Cross-posted at CalWatchdog.

Democrats are struggling to put Gov. Jerry Brown’s $12 billion tax increase proposal up for a June 2011 election of the voters of the state of California, which supposedly would help close the budget deficit of $25 billion. They need 2/3 votes in both houses of the Legislature to call a special election for the vote, but are just shy of that number. Which means they need a handful of Republican votes in each house of the Legislature to put the ballot measure to the people.

Callbuzz even said this was “undemocratic.”

But do they really need the minimum Republican support in the Legislature?

Actually, no. There’s a way around it, if Democrats dare. It involves a two-step process. The steps must be done in order.

Step 1. Do this quickly. Gather petitions to put the $12 billion tax increase on the next statewide ballot. Signature-gathering now costs about $2 million for each initiative petition.

We have spent last Friday and this past weekend glued to our
TV’s, pasted to the internet with mass anxiety rising like a Saturn rocket from
it’s launch pad, and the news from Egypt is so bad that adjectives fail.  Mubarak, the now embattled BeAll&EndAll of Egypt’s government
for several decades; the lynchpin to keeping the peace between Egypt and our
closest Middle East ally, Israel, and; the recipient of annual Billions of US
aid (from my taxpayer pocket and yours, too) and our very best weaponry, is now
a Dead Man Walking, or so say the many TV Talking Heads and cyber-pundits.  Did I forget to mention that he was also a
brutal dictator (sorry Joe Biden, you got that one wrong), employing his
dreaded security police (no over-used Nazi comparisons here, folks) to torture
and intimidate – until they all disappeared at some point Friday (our time),
leaving the most educated populace in the Middle East to literally fend for
themselves with knives and clubs to protect their loved ones and property.  Gun control advocates, please take note of
what happens when chaos descends on civilized society – we can all recall the
’92 LA Riots, where similar things happened and whole neighborhoods, like my
own hillside one, were left without police and fire protection for a couple of
days – Police and Fire Dept. officers came door to door to tell us to keep our
weapons handy if we had any because we were on our own.

The sheer fright factor here cannot be over-emphasized.  If you think I am overstating what is going
on in Egypt, you haven’t been paying attention.

COURT SAYS BALLOT MEASURE SUMMARIES MUST BE IMPARTIAL

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association Court of Appeal
victory yesterday says the legislature cannot dictate the ballot label, title
and official summary. The legislature did just that for the High Speed Rail
bonds that narrowly passed in 2008.

HJTA president, Jon Coupal, said in a release, "the Court’s ruling is a stinging rebuke of the
California Legislature for manipulating voters by substituting the proponent’s
advocacy for what is supposed to be a neutral summary by an impartial third
party."

While the decision is a victory
for California voters, the ruling begs the question about the partisan office
of Attorney General being an impartial third party. The AG is assigned the task
of writing the impartial ballot label, title and summary. Over the years,
attorney generals from both parties have been accused of political maneuvering
in drawing up ballot information.

Perhaps it is time to turn the
task of writing impartial ballot titles and summaries over to a non-partisan outfit
like the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Pop quiz: What is the meaning of the following set of
numbers?

63, 62, 58, 56, 76, 68, 56, 90, 57, 67, 55, 67, 68, 77

Those are the ages of the members of the Think Long
Committee,
the group convened by famously homeless billionaire Nicolas Berggruen to come
up with systemic fixes for California’s governmental dysfunction.

For those who haven’t been
following it, the Think Long Committee – let’s call it the TLC — is the most
promising entity in the reform movement. Berggruen is an expert in
constitutions with a global outlook and a strong sense that California’s system
is broken and needs to be redesigned.

Super Bowl Week
kicks off this weekend as NFL all-stars gather in Hawaii for the Pro Bowl game
on Sunday.  But there is another all-star
game of sorts happening near Palm Springs this weekend.  This one is not about football. But it is about
America’s other great passion-politics.

According to news
accounts in the New York Times, Politico and the Desert Sun, Koch Industries is
hosting its annual conference that has been dubbed by a representative of the
liberal Courage Campaign of California, a vehement opponent of the conference,
as "insidious." 

Now I have heard of
Koch Industries and the two brothers who run this highly successful
multi-faceted company but to be honest I hadn’t heard of their conference
before this year. From the sounds of things they do attract an all-star line-up
of speakers that includes leaders from government, academia and industry many
of them conservatives and libertarians. Sounds like a good conference from what
I have read.

In the seven weeks since the last report, another 11 companies have left California completely or re-directed substantial capital to build facilities out of state that in an earlier era would have been built here. The number in today’s list is lower than the usual four-per-week average and I believe it’s because companies shy away from making such announcements during the end-of-year holiday season.

The names of the companies and justifications for listing them appear in the list below, which builds upon the Dec. 6, 2010 entry regarding 193 companies here (which in turn builds on previous lists).

In brief:
Company total for 12 months of 2010: 204
Company total for all of 2009: 51

A superficial read of the latest PPIC poll might encourage the Brown Administration to change course away from across the board tax extensions to taxing businesses. But, such a move would be a mistake.

All ready, the Brown administration is informing business leaders that if the tax extension plan included in the governor’s budget doesn’t move forward, Plan B could be to tax individual industries. Not surprisingly, the poll shows voters would rather tax corporations than tax themselves. PPIC reports that 55% of likely voters favor raising state taxes paid by corporations. Meanwhile likely voters turned thumbs down on the idea of raising personal income taxes (70% No), state sales taxes (64%), and vehicle license fees (62%).

However, PPIC pollsters did not follow up with any questions to test the idea of taxing corporations. Since businesses provide jobs, and increased taxes mean less revenue businesses would have to hire employees, and jobs are important to the electorate (31% of likely voters said it was the most important issue the state faces), clearly reminding the voters of the connection between higher taxes and fewer jobs would effect election results.

The first survey on the Gov. Jerry Brown budget plan is now out and it has some interesting findings. The Public Policy Institute of California released the survey on Thursday.

According to the PPIC, some 58 percent of Californians are satisfied with the Brown budget approach of cuts and taxes; some 66 percent of likely voters favor the idea of a special election to prevent further budget cuts, but only 54 percent actually favor extending the 2009 tax increases that would be at the heart of the proposed June special election.

What are we to make of these figures? First, the $8 billion in specific budget cuts Brown has proposed would now seem in concrete. Democrats howled when former Gov. Schwarzenegger proposed similar cuts, but now that the cuts have Brown’s fingerprints on them, the howling has ceased. The $4 billion in funding shifts Brown has proposed would also seem to have general support.

The special election issue is more nuanced. First, the poll find voters very opposed to cuts in K-12 education and favoring cuts in prison spending. But, as PPIC points out, this may be based on an erroneous belief that prison spending is higher than spending on schools, when the facts are just the opposite. Only 10 percent of the budget goes to prison spending, nearly half to schools.

Article 11 Sec. 1 (a) of the California Constitution says: "The State
is divided into counties which are legal subdivisions of the State".  Always a dynamic relationship it began to deteriorate in 1978 with the passage of Proposition 13.  Although serving the very important purpose
of capping run away property tax increases, Prop. 13 also severed the
relationship between local revenues, and state mandated programs, and
permanently muddled any relationship between responsibility, accountability
and resources.