Author: Joe Armendariz

If I were President, or Governor, or the Mayor of Any Town USA, I would call on grocery stores and other retail outlets to start

There was an article in the Santa Barbara Newspress that exposed Santa Barbara County, a place where our political leaders do whatever it takes to

When will politicians and lawyers (although I repeat myself) understand that merchants, either online or brick and mortar, do not pay sales taxes except on

Are you for building a “resilient infrastructure for tomorrow’s economy”? Me too! Or #MeToo. This new political idea is being fertilized with this dogmatic article

I won’t bore readers with the tedious statistics that I have been talking and writing about for years, including but not limited to the fact

According to a report released by the American Petroleum Institute, 2011 could go down as the first year since 1957 that there has not been A SINGLE offshore lease sale. Moreover, 85 percent of our nation’s offshore resources continue to be off-limits to development. This is despite the increased uncertainty in world oil markets and a rising worldwide demand for crude oil (think China, India, and eventually Japan).

Keep in mind that not only will increased domestic oil and gas production fuel our economy by lowering energy costs, while also creating good paying private sector jobs…more oil production in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) would also result in tens of billions of new tax revenue for state and local governments, including right here in California, and in Santa Barbara County where the budget deficits for FY 2011/2012 are $24 billion, and $43 million respectively.

President Obama delivered a speech on energy where he suggested that all is pretty well with our nation’s domestic energy production…I.e., energy crisis? What energy crisis? He even went so far as to boast that under his Administration 2009 saw an increase in domestic oil production. Well, below are some examle of how the Obama Administration is handling our nation’s domestic energy needs (Source: API):

In a recent article that appeared in the Santa Barbara Independent, Nick Welch, the paper’s executive editor, let the cat out of the bag as it relates to Pedro Nava’s true motive for pushing AB1604, which if passed would impose a 10% severance tax on California domestic oil production. In the article, Nick points out that Nava’s reason for pushing this new tax legislation is to gain favor with environmentalists who he hopes will help him in his race for Attorney General.

In other words, the Nava oil tax scheme isn’t about good fiscal policy, sound economic policy, or even smart environmental policy…it is about politics and Pedro’s personal ambition. And that is of course bad enough. But it’s even worse when you consider the impacts on our state’s families if Nava’s oil tax scheme were to become law.

Indeed, if passed, Nava’s oil tax scheme would be imposed on all of California’s oil and gas operators’ gross oil production. Nava and his bill’s proponents claim this is justified in light of the fact that Texas and Alaska impose a similar tax. They suggest, therefore, that California is giving oil companies that do business in this state a "free ride".

The Santa Barbara County Taxpayers Association is opposed to AB 1604 by Assemblymember Pedro Nava (D-Santa Barbara) not just because it creates a whole new tax that will cause a larger drag on our economy, which is already struggling to recover.

We also oppose the deliberately misleading tactics being used to promote the oil severance tax. Assemblyman Nava and his supporters like to say that California is the only oil-producing state without a severance tax. This is true on its face, but is misleading.

California taxes oil producers in ways other states do not. For example, we have the highest corporate income tax in the country. Texas, Nevada and others have none. California charges a sales tax on the purchase of the expensive manufacturing equipment used in oil production. Most states do not.

California is already taxing oil producers at a high rate. The addition of the AB 1604 severance tax would give California yet another area where it has the highest taxes of all.

At the end of the 2008 fiscal year, the Treasury Department’s “Financial Report of the United States Government” issued a report that showed the present value of America’s unfunded liabilities had reached a staggering $56 trillion, or nearly four times our nation’s GDP.

In about a month, the 2009 Financial Report will be released and those in the know expect it to show our unfunded liabilities growing to over $60 trillion, effectively tripling in a decade.

Every day we delay rehabilitating our nation’s spending addiction, America sinks $11 billion deeper into an ocean of red ink.

What is the response from Congress to this out-of-control spending habit? Pass a massive new health care entitlement of course…what else?