March 3rd and 4th, 2012

California Tea Party Groups

Strategic Conference

San Juan Capistrano - Orange County, California 92675

Capistrano Inn/Best Western

27174 ORTEGA HWY SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, CA 92675

949.493.5661 

Best Western Reservations

Hotel reservations at number above or website above.

We have blocked 20 rooms for our conference at $89.95 per night. Mention SoCal Tax Revolt for the discount.

Registration is $45.00 per person for the conference, this includes lunch both days.

 Please register for event at the below link for PayPal.

Fellow Patriots,

Despite an incredible effort by so many of you and tens of thousands of volunteer circulators working alongside paid petition-gatherers, I regret to inform you that we fell short. 504,760 valid signatures were needed to qualify the referendum for the November 2012 ballot. Although we put in a herculean effort the count as of late last night was 447,514 signatures, which precludes us from submitting the signatures today to the registrar of voters at each of the 58 counties.

This is disappointing news, but it is no less of a warning to Governor Brown, and every Democrat legislator who voted to create a new entitlement program for illegals while the state still has a budget deficit over $9 billion, and cannot even meet it's obligation to legal California students.

Thank you for joining us in this historic effort as Californians of every age, race, religion, income and political party came together to fight to restore sanity to the Golden State. We may have failed in this first battle, but we will not give up in the war to save California from the reckless politicians who want to raise our taxes to put the college dreams of illegals ahead of our own children.

Your efforts have not been in vain.  We have alerted our fellow citizens to this fiscal nightmare. Today only marks the end of one battle in a war to reclaim our voice in our legislature.This one loss will not dampen our resolve.

It is an honor fighting alongside you in this great cause.

Godspeed,

Assemblyman Tim Donnelly

Gov. Jerry Brown calls for historic shuttering of state's notorious youth prison system

By Karen de Sá kdesa@mercurynews.com

Posted: 01/06/2012 04:10:18 PM PST

Updated: 01/08/2012 05:11:50 AM PST

Following years of failed attempts to rehabilitate juvenile offenders and improve public safety, California's once-sprawling youth prison system may soon shut its gates for good.

If the Legislature approves the plan Gov. Jerry Brown released Thursday as part of his budget blueprint, California could become the first state to entirely eliminate its prisons for youthful offenders, juvenile crime experts say. The responsibility for jailing all youths would shift to local governments.

Fiscal pressure in a system with annual costs of $200,000 per ward drove Brown to propose halting new admissions into the Division of Juvenile Justice. Under the plan, beginning next year the state's three remaining youth prisons would be phased out as current inmates complete their terms.

But Brown's vision represents far more than just belt-tightening. Already, it's being described by crime experts across the country as a historic proposal given the state's size and the notorious history of its youth prisons. Wire-mesh cages, 23-hour cell confinement and brutal staff beatings are well-documented parts of that legacy.

"California is at the front end, cutting edge of what is going to be the huge trend going forward," said Bart Lubow, who directs national juvenile justice reforms for the Annie E. Casey Foundation. "And that is the policy embrace of the fundamental truth that kids do better when they are near their homes."

Matthew Cate, California's corrections chief, predicted Brown's plan would be a boon to public safety. "The biggest benefit is it keeps wards close to home," Cate said. "The evidence shows, especially with young people, that it eases the return to communities and reduces victimization."

Currently, only the most serious and violent offenders are housed by the state. And California's corrections system for youths has reached other milestones that reform advocates could only have dreamed of a decade ago.

With dramatic drops in youth crime and more incentives for counties to keep their offenders close to home, the number of youths in custody has plunged from more than 10,000 wards in 1996 to just about 1,100 today. The number of youth prisons has dropped from 11 to three. And for the first time in recent history, conditions inside the facilities have finally begun to improve, said one of the system's longtime critics, Donald Specter of the Marin-based Prison Law Office.

Juvenile crime rates have plunged in every major county in California from 1998 to 2010. The rates of serious youth crime are now the lowest since statewide statistics were first collected in 1954, according to the San Francisco-based Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice.

Those who have spent decades attempting to overhaul the youth corrections system say they never imagined the reforms would become so costly -- and the population so shrunken -- that the juvenile prisons would ultimately close.

Still, they share concerns about sending young prisoners back to county jails. Absent a state option, they predict, more youthful offenders will be sent to adult prisons, or housed in facilities even less equipped than those run by the state.

In contrast with adults, juvenile offenders have a legal right to treatment, education and training. But juvenile halls are designed for short-term detentions, and county ranch programs are generally not secure enough to provide for maximum security.

http://www.insidebayarea.com/top-stories/ci_19690876?source=rss

Brown has high hopes for California

BY JULIET WILLIAMS AND JASON DEAREN/ ASSOCIATED PRESS

Posted: 01/07/2012 01:01:43 AM PST

SACRAMENTO -- While most other states are limiting expectations as they try to recover from the recession, Gov. Jerry Brown is dreaming of a bright future for his native California.

Even as he prepares for another year of budget cuts, Brown is bucking national conventional wisdom by proposing spending on the types of long-term projects most other governors and state legislatures are shunning.

The 73-year-old Democrat, in his second stint in the governor's office, has said he intends to plan for California's future even as the state tries to right its economy and limit spending on basic programs such as health care for the needy, social services and higher education.

The budget proposal for the 2012-13 fiscal year that he released on Thursday commits seed money to a number of expensive projects that he hopes will guide California in the decades to come. The amounts are relatively small but provide down payments for initiatives he said are essential to keeping California desirable. 

The allocations underscore Brown's support for a $98 billion high-speed rail line that has been heavily criticized for its ballooning price tag and an array of alternative energy projects he hopes will lead to a cleaner environment and so-called "green" jobs.

Despite the worst economy in modern times, the Democrat once mocked as "Governor Moonbeam" for proposing communication satellites in space is asking state lawmakers to support "bold moves" that live up to California's history of innovation. Critics question whether California can afford the projects in the years ahead.

"This is a strong, confident investment in the future of California," Brown said in releasing his budget plan. "There are a few people, some of them who are hankering after life in Texas, who call California a failed state. But we are the innovative state. We're the state of Apple computer, of Facebook, of Hewlett-Packard, Hollywood, stem cell research, international trade, diversity. This is a state that's dynamic, it's creative, and it's prosperous."

Brown's approach is markedly different than that taken in most other states in the wake of the Great Recession. Other governors and state legislative leaders have taken the opposite view, arguing that governments at all levels must live within their current means.

Forty-eight states have cut programs and services since late 2007. That includes California, which has made deep cuts to social services and education. Brown also has sought to reduce bureaucracy or transfer to local governments the types of programs that he believes should not be overseen by the state, but he also has said he wants to empower government's core functions, including offering help to those who need it most.

Brown's 2012-13 spending plan includes $4.2 billion in cuts to the state's welfare-to-work program, Medi-Cal and child care services. Yet he also is proposing spending about $1 billion in expected revenue from California's new "cap-and-trade" program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He wants that money to go toward clean energy research, natural resource protection and infrastructure projects related to alternative energy.

He also budgeted $15.9 million for the agency overseeing the high-speed rail project, signaling his continued support for it even in the face of several reports that question the project's planning and costs. The rail line is one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects proposed in any state, with plans to link the San Francisco Bay area, the Central Valley and Southern California with trains running up to 220 mph.

The current cost estimate is more than double the original, and funding for most of the project has not been identified.

Brown also wants to devote $25 million and create 135 new jobs as part of a habitat conservation and water delivery system in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. That comes amid the ongoing debate over whether California should build a massive canal or tunnel to move Sacramento River water to farms and cities to the south.

During his campaign for governor, Brown endorsed building a canal or tunnel around the delta, but his administration has not proposed building one so far. A proposal for a so-called peripheral canal that Brown supported was the subject of a bitter ballot fight when he was governor in the 1980s.

The sums are small in scope amid a total proposed general fund budget of $92.5 billion, but they reflect the governor's attitude that California can't stop planning for the future just because times are tough right now.

Investments in the environment are relatively cheap and one of the few policy goals that are not blocked by current political and economic realities, said Thad Kousser, an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego.

He said Brown is taking a risk by supporting high-speed rail but noted that funding for the initial phase of construction comes from sources outside the state budget.

"This is Jerry Brown swimming up the political stream to fulfill his father's vision of California, of investing in infrastructure," Kousser said. "It doesn't look easy in the short term, and many of us will be long gone before it comes to fruition."

Brown's father, Pat Brown, was governor from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s and is credited with developing California's extensive water system and a higher education system that until recent years was a model for its combination of accessibility, affordability and high quality.

If the rail project eventually succeeds, it could provide Brown a lasting legacy of his own. His first tenure as governor, from 1975 to 1983, also was marked by cutbacks to state government and a voter revolt against escalating residential property taxes. Brown was asked this week whether he has had second thoughts about the rail project after the latest critical report.

"You know, I'm of the view that this is the time for big ideas, not shrinking back and looking for a hole to climb into," he told reporters. "California is a big state. America can have a high-speed rail system like every other country -- every other major country -- and I think we've got to move forward."

Republicans and some Democrats have called for scrapping the project. Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, said Brown's budget reflects his "addiction to overspending."

"It is irresponsible to assume that billions of dollars in new tax revenue will suddenly appear, while they move full-speed ahead on high speed rail, a billion-dollar cap and tax scheme, and numerous unsustainable entitlement programs," he said in a statement.

The environmental projects eligible for some of the $1 billion look to the future: solar and wind farms, as well as programs to charging stations for electric vehicles. Such projects will end up boosting the economy as well as protecting the environment, said Stanley Young, a spokesman for the California Air Resources Board, which would oversee the spending.

Jan Mazurek, director of strategy and operations at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University, said Brown also has displayed political courage by pushing ahead with the cap-and-trade plan, which was part of a bill signed by his predecessor, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The plan puts a price on greenhouse gas emissions and offers financial incentives for companies to reduce pollution.

"Other states may be shortsighted toward environmental budget cuts, but Governor Brown understands a cap can close the deficit and that it can grow clean energy companies. A growing economy closes budget deficits," Mazurek said.

Brown served as state attorney general before he was elected governor for the second time in 2010. During that tenure, he supported enacting the state's greenhouse gas law and has repeatedly talked about the need to plan for the predicted effects of climate change.

During a conference on extreme climate risks he hosted last month in San Francisco, Brown urged people to "wake up" to the extreme weather patterns caused by climate change. He said there already was evidence that warming weather is causing faster snowmelts from the Sierra Nevada, putting stress on the state's aging levee system and threatening agriculture in the Central Valley.

He said the greatest obstacle California faces is a "deep sense of complacency" that things will work themselves out.

http://www.thereporter.com/rss/ci_19694723?source=rss

Economy is revving up; why is Jerry Brown seeking cuts, tax hikes?

By Dale Kasler
dkasler@sacbee.com

Published: Saturday, Jan. 7, 2012 - 12:00 am | Page 1A

Last Modified: Saturday, Jan. 7, 2012 - 12:21 am

The economy is kicking into gear – yet Gov. Jerry Brown says California still has to slash spending and raise taxes.

What gives?

The jarring contrast between Brown's budget proposal and the latest unemployment news out of Washington is a reflection of the depth of the downturn in California. Even as job growth is gaining significant momentum – nationally and in California – most experts don't expect an immediate end to multibillion-dollar state budget deficits.

"At the state level, revenues are going up. But the gap, the red ink at the state level, is so huge," said Sung Won Sohn, an economist at California State University's Channel Islands campus in Camarillo. "There's still a significant amount of red ink to cover."

On Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statisticssaid employers across the country added a better-than-expected 200,000 jobs in December. The national unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent, the lowest since February 2009.

Just a day earlier in Sacramento, the governor offered up the sort of grim menu that's become the norm at the Capitol in recent years: billions of dollars' worth of spending cuts and higher taxes.

