Voters Beware – Prop 27 has Big Teeth
You remember the fairy tale … the little girl visits her grandmother but notices something strange about her … "What big teeth you have, grandmother."
A Big Bad Wolf has dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother so as to catch her by surprise and devour her.
The backers of Proposition 27 play the Big Bad Wolf in a modern day version of the tale. The politicians behind Prop 27 want to devour the poor voters who think it’s a good idea to remove legislators from the obvious self-interest of drawing their own legislative districts.
Hiding Their Books
In their magnificent study about eight centuries of financial folly
("This Time Is Different"), economists Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart
lampoon the low level of accuracy with which governments maintain their
books: ""Think of the implicit guarantees given to the massive mortgage
lenders that ultimately added trillions to the effective size of
national debt, the trillions in dollars in off-balance sheet
transactions engaged in by the Federal Reserve . . . not to mention
unfunded pension and medical liabilities. Lack of transparency . . . is
almost comical."
It’s also expensive. In a recent study, Alicia Munnell, a member of
President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors and now director of
the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College cited one example:
"In 1999, the California Public Employees’
Retirement System (CalPERS) reported that assets equaled 128 percent of
liabilities, [after which] the California legislature enhanced the
benefits of both current and future employees. If CalPERS liabilities
had been valued at the riskless rate, the plan would have been only 88
percent funded. An accurate reporting of benefits to liabilities would
avoid this type of expansion . . .."
Left at a Loss on Labor Day
We
just celebrated Labor Day, which means you’ve gotten a dose of boring
"state of the labor market" articles and opinions. Alas, this is
another one.
The
situation on the job front is not good. You probably know that unemployment
nationwide was 9.6 percent in August. It was much worse in California
at 12.3 percent and in Los
Angeles County
at 12.4 percent in July. A year earlier, L.A.’s
unemployment was 11.9 percent. In other words, it was bad last year and worse
this year.
But
you may not know that the unemployment rate only tells some of the story.
Another part is how many jobs are being created. Or lost.
Fighting for Taxpayers in the Capitol: Against the Odds
One of the most famous quotes from the American Revolution was uttered
by Sam Adams: "It does not take a majority to prevail … but rather an
irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the
minds of men." As fiscal conservatives in a fiscally irresponsible
state, we at Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association often find ourselves
in the minority when trying to advance pro-taxpayer principles in the
legislature – especially with our current crop of politicians.
While HJTA may be better known for our initiatives and victories in the
courtroom, some might overlook the fact that we also maintain a
fulltime lobbying presence in Sacramento. Our top legislative priority
every year, of course, is stopping the direct attacks on Prop 13.
As
part of the California Constitution, however, Prop 13 cannot be amended
or repealed by statute – only by a proposed constitutional amendment
emanating from the legislature with a two-thirds vote of each house.
While fiscal conservatives in the Legislature don’t come close to a
majority, they do constitute (barely) more than a third. Because of
that, and because hundreds of thousands of our members sign petitions
to their legislators demanding that Prop 13 be protected, we have
successfully stopped these efforts to weaken or repeal California’s
most popular law.