Another Smokescreen from CalSTRS’s CEO
There’s a memorable scene in the movie Airport in which Dean Martin, playing an aircraft captain, is asked by a passenger why it looks from the stars that the plane has turned around. Not wanting the passengers to learn the truth (the plane had indeed changed direction), Martin responds with complex obfuscation designed to confuse […]
California Finances Riding the Roller Coaster, Again
California’s government finances are riding the roller coaster again. Buoyed by a soaring stock market and rising home prices, personal income tax receipts are flowing into the state treasury at a rate exceeding all expectations. The result: a surplus of $6 billion or more is likely if Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature simply stay […]
My Kingdom for a Clean Tobacco Tax Hike
This state needs to raise tobacco taxes. For a state as properly focused on health as California, the fact that we have unusually low such taxes is downright weird. We should be well above the national average in our level of taxation. So why not? Part of the trouble is the massive opposition from tobacco […]
How Unions and Bankers Work Together to Protect Unsustainable Defined Benefits
One of the biggest unreported, blockbuster stories in modern America is the alliance between public sector unions and the speculative banking industry. It is a story saturated in greed, drowning in delusion, smothered and marginalized by an avalanche of propaganda – paid for by taxpayers who fund both the public sector union machine and the […]