Labor Study Funded by Union Calls for Tax Increases
The UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education issued a policy brief arguing that raising taxes will result in fewer jobs lost than would occur under the spending cuts in the governor’s budget proposal.
The brief indicates the best alternative to deal with job losses is to avoid the governor’s proposed cuts and instead raise taxes on oil severance, corporations, and top bracket income tax payers, which will produce billions in new revenue and fund the public sector. The report acknowledges the tax increases would slow economic activity and come with job losses in the private sector.
I’m trying to figure out how reducing jobs and economic activity in the private sector will benefit California in the long run.
Boycotting Arizona is Stupid
The proposal to
divest and boycott Arizona over the state’s passage of SB 1070, making
illegal federal immigration law a violation of state law is stupid.
As elected officials, we take an oath to uphold the federal and state
constitutions. To boycott a state for enforcing our federal laws is in
direct violation of that oath.
The propaganda by both the media and
others is intentionally misleading because Arizona’s law mirrors
federal law. Rather than debating a boycott, this Board of Supervisors
should hold our federal representatives accountable for their failure
to act on immigration reform but also for their failure to reimburse
costs incurred by local governments.
L.A. GOP Scores a Major Victory
You may not have felt it, but the earth shifted this week while
candidates up and down the state were busy with their final push toward
Election Day.
The epicenter of that shift? L.A.
The Republican Party of Los Angeles County (RPLAC) scored a major
victory this week as a Judge ruled in the organization’s favor –
throwing out a frivolous lawsuit brought by a wily group of Ron Paul
activists that claimed they had legal rights to run the Party, even
though they handily lost their Board elections last year.
No On Prop 17 – Insurance Companies Don’t Spend Millions on Initiatives To Lower Your Rates
The California Department of Insurance recently cracked down on an
insurance company that has been overcharging motorists, including men
and women serving in the military, for 15 years.
That same company,
Los Angeles-based Mercury Insurance, is bankrolling Proposition 17 on
the June ballot. Mercury wants you to trust it when it says that its
measure will save everyone money.
When was the last time an insurance company spent $14 million on a ballot initiative to lower your rates?
Times to Try Mens’ (& Womens’) Souls
"These are the times that try men’s souls." – Thomas Paine’s The Crisis
Going ‘from bad to worse’ is a much overused expression. For those who have not entirely given up on the 24-7 Media coverage of all the nasty things going on lately, some have begun developing traumatic associations and now avoid news like the plague, how many disasters does it take . . . . let me count them.
The Gulf is filling with what looks like melted chocolate and even mighty BP is clueless how to stop it, having started on live video feed, no less, it’s latest, Top Kill (think: life as comic book) solution to the month-old spewing of oil into the pristine Carribean waters and beyond, involving something with old sneakers, tennis balls, cement, what have you. Lousiana’s bayou and wetlands country is smothered in what we only wish was butterscotch syrup, some twelve miles in now.