If the Legislature won't raise taxes, Brown warned of billions of additional spending cuts.

Brown's plan acknowledges that things are getting better. The deficit is estimated at $9.2 billion, or about one-third what it was a year ago. The outlooks for the national and state economies are "guardedly positive," according to his official forecast.

But the Democratic governor said the economy isn't growing quickly enough to rescue the state budget.

In one telling statistic, his forecasters at the Department of Finance said it will be 2016 before California recoups the 1.2 million jobs it lost during the recession.

That's seven years after the recession technically ended in June 2009. Typically, full recovery in the job market takes no more than 4 1/2 years, the forecasters said.

http://www.sacbee.com/2012/01/07/4169317/economy-is-revving-up-why-is-jerry.html#mi_rss=Capitol%20and%20California

Los Angeles: Impound Citizens Car–Allow Illegal Aliens to KEEP Cars

by Stephen Frank on 01/06/2012

Los Angeles is the home of a criminal police force.  The Chief of Police allowed vandals to cause millions of dollars of damage to public and private property and watched for two months.  The cops allowed gangs to roam the streets of downtown and close streets to traffic whenever they wanted.

The LA cops allowed drug sales and the public urination and defecation in the streets–and just watched.

For years the LAPD have allowed foreign criminals to roam the streets, commit crimes and then refuse to turn them in to the Feds for deportation–some would call that a criminal conspiracy.

“A few weeks ago, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa ordered the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) to stop impounding the vehicles of unlicensed drivers for 30 days as per California state law, according to Judicial Watch, a non-profit organization that investigates and exposes government corruption and abuse.

The state law is intended to keep potentially reckless drivers off the road and therefore protect the public. It applies to unlicensed drivers as well as those who have had their license revoked or suspended.

In other words, under the LAPD guidelines, citizens will have their vehicles impounded at their own expense, but illegal aliens will retain their illegally driven cars.”

A corrupt Mayor directs a corrupt police department–and honest citizens are at the mercy of the criminals and corrupt city government.

What do you think should be done?

CA In Process of Releasing HALF the Women From State Prisons–Feel Safer?

by Stephen Frank on 01/06/2012

Jerry Brown and the amateur Arnold are sexists.  They have created policies to release half of the women in State prison–but no similar policy to release half the men.  The professional Jerry and the Amateur Arnold obviously believe that women cannot be as dangerous as men.  That is sexist.  California is no longer a safe place to live, thanks to courts and politicians.  At least we have the Second Amendment–which both Arnold and Jerry have tried to minimize.

“Since Governor Jerry Brown ordered to shift low-level offenders from state prison to county jails to reduce the state’s bloated prison system, more and more jailed moms are serving the remainder of their sentences at home (see earlier story). The state began shifting inmates in October, reducing the number of prisoners by more 8,000.

KPCC, a Southern California public radio station, reports that 20 female inmates qualified this year to serve their sentences at home, and officials hope to increase that number to 500 in the near future. The Alternative Custody Program could potentially lead to the early release of 5,000 women, which is half of the female prisoners in California prisons.”

This will save $6 million in prison costs and cost tens of millions in new crimes.  No one ever accused Jerry or Arnold of being math geniuses or concerned about the welfare of innocent citizens.

Sexism will have a cost in human life.

California Assembly releases member budgets under court order

Complying with a court order, the California Assembly released thousands of pages of documents about its members' expenditures today that it fought against providing to the public.

The documents detail budgets and spending by each of the Assembly's 80 members. The data should enable the public to better determine what portion of committee funds are used for lawmakers' personal staff.

Sacramento Superior Court Judge Timothy Frawley ordered the records to be released in a lawsuit filed by The Bee and Los Angeles Times. Frawley issued a tentative ruling in December, which the Assembly did not contest.

"How the government spends the public's money is an area of profound interest," said attorney Rochelle Wilcox, who represented the newspapers in the fight over interpretation of California's Legislative Open Records Act.

Documents released by the Assembly "provide significant information about Assembly spending of tens of millions of dollars annually," Wilcox said.

Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez said that his house was changing its policies to make information accessible to the public even before Frawley's ruling.

"We had the opportunity to challenge the ruling of the court," Pérez said. "I don't think there's any value in that. We have no interest in muddling the issue up, so we're going to move forward in compliance with the court and act based on best practices around sharing information."

After the lawsuit was filed, but before it was resolved, the Assembly began posting onto its website member-by-member expenditure information that previously was not released until 12 months after the end of a legislative year.

http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2012/01/assembly-releases-member-budgets-under-superior-court-order.html

Jerry Brown budget plan cuts welfare, threatens deeper cuts if taxes fail

By Kevin Yamamura
kyamamura@sacbee.com

Published: Friday, Jan. 6, 2012 - 12:00 am | Page 1A

Last Modified: Saturday, Jan. 7, 2012 - 10:47 pm

Gov. Jerry Brown released a new budget Thursday that would slash health and welfare programs for the poor and ask voters to pump nearly $5 billion back into education through higher taxes.

Brown framed his $92.6 billion spending plan as an either-or decision dependent on his $6.9 billion initiative to increase taxes on sales and the state's high earners.

If voters approve his taxes, he suggested, the state could begin paying down years of debt and reverse recession-era cuts to K-12 schools, which have stuffed more students into classrooms and shortened the instructional calendar to save funds.

"With the tax program, we will eliminate the budget deficit finally, after years of kicking the can down the road," Brown said.

If voters reject his plan, schools may have to cut deeper and prolong a patchwork of borrowing to maintain operations.

For K-12 schools and community colleges, the tax measure would provide nearly $4.8 billion more than they received this fiscal year, roughly a 10 percent increase. Department of Finance Director Ana Matosantos suggested losing that money if voters reject taxes would be "equivalent to" cutting three weeks of school, though education experts believe such drastic measures would be unnecessary.

If the taxes fail, the governor proposed $200 million cuts each to the University of California and California State University systems, which have relied on substantial tuition hikes to offset state reductions in recent years.

http://www.sacbee.com/2012/01/06/4166838/jerry-brown-budget-plan-cuts-welfare.html

Steinberg: Senate won't make March cuts proposed by Brown

California's top Senate Democrat today shut the door on Gov. Jerry Brown's budget proposal to make deep cuts to social services programs in the first few months of the year.

The January spending plan unveiled by Brown today includes nearly $1.4 billion in cuts to the state's welfare-to-work and subsidized child care programs. The Democratic governor called on lawmakers to approve those cuts in March to maximize savings.

But Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, echoing comments made Wednesday, said he wants to hold off on further spending reductions in hopes that the state will see an uptick in revenues this spring.

"Why would we make cuts that are going to harm people and harm the economy in March when in fact in May there's a real not just possibility, but if the trend continues, a probability that the deficit number is going to be less," the Sacramento Democrat told reporters, pointing to improvement in a revenue forecast made in December.

Brown's plan relies on a mix of roughly $4.2 billion in cuts and the passage of a $6.9 million tax measure he is seeking to qualify for the November ballot in order to close what he estimated to be a $9.2 billion budget deficit through June 2013. He proposed deeper cuts to K-12 and higher education if that measure fails.

Steinberg emphasized that the plan Brown unveiled today is just the first draft of a 2012-2013 spending plan.

"It's a January budget, and a ... June 15 budget, by definition, historically looks nothing like a January budget," he said.

Steinberg characterized Brown's call for additional cuts if voters fail to approve his tax measure in November as a "sound" approach but signaled that the Legislature might look at other areas for those spending reductions.

http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2012/01/darrell-steinberg-california-senate-budget-cuts-march-2012.html

Jerry Brown's budget eliminates 3,000 state jobs, axes agencies

Gov. Jerry Brown's new budget plan would eliminate a few thousand state jobs and consolidate or ax nearly 50 state organizations, according to documents released this afternoon.

Brown's first draft of the budget for the 2012-13 fiscal year that begins July 1 envisions reducing the state workforce by some 3,000 positions, mostly from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The cuts fill a small part of the $9.2 billion budget hole projected through June 2013.

When asked whether state workers could expect layoffs or job elimination through attrition, Department of Finance Director Ana Matosantos said the goal is "reductions in positions."

The administration will "try to minimize the number of layoffs" by relocating employees whose positions have been eliminated, Matosantos said during an afternoon press conference. "But the total workforce will continue to go down."

The budget proposal doesn't include state worker furloughs. Contracts covering more than half the 200,000 unionized workers under gubernatorial authority contain no-furlough protections in exchange for one unpaid day off per month, but those provisions expired last year. Several unions that signed similar contracts with Brown last year still have the furlough-free guaranteed for a few more months.

That left open the possibility that Brown could have suggested the Legislature impose furloughs again. But the governor and his administration have consistently signaled that they don't think furloughing is sound policy.

Brown's budget plan reduces the number of state agencies -- cabinet-level organizations that oversee departments -- from 12 to 10. Brown also wants to eliminate 39 state entities and wipe out nine state programs.

Brown wants to ax the California Volunteer Agency. Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger named the first secretary to the agency in 2008 to "encourage volunteerism in California and to improve coordination of volunteer efforts between the state's departments and agencies," according to the volunteer agency's website. The agency's functions (and federal funding) are proposed to continue through the Office of Planning and Research.

http://blogs.sacbee.com/the_state_worker/2012/01/jerry-browns-budget-eliminates-15000-state-jobs.html

Is This Poll for Real?

December 19, 2011 The numbers behind California's 11.3 percent jobless rate

California's unemployment rate has been edging downwards in recent months in an apparent sign of slow recovery from the state's worst recession since the Great Depression, dropping to 11.3 percent in November.

 

But it's a mixed bag of numbers. The good news is that a quarter-million more Californians were working in November than a year earlier, and that was more than enough to offset a 34,000-person increase in the labor force, so the unemployment rate dropped by 1.2 percentage points from the previous November, although it's still one of the nation's highest.

 

The bad news is that about 2 million Californians considered to be in the labor force are still jobless, and that's about a million more than were unemployed before recession struck the state.

 

 Roughly half of the 2 million jobless workers are receiving unemployment insurance benefits and the state fund that pays them is nearly $10 billion in the red and subsisting largely on loans from the federal government.

 

That fund covers only the first 26 weeks of unemployment for about a half-million recipients. Benefit extensions for another half-million, up to 99 weeks in total, are financed by the feds, but the longest extensions will expire in less than two weeks unless Congress renews them.

 

They are ensnared in a sharp partisan battle in Washington. In all, state and federal unemployment insurance payments total about $1.2 billion a month, but that's down from a 2011 high of more than $1.6 billion last March.

 

About a quarter-million Californians exhaust their benefits each month, although some may qualify for additional benefits upon re-application. Approximately that many initial claims for benefits are filed each month.

 

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/12/the-numbers-behind-californias-113-percent-jobless-rate.html#storylink=cpy

 

Sacramento, state jobless rates show big drops

 

By Dale Kasler The Sacramento Bee Last modified: 2011-12-17T08:35:58Z Published: Saturday, Dec. 17, 2011 - 12:00 am

 

Sacramento's unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest level in 2 1/2 years – and the region is showing signs of finally joining the economic recovery.

 

Thanks to unusually strong holiday retail hiring, Sacramento unemployment dropped half a percentage point in November, to 10.9 percent, the state Employment Development Department said Friday.

 

Overall, payrolls grew by 4,000 jobs.It was the first time that Sacramento unemployment dipped below 11 percent since May 2009.

 

A year ago, the rate was 12.8 percent. "This is the first month when Sacramento is showing a clear gain … in a long time," said Jeff Michael, an economist at the University of the Pacific.Statewide unemployment fell four-tenths of a point, to 11.3 percent. It was one of the most dramatic one-month declines in years.

 

But the state as a whole added just 6,600 jobs, following several stronger months. The payroll figure is based on a broader survey and is considered more reliable than the unemployment rate."We didn't gain any ground here," said Howard Roth, chief economist at the state Department of Finance.

