Memo to the Special Session: Taxes have already been raised on business this year
The sun rose this morning, the Cubs are not in the World Series, and California’s budget is in crisis. All may not be well with the world, but we can count on some things remaining constant.
Also predictable: renewed positioning for new taxes to solve the budget deficit.
But if the Governor calls the Legislature into special session next month to address the deficit, they should be mindful that this year’s budget was predicated on nearly $6 billion in new or accelerated taxes on California businesses and investors. When it comes to taxing California’s employers, they gave at the office.
What are the tax changes?
It’s Time to Hold Politicians Accountable!
Healthcare reform – an on-time state budget – eminent domain reform – education reform. What do all of these issues have in common? They were all sidelined by the partisan gridlock that continuously has our State Capitol in a stranglehold. It is clear that voters have grown tired of inaction in Sacramento and our ongoing budget crisis and wasteful, ineffective spending. The question becomes – what can be done to fix our political system and hold politicians accountable so that the issues facing our state can be resolved?
NFIB/CA believes that Proposition 11 is a step in the right direction. Proposition 11 will create a 14-member independent citizens commission to redraw state legislative district lines based on strict non-partisan rules. Unlike the current process, Proposition 11 will ensure that the redistricting process is open and transparent and will respect existing city and county boundaries and communities. It will exclude individuals with obvious conflicts of interest, including elected officials and their staff from serving on the commission.
I’ll show you my balance sheet if you show me yours!
The morning news brought the following ‘Gulp!’ item: ‘Wachovia Reports $23.9 Billion Loss for Q3!’ Not good news for the folks who now own that mess. How do you even go about losing $23.9 Billion in three months’ time? First, you would need the empty warehouse to stack all that money – it takes time to rent a warehouse. Second, you would then have to somehow ‘disappear’ all that money. If you burned it, the Fire Department would not be happy; if you dumped it in the ocean, the fish and environmentalists would not be happy either. I’m stumped as to exactly how they went about that.
Our economic problems, which have been on my mind a lot of late, are based on some real Wizard of Oz stuff going on right now. Nobody knows what the Man Behind the Curtain is really holding. If all the financial institutions of all the industrialized nations all showed their full balance sheets in all their combined glory right now, aside from increasing dramatically the number of heart attacks and strokes, we would actually know just how bad this situation is – but, they won’t do that. If I tell you that there are $60-65 Trillion just in Credit Default Swaps out there, buried on or off those balance sheets, most people probably can neither comprehend the enormity of the number nor really understand what those damn things are anyway.