Brown’s Tax Plan Looking for Love
Governor Jerry Brown is taking knocks for not yet clearing competing tax proposals proposed for the November ballot to the point where Scott Lay in his Nooner report asked the question whether Brown would be the one to dump his measure and back another. Joe Mathews in his weekly rankings of the ballot measures on […]
Munger Measure Would Upend State Finances
Chaos. That’s the overlooked and underreported consequence of the “Our Children, Our Future” measure, also known as the Munger initiative. Sponsored by philanthropist Molly Munger, the initiative would increase income taxes by more than $10 billion a year. It adds surcharges onto every tax bracket except the very lowest, and creates new high-income brackets, where […]
Middlemarch, California
In George Eliot’s 1874 novel Middlemarch, the young doctor Tertius Lydgate establishes his practice in the fictional Midlands town of Middlemarch. Though he lives far away from London, the center of medical research, he seeks to use his local efforts to contribute to the stock of medical knowledge. “He did not simply aim at a […]
Trash This Dirty Deal
Is a deregulated market a messy market? You bet. Just look at the airlines. They change flight schedules more often than Republicans change front-runners. It’s difficult to recall which airline is in bankruptcy this month. But those are problems for the airlines to figure out. Airline deregulation in 1978 gave consumers a true benefit: Command […]
Environment and Justice for All
There was a seven hour trash stink at L.A. City Hall yesterday as businesses from across the City expressed their anger about a proposal that would give the City the power to select the trash hauler for every business in Los Angeles and set the rates as well. For the first time in the history […]