President’s Remark on Building a Business is Backwards
With President Obama visiting California yesterday, let’s take a look at his recent controversial remark related to business: “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” The irony is that the things that he says help a business grow and mature – the infrastructure, education –are paid for […]
Hidden Park Funds & Bullet Trains & Legislative Pay Raises—What’s Next?
While the governor and legislature moved to cut $22-million from California’s state parks and park advocates scrambled to raise private funds to keep parks open, the state parks department was sitting on hidden revenues of $54 million dollars. Another day, another story of mismanagement of our tax money — and Sacramento political leaders say we […]
“Ballot Mirroring” Poll Gives First Snapshot of All 11 State Measures
Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy and the California Business Roundtable teamed with M4 Strategies, a public opinion and marketing research firm, to produce the first in a proposed bi-weekly series of polls on the state’s ballot measures. The design of the poll is to test the ballot title and summary only to see if […]
Fact Checking Prop 30’s “Dubious” First Ad
Governor Jerry Brown’s campaign to pass Proposition 30, a nearly $50-billion tax increase, released its first ad on the Internet. The campaign opposed to the tax initiative (of which I am a part) issued a “Fact Check” on the ad, featuring critical comments from news reports from around the state. Read the Fact Check and […]
Prop 40: A Test if Position on the Ballot Matters
Much has been made about the governor’s effort to manipulate the ballot to get his tax increase initiative ahead of other measures on the ballot. The theory political experts gave for the move is that measures at the end of the ballot tend to draw more NO votes. There will be a great test for […]
Fiscal Hits Keep Coming
CalPERS Reports; Talking High Speed Rail and the Gov.’s Tax Plan on NBC-LA News Conference On a day that the Brown tax campaign released its first internet ad populated mostly by voices from folks in the public sector advocating for Prop 30, but not once mentioning the word “tax” in the minute-and-a-half ad, CalPERS reported […]
And, the Governor’s Team Sings: Good Golly Miss Molly
Friends and allies of the governor put together a campaign against the Molly Munger initiative. Since they were concerned her tax increase for schools could undermine the governor’s tax increase effort, they decided to fight Munger’s initiative head on. They filed ballot arguments against the measure. They know they are in for a fight with […]
Tax Solutions to Bankruptcy Limited and Controversial
Like canaries in the coal mine, the bankruptcy declarations of Stockton and San Bernardino should be a warning to the leadership in the legislature and local governments – fix the finances before it’s too late. Unfortunately, it won’t be easy to reverse the big spending promises made on pension and health care costs, which represent […]
Munger’s Team Fumbles, HJTA Picks up the Ball
While Molly Munger’s attorneys argued in yesterday’s court hearing procedure and incompetence and/or favoritism by the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters to help put the governor’s initiative first of eleven measures on the November ballot, a challenge to the constitutionality of the bill that created the situation was ignored in the debate. But the […]
Sir Walter Scott Comments on California Politics
Oh! what a tangled web we weave When first we practice to deceive! Sir Walter Scott From the poem, Marmion, published in 1808 It’s safe to assume that Sir Walter Scott, the author of Ivanhoe, who was born in the 18th century, was not thinking of California when he wrote the lines above. But, I […]