our state’s economy and massive tax increases to pay for these shifts. It includes a provision for it to be suspended if our state faces economic hardships, and that time has come.

The governor refuses to order a suspension, so I have teamed up with Ted Costa of People’s Advocate and Congressman Tom McClintock to give the people of California an opportunity to make this important decision.

On November 25, 2009, we submitted the California Jobs Initiative to the Attorney General for title & summary. We will begin gathering signatures to qualify this measure for the November 2010 ballot in mid-January. If you would like to help, go to www.danlogue.com.

As Vice Chairman of Jobs and Economic Recovery I realize in times of economic adversity there should be no higher priority for government than to find out how it can best help get businesses back on track towards job creation. This means finding the source of the problem, determining the best solution, and moving forward with determination and a solid plan. To date this has not happened.

As our federal government continues its experiment in a jobless recovery, it’s crucial for California to not make the same mistakes. The recent report on the cost of regulations on California business, which was delivered to the Governor’s office by the Small Business Advocate, gives a broad overview of all that state government has done to make things harder on businesses and working families, costing us 3.8 million jobs, hundreds of billions in costs to California businesses, and even billions lost in state revenues as a result of overregulation. In other words, government over regulation, is crushing the hopes and dreams of millions of California families..

Have you ever wondered about the real costs of government on our society? Not just the cost in taxes to pay for government services, but the costs government imposes on our daily lives? As Californians suffer through the worst recession in decades, is our government working to make things easier for us, or harder? When the State Legislature imposes new regulations on business, what is the impact on our pocket books? How many jobs are lost when agencies like the California Air Resources Board (CARB) or the Cal EPA impose new regulatory burdens on those employers who seek to create jobs and wealth?

I have spent the last three weeks lobbying the Governor’s office urging the release of an historic study that spells out the costs imposed on jobs and businesses in this state by overregulation. This report is now available to the public. This study outlines the real costs to businesses in our state that are caused by our own government. The study originated from AB 2330 (Arambula), which passed with bi-partisan support in 2006. This was a quantitative study that focused on the actual losses in economic output, losses in jobs, the indirect losses in business taxes, and finally losses in labor income (the monies a family would normally spend as part of household disposable income). The study can be found on the Governor’s website athttps://www.sba.ca.gov/.

“The greatest threat to liberty is the concentration of economic and political power”. Milton Friedman’s words have never more accurately described the reality of a situation as when this truth references the Government in California. Years of big government power grabs, shifting control over every aspect of life from the sovereign citizens to Washington and Sacramento bureaucracies, have left our beloved state and nation in an economic ruin and crises in confidence. Even when the people of a region send responsive representatives to the Legislature, they fight a loosing battle unless that battle is fundamentally shaped by the basic self government principle that economic and political power should be sent back to the people.

This should be our reform message to the people of California and our nation!

Across the state and nation, the people are rising up and demanding that Government return their God given liberties that Sacramento and Washington has stolen through excessive taxation and overregulation. The people’s cries are getting louder and rightfully so; Sacramento bureaucrats are getting more brazen and shameless. But demands for change are not enough. The answer to our problems, the tangible action behind out message is simple: Decentralize California.

Barely a month has passed since voters established a mandate opposing tax increases enacted by the Democratic State Legislature. The message was clear: we are tired of bank bailouts, GM bailouts, Chrysler bailouts and now a California bailout.

Not known for listening to the people, my very liberal colleagues in Sacramento are dead set on more tax increases.

Never mind that Californians pay some of the heftiest taxes in the nation. Our top-bracket earners have the second highest income tax rate in the country. Our middle income earners are also near the top of the list, and our gas taxes are the third highest in the nation. Californians are taxed enough already, and they will not accept any further tax increases.

I recently led a legislative fact finding mission to Nevada where we heard from businesses that fled California’s burdensome taxes and regulations for a more welcoming environment across the state line. We now face 11.2% unemployment in our state, the highest on record, with only three other states worse off. In the midst of this crisis, on May 19th Californians will vote on Proposition 1A, a $16 billion tax increase that will cost the average family an additional $1100 per year.

Undoubtedly, Prop. 1A is a step in the wrong direction. The measure raises income tax, sales tax, almost doubles the hated car tax and costs families with children another $200 per year by eliminating the child tax credit.

Proposition 1A would make California the highest tax state in the nation. The measure extends recent tax increases for up to two more years, extending with it the pain on hard working Californians. When I was in Nevada, one business owner said to me, “Doing business in California is like death by a thousand cuts.” We cannot continue to punish those we need to help us out of this economic crisis.

Thomas Paine’s words – “These are the times that try men’s souls” – came to mind last Friday as business after business testified why they left California and relocated to Nevada.

I was honored to join with Republican Assembly Leader Mike Villines, State Sen. Sam Aanestad and nine other Republican Assemblymembers to do something that had never been done before.

We crossed state lines into Nevada on a fact finding mission to understand specifically why many of business owners have uprooted their families, their lives, their hopes and dreams and moved out of California.

As they departed, they took thousands of jobs with them, to pursue the American dream.

Why did they leave?