Poisoning the Golden Goose
With the continuing economic crisis evaporating government treasuries in California, businesses big and small find themselves the targets of advocates who seek more revenue to offset potential budget cuts and officials who must deal with spiraling costs.
There is a well-financed effort led by public employee unions to raise taxes on businesses and products. Public employee unions have been circulating a poll that claims to show voters, who recently rejected a continuation of the budget deal taxes, are willing to raise taxes on certain businesses and products.
Not so fast. Such claims have been made before but when the voters actually have to vote on these tax increases they understand that the taxes will filter down to the consumers.
Finally, a Little Good News on the State Budget
For the glass-half-full crowd, there is a bit of good budget news coming out of Sacramento.
Buried in the red meat for the party faithful about raiding the planned budget reserve to save welfare, college scholarships and children’s health insurance, Darrell Steinberg, the Democratic leader in the state Senate, also said his caucus is willing to go along with $13 billion of the budget cuts proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
When you add that to the governor’s $8 billion in smoke and mirror funding (increased income tax withholding, a boost in estimated tax payments, various funding shifts and the like) that the Democrats never had any real problem with, you get a total of $21 billion in cuts.
Sure, that’s short of the estimated $24.3 billion hole in the 2009-10 budget, but it would go a long way toward solving the fiscal problem that’s threatening California’s financial future.
How About a Governor Campbell Right Now?
Most candidates aren’t answering detailed questions about their plans for the state. So it’s still way too early to tell who would be the best candidate to take over as California governor in 2011.
But there’s a case to be made that Tom Campbell might be the best governor the state could have right now.
Whatever his other faults and virtues, Campbell’s credible budget proposal comes closer than anything else I’ve seen to resolving the problem.
Consider, for purposes of comparison, Gov. Schwarzenegger’s approach on the budget. He’s essentially offering a package of super-scary cuts that, by evidence of his previous public statements in favor of the targeted programs, he himself doesn’t support. The governor said before the special election that the laws of mathematics made it impossible to balance the budget without tax increases.
Funny Thing Happened to Chrysler on the Way Through the Bankruptcy Court
Just when Chrysler was on its way into the loving arms of Italian automaker, Fiat, a funny thing happened in the Bankruptcy Court’s handling of the bullet train, breathtakingly fast bankruptcy that we had been promised. US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, in her role as 21st century circuit-rider, issued a stay, all on her very own, that brought it all to a crashing halt. Perhaps for a few days anyway.
Justice Ginsberg’s Order, issued minutes before a 4pm deadline, is breathtaking in its simplicity:
“ORDER
UPON CONSIDERATION of the application of counsel for the
applicants, and the responses filed thereto,
IT IS ORDERED that the orders of the Bankruptcy Court for the
Southern District of New York, case No. 09-50002, dated May 31 and June 1, 2009, are stayed pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court.”
Yes, one single Justice of the highest court in America has that kind of power.