Will the Last to Leave California Please Turn Out the Light
I was intending to write something lighthearted as my last entry for Fox and Hounds in 2008. (F&H will not publish again until January 5, 2009.) But then I read that the California Teachers Association has filed an initiative to raise the sales tax. And another initiative has been filed, I assume by the same group, to lower the vote requirement to raise many other taxes. (You can find the initiatives on the Attorney General’s site numbered 08-0021 thru 08-0023.)
Of course, we have the call for permanent tax increases to solve the growing budget deficit. And, then there is the report by the Department of Finance, as reported in the Los Angeles Times, that for the fourth year in a row more people are moving out of California than are moving in. Read that as taxpayers are leaving.
If all these tax measures are successful, expect the exodus to continue.
Another $350 Billion? When You Tell Us How You Spent the First $350 Billion!
I gave a homeless man $10 at a freeway exit yesterday – he looked like he needed it more than me. The greatest panhandlers of our time are not homeless. I seriously question the wisdom of Congress giving yet another $350 Billion away in what has so far been the game of: “So You Wanna Be a Billionaire?” – without much to show for it.
The recipients of the first $350 Billion of the BailOut will not account for what they did with the money; why then is the drumbeat getting louder to give them another $350 Billion? They first need to tell us how they spent, or did not spend but instead hoarded, the first $350 Billion? Bernanke, Paulsen & Co. told us back just a few months ago that the skies would fall, the world, as we know it would end, and that the credit markets had seized up.
Never mind that this same group made Lehman Bros walk the plank and it will take years to unwind the Lehman Bankruptcy and its nearly ¾ of a Trillion dollar debt – that alone just might have caused credit markets to seize up and have a financial stroke. The mass giveaway, without strings or accountability, of some $350 Billion has not thawed the credit markets at all now at year-end.
The Bogus County Funding Crisis
Recently local media has been reporting frightening, one-sided stories about San Diego County’s $78 million county budget shortfall, and the dire consequences we face.
For instance, a SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE article warned that this deficit “could force dramatic cuts in programs aimed at children and low-income families.” The next day, the U-T reported that this reduction “could force cuts in public safety . . . .”
The NORTH COUNTY TIMES reports that “The shortfall could lead to cuts in jobs and programs that serve the poor, children and senior citizens, officials said.” TV stories parroted the same lines, fed to them by county officials.
$78 million is indeed a lot of money. But compared to what? The total county budget is $5.2 billion. Do the math (no media story did). That’s a 1.5% drop in funding.