The Missing Link – The Taxpayers
The Commission on the 21st Century Economy decided to ask the governor to move forward the due date of their final report 45 days to September 15th. The move was made to allow time to study the complex proposals before the commission as well as consider a number of alternatives. The complexity of what is being considered, a major overhaul of the tax code, was first intended to be completed April 15; then moved to July 31; now perhaps to September 15. That may not be the final date.
One of the reasons more time is needed to consider proposals before the commission is because the commission is considering a new kind of tax – a Business Net Receipts Tax, which is a type of value added tax.
The intricacies of the proposal raised many questions and lots of explanation from commission and government agency staff members at the meeting in San Francisco yesterday. It will be hard for the layman to get their hands around the tax proposals that tax wonks and experts grappled with during the course of the commission hearing.
Same Old, Same Old in Budget Talks
“Until there’s a deal, there’s not a deal.”
-Aaron McLear, spokesman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
When McLear spoke those words to reporters Tuesday morning, he didn’t realize what a prophet he was.
Two days of untoward optimism fizzled Thursday as the governor admitted that the budget talks, while not broken, are “stalled.” Stalled as in it wasn’t even worth holding a Big Five meeting on Thursday. While it’s likely that everyone will get together today, the governor wasn’t making any promises.
As usual, the governor talked a good fight, promising yet again that a budget deal is just around the corner.
“There’s a will there, in this building, of both parties to get it done,’’ the governor said in a brief news conference Thursday.
Cradle-to-cradle environmentalism
California stands on the verge of ushering in an environmental program which aims to change the face of waste production standards. Several bills currently in the California Legislature propose to codify the European concept of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) , which has so far been a voluntary practice. It is a strategy which promotes the integration of environmental costs associated with a product throughout its lifecycle into the market price of the product. In other words, b efore the manufacturing of a product begins, EPR suggests that the manufacturer should know how the waste created by the production process should be treated, as well as how the product should be taken care of once discarded. In this way, state regulators would create a system that would burden businesses with “cradle to cradle” recycling systems designed, financed, and managed by the producers themselves.
First conceived in Sweden, then used in Germany, EPR has spread across Europe and is slowly entering the American consciousness. Environmental activists hope that new California mandates will be established for the rest of the country to follow. EPR has the potential to combine environmental efforts such as greenhouse gas emissions implementation, landfill diversion quotas, the green chemistry initiative, to name just a few, that will hurt the state’s economy and result in higher prices, fewer choices, and increased unemployment.
Goldman Sachs is Having a Very Good Year
Not only did they pay back their
BailOut Bucks to the Feds already ($10 Billion worth), but Wall St. Titan
Goldman Sachs has announced that it is having a very good year. Goldman stock went to the moon
(tripling this year); Goldman employees are licking their collective chops in
anticipation of those hefty bonuses (think secretaries earning six figures!)
and it is business as usual in those hallowed halls again. Is this an example of the wisdom of the
BailOuts from last Fall, a poster-boy example of what went right when so much
went wrong? Or, does this raise
the aroma that Shakespeare long ago attributed to something smelling rotten
over in Denmark? (Apologies to "Hamlet."
Act I, Scene 4: Marcellus’ famously misquoted utterance upon seeing the ghost
of Hamlet’s father, the late king of Denmark.)
Goldman Sachs announced this week that
it earned $3.44 billion in the second quarter of 2009, exceeding expectations –
its largest bonus payout in history is likely coming soon. Last Fall, Goldman received $10 Billion
in TARP’s BailOut Bucks, converted itself from being an investment banker to being
a commercial bank with membership in the Federal Reserve System, and then lined
up at the Fed Discount Window to receive nearly free, or actually free at zero
percent interest, Fed money to use at its disposal in its financial operations. Goldman also thus became eligible for the
FDIC’s guarantees on its debt offerings – something which immeasurably
strengthened their position in a fragile marketplace.