 

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/12/17/4128910/sacramento-state-jobless-rates.html#storylink=cpy

 

Feinstein earmark quietly paves way for easier water sales Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. | Rafael Suanes

 

Draft plan to protect California's Delta inadequate, scientists say Story | California lawmakers seek to exempt water projects from key law Story | California water politics seep into GOP spending bill On the McClatchy Newspapers

 WASHINGTON — Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein quietly used a $915 billion spending bill to accomplish a long-standing and, in some circles, controversial goal of easing Central Valley water sales.

With one sentence, the 1,221-page bill signed Saturday by President Barack Obama helps the Westlands Water District and privately owned Kern Water Bank, among others, buy more from irrigation districts served by the federal Central Valley Project.

With a second sentence, the bill orders a study designed to streamline water sales, including those from north of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to south of the Delta. "The water transfer language inserted by Sen. Feinstein will add to the flexibility that we have sought, and it will certainly help us meet our water needs," Westlands General Manager Tom Birmingham said in an interview Monday.

Feinstein describes the measure as a sensible way to move water around the state. But opponents, who had earlier resisted the proposals when presented as separate legislation, consider it a boon for some well-connected farmers. "It's an earmark worth millions to the water merchants, who can buy water at rock-bottom prices and resell it," Patricia Schifferle, director of the environmental group Pacific Advocates, said in an interview Monday, adding that "there are a lot of things that sneak into these late-night bills." And Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, campaign director of Restore the Delta, agreed Monday that the legislation "opens the door to problematic water transfers (that) could be used for speculation (and) development."

The issues are both technically complex and politically fraught, as is usually the case with California water. In part, the legislation lifts several restrictions that a 1992 environmental law imposed on the transfer of Central Valley Project water. The federal project provides water at subsidized rates through a Redding-to-Bakersfield network of dams and canals.

The 1992 law, called the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, declared that irrigation districts could only sell their water if it would have otherwise been "consumptively used or irretrievably lost." The districts also could only sell water amounting to the average of what they actually received.

The rules were designed in part to limit water speculation and ensure irrigation districts were not selling contracted-for water that they really didn't have. Operating under these existing rules, as well as others, federal officials last year oversaw the transfer of about 600,000 acre-feet of CVP water in California.

This was about 10 percent of the total amount delivered through the project. In 2009, Feinstein and Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer wrote legislation essentially waiving the two rules for certain water transfers. A similar bill was written in the House by Reps. Dennis Cardoza, D-Atwater, Calif., and Jim Costa, D-Fresno, Calif. "The bill...will provide more flexibility in the system, allowing water to flow more freely around the Central Valley,"

Feinstein said when she introduced the bill in October 2009. Birmingham added Monday that the revisions will "help to streamline the approval process" for water transfers. Feinstein has estimated that up to 80,000 acre-feet of additional water might be transferred under the new rules.

 

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/12/19/133552/feinstein-quietly-paves-way-for.html#storylink=cpy

Sacramento region governments cut from the bottom while adding to the top  By Phillip Reese and Loretta Kalb preese@sacbee.com By Phillip Reese and Loretta Kalb The Sacramento Bee Last modified: 2011-12-19T03:27:07Z Published: Sunday, Dec. 18, 2011 - 12:00 am |

 

Several local cities sliced their payrolls through layoffs last year by cutting those who made the least. And they ended up paying more employees six-figure salaries.

 

The 3,800 employees who earned at least $100,000 annually last year made up 10 percent of the region's city and county workers, but ate 25 percent of payroll. Their ranks increased by about 80, while the number of city and county workers earning less than $100,000 fell by almost 3,000, according to a Bee review of new data from the state controller's office.

 

The trend was not universal. Cities such as Davis, Rancho Cordova and Elk Grove reduced the number of their workers earning six figures. But the city and county of Sacramento collectively increased the total amount paid to six-figure employees by $23 million, or 9 percent, while cutting 1,800 workers from their payrolls."Somehow that doesn't surprise me," said Tana Taylor, who was laid off from her job as an office assistant in Sacramento County's Department of Health and Human Services last year. "Higher-end people – they seem to be hanging in there."

 

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/12/18/4130565/sacramento-region-governments.html#storylink=cpy

Quirk may leave millions unrepresented by state Senate

Every 10 years since the 1970s, millions of Californians have temporarily gone without representation in the State Senate while millions more have temporarily been double-represented.

 

 

By BRIAN JOSEPH and JIM MILLER / THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER and THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE

 

SACRAMENTO – More than 230 years since the American Revolution, taxation without representation still survives in California.

Thanks to a quirk in the law, millions of Californians may not be represented by a state senator in 2013 and 2014 while millions of others could be represented by two senators.

 

Laguna Niguel Mayor Paul Glaab is one of the 3.97 million unlucky Californians who may go without representation in the State Senate in 2013 and 2014 thanks to a quirk in the law. Several Orange County cities may be affected, including Laguna Niguel, Seal Beach and Mission Viejo.

 

And it's totally legal.

"I'm aghast," said William Siebuhr, a Westminster resident who is one of the unlucky Californians facing two years without a voice in State Senate. "Somewhere along the line, I've been screwed out of my rights," he said.

Just one mile away, John Vestman of Stanton could have two state senators. "It seems lopsided," he said.

In all, 3.97 million Californians may go without representation in the Senate, according to an analysis by The Orange County Register and The (Riverside) Press-Enterprise. Another 3.9 million residents could be represented by two senators, according to the newspapers' figures.

"Amazing," said Paul Glaab, mayor of Laguna Niguel, another city that faces two years without Senate representation. "To me, that's an anomaly that probably should be corrected," he said.

Since the 1970s, millions of Californians have temporarily gone without Senate representation every decade. But the phenomenon receives little attention because it's complex and obscure, and because the courts have ruled it's not in violation of anybody's rights. It's just a weird byproduct of redistricting and the Senate's election schedule.

"It happens every time we redistrict," said Tony Quinn, a former GOP redistricting staffer. "You can't avoid it."

Experts, however, say it's not a big deal. If you have a problem with the government, you can still turn to your representatives in the State Assembly, U.S. Congress or local government, said UC San Diego political science professor Thad Kousser.

"It evens out because we have so many ways to get our voices heard in California," he said.

Republicans have filed a suit challenging the new Senate districts. At this point it's unclear whether the new or old districts will be used in next year's election, or whether judges will draw up a third set of maps to use while the case unfolds.

 

http://www.ocregister.com/news/senate-331689-state-districts.html

 

Rural school districts hard hit by transportation

Share By Diana Lambert dlambert@sacbee.com By Diana Lambert The Sacramento Bee Last modified: 2011-12-19T15:42:40Z Published: Monday, Dec. 19, 2011 - 12:00 am

Four of the six schools in the Eastern Sierra Unified School District are scattered along Highway 395, a two-lane road that meanders through scenic Mono County in the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains.

Students often travel as far as 35 miles – each way – to school and back. The drive can be treacherous, especially in winter when rain and snow make the roadways slippery. Traffic near schools and a dearth of street- lights make travel hazardous for drivers pulling into school parking lots and students traveling on foot, said Stacey Adler, superintendent of Mono County schools.

But things could get much worse come Jan. 2. That's when the district's 500 students will have to find their own way to school, unless they live more than six miles away. Last week, still grappling with a budget crisis, California became the first state in the nation to completely eliminate transportation funding for public schools.

Gov. Jerry Brown cut $248 million in state funding that helps put school buses on the road and reduced student attendance funding by $79.6 million. Those cuts take effect the second half of the academic year

.Eastern Sierra Unified is among the districts that will pare back busing for the remainder of the school year. But school officials say most rural districts don't have the luxury of completely abandoning bus service, given the distances their students travel to school. They call transportation a safety issue for students and an economic necessity for working families.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/12/19/4132035/rural-school-districts-hard-hit.html#storylink=cpy

November 28, 2011

Californians' economic confidence falls, survey finds

As the holiday buying season begins, Californians' confidence in their economic futures is declining, a new statewide survey by San Jose State University finds.

SJSU's Survey and Policy Research Institute says that its overall consumer sentiment index has dropped 10 points in the last year to 64.5, and the index of future expectations has dropped as well. The poll, conducted in October, found that 43 percent of California adults described their personal financial situations as worse than they were a year earlier.

As constructed, the index rates anything above 100 as positive and anything below that level as negative. It's similar to the national index of consumer confidence developed at the University of Michigan, and the latest SJSU survey results closely track those at the national level in the latest Michigan poll.

"The good news here is that we are starting to see some improvement in consumer
confidence statewide," said Melinda Jackson, the institute's research director. "The bad news is that attitudes are still fairly pessimistic overall. We may have turned the corner on the worst of the recession, but there is not a lot of hope for a quick recovery in these numbers."

In fact, 85 percent of the survey's respondents believe that the state remains in recession, even though technically it has hit bottom and is in recovery, and more half said they expected recession to continue for at least three more years.

Read more: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/11/californians-economic-confidence-falls-survey-finds.html#ixzz1f482pkCJ

Viewpoints: Elite 'council' would have king-like powers

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By Joel Fox
Special to The Bee

Published: Saturday, Nov. 26, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 11A

When I read about the Think Long Committee's proposal for a "Civic Council for Government Accountability," the first image that jumped into my mind was the Ruling Council in the Christopher Reeves' "Superman" movie, sitting as elders while their world collapsed around them. That image was quickly replaced by the perhaps more appropriate image of the infamous "Committee of 25," an elite group of power brokers that served as a shadow government for the city of Los Angeles in the 1940s and '50s.

As described in the Think Long Committee's blueprint for changing governance in California, the civic council would be an independent, impartial and nonpartisan body that would establish and develop a vision encompassing long-term goals for California's future.

As designed, it will certainly be less than impartial and nonpartisan. However, the worst of the plan is that the civic council would be given extraordinary, king-like powers that exceed the powers of legislators, the governor and ordinary citizens.

The appointment process for membership on the council will not eliminate politics from governance but may well enhance it.

The 13-member body would be appointed by the governor (nine appointments, two from other than the majority parties); the Senate Rules Committee (two appointments, one each from the state's majority parties); and the Speaker of the Assembly (two appointments, one each from the state's majority parties.)

Given the political makeup of the state, that means the majority party will make all the appointments with the potential of creating a one-sided super majority from their party running the council. Will the committee truly be nonpartisan and impartial? Hardly.

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/26/4080288/elite-council-would-have-king.html#ixzz1evo80cBJ

 

Companies give GOP, regulators different messages

BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Posted: 11/26/2011 01:01:05 AM PST

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Large and small companies have told Republican-led congressional committees what the party wants to hear: dire predictions of plant closings and layoffs if the Obama administration succeeds with plans to further curb air and water pollution.

But their message to financial regulators and investors conveys less gloom and certainty.

The administration itself has clouded the picture by withdrawing or postponing some of the environmental initiatives that industry labeled as being among the most onerous.

Still, Republicans plan to make what they say is regulatory overreach a 2012 campaign issue, taking aim at President Barack Obama, congressional Democrats and an aggressive Environmental Protection Agency.

"Republicans will be talking to voters this campaign season about how to keep Washington out of the way, so that job creators can feel confident again to create jobs for Americans," said Joanna Burgos, a spokeswoman for the House Republican campaign organization.

The Associated Press compared the companies' congressional testimony to company reports submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The reports to the SEC consistently said the impact of environmental proposals is unknown or would not cause serious financial harm to a firm's finances.

Companies can legitimately argue that their less gloomy SEC filings are correct, since most of the tougher anti-pollution proposals have not been finalized. And their officials' testimony before

congressional committees was sometimes on behalf of -- and written by -- trade associations, a perspective that can differ from an individual company's view.

But the disparity in the messages shows that in a political environment, business has no misgivings about describing potential economic horror stories to lawmakers.

