Campaign Finance Battles Won’t Go Away
Campaign finance is in the news again as the U.S. Supreme Court took another look last week at who should be allowed to get how much from whom. Regardless of whether the justices decide in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission to overturn the current federal limits on combined contributions to individual candidates over a two-year […]
Gov. Brown Spikes Faulty Initiative Change
Governor Jerry Brown refused to go along with a labor unions’ scheme to swing the initiative process in their favor. Brown vetoed AB 857, a bill authored by Assemblyman Paul Fong and sponsored by unions, that would have required ten percent of the signatures gathered on statewide initiative petitions to be collected by non-paid signature […]
Bill Signings End Tax Board Money Grab from Small Business
Small businesses got a bit of hope this past week as Governor Brown signed two bills, Senate Bill 209 (Lieu) and Assembly Bill 1412 (Bocanegra) to ensure that interest and penalties will not be assessed retroactively against taxpayers who complied in good faith with existing tax law when that law was later declared unconstitutional by […]
Shrine To Big Government In Place In State Capitol
There were a number of low-points from my perspective during the tenure of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. But none was worse for California taxpayers, or for the California Republican Party, than the budget deal of 2009. At the heart of this particular budget deal was a two-year massive increase in taxes on income, sales and cars […]