Majority Vote Budgets and Majority Vote Fees
The guys over at Calbuzz did some insightful analysis on California Forward’s discussion of restricting fees as part of a compromise to reduce the state budget vote from two-thirds to majority.
There is a simple reason that members of the business community are demanding a higher vote requirement to pass certain fees in return for a majority vote budget. If the budget vote is reduced to a majority, and fees, which smell like taxes, look like taxes, and quack like taxes, can be levied at a majority vote, the door will be open to mischief.
The majority party, by a simple majority vote, could approve a budget and fund the budget with a series of fees that they claim have a nexus to services. For example, a fee could be raised on alcohol and fund health care because it would be argued excessive alcohol use could cause health problems.
Cleansing the GOP of Independents
If Sarah Palin wants to find death panels, she need look no farther than the executive committee of the California Republican Party. The California GOP leadership has shown one and only one political skill in recent years, losing elections. In the past 15 years they have elected one insurance commissioner and one governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, whom they all detest. Other than in gerrymandered districts, the GOP cannot elect anyone in California.
So it no surprise that the GOP executive committee has now decided – or will shortly – to ban independent voters from voting in GOP primaries. Independents are the largest growing share of the California electorate and include many young people and newly registered voters. It is no surprise that a party whose demographic is largely elderly white people would want to exclude them.
Nevada Just Doesn’t Add Up
By now you’ve probably seen those business-stealing advertisements from Nevada. One ad says that if you don’t move to Nevada you can “kiss your assets goodbye” because California is so expensive. There’s another that shows a pig with wings that asks, “California will be more pro-business … when?” Cute.
Yeah, sure Nevada’s got a point. It has no personal or corporate income tax. That state can offer goodies to businesses that decide to locate there. But be honest: Do you really want to move to Nevada? Once you get past the tax advantages, Nevada is a whole lot of desert.
I mean, really. We’re talking about a state whose towering cultural figure is Wayne Newton. Among all states, Nevada is the biggest producer of what? Heat stroke?
National Deficit Projected Now at 9 Trillion over next Ten Years – Can These Numbers be Real?
The two hardest things about vacations are getting ready to go and the re-entry when you return, like diving into the deep end of a very cold swimming pool. Making it even harder in this late Summer of Screaming TownMeetings and televised HealthCare Dueling is to digest the news that our national deficit is now projected to reach 9 Trillion (with a “T”) dollars over the next decade.
You see, they apparently had it reliably pegged at a mere 7 Trillion (with a “T”), and then some federal BeanCounters re-tallied the list and came up with a couple of Trillion that they had overlooked (nobody’s perfect!), to be added to this staggering total.
At the end of last week, world bankers had hunkered down at Jackson Hole to collectively announce that the worst from our economic meltdown since Dec. 2007 is now over – that’s the good news. They also announced – Ben Bernancke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, that is – while happy days are not quite here again; not with high unemployment projected for at least another year, that home sales indeed are picking up (if you can pick through the foreclosed properties, that is) and that Wall Street has gone so nuts again that some have announced the birth of another Bull market as the Dow crossed the 9500 mark, still well below its heights of some 14,000 not long ago.