"As an industry, we have said this before, we face a potential regulatory train wreck," Anthony Earley Jr., then the executive chairman of DTE Energy in Michigan, told a House committee on April 15. "Without the right policy, we could be headed for disaster."

http://www.thereporter.com/rss/ci_19416089?source=rss

EDITORIAL: State shouldn’t back away from budget’s automatic trigger cuts

State leaders knew there was a good chance it would come down to this.

Saturday, Nov. 26, 2011 | 12:01 AM

To the surprise of almost no one, state tax revenues have failed to meet the hopeful expectations of lawmakers when they approved a budget in June. As a result, the Legislative Analyst’s Office says California now faces a $3.7 billion shortfall in the current budget year.

This shortfall was anticipated in the deal that Democrats and Gov. Jerry Brown crafted. With no chance of new tax revenue because of Republican intransigence, Democrats based their plan on rosy projections, but wisely coupled it with a contingency plan of “trigger cuts” should revenues come in lower than expected.

That moment has arrived. The Department of Finance still needs to present its own forecast on revenues for the remainder of the year, but there is little doubt that California faces a multibillion-dollar shortfall that will need to be addressed with more spending reductions.

Supporters of public education are balking at $1.36 billion in mid-year trigger cuts that K-12 schools would absorb. School advocates now say they are surprised the triggers will have to be pulled. Really? State leaders were adamant in the summer that the trigger cuts were very serious possibilities.

Sure, they hoped California could avoid the triggers. But they were necessary to calm Wall Street and other holders of California’s debt.

We can understand why some might want to tinker with the triggers. Many school systems will have trouble absorbing further cuts, especially since lawmakers agreed to a deal with the California Teachers Association to spare teachers from midyear layoffs. That leaves schools with two messy choices: Shortening the school year by seven days or renegotiating pacts with teacher unions so they can institute furloughs.

But as bad as those choices are, it would be worse for lawmakers to back off the triggers, shift cuts to higher education, or resort to gimmicks such as further rosy revenue projections.

Republicans, not surprisingly, are responding to the LAO findings with barely restrained glee. The LAO report, said Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, vice chair of the Assembly Budget Committee, shows that the “budget passed by Democrats with only a majority vote was overly optimistic and based on shaky assumptions.”

Read more: http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/11/26/2625916/editorial-state-shouldnt-back.html#ixzz1evnbPR66

November 23, 2011

Gavin Newsom condemns 'senseless violence' at Davis

Four days after the pepper spraying incident at UC Davis, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, acting governor while Gov. Jerry Brown is on vacation out of state, issued a statement Tuesday night condemning the "senseless violence" and praising UC officials for ordering an independent investigation.

"UC students and the people of California deserve a swift, just and thorough independent investigation into this matter," Newsom said in a prepared statement. "Concrete remedies need to be implemented to ensure that peaceful protests on our university campuses are never again met with senseless violence."

Newsom visited the campus earlier Tuesday, his office said. His statement followed remarks by other major politicians, but not Brown, who has kept silent on the matter.

"President Mark Yudof and his staff have kept my office appraised on the events of the last week and I made it clear that the University has a profound obligation to its staff and student body - not to mention its worldwide reputation - to better balance protecting the public safety with protecting the constitutional right to free speech and political expression," Newsom said. "After contact with William Bratton earlier this week, I am pleased that the University of California has retained the former Los Angeles Police Chief to lead an independent investigation of the pepper spray incident on the campus of UC Davis last Friday. I have every confidence that Chief Bratton will be thorough and frank in its findings."

Read more: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/11/gavin-newsom-condemns-senseless-violence-at-davis.html#ixzz1emiimCvs

Occupy L.A. receives offer to decamp

 

Los Angeles officials have offered Occupy L.A. protesters a package of incentives that includes downtown office space and farmland in an attempt to persuade them to abandon their camp outside of City Hall, according to several demonstrators who have been in negotiations with the city.

 

The details of the proposal were revealed Monday during the demonstration's nightly general assembly meeting by Jim Lafferty, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild who has been advocating on behalf of the protest since it began seven weeks ago.

 

Lafferty said city officials have offered protesters a $1-a-year lease on a 10,000-square-foot office space near City Hall. He said officials also promised land elsewhere for protesters who wish to farm, as well as additional housing for the contingent of homeless people who joined the camp.

 

Photos: Occupy protests go global

 

A spokesman for the mayor would not comment on the proposal, saying only: "We are in negotiations with organizers of Occupy L.A."

 

Los Angeles has been one of the most accommodating cities in the nation for its Occupy encampment.

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1122-occupy-la-move-20111122,0,1592348.story

 

 

California’s “golden” status set to run out of money in two weeks

Continue reading on Examiner.com California’s “golden” status set to run out of money in two weeks - San Diego County Political Buzz | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/county-political-buzz-in-san-diego/california-s-golden-status-set-to-run-out-of-money-two-weeks?CID=examiner_alerts_article#ixzz1e4tPuvep

Once famous for the “gold rush,” California’s fertile land drew anybody who wanted to strike it rich, sadly those days are long gone and have been replaced with tax and spend policies that have ended in massive deficits.

California’s financials offer proof that the month of October painted serious accounting problems for the state. According to the October Statement of General Fund Cash Receipts and Disbursements report from California State Controller John Chaing, the state’s income plunged by $3.6 billion. On the other side of the balance sheet, California’s spendaholic ways will increase by $10.2 billion this year. The governor and state legislators don’t seem to be smarter than a fifth grader- that's a $6.6 billion deficit.

According to Chriss Street of Cal Watchdog, “California has already drawn down 85 percent of its credit lines and only has $4 billion remaining to fund a $13.8 billion deficit.  With the same sovereign credit rating as basket-case Portugal, California’s debt is at maximum risk of being downgraded to ‘junk’ bonds.  With credit lines almost tapped-out, the sovereign debt crisis that has hammered Europe may arrive in America.”

Continue reading on Examiner.com California’s “golden” status set to run out of money in two weeks - San Diego County Political Buzz | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/county-political-buzz-in-san-diego/california-s-golden-status-set-to-run-out-of-money-two-weeks?CID=examiner_alerts_article#ixzz1e4tForHh

 

Budget cuts may be coming in Sacramento

November 14th, 2011, 12:29 pm ·  · posted by BRIAN JOSEPH, Sacramento Correspondent

inShare

The state Department of Finance this morning released budget figures that confirm the state is in danger of enacting mid-year cuts to schools and other services.

According to Finance, state revenues came in $608 million below projections for the month of October. All told, state revenues this year are $1.26 billion below projections, according to Finance numbers.

State Controller John Chiang recently estimated that revenues are $1.5 billion behind projections. While Finance’s number would represent an improvement, it the difference wouldn’t be enough to avoid so-call trigger cuts that were built into this year’s budget deal.

This summer, the state budget was balanced largely on optimistic revenue projections. The budget included a series of additional cuts that would be triggered mid-year if those revenues didn’t materialize. Both the University of California and California State University systems would lose $100 million if the trigger is pulled on the cuts, among other agencies.Over the last few months, revenues have consistently come in below projections. The Department of Finance said in a prepared statement that if revenues do indeed meet projections, “it is currently anticipated that the bulk of these revenues would be reflected in higher [personal income tax] and Corporation estimated tax payments and final return payments which will be made in the months of December 2011, through June 2012.”

During this month and next, the Department of Finance and the well-respected Legislative Analyst’s Office will produce new revenue projections. “It is these forecasts that will determine whether the ‘trigger’ budget reductions will be implemented,” Finance said.

http://totalbuzz.ocregister.com/2011/11/14/budget-cuts-may-be-coming-in-sacramento/76943/

NEW: Court Case Shows Republican Hypocrisy

NOV. 14, 2011

We all know that California’s Democratic Party is running the state into the fiscal ground, given how beholden its members are to public-sector unions and how devoted they are to expanding government and raising taxes. The state needs some political competition, but a major court case reminds us why the state Republican Party is a useless vessel that’s incapable of broadening its base and changing the state’s political trajectory.

On Thursday, the California Supreme Court began oral arguments in a lawsuit brought by defenders of the state’s redevelopment agencies (RDAs), which are seeking to overturn recent laws that essentially shut down those agencies. Gov. Jerry Brown isn’t often right, but he was on target when he proposed shutting down these central planning agencies that primarily dispense corporate welfare to big businesses and drive small property owners off their land so that big-box stores can prosper.

Brown’s plan wasn’t perfect. It allowed the agencies to buy their way back into existence as many of them have since done. The law wasn’t passed entirely for the right reasons. Brown and legislative Democrats had typically supported RDAs, but were looking for quick ways to close the state’s gaping budget hole. As Bloomberg reported, “The governor and supporters of the law said the redevelopment agencies have become little more than slush funds for private developers, and they want the tax money generated by new developments to be diverted from the agencies to local schools, law enforcement agencies and other services.”

When your political enemies give you a gift, you ought to take it. Instead of taking it, California Republicans actively opposed the governor’s plan and shamelessly sided with the people who run roughshod over everything the GOP is supposed to stand for. Forget all the talk about property rights, limited government, free markets and family values.

GOP Votes to Protect

“Almost like in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ where up is down, and down is up, this past year Democratic Legislators voted to abolish redevelopment and most Republicans fought tooth and nail to protect 425 redevelopment agencies from being abolished!” explained Jon Fleischman, California GOP vice chairman and publisher of the GOP-oriented Flashreport. Fleischman noted that over two crucial votes, only six Assembly Republicans voted to abolish RDAs and only one Senate Republican voted to do so. This indeed is shameful.

In fact, one of the GOP’s leaders, Sen. Bob Huff of Diamond Bar, received the League of California Cities’ Legislator of the Year award for his efforts to save redevelopment agencies. His wife, by the way, works for a developer who is one of the state’s biggest redevelopment beneficiaries. This is the type of thing that makes me want to join the unbathed wretches occupying city parks.

http://www.calwatchdog.com/2011/11/14/court-case-spotlights-republican-hypocrisy/

Little-known state board overturns employee terminations

A nurse's aide accused of stealing money from an elderly patient and a hospital staffer who allegedly beat a disabled patient with a shoe were among those ordered rehired by the Personnel Board.

 

By Jack Dolan, Los Angeles Times

November 13, 2011, 7:58 p.m.

When thousands of dollars belonging to elderly residents of a veterans home went missing, police set out to catch the thief. A video camera they hid showed nurse's aide Linda Riccitelli creeping into a 93-year-old man's room and sticking her hand in a dresser drawer stashed with bait money.

Investigators confirmed the cash was gone and the video showed that no one else had opened the drawer.

Prosecutors charged Riccitelli with burglary, and the Department of Veterans Affairs fired her. To most, it seemed like an open-and-shut case. But a little-known state agency that rules on employee discipline saw things differently. It ordered Riccitelli re-hired, with three years' back pay because, they said, the evidence was "circumstantial."

The board has reversed dozens of terminations in recent years, turning the employees' time off into the equivalent of long, paid vacations. Among the cases: a mentally disturbed prison doctor fired for mistreating inmates; a psychiatric hospital aide fired for allegedly striking a severely disabled patient with a shoe, and a prison mechanic who requested two-months' leave to address "family issues" while he was in jail for beating his wife.

Working for the state is "different" from the private sector, said Personnel Board Executive Director Suzanne Ambrose, explaining that the review process was designed to prevent employees from losing their jobs for political reasons and to ensure "fairness in how the government work is being done."

By contrast, the vast majority of Californians who work in the private sector serve at the pleasure of their bosses. If fired, they have little recourse unless they prove in civil court that their employer violated anti-discrimination laws by terminating them based on something such as their age, race or disability.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-discipline-reversed-20111114,0,7958658.story

Chiang: State Revenues Crashing

John Seiler, Cal Watchdog,  11/11/11

As we have predicted many times here on CalWatchDog.com, the state still is taking in too little revenue for what it spends. The latest monthly report from Controller John Chiang:

SACRAMENTO – State Controller John Chiang today released his monthly report covering California’s cash balance, receipts and disbursements in October, showing revenues came in $810.5 million below projections from the recently passed state budget.

