Business Views on Budget Plan not Uniform
Business has become the focus of Governor Jerry Brown’s efforts to line up support for his budget plan. But business is far from unified and does not speak with a single voice.
Yesterday, Allan Zaremberg, president of the California Chamber of Commerce, gave Brown hope that the largest, most influential business organization in the state may support his plan to deal with the budget. Zaremberg was careful with his words and did not give an outright endorsement to any budget plan saying that would have to wait until all details are in place and the Chamber board has an opportunity to meet on March 11.
What may accompany the five-year tax extensions on a special election ballot that Brown is pushing could have a lot to do with his securing support from different segments of the business community.
When the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce recently endorsed Brown’s effort they did so with caution and recommendations advising the governor that the business leaders wanted to see regulation reform and a shorter period for the tax extensions.
Could California Be First In Constitutional Dysfunction?
California’s long and complicated constitution – and the
governing dysfunction it promotes – is bad. But Californians who care about
such things have been able to take comfort in the idea that ours is not the
most broken constitution in the country.
Thank God
for Alabama.
But there’s
news there.
Democrats
in the Alabama legislature are pushing for a referendum asking voters whether
they want to tear up that state’s 1901 constitution – a document longer than
California’s massive constitution – and write a new one.
It’s a bad
sign when Alabama political elites are more willing to confront their
constitutional problems than those in California. Powers-that-be have dismissed
the notion of top-to-bottom constitutional reform as a pipe dream.
Which means California may soon be
the country’s undisputed leader in constitutional failure.
Budget committee passes spending plan; now the real talks can begin
Cross-posted at HealthyCal.
Democrats on the Legislature’s budget-writing committee passed a budget Thursday that largely reflects Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to close a $25 billion shortfall with a combination of spending cuts and extensions of temporary taxes.
The budget bill passed on a party-line vote and now goes to the Assembly and Senate for approval. Democrats control both houses, and, thanks to the passage of Proposition 25 last November, they now have the ability to adopt a budget by majority vote rather than the two-thirds super-majority that was required until this year.
But they still need a two-thirds vote to raise taxes, and, by most accounts, even to put a tax increase on the ballot, as Brown has proposed. And so far, most Republicans in the Legislature have said they will not vote to send the governor’s tax plan to the voters in a special election in June.
The Last of the White Collar Apprentices
Once upon a time the apprentice
model – a fancy way of saying "learn on the job" – was widespread. Today,
very few apprenticeships exist outside the building industry. One of the few fields in which it does, however,
is the business of being a literary agent.
Most
readers will know that a literary agent is the person who sells your
lovingly-written book to a major publisher.
(To sell to a small or university press you usually won’t need an agent
– you also usually won’t get as much, if any, money.) This gives an agent prestige among writers,
especially those in the early stages of their career. Go to a writers’ conference, get a lanyard
that announces that you are a literary agent, and writers will follow you
around all weekend, as if you were a mama duck and they were your devoted like
ducklings. I’ve been the mama duck and
it’s really fun.