"The Commander-in-Chief answers him while chasing a fly
Saying, ‘Death to all those who would whimper and cry’
And dropping a barbell he points to the sky
Saying, ‘The sun’s not yellow it’s chicken’"

The
other morning I read an article by a major columnist that said the goals of
those who oppose tax increases – or at least the result of such opposition was (1)
the privatization of public schools, (2) driving students of limited means out
of the universities and (3) eliminating tax-funded health care and social
services for the poor.   The same day another major columnist claimed people
who opposed Brown’s tax increase were disingenuously denying responsibility for
soaring tuitions and the shredding of grandma’s safety net.  He asserted if such policies were followed to
their logical conclusion there would be "no other
honest choice but to starve college students" and "poor grandma".

First of all, let me say something some apparently may find controversial:  I like grandmothers and do not want them to starve.   Second, the problem with their rhetoric is
that it distorts the problem we face.  Who
pays how much in taxes is a real issue.  However,
to say those of us who opposed the tax increase without other reforms (and a vast
majority of Californians did so), will oppose imposing taxes even if it means
people will starve is hateful, disingenuous and arrogant – not to mention
inaccurate.

Cross-posted at CalWatchdog.

Gov. Jerry Brown and the other anti-business fanatics in the Legislature and government unions just don’t get it: If you attack businesses, they leave California.

A recent departure was Pixel2Canvas, which split Lake Forest for North Las Vegas. It’s noteworthy that the company left Orange County, which has a much better business climate than the rest of California because the locals are more libertarian. But Orange County still is in Taxifornia. Reported the Orange County Register:

You coulda seen this coming. A year ago, Curt Benton moved his company, Pixel2Canvas and its 14 jobs, from Lake Forest to North Las Vegas.

The company is a fine art printer that puts digital art onto canvas, a process called gliclee.

Initially, Benton planned to keep his family in Orange County and commute. But now they have moved to Nevada too.

Cross-posted at CityJournal.

For decades, most Angelenos have known that something was not quite right in Vernon. A 5.2-square-mile city situated in the southern shadows of downtown Los Angeles, a scant few miles from the now infamous Southland cities of Bell and Maywood, Vernon is a company town—or, rather, a companies town. At last count, 1,800 businesses had operations in Vernon, employing over 55,000 people in mostly blue-collar jobs. Yet the city has just 97 residents. A larger, more engaged populace might possibly have prevented Vernon’s public officials from committing a shocking amount of malfeasance recently. The city manager, Bruce Malkenhorst, pleaded guilty in May to illegal use of public funds after investigators for the L.A. County district attorney found that he’d received more than $60,000 in city funds for personal use and was drawing the state’s highest pension (over $500,000 per year). Malkenhorst’s plea followed the 2009 conviction of Vernon’s mayor, Leonis Malburg, for voter fraud. Donal O’Callaghan, the city’s top administrator until mid-2010, was indicted in October for illegally putting his wife’s company on the city payroll. And the city council recently voted to continue receiving salaries of around $70,000 per member per year—nearly the highest in the state.

Mr. Reid Hoffman
is one of  California’s leading venture
capitalists. Based at Greylock Partners in Silicon Valley, Mr. Hoffman is a
co-founder of LinkedIn and has been a major participant in PayPal, Zynga, and
Flickr-as well as an early Facebook investor.  

California’s
venture capitalists, along with the state’s staffing industry and local
Workforce Investment Boards, know California’s job markets. That’s why it was
good news last week to read in a column by Mr. Thomas Friedman that Mr. Hoffman
has a new book coming out early next year, "The Start Up of You". The book builds
on ideas of entrepreneurship within firms, among firms and throughout the
economy that Mr. Hoffman has been putting forward for some time.

The recent disappointing job reports, with unemployment rising above 9%, only reinforced an emerging reality that few politicians, in either party, are ready to address. American society is becoming feudalized, with increasingly impregnable walls between the classes. This is ironic for a nation largely defined by its opportunity for upward mobility and fluid class structure.

According to the latest data, the current unemployment rate is the highest it has been so deep into a recovery since the 1940s.  Even more troubling, over 6 million Americans have been unemployed for more than six months — the largest number since the feds have begun tracking this number decades ago.

That’s not the worst of it.  The pool of “missing workersâ€? — those who are unemployed but are not counted as such — has soared to over 4.4 million. And under the first African-American president the employment rate for black men now sits at a record low since the government started measuring the statistic four decades ago.

Who remembers the WIN Button from the Ford
Administration? The WIN button campaign came to mind in reading the new effort
devised by the California State Employees Association Retirees to place
stickers on checks that read: "Paid by State Retiree."

WIN stood for Whip Inflation Now. In attempting
to bring inflation under control, President Gerald Ford and his advisors came
up with a campaign of both mandatory and voluntary measures to encourage the
public to engage in disciplined spending habits and personal savings. A public
relations campaign featuring WIN buttons was created to accompany the effort.

The buttons did little to change economic
habits. They quickly became the object of ridicule and some people wore the
button upside down saying the acronym "NIM" stood for: "No Immediate Miracles."

The state retirees want you to know the value
their spending power has on California’s economy.  The effort is built on the back of a CalPERS
sponsored study recently released that claims public employee pension payments
have a $26 billion effect on statewide economic activity.

Treasurer Bill Lockyer told reporters last week that a proposed state
spending cap on next June’s ballot is unusually restrictive and will force a
significant downsizing of government – and especially higher education.

The Treasurer is a keen observer of and among the
most experienced and knowledgeable players in state budget policy and politics.
But on this issue he’s wrong.

Mr. Lockyer was referring to ACA 4, a proposed constitutional amendment placed
on the June, 2012, ballot by the Legislature. The measure aims to accomplish
two goals: create and enforce a Rainy Day fund for the state’s budget, and
require that unforeseen revenue spikes be spent for one-time purposes and not
added to the general spending base.

Far from "spelling doom" for key programs, ACA 4 will
protect them from irresponsible short-term budget gimmicks.

If Tony Quinn is right, the Democrats may get a two-thirds
supermajority in the Assembly next year.

This
possibility should focus the Republican mind. Now is the time for the GOP to
press for a constitutional reform deal. Republicans have a big card that they
should give up for good reason – the two thirds requirements for raising taxes
or fees. But they shouldn’t just give it up. They need to get something very
specific in return.

What should
that be?

The
reflexive would likely start with: at the very least "a real spending limit and
pension reform." Republicans, those are fool’s gold. Spending limits are
totally unpredictable – you don’t know how they’ll work, or not work as they
interact with all the other spending and tax formulas in California. (See the
Gann spending limit and a host of other spending restrictions passed over the
past 30 years). And the pension reform that Republicans want is unlikely to
last because it is based on a two-tiered system, with less generous retirements
for new state employees than old ones. Two-tiered systems are inherently
unstable. When the good economic times return, they inevitably revert to
one-tier systems.