“October’s poor revenues capped a very disappointing first four months of the fiscal year,” said Chiang. “Unless revenues and expenditures begin to track with projections, the State will face increasing cash pressure in the months ahead.”

The Controller’s Office continues to work with the Department of Finance to identify and prepare for any impact on the State’s cash outlook. After accounting for October revenues, total year-to-date general fund revenues are now behind the budget’s estimates by $1.5 billion, but expenditures for the year are over projections by $1.7 billion.

The State ended last fiscal year with a cash deficit of $8.2 billion. The combined current year cash deficit stands at $20.3 billion.  Those deficits are being covered with $14.9 billion of internal borrowing (temporary loans from special funds) and $5.4 billion of external borrowing.

Well, what do they expect from a state that punishes businesses and productive workers with high taxes and multitudinous regulations? Successful states, such as Texas and its zero income tax, pamper businesses because that’s where the jobs come from. If businesses leave, then the tax base erodes.

It’s like a sheep herder. A smart one keeps his sheep happy so he can sheer them and make money from the wool. A dumb sheep herder kills his sheep and eats them.

In California, the state government — which is run by the government-worker unions — first starves the sheep, then kills the sheep to eat them. Then it complains there’s not enough wool to go around. And it plots to kill the sheep sooner.

http://capoliticalnews.com/2011/11/11/democrat-controller-chiang-state-revenues-crashing/

NOVEMBER 14, 2011 10:16AM

California's economic downturn over a decade old

California conventional wisdom is that we were doing just fine until 2008 when the housing bubble burst.  But according to the new study below, such was not the case.   We'd been sacrificing our business climate for years, and the stats in the study show the results.

 

Yes, the housing/mortgage collapse had a dramatic negative effect in the misnamed "Golden State," but our underlying business economy had been heading downhill (well, heading to other states) at least since the turn of the century.  Indeed, in the middle of the last decade California was losing over a QUARTER MILLION PEOPLE ANNUALLY to other states.   And that's a NET loss -- what's called net domestic migration (migration between states).

It goes without saying that there is NOTHING going on in CA that will reverse this trend -- quite the opposite.  Just wait until AB32, the global warming madness, takes full effect (we won't have to wait long).

BTW, if you are not subscribed to the free CITY JOURNAL daily email broadcast service (with some emphasis on California), you are missing out. 

http://www.city-journal.org/html/alerts.html

 http://www.city-journal.org/2011/21_4_california-jobs.html

Pelosi fires back at '60 Minutes' report on 'soft corruption'

(CNN) -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi fired back Sunday at a CBS News' "60 Minutes" report that highlighted several instances of what it suggested could be "soft corruption."

The show looked at the investments of various lawmakers -- including Pelosi, House Speaker John Boehner and Republican Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama -- who reportedly bought stocks around the same time legislation involving those investments was being discussed.

Pelosi and her husband participated in an initial public offering of Visa in 2008, according to CBS. They bought 5,000 shares at the initial price of $44; two days later, shares were trading at $64, CBS said.

The network reported the investment came at the same time a piece of legislation that was opposed by credit-card companies was making its way through the House.

"Congress has never done more for consumers nor has the Congress passed more critical reforms of the credit card industry than under the Speakership of Nancy Pelosi," Pelosi spokesman, Drew Hammill, said in a statement soon after the report aired Sunday night.

"It is very troubling that 60 Minutes would base their reporting off of an already-discredited conservative author who has made a career of out attacking Democrats," he added.

CBS said it used as a starting point for its story the research of Peter Schweizer, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank at Stanford University.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/13/politics/60-minutes-pelosi/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

Bring It All Down, Man

·         Larry Kelley 
 

Nov 03, 2011

 

In attending the occupation of Oakland, I was struck by how the American Left has coalesced around the advocacy of Saul Alinsky, a man that 99% of the so called 99%ers have doubtlessly never heard of. In the 1930’s Alinsky created the “crisis strategy” which prescribed flooding welfare rolls in order to bankrupt cities. David Horowitz has led the country in detailing how it was the Alinsky model which profoundly influenced Barack Obama and gave birth to vast “shake-down” organizations such as ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). But even more importantly, he points out it was Alinsky, who, though not a communist, united the various socialists, anarchists, union workers, the disadvantaged and disaffected into a nihilist common cause—the seizure of power.

So successful was his strategy in uniting the American Left that in 1969, a Wellesley undergraduate by the name of Hillary Rodham wrote her senior thesis on Alinsky comparing him to Martin Luther King and Walt Whitman. In his Rules for Radicals, Alinsky writes, The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution. Without committing itself to a specific end game or vision of the future, Alinsky was crystal clear. The only organizing principle of the new Left would be the destruction of American society, its economic system and the seizure of its instrumentalities of power. During Oakland’s occupation, Allinsky’s political nihilism was utterly on display.

On a classically perfect autumn day in Oakland, mid 70’s, sunny, and crystal clear, dressed to look like an occupier, I first encounter a group of them sitting in front of Chase bank branch. They’d put crime tape over the ATM and are sitting in front of the main entrance which is locked and are smugly making sure that no customers will try to enter the branch. Peering through the windows, I see that some employees are inside presumably catching up on paperwork. One of the occupiers has a large wad of one dollar bills in her hand. She gives me one and says, “Here take it. We’re practicing generosity.” I take it and give it to homeless guy a block away and tell him where he can go to get some more.

http://townhall.com/columnists/larrykelley/2011/11/03/bring_it_all_down,_man

November 2, 2011

Jerry Brown shuts down government transparency website

Gov. Jerry Brown has shut down the government transparency website created by his predecessor, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, as a repository for financial disclosure statements and other records.

A note on the website, www.transparency.ca.gov, says information previously available on the site can be found on other state websites and furnishes the links. But open government advocates have objected to the move, saying it will make it more difficult for citizens to track spending.

Many of the documents -- including information about state contracts, audits and salaries -- can be found on other sites. But the transparency site, created in 2009 and shut down Tuesday, also included travel expense claims submitted by senior agency officials and employees of the governor's office.

Brown's office said this afternoon that travel records can be requested under California's open records act. Elizabeth Ashford, a spokeswoman for the Democratic governor, cited the time and cost of copying and uploading those documents.

Ashford said the website was created in response to concerns about travel and spending during Schwarzenegger's administration. Staff and travel costs under Brown are far lower, she said.

Phillip Ung, a lobbyist for the government watchdog group Common Cause, said there is a "large public interest in having a centralized disclosure, which is exactly what the transparency website was."

When he saw a note on the website this afternoon announcing its discontinuation, Ung said, "This is the worst."

The note on the website says Brown "is committed to keeping state government open and transparent while eliminating inefficiencies and unnecessary costs."

Read more: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/11/jerry-brown-shuts-down-california-government-transparency-website.html#ixzz1ckjPoek8

OBAMA’S BIG GREEN MESS - HOW THE WHITE HOUSE LOST ITS ECO-MOJO.

Oct 17, 2011 1:00 AM EDT

Eleanor Cliff

Newsweek

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/10/16/obama-s-green-energy-agenda-flop.html

This summer, federal inspectors made a routine visit to 11 homes in St. Louis to see what taxpayers got for the $5 billion that President Obama spent to help Americans weatherize their homes to save energy.

What they found was quite a surprise. Some of the energy-efficient furnaces installed at taxpayer expense spewed carbon monoxide that could poison occupants. New water heaters lacked required pressure valves, putting them in jeopardy of exploding. And a handful of contractors—unfamiliar with the nuances of specialized weatherization work—had used air blowers in homes with asbestos, potentially dispersing the cancer-causing agent, according to several Energy Department inspector-general reports.

As it closes in on retrofitting 600,000 homes, the government’s weatherization program—a key element of President Obama’s green-energy initiative—has had its share of happy, energy-saving customers. But it has also been riddled with problems. In one review, Energy Department investigators found that 14 percent of weatherization projects surveyed, from Tennessee to West Virginia, failed to meet safety or quality standards. Many customers were poor or elderly, with few resources to pursue wayward contractors.

It turned out that as so much money was being spent so quickly, a lot of state and local governments, as well as contractors, simply weren’t ready for the job at hand. "You don’t have trained people to do those jobs in places like Arizona or Florida," says Earl Devaney, chairman of the Recovery Board and Obama’s handpicked watchdog to oversee stimulus spending. "It turned into a cottage industry." A senior Energy Department official agreed: "We were clearly not ready to take all this money, especially at the state level."

Washington’s scandal du jour has been Solyndra. The California solar company received a rushed half-billion-dollar clean-energy stimulus loan from the Obama administration, only to go bankrupt and potentially leave taxpayers on the hook—despite warnings from career officials that both Solyndra and the larger solar industry were facing financial pressures.

 

But it is far from the only blemish on the administration’s much-touted green agenda. In addition to weatherization problems, an internal Labor Department report disclosed this month that a multibillion-dollar program to retrain workers for green-energy jobs met only 10 percent of its goal of creating 80,000 jobs. A federal renewable-energy lab in Colorado that got nearly $300 million from another green-energy program began laying off 10 percent of its workforce last month.

 

Overall, as the $787 billion economic stimulus—the primary engine for the green-energy agenda—came to an end Sept. 30, it is clear that the program created far fewer jobs than promised. So-called green-collar jobs are notoriously hard to tally, but numerous estimates by gleeful Republicans put the taxpayer cost of each green-energy job created by the stimulus at more than $1 million.

 

The White House acknowledges it hit bumps but insists the payoff will become clearer down the road. "Any time you take historic action you’re certainly going to learn lessons," says Heather Zichal, Obama’s chief energy and environment adviser. "These investments are not just about the jobs they are creating today but also support the long-term competitiveness and health of this important sector of our economy."

Some of the biggest immediate beneficiaries of the green revolution, ironically, may have been politicians themselves.

 

Executives of the top 50 recipients of the government’s green-energy aid have donated more than $2 million to federal campaigns since Obama took office. Some of the biggest recipients of green stimulus money—including NRG Energy and Consolidated Edison—made six-figure donations to candidates and interest groups. The industry as a whole has ponied up more than $5 million from its executives and political action committees, a notable increase from a formerly quiet sector. Democrats have been the main beneficiaries of clean-energy money. But Republicans have tapped their allies in the fossil-fuel industries—Exxon Mobil and Koch Industries have been the biggest donors, and overwhelmingly to Republicans—for more than $20 million in donations since Obama took office.

The clean-energy agenda quickly took on the trappings of the money-for-access game endemic to Washington. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, a chief backer of Obama’s agenda, hosted a roundtable in Washington in June 2009 with a dozen major clean-energy executives eager to build projects in his home state of Nevada. Within a year, at least eight executives from those companies donated to Reid’s reelection campaign. Reid’s office declined to comment.

Republicans put their own squeeze on the industry, pressing for federal largesse while publicly denouncing Obama’s program. House Speaker John Boehner, a leading critic on Solyndra, urged Obama to allocate clean-energy grants for a nuclear-enrichment project in Ohio, his home state, just three months after one of the company’s executives donated to Boehner’s reelection campaign. According to Maplight.org, a nonpartisan researcher of money’s influence on politics, Boehner has received nine major donations from nuclear-energy advocates. A spokesman for Boehner says there’s nothing improper about the speaker’s support of nuclear energy.

Last-minute 'gut and amend' laws bypass scrutiny in California

By Laurel Rosenhall

lrosenhall@sacbee.com

Published: Monday, Oct. 17, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 1A

It was after midnight on the last day of the legislative session last month when the state Senate took up a controversial bill concerning election laws for the very first time.

Most bills go through a months-long process of hearings, negotiations, amendments and votes. Not this one.

