Tax Bridge to Nowhere
A major hang-up on the budget deal is whether taxes should be extended until the people can vote. However, unanticipated revenues revealed last month should make the tax bridge unnecessary if the vote occurs in a few months.
An election probably would not happen until the beginning of autumn at the earliest and the governor wants to build a tax bridge until the election occurs. Republicans have balked at the idea of continuing taxes beyond their expiration date at the end of the month.
As things are shaping up, the voters would be presented with a package of proposals that include continuing or re-establishing the expired taxes – depending if the tax bridge is built – a short term spending reform and some public sector pension changes.
Here’s My Map
I hope that arguing over redistricting commission maps burns calories. Because if this doesn’t help you lose weight, there’s really nothing useful about this mapping debate.
There’s an easier, smarter, more effective way to divide California into legislative districts, of course. And it happens to be my way. It wouldn’t require a redistricting commission or a legislature. It’s a two-step process:
1. Take any map of California that shows the regions of the state.
2. Make those regions our legislative districts.
You’re done.
California’s Green Jihad
Ideas matter, particularly when colored by religious fanaticism, wreaking havoc even in the most favored of places. Take, for instance, Iran, a country blessed with a rich heritage and enormous physical and human resources, but which, thanks to its theocratic regime, is largely an economic basket case and rogue state.
Then there’s California, rich in everything from oil and food to international trade and technology, but still skimming along the bottom of the national economy. The state’s unemployment rate https:> is now worse than Michigan’s and ahead only of neighboring Nevada. Among the nation’s 20 largest metropolitan regions, four of the six with the highest unemployment numbers are located in the Golden State: Riverside, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco. In a recent Forbes surveyhttps:>, California was home to six of the ten regions where the economy is poised to get worse.
One would think, given these gory details, California officials would be focused on reversing the state’s performance. But here, as in Iran, officialdom focuses more on theology than on actuality. Of course, California’s religion rests not on conventional divinity but on a secular environmental faith that nevertheless exhibits the intrusive and unbending character of radical religion.
Stay Classy, Politicos
Political sex scandals have a way of captivating us and diverting our attention from the real issues-even before the days of TMZ, Big Government and the National Enquirer. The modern day celebrity news culture dedicates column inches, cable minutes and untold pixels to talking about shirtless congressmen, "Hiking the Appalachia Trail https: south.carolina.governor_1_jenny-sanford-south-carolina-gov-buenos-aires?_s=”PM:POLITICS”> ," and sexual braggadocio in the California Assembly https:> . It is good for ratings and is easier to convey than explaining the budget crisis or raising the debt ceiling. Reputations and careers built over a lifetime are ended in the amount of take it takes to hit "upload" or click "comment." Given that realization and thinking of Rep. Anthony Weiner’s Twitter travails, here are five rules for aspiring politicos-from Fort Dick to San Ysidro.
The Grover Cleveland. Political junkies and historians might recall the opposition slogan against our 22nd (and 24th) president of the United States, Grover Cleveland: "Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa? Gone to the White House. Ha! Ha! Ha!" In a pre-Lanny Davis https:> get-it-all-out-there move, the bachelor Cleveland admitted paternity and also to paying child support (in a non DNA-testing age). It was quite scandalous back for the 1880’s (and John Edwards might be today’s counterpoint) but he survived and so should the New York Congressman in the news so much in recent weeks-provided all of his electronic pen pals were not underage and government resources were not used.
California Budget D-Day is Upon Us
June 15 is D-Day for the California Legislature. It’s the Constitutional deadline for passing a balanced state budget. And it is an opportunity to pull our State out of the financial and economic morass we find ourselves in today.
Financial deadlines usually force people out of their comfort zones and give them an urgency to act. Gov. Jerry Brown and members of the Legislature should use the June 15 deadline as an opportunity to put a financial workout plan into place for California.
In the business world, a financial workout plan is an agreement between a financially troubled company and its lender to alter the terms of repayment. Typically, the lender agrees to modify the terms in exchange for legally binding commitments from the company to fix the structural problems that got the company in trouble. That’s what California needs: a workout plan where taxpayers agree to extend temporary taxes on the condition that state government fixes the underlying conditions that got California in trouble.