Poll Question Reflects a Concern for Business
The USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll asked how voters
felt about giving more taxing authority to local governments. Curiously,
however, the question asked in the poll did not reflect the proposal being discussed
in Sacramento.
The question dealt with a
number of areas that local governments currently do not have the power to tax
that the state does: alcoholic beverages, sweetened beverages, tobacco products and oil
extraction.
The bill authored by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg granting
new taxing authority to local governments casts a much wider net. The bill
would extend taxing authority over some very big items: transaction and use
tax, vehicle license tax, and personal income tax.
Do you suppose if the poll question included these items – especially
giving local government power to establish a personal income tax – the results
would be the same? Highly unlikely.
Business and Labor Agree on Something: Get Rid of Term Limits
Cross-posted at RonKayeLA.
Business and labor, so often posturing as antagonists in a life and death struggle for power, have come solidly together in their nostalgia for the good old days when politicians were bought once and stayed bought.
Ah, the good old days before term limits, how sweet it was — and cheap for special interests.
Back then, political hacks held their Assembly, Senate or other public offices more or less for life unless they got caught up in a bribery or sex scandal. Even then, it was 50-50 whether they would get re-elected as long as they stayed out of prison.
Term limits grew out of the failure of our political leaders to do their jobs as public servants for the best interests of their constituents, an effort to try to break the political gridlock that was running California downhill. Sadly, the slide of the state has continued unabated to the point that we are in endless crisis.
Give A Convict A Job
Cross-posted at CalWatchdog.
Never has it been more evident that California is in a downward spiral on the verge of economic, social and political collapse — San Francisco is now pushing to make convicted criminals a protected class so that prospective employers cannot inquire about criminal records.
An already precarious business climate in the state is about to get worse.
The San Francisco Human Rights Commission voted unanimously this week to join the Reentry Council of San Francisco and send a letter to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and Mayor Ed Lee “urging them to develop and enact legislation to prohibit discrimination in San Francisco against people with prior arrest and/or convictions.”
Standing Too Close to the Propeller – Edge Playing with The First Default in Our Country’s History
Last week ended with Speaker Boehner "walking out" on
meetings with President Obama, signaling that we are no closer to solving the
rapidly escalating economic crisis of raising our country’s debt ceiling than
we were a while ago – and time is now officially running out. Meanwhile Europe seems to have agreed upon a
bailout of Greece, and some help for others of the P.I.G.S. countries, although
Moody’s downgrading of Greece’s debt is a bad sign.
We shall all now have time to see whether the Euro really is
like having a first class ticket on the Titanic, as some have now said –
Germany is on the same Euro as the weakest of the EU members – when that plane
crashes, first class passengers as well as those crammed in the back by the
bathrooms and flight attendant kitchens, will all hit the same mountainside
within microseconds of one another.
The mountainside that the US is about to drive headlong into
at full speed on or about August 2 is a whole lot closer. As this day of reckoning approaches ever
closer, we are now coming dangerously close to doing permanent and lasting
economic harm in ways that those who have irresponsibly said ‘Bring It On,’
when reminded that time has almost run out on the days of our nation’s good
credit rating, cannot even begin to imagine.
How does 20% unemployment, skyrocketing interest rates, and adding
billions to our national debt for additional interest due to destroying our
nation’s AAA credit rating, all sound, for starters?!?