Senate Bill 202 was written about 24 hours earlier, when Democrat Loni Hancock of Berkeley deleted the language in a bill about filing fees on voter initiatives and replaced it with a highly political proposal to change the state's election laws in ways that will favor Democrats in 2012.

"The lack of process in this bill is inexcusable," Sen. Ted Lieu of Torrance told his colleagues that night. "We as Democrats should be ashamed at how this came to the Senate floor."

Hancock's bill was the most extreme example this year of the Legislature's penchant for writing new laws at the last minute – but it was by no means the only one.

The Legislature wrote 48 bills in the last three weeks of the regular session, long after the deadlines for most law-making procedures had passed. They did so by deleting the text of existing bills and replacing it with something new and often unrelated – a process known as "gut and amend."

Lawmakers sent 22 of those bills to the governor, who signed all but three of them.

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/10/17/3984771/last-minute-gut-and-amend-laws.html#ixzz1b3jXHEUy

Auditor's instincts paved way for Kinde Durkee probe

 

By BRIAN JOSEPH / THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

The arrest that's sent shock waves through the California Democratic Party started with a hunch.

 

In March of last year, a soft-spoken forensic accountant with the state Fair Political Practices Commission learned of a single, $4,500 expenditure buried in the bank statements of an unremarkable campaign account.ADVERTISEMENT

 

Nineteen months later, federal prosecutors and politicians have accused treasurer Kinde Durkee of embezzling millions of dollars from U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Orange County Assemblyman Jose Solorio and other federal, state and local Democrats.

 

This week, Durkee is expected in court. Her attorney, Daniel Nixon, has said, "We anticipate she'll enter a not guilty plea." An affidavit filed by an FBI investigator says Durkee admitted taking funds from her clients.

 

But the allegations against Durkee might never have materialized if not for that unassuming auditor, who believed something was very wrong with that $4,500 check.

•••

Grant Beauchamp wasn't thrilled in March 2010 when he sat in his bare office at the Fair Political Practices Commission in downtown Sacramento. Before him was a box of financial documents, hundreds of pages deep.

 

It wasn't the size of the task that bothered him. A veteran auditor, Beauchamp, 54, has spent more than half his life poring over papers just like these. He finds the work invigorating, picking through photocopied checks, searching for violations or fraud.

Beauchamp had devoured files 40 times as big during a career that stretched three decades.

 

No, what bothered Beauchamp was the nature of the assignment. Beauchamp – slim, with a receding hairline and white temples – has a look that belies his thirst for action.

Beauchamp accepted this job to take on big, important cases and, as he sat in his office, nothing in this box felt big or important.

 

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/beauchamp-321957-durkee-horton.html

 

California Assemblyman Chuck DeVore leaves California for Texas

California is becoming 'post-industrial hell,' economist says

BY LANCE WILLIAMS California Watch | Wednesday, Oct 12 2011 01:03 PM

Last Updated Wednesday, Oct 12 2011 01:04 PM

Since the recession began, times have been tough in California -- everybody knows it. The economy is in a protracted stall.

But it took economists at California Lutheran University's Center for Economic Research and Forecasting to describe, in hyperbolic language, the depth of the problems that have beset the Golden State since the stock market started to tank in the summer of '08.

"California," writes center director Bill Watkins, "is fast becoming a post-industrial hell."

That's true "for almost everyone except the gentry class, their best servants and the public sector," he writes.

In an essay and accompanying PowerPoint, Watkins sketches his portrait of Lotus Land as Hell on Earth by citing a series of post-recession economic statistics, many familiar, all of them sobering:

* The state's unemployment rate seems stuck at 12 percent, higher than the national average, and the state is still shedding jobs.

* The poverty rate is 16.1 percent, also slightly higher than the national average, and maybe 10 points higher when adjusted for the high cost of living.

* Fresno and San Bernardino are among the 10 poorest large cities in the U.S. With a 34.6 percent poverty rate, San Bernardino is the second-poorest U.S. city, after famously troubled Detroit.

Other economic indicators give a grim readout as well, according to Watkins. Wages are down. Since the recession began, the value of the average California home has dropped by about $90,000. About 3 percent of all home mortgages are in foreclosure.

And while 150,000 California students get their college diplomas each year, the state is creating only about 50,000 jobs for people with college degrees, he writes.

And so, middle-class people are bailing out. "Domestic migration has been negative for a decade," Watkins writes, and the state is attracting fewer legal immigrants from abroad.

To top it off, Watkins complains of problems with the state's schools and highways, its brutally gridlocked traffic, and even the reliability of the water supply.

http://www.bakersfield.com/news/local/x443091679/California-is-becoming-post-industrial-hell-economist-says?utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tbc619+%28The+Bakersfield+Californian+--+Latest+News%29&utm_medium=feed&utm_source=feedburner

Stephan Franks Article on CA Jobs

Friday, 30 September 2011 18:08

Do you need more evidence that California is in a Depression?

Eight of the Nine worse cities for unemployment in the nation are in California–and the ninth, Yuma, Arizona is just a few miles from the worst city in the nation, El Centro!

“El Centro, 32 percent

Yuma, Ariz., 29 percent

Merced, 18 percent

Yuba City, 17 percent

Stockton, 16 percent

Modesto, 16 percent

Fresno, 16 percent

Visalia-Porterville, 16 percent

Hanford-Corcoran, 15 percent”

Note that six of the nine are in the Central Valley–the amateur Arnold, allowing the Feds to stop our water is the main reason the Food Bowl of America is mostly a Dust Bowl.

Read More

California Supreme Court Nominee

Last Updated on Tuesday, 26 July 2011 08:52
Tuesday, 26 July 2011 08:47

President Obama nominated Gordon Liu twice as a U.S 9th Court of Appeals Federal judge, considered by the U.S. Senate to be too far left to be an objective force on the court. Result - Gordon Liu failed his nomination twice. But, Governor Moonbeam of braindead fame has now nominated the same Gordon Liu for the California Supreme Court. And people wonder why I'm proud to have been born and raised on the Communist Coast!

MORE

Tea party pushes back against Cal congresswoman
The Associated Press
Published: Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2011 - 4:01 pm
Last Modified: Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2011 - 6:07 pm

LOS ANGELES -- Tea Party leaders Tuesday faulted Democrats for failing to police their own ranks, after a California congresswoman told a cheering audience that the conservative movement should "go straight to hell."

Mark Meckler and Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party Patriots - the nation's largest tea party organization - said in a statement that President Barack Obama and other Democrats call for civility but "are neglecting to censure their own."

"Is civility only required from their opponents?" they asked. "The president's silence on these latest violations of civility has been deafening, but not surprising."

READ MORE . . .

California’s ‘Amazon Tax’ Already Proving a Bust

by Capitol Confidential

California recently instituted as part of its budget solution an “Amazon Tax” aimed at forcing out-of-state, online retailers with no physical presence in the Golden State to collect and remit sales tax in respect of goods sold to Californians where the retailer in question advertises, or maintains an “affiliate” referral relationship, with websites based within state lines.

Prior to passage of the bill obligating collection and remittance in such circumstances, prominent online retailers including Amazon.com and Overstock.com had threatened to terminate relationships with affiliates, if the legislation became law. Now that it has, and affiliate relationships are being severed, something critics of the legislation say was entirely foreseeable is occurring: Online businesses and entrepreneurs are leaving the state, thus risking an actual reduction, as opposed to marginal increase, in California’s tax revenue.

READ MORE. . .

Assembly Republicans start releasing office spending records

Individual Republican Assembly members began releasing their current office budgets Thursday in the wake of a call by the GOP caucus for the Assembly to make them public for all members.

"The people I represent would want to know what their money is spent on -- it's their money," said Assemblywoman Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield.

Besides Grove, Assembly members Kristin Olsen, R-Modesto, and Tim Donnelly, R-Twin Peaks, released their month-by-month office expenditures.

All three are freshmen, and each is projected to have a surplus by year's end: $51,477 for Donnelly, $27,174 for Grove, and $25,090 for Olsen, the newly released records of month-by-month spending show.

READ MORE . . .

California unemployment rises in July to 12%

By Marc Lifsher, Los Angeles Times
August 20, 2011
Reporting from Sacramento— California's stubbornly high unemployment rate rose even higher in July, climbing two-tenths of a percentage point to 12%, the U.S. Department of Labor reported Friday.

It was the second straight monthly increase in joblessness as measured by a federal survey of households.

California's unemployment rate was the second-highest in the nation, exceeded only by Nevada at 12.9%.

READ MORE . . .

REPORT: OBAMA ADMIN FUNDED OBAMACARE INTERNET PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN
Posted on August 19, 2011 at 4:14pm by
In a bombshell accusation, the government watchdog group Judicial Watch announced today that the Obama administration used taxpayer money to help orchestrate an internet search engine manipulation campaign specifically promoting Obamacare.

Judicial Watch obtained 2,328 pages of records pursuant to a March 23, 2011, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit. The FOIA information included correspondence between the Department of Health and Human Services and the Ogilvy Group, the public relations fire hired by the White House to push Obamacare on the American people.

Judicial Watch listed the following as major points of interest from the FOIA request (all bullets quoted):
REPORT: OBAMA ADMIN FUNDED OBAMACARE INTERNET PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN
Posted on August 19, 2011 at 4:14pm by
In a bombshell accusation, the government watchdog group Judicial Watch announced today that the Obama administration used taxpayer money to help orchestrate an internet search engine manipulation campaign specifically promoting Obamacare.

Judicial Watch obtained 2,328 pages of records pursuant to a March 23, 2011, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit. The FOIA information included correspondence between the Department of Health and Human Services and the Ogilvy Group, the public relations fire hired by the White House to push Obamacare on the American people.

Judicial Watch listed the following as major points of interest from the FOIA request (all bullets quoted):

READ MORE . . .

Democrats DEMAND ‘Made in the USA’ Requirement Pushed As Job-Creator for California

Written by CA Political News on August 12, 2011, 02:33 AM

‘Made in the USA’ Requirement Pushed As Job-Creator for California

By Susan Jones, CNWNews.com, 8/11/11 

CNSNews.com) - Liberal activists -- with a dig at tea party conservatives -- are pushing a California ballot initiative intended to bring jobs to the state by requiring state and local government agencies to buy only “Made in the USA” products.

"The Tea Party gridlock and paralysis in Washington and Sacramento requires middle-class voters to take action to bring back jobs," said Jim Gonzalez, a proponent of the initiative and a former finance chair of the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors. “The Bring Manufacturing Jobs Back to California Act would end the decline of manufacturing jobs that is at the root of our economic crisis."

Beginning in January 2014, the initiative would require the State of California and all local government entities to purchase or lease only those products that are manufactured in the United States – and made mostly from materials produced in the U.S.A.

Construction and public works contracts would go only to companies that agree to use or supply made-in-the-U.S.A. products and produced-in-the-U.S.A. materials.

Gonzalez and two fellow Democrats, Bill Zimmerman and John Thiella, have sent the ballot initiative to the California Attorney General for a title and a summary, after which they will circulate the petition and try to collect enough signatures to get the measure on the November 2012 ballot.

"Between 2001 and 2011, California lost 612,000 manufacturing jobs, equal to over 32% of our state's industrial base," said Thiella, who formerly worked for California's elected tax commission. He said the proposed ballot initiative would create a market for new manufacturing contracts based on the combined purchasing power of the State of California and its counties, cities, districts, and local government agencies.

"The Bring Manufacturing Jobs Back to California Act is about simple economic justice in an economy being destroyed by outsourcing and long term unemployment," said Bill Zimmerman, who has organized other citizens' initiatives, including the Proposition 215 (medical marijuana).  

(As an example of how outsourcing is hurting the state, the ballot initiative notes that the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge span is being built by low-wage workers in China.)

READ MORE . . .

