Projected State Budget Surpluses Could Disrupt Tax Initiatives
The budget projections offered by the Legislative Analyst last week could throw a monkey wrench into the plans of those who are seeking tax increases on the 2014 ballot. The LAO projected a budget surplus of $5.6 billion dollars for the budget year ending in 2015 scaling up to $10 billion a couple of years […]
Deciphering Public Pension Fund Investment Fee Reports
Recently there has been a good deal of press about public pension funds moving $600 billion to “alternative investments” managed by hedge funds and private equity funds. Some commentators, such as Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone and David Sirota of Salon, criticize alternative investments as transfers of wealth to Wall Street because alternative investment managers […]
Fixing DC: California’s Innovations Can Help
Right now, it is hard to imagine Congress transforming into a productive bipartisan institution. But the Legislature in California has demonstrated the possibility of such a transformation. In doing so, it exemplifies the kind of governance innovations that the United States badly needs today. Over the course of a generation, governance in California mutated into […]
Small Business and Self-Employed Hurt by Administration’s Policies
Obamacare’s first set of victims was predictable: the self-employed and owners of small businesses. Since the bungled launch of the health insurance enrollment system, hundreds of thousands of self-insured people have either had their policies revoked or may find themselves in that situation in the coming months. More than 10 million self-insured people, many of […]