Redistricting: Legal Challenges And A Referendum
The Redistricting Commission has now completed it work and certified its final maps. A referendum has been filed against the Senate plan. As of now, the legal action appears aimed at the Senate plan.
Latino groups have threatened a lawsuit, likely in federal court, against the Senate plan for regressing Latino opportunities. Republicans may file suit in state court against the map plan for violating state constitutional criteria.
Propositions 11 and 20 vest original jurisdiction over legal challenges to the redistricting plans in the State Supreme Court, and the court has issued guidelines for anyone wishing to file an action. A plaintiff has 45 days to file a suit, meaning any lawsuit must be filed before the end of September. The Secretary of State in the past has said she will need final maps by February 1, so October 1 to February 1 is the window for the court to make any changes to the maps.
Deliberative Poll Says: Waste Not, Want Not
Results of the Deliberative Poll from a couple of months ago
were revealed yesterday and they seemed to track the feelings Californians
express in more standardized polling.
The poll was conducted over a weekend in Torrance with 400
citizens, a sampling of the voter population, taking part. The participants
were polled at the beginning of the exercise. Over the course of the weekend
they took part in breakout groups, meeting occasionally as a committee of the whole
to hear discussions on four separate issues from experts in State-Local Reform,
the Initiative Process, Representation and Taxation & Fiscal Policy. They
were then polled at the end of the weekend.
For the purposes of this column, I will focus on the
Taxation and Fiscal Policy section since I served on the expert panel in that
category.
A message gleaned from the polls on the taxation issue might
be: Waste Not, Want Not.
AB 742 – Bad Bill Jeopardizes Property Rights, Usurps Local Land Use Process, Diminishes Business Climate
A broad and growing coalition of influential labor, business, education, and local government groups has come together to kill Assembly Bill 742, a so-called “gut and amend” measure that would usurp local government land use decision-making, put new jobs and vital revenue at risk, and further diminish the business climate in California.
The bill was cobbled together with new language just days before the end of the Legislative Session by Assembly Member Bonnie Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) specifically to help the politically powerful and wealthy Pechanga Tribe of Luiseno Indians circumvent local land use authorities and kill a planned aggregate quarry project near Temecula.
Has Anybody seen our $862,000,000,000?
When one
of my sons was three, we were driving down the street. I realized I had passed our destination and merely
turned the car back in the direction
of our home. From the back seat I heard
this cheery voice, "What’s the matter Dad, you forget your wallet again?" My tendency to lose my wallet is something my
kids remind me of to this day. A recent
Father’s Day card is to the right. (Note my close physical
resemblance to Indy and that my kids notice it too.)
So when it comes to fiscal responsibility, I may not be the best messenger. But $862,000,000,000??? That is how much the administration spent on
the last stimulus plan. A new report explains
why the administration has given the word "stimulus" such a bad name and why it
would be a huge mistake to allow them to now produce "Stimulus II, More Lost
Treasure". Report
by John Cogan and John Taylor
The administration attempted to stimulate increase
economic activity by (1) direct payments to state and local governments, (2) creating
and executing "shovel ready" projects and (3) direct payments to individuals. However, with respect to direct payments to
government entities, Cogan and Taylor conclusively show the funds were not used
to create jobs but to (a) increase payments to health and welfare programs and (b)
provide an alternative funding source for existing projects. For example, instead of issuing a bond to pay
for a project they already planned to undertake, they just used stimulus funds.
CA Misery Index Tops Jimmy Carter Era
Cross-posted at California Political Review.
The “Misery Index” economic indicator that Jimmy Carter used to defeat Gerald Ford for the Presidency was at an all-time high of 13.57% in the summer of 1976. But it’s 14.68% now in California, and rising. While Carter successfully campaigned that “no man responsible for giving a country a misery index that high had a right to even ask to be President,” thereby targeting a weak Republican president instead of the policies of the entrenched 40-year long Democrat controlled Congress of the era, perhaps Democrats here in California will also get away with their terrible performance on the economy by blaming someone else.
That’s because the main stream media doesn’t seem very interested in holding Democrats to task for California’s (or America’s) economic woes, even given the Democrats almost perpetual control of our State Legislature, a Democratic Governor, a Democratic President, and a Congress only one-half, and narrowly at that, controlled by Republicans. And public opinion is still pretty good for Governor Jerry Brown, at 48% positive. Yet the MSM seems full of stories about George W. Bush-era failings as the root of all economic evils in America, and can’t seem to write much anything about the utter failure of Obama-era spending programs, or California’s dysfunctional big spending Legislative Democrats. While Obama hands out the shovelware, and our State Legislature debates variations of shear constitutional lunacy, our financial markets are blowing up at the seams. Piers Morgan devotes hours on CNN to talk about a defeated Delaware 2010 GOP U.S. Senate candidate’s position on gay marriage. It all reminds one of that story about Emperor Nero fiddling while Rome burned down. Is anybody in a responsible position anywhere paying attention to our economy???