Protecting Taxpayers by Protecting Local Discretion

By Chris McKenzie and Jon Coupal

Those familiar with Sacramento politics know that the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and the League of California Cities are often on opposing sides of major policy issues. Nonetheless, we have worked together on a number of issues where our interests overlap. One issue on which we have always agreed is firm opposition to unfunded mandates on local governments. Many in local government are unaware that it was a taxpayer advocate, Paul Gann, who placed in the California Constitution a prohibition against unfunded state mandates to local governments.

Today, we stand together again as state legislators attempt to inject paralysis and dysfunction into local budgets. Specifically, our organizations join in strong opposition to several bills attempting to restrict the ability of local governments to reduce costs, manage their budgets and spend tax dollars in the most efficient manner possible.

Take for example, AB 438, a bill that restricts the ability of cities to contract for library services. For communities that have already pursued some level of contracting out, it has proven to be remarkably successful with lower costs, expanded library hours and, in most cases, no layoffs. In an era of reduced revenues from the highs of a couple of years ago, local agencies should have maximum flexibility to deliver quality services in a way that provides the best value to residents.

AB 646 is another restrictive bill that undermines a local agency’s ability to bargain with its employees by giving special authority to employee organizations to create delays in the negotiation process.

AB 506 is yet another bill that would severely impact local fiscal and labor decisions by imposing delays and obstacles that effectively prohibit a local agency in a fiscal crisis from seeking federal bankruptcy protection. While no one in local government relishes the idea of bankruptcy, if mediation and all other reasonable efforts to compromise result in failure, then it is crucial that local agencies retain the option of bankruptcy protection without various legislative hurdles being imposed on the process.

Particularly during these difficult economic times, Californians want their government to be lean and efficient. They want to have their tax dollars used wisely. In tough times, our residents expect their government leaders to make tough choices. Our elected leadership at the state level seems unable to make hard decisions, while most city governments simply have no choice.

City governments have eliminated and consolidated programs, reworked agreements with their labor unions, contracted out for services, and have had to lay off employees. These actions are in the best interest of taxpayers,but they make some powerful interest groups in Sacramento unhappy. Several bills, including those mentioned here, are aimed at limiting local discretion to deliver services and efficiently trim their budgets.

While Gov. Jerry Brown, a former big city mayor himself, needs to be more aggressive on matters of local control, he has already taken some positive steps. For example, he recently vetoed AB 455 (Campos), another bill that would have seized local authority. He stated in his veto message that the bill sought to “impose a level of state control that is inconsistent with my administration’s efforts to…increase local control.” As legislators continue to place stacks of bills on his desk that compromise local control we hope that he repeats this language in his veto messages as a Zen master repeats a mantra.

Chris McKenzie is executive director of the League of California Cities. Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

To read this column on the HJTA website, click here.

California Amazon tax will kill 25,000 small businesses

By: Katy Grimes | CalWatchdog.Org | 06/29/11 5:57 PM

With the California legislature having just passed a flawed budget full of accounting tricks, budget gimmicks and money grabs, one area of small business is about to be taxed right out of business - just so that the state can fill a budget hole instead of making necessary and substantive cuts.

One of the budget trailer bills contains three formerly separate Internet tax bills now wrapped into one, to tax all Internet purchases made in California.

The ‘Amazon tax,’ AB 27 X1, is in legislative limbo. The tax was part of the budget deal that was vetoed only 10 days ago by Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown. But now legislative analysts are trying to get the governor, who has signaled his support for the tax, to sign the bill, or the bill will have to go through the legislative process again.

In the face of strong evidence that this trick would most certainly put many small e-retailers and internet affiliates out of business, legislators continue to pursue what they claim will be a $200 million windfall of tax income. AB 155, one of the online tax bills authored by Assemblyman Charles Calderon, would change the definition of a “retailer” to include any group “that performs services in this state in connection with tangible personal property to be sold by the retailer.”

The bill states, “Qualifying services include, without limitation, the design and development of tangible personal property (merchandise) sold by the retailer, or the solicitation of sales of TPP on the retailer’s behalf. Imposes a sales tax on retailers for the privilege of selling TPP, absent a specific exemption. The tax is based upon the retailer’s gross receipts from TPP sales in this state.”

Calderon even included a “complementary use tax on the storage, use, or other consumption in this state of TPP purchased from any retailer.”

That about covers everything a retailer does. However, the bill specifies that the use tax is imposed on “purchasers” — the customer.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/2011/06/california-amazon-tax-will-kill-25000-small-businesses#ixzz1UrE4velK

 

 

Tech at Night: Anonymous losing, CA Amazon Tax repeal leading, Anti-AT&T folk lying 

Anonymous is starting to lose more than it wins. As I already mentioned on Wednesday, the FBI is racking up names to arrest, and moving on them. Anonymous responded by claiming to have broken into NATOsystems. The world responded by trashing Anonymous’s AnonPlus website. Of course, when they’re in jail, that won’t matter much, but it’s fun to see.

Good news: Early polling suggests a slight lead for the referendum to repeal the California Amazon/Internet Sales Tax.

Why do I oppose the PROTECT IP copyright bill? I don’t want Indian-style censorship any more than I want the Chinese kind.

 

The far left continues to try to use big government to dictate against the AT&T/T-Mobile deal, even though as I’ve pointed out previously and as Ryan Young pointed out at Daily Caller,Sprint’s actions don’t match its words. The deal will increase competition, and it should pass unmolested by government, for the greater good.

The far left continues to fight competition though, instead hoping to impose some greater form of state control over the industry. Because they’re lying about the “jobs” angle.

 

Tip: “The Cloud” is not a backup, and if you don’t own the domain, then you do not own your email address. Protect yourself out there, folks. Just because “everyone” is using a certain service, that doesn’t mean that service is safe. Not Gmail, not Paypal, nothing. Be careful. Don’t overcommit.

 

Tea Party Patriots hit back on S&P downgrade

By Cameron Joseph        - 08/08/11 11:28 AM ET

The Tea Party Patriots attacked the Obama administration for Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the national credit rating the day after senior Democrats tried to blame the Tea Party movement for S&P’s move.

The group seized on an editorial in a Chinese government-run newspaper that said the U.S. needed to address its “mounting debts.”

“When Washington, D.C., gets slammed from the right by communists, you know we have a problem with our leadership,” Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler said. “[Politicians’] muddled thinking comes from a lack of leadership that has failed to face our debt problems or corral overspending.”

Their response comes as recent polls show the debt-ceiling debate hurt the Tea Party’s standing with voters. A CBS News/New York Times poll conducted the first week of August had 40 percent of Americans disapproving of the Tea Party, with only 20 percent in support.

Democrats were quick to blame the movement for S&P’s actions.

“The fact of the matter is that this is essentially a Tea Party downgrade,” David Axelrod, a top adviser for President Obama’s reelection campaign, said Sunday on CBS. The United States came close to default, Axelrod said, because “strident voices” in the Tea Party were willing to see the country fall short of its debt obligations.

“Not one of the Republican presidential candidates stood up in opposition to that,” he said.

Standard & Poor’s blamed both mounting debt and the uncertainty created by the debt-ceiling negotiations for the downgrade from AAA to AA+, the first time the U.S. government has been downgraded since S&P gave it the AAA rating in 1917.

 

The Tea Party Patriots were the only major Tea Party group that refused to support any form of debt ceiling increase -- the other major Tea Party groups backed Republicans' plan to include a balanced budget amendment and cut spending.

Erik Wasson contributed.

This post was updated at 3:02pm.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/175897-tea-party-patriots-hit-back-on-sap-downgrade

Senators debate illegal immigrant student bill
BY CINDY CARCAMO
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER


For the first time, Senators held a hearing this week on a bill that would give thousands of students and military hopefuls who are in the country illegally a pathway to U.S. citizenship.
Still, the observers have said the future looks dim for the bill because Republicans have taken a harder line against illegal immigration and now have control of the House.

DREAM Act Activists rally in support of the bill in Orange County. Cindy Yamanaka/ The Orange County Register


The Development, Relief and Education for Minor Aliens Act – better known as the Dream Act – has ping-ponged its way through Congress for about a decade without much success but this is the first time its had a hearing in the Senate.
Tuesday's hearing was an opportunity for proponents and opponents of the law to lobby. During the hearing, the panel clashed with Republican legislators in front of Democrats and room packed with hundreds of youngsters who were allies of the bill or in the country illegally themselves, according to news reports.
"Let me ask everyone here today who is a Dream Act student to stand and be recognized," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, the bill's sponsor.
Nearly everyone in the room stood up, Fox News.com reported.
The Senate Judiciary Committee's immigration subcommittee discussed brining the Dream Act back before Congress.
Senator John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, pressed Department of Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano on a stipulation in the act that would give her the authority to waive educational requirements for some Dream Act applicants on a case-by-case basis, The New York Times reported.
Cornyn said he was uncomfortable with that part of the bill, as well as another stipulation that allows participants to have two misdemeanors convictions before being expelled from the program, according to the New York Times.
Napolitano told Cornyn that given the limitations to the DHS budget, deporting teenagers who have spent much of their lives in the country and hope to enroll in college or serve in the military didn't fall within the enforcement priorities of the agency.
The bill would allow students who are in the country illegally and have finished at least two years of college or military service to apply for legal status. The act would also protect them from deportation and make them eligible for student loans and federal work study programs.
Students would need to have lived here at least five years before the bill was enacted into law and have arrived before they were 16. Applicants would also need to be younger than 36.
Still, the bill's opponents call it a provisional amnesty, stating that it's flawed and contains major loopholes. Others say that people would be rewarded for breaking the law.
Proponents of the bill have said that most of these students were children when they were brought over by their parents. Activists argue that the children should not be punished for their parent's decisions and instead should have the chance to give back to society via the military or as working taxpayers.
The bill's most recent failure was during the Congressional lame-duck session last year.
Democratic lawmakers reintroduced the bill in May.
Read more about the hearing in the Christian Science Monitor, Associated Press, New York Times and FoxNews.com.
See which states have their own version of the Dream Act.
Immigration Text Alerts: Subscribe to free immigration news alerts. About 3-7 are sent each week. Text OCRIMMIG to 56654. More OCRegister news alerts.
http://www.ocregister.com/news/bill-306717-act-dream.html start saving on taxes today

By MICHAEL GARDNER

FOR THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER



SACRAMENTO – Starting Friday, Californians can buy and license a new car for less money than Thursday.

How much less? Try $300 on a $20,000 purchase.



A woman puts new registration sticker on her car at a Department of Motor Vehicles office in Redwood City, Calif., Thursday, June 30, 2011. All Californians with a vehicle will pay $12 more a year to register it and millions of property owners who live outside cities will pay $150 a year for state fire protection. Those are among the new fees included in the state budget signed on Thursday. On July 1, a temporary hike in vehicle license fees also ended.



That's because a series of temporary sales, vehicle and income tax increases expired at midnight after Gov. Jerry Brown and Republican lawmakers failed to strike a deal on extending the taxes as part of a new budget deal signed into law Thursday.

Combined, the new lower tax rates will save the average family of four about $1,000 a year, according to various state figures.



"Today, young families in California should celebrate. ... I have seen how these taxes going to state government impacts their budgets," said Assemblyman Brian Jones, R-Santee, who used to sell cars.



But those savings come at a price. Some offsetting new fees have been imposed, budgets for schools and services slashed, and college tuition is on the way up.



"The budget choice was simple: pay the same amount in taxes you do now or enact painful budget cuts that will be felt for years to come. Legislative Republicans made their choice, and Californians will suffer the consequences," said Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and president pro tempore of the Senate.

Republicans insist Californians will still come out ahead.



"It will still be a net cut. Taxpayers will still see a lower tax burden," said Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, a San Diego Republican who opposed the new round of fee increases.



Here's why:

Sales tax cut: Today marks a 1 percent rollback in the state sales tax, saving shoppers $1 for every $100 worth of taxable goods they buy — from books to wrenches. That may not sound like much, but it adds up. The state Board of Equalization puts the savings at $233 a year for the average Californian even if they do not buy big-ticket computers or appliances.



Smaller vehicle license fee: The rate will be almost halved, to 0.65 percent from 1.15 percent of the value. That's about $5 for every $1,000 in value, or $100 savings on a car DMV values at $20,000.



Income tax: Californians will also feel less of a bite from the tax man on April 15, thanks to the Dec. 31, 2010 expiration of a temporary tax hike. Income tax rates for the 2011 calendar year will go down, but by how much is contingent on personal finances, deductions and other factors. But, as an example, a family with one child and adjusted gross income of $60,000 will save about $340.

Tax credits: As part of the income tax rollback, couples filing jointly will be able to declare a roughly $309 per dependent credit. The comparative 2010 credit was $188.

http://www.ocregister.com/news/tax-306667-taxes-sales.html

Californians

California's $85.9 billion budget: Here are the major provisions

Published: Friday, Jul. 1, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 3A

Last Modified: Friday, Jul. 1, 2011 - 12:13 am

After a veto fight with his own party and unresolved differences with Republicans, Gov. Jerry Brown signed an on-time $85.9 billion spending plan Thursday that slashes higher education and the safety net while counting on a windfall of tax revenues.

Democrats approved the plan using new majority-vote budget powers.

The plan "really does put our fiscal house into much better shape," Brown said as he signed the main budget bill. "But we're not finished."

What follows are major provisions in the plan:

TOTAL GENERAL FUND BUDGET: $85.9 billion

Health and Human Services:

MEDI-CAL

• Co-payment requirements. Starting Nov. 1, patients will be required to pay $5 on doctor visits and $50 on emergency room visits. Also imposes co-pays on prescription drugs and hospital stays. Saves $511 million.



Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/07/01/3740427/californias-859-billion-budget.html#ixzz1QsKCba4w

June 15, 2011

Legislature approves majority budget plan ahead of deadline
The state Legislature plowed through a package of majority-vote budget bills this afternoon, approving a plan to close the $9.6 billion deficit with more than seven hours left until the deadline for both houses to pass a budget.

The package includes deeper cuts to higher education and the courts, the elimination of redevelopment agencies with plans to create an alternative funding system, a quarter-cent increase to the sales tax and a $12-per-vehicle increase to the vehicle registration fee. It also relies on higher revenue projections and maneuvers like bringing back an abandoned proposal to sell state buildings and tapping into funds meant for health and educational programs for young children.

The plan now goes to Gov. Jerry Brown, whose own budget proposal is centered on extending higher tax rates set to expire through a vote of the Legislature and later statewide election.

Majority Democrats, facing today's deadline and the threat of no pay if a budget was not approved by midnight, said they were forced to resort to the alternative package without Republican votes needed to approve the governor's plan.

"This was very, very tough. But we've been given the responsibility and we certainly have done I think a very good job with the tools at our disposal," Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said after the Senate finished its work today.

Republicans, who had sought a spending cap and changes to the pension and regulatory systems as part of a deal to put taxes on the ballot, blasted the plan as filled with gimmicks, one-time solutions and legally questionable tactics for raising revenues.

"This Democrat budget is an irresponsible package that has no real pension reform, no hard spending cap, no plan to put people back to work and no change to government as usual," Senate GOP leader Bob Dutton, of Rancho Cucamonga, said in a statement. "It clearly demonstrates that legislative Democrats would rather pander to their special interest allies than adopt the long-term budget solutions that Californians demand and deserve."

Brown has 12 days to sign or veto the budget approved today. Steinberg said he is still hoping an agreement on approving so-called tax bridge and later election on the taxes can still be reached. Unlike the budget in the wake of the successful 2010 ballot measure Proposition 25, the tax solutions require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature.



Read more: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/06/legislature-plans.html#ixzz1POVTYbLj

The victory of three Republican Latinos in last year's election is a warning sign for Democrats. Political activists and campaign strategists say Democrats need to do more to bolster their Latino candidates.



By Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times

FIELD POLL: Brown numbers slipping

David Siders

dsiders@sacbee.com

Published: Wednesday, Jun. 15, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 3A

Gov. Jerry Brown still has public support for his tax plan, but the margin has slipped, and so has his public approval rating, according to a Field Poll released today.

The poll comes as legislative Democrats – frustrated by months of failed budget talks between Brown and Republican lawmakers – prepare today to take up a budget of their own.

Though Brown's public approval rating has slipped just two percentage points since March, to 46 percent, many Californians who previously were undecided about Brown made up their minds against him. Thirty-one percent of voters disapprove of Brown's job performance, up from 21 percent in March.

"Three months ago he was still in his honeymoon period with voters," Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo said. "Now I think what you're seeing is more of a return to normal."



Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/06/15/3701203/field-poll-support-slipping-for.html#ixzz1PLw8GWgl

June 11, 2011, 5:08 p.m.

Early this year, Brian Sandoval and Susana Martinez made history. He became Nevada's first Latino governor. In New Mexico, she became the country's first Latina governor.

Just as striking as their breakthrough is their party affiliation: Both are Republicans.

For Democrats, the election of the three was something else: a warning sign at a time when Latino support has grown increasingly vital to the party's success, especially in the battleground states of the Rocky Mountains and desert Southwest.

Sens. Harry Reid of Nevada and Michael Bennet of Colorado each withstood the 2010 Republican wave thanks in good part to Latino support. President Obama is counting on strong Latino turnout to hold on to Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico — states he won in the last White House race — and to expand the 2012 competition to Arizona and, maybe, Texas and Georgia.

"The Republicans, by electing three national Latino leaders, have really challenged the Democratic Party," said former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, until recently one of the highest-ranking Latino Democrats in the country.

"Democrats have to recruit more Latino candidates and they have to start siding with Latinos on redistricting and other issues," Richardson said, "because many Latinos perceive that the party doesn't care enough about electing more Hispanic officials."



http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-latino-democrats-20110611,0,5901833.story

California ponders end run around Electoral College
By Genevieve Jerome | 05/26/11 12:00 AM PST
Remember back in 2000 when George W. Bush was elected president, even though rival Al Gore won the popular vote?

If so, you’re not the only one: A number of Democrats – and some Republicans – want California to award its Electoral College votes in a presidential election to the candidate who wins the popular vote. The idea is to avoid elections in which the popular-vote winner loses the race because the rival candidate has more electoral votes. That, in turn, might give California, the nation’s most populous state, more clout in picking a president.

A bill to do exactly that faces the state Senate. Last week, the Assembly in a 43-18 vote passed AB 459 by Assemblyman Jerry Hill, D-South San Francisco, which enables California to join in a compact with a number of other states and the District of Columbia to authorize the vote shift.


For the compact to work, it needs a total of 270 electoral votes by all of the states. Thus far, states with a total of 77 electoral votes have decided to join the compact. Many states are waiting to see what California, with a trove of 55 electoral votes, is waiting to do.

“I think if voted, it would be a major positive effect on California. I think it will allow our voices to be heard in the national debate for president,” said Assembly Democratic Caucus Chair Jerry Hill who represents the 19th district. Hill says assuring the popular vote could have a major impact on important issues such as off-shore oil drilling and agricultural issues.
“The passage of the bill would make a big difference because California would be relevant in presidential elections,” says Hill. “Today the only thing we’re good for in a presidential election is for money,”

Senator Mimi Walters, R-Laguna Niguel, feels AB 459 would have a positive effect on California.

“Assembly Bill 459 will help to put California on a more balanced playing field with other states, so that we can attract national attention to issues that are unique to our state,” says Walters. “California is too large and our issues are too important to be ignored at the expense of those in battleground states. AB459 is an issue of equity – our citizens deserve comparable national consideration as those in other states.”
http://www.capitolweekly.net/article.php?_c=zqcwmg44ozl8ix&xid=zqb28mwn77xxky&done=.zqcwmg44p0a8ix

 

State budget special election: An update
One of the most common questions in our budget online chat yesterday had to do with the budget special election.Gov. Jerry Brown originally called for an early June election, but that became impossible once talks ended in March. Here's where various players stand on the election issue at the moment:
Brown: Wants a special election as soon as possible, which realistically means September if the Legislature agrees on a budget by June. To balance the budget until an election, he wants lawmakers to extend sales and vehicle taxes from July 1 until the election. He backed off his original call for a retroactive extension of an income tax surcharge for 2011, though he still wants a smaller dependent tax credit.
Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento: Wants to balance the 2011-12 budget by having the Legislature approve a one-year extension in taxes. Wants the electorate to vote on extending the taxes for four more years some time in 2012.
Assembly Republican Caucus: Opposes tax extensions and opposes an election, other than one on pension reductions and a spending cap. Issued a plan that relies on cuts such as a 10 percent reduction in state worker compensation and taking funds from First 5 and mental-health programs, as well as Brown's projection of unexpected tax revenues.
Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez, D-Los Angeles: Believes the Legislature should approve taxes on its own, but says he is open to a "ratification" by voters at some later date.


Read more: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/05/budget-special-election-an-upd.html#ixzz1NQ1mTd3P

 Former Assemblyman Roger Niello's politically-motivated attempt to slash retirement benefits and collective bargaining for public employees is dead -- for now. Niello told the Sacramento Bee last night that he was pulling the measure, which apparently had no significant backing behind it to qualify for the ballot. Many believe Niello filed the measure to curry favor for an expected bid for the California Senate. The LAO reviewed the initiative last week, noting that it would force an increase in social service benefits to state workers because they would not be able to have secure retirements. Here's what Dave Low, chairman of Californians for Retirement Security, had to say about Niello's decision: It is appropriate that the flawed Niello initiative to gut retirement security for millions of Californians will end up in the scrapheap of politically-motivated failures instead of on the ballot. It was a poorly drafted attempt to punish middle-class workers and it ignored the fact that workers have agreed to substantial reductions in retirement benefits and have increased their contributions towards pensions from 5 to 10 percent. We continue to believe the way to improve the state's pension system is at the bargaining table, not the ballot box.

http://www.camajorityreport.com/index.php?module=articles&func=display&ptid=9&aid=4671

 

APNewsBreak: High-risk Calif parolees unsupervised
By DON THOMPSON, Associated Press
2:15 p.m., May 25, 2011
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California improperly paroled more than 450 dangerous criminals without supervision last year as part of a program designed to reduce prison crowding and cost, the California prison system's independent inspector general said Wednesday in a report.
A faulty computerized risk-assessment program predicted the offenders could be released under the state's non-revocable parole law that took effect in January 2010.
The inspector general found that about 1,500 offenders were improperly left unsupervised, including 450 who "carry a high risk for violence." The offenders otherwise would have been released under traditional parole, which requires them to report in regularly and follow specific rules.
The new law was designed for less serious offenders. Under non-revocable parole, offenders don't report to parole agents and can't be sent back to prison unless they commit new crimes.
The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said it relies heavily on a computerized program because it must review the criminal histories of more than 160,000 inmates and more than 100,000 offenders on parole.
Auditors found the risk assessment was wrong for 23.5 percent of more than 10,000 offenders who were considered for non-revocable parole between January and July 2010. Some were scored too high and others too low, with the lower-scoring inmates eligible for unsupervised release.
Even after the computer program was altered, analysts determined it was wrong in 8 percent of cases.
"CDCR should not compromise public safety ... by understating offenders' risk of reoffending and releasing high-risk offenders to unsupervised parole," the report said.
The department disputed the inspector general's analysis and conclusion.
"Alleged `errors' ... have in large part been corrected," Lee Seale, the department's deputy chief of staff, wrote in a rebuttal letter. "We reject the notion that the California Static Risk Assessment is flawed and dispute the evidence the OIG cites in support of this claim."
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/may/25/apnewsbreak-high-risk-calif-parolees-unsupervised/

Senators unveil bipartisan transportation plan
Posted at 02:49 PM on Wednesday, May. 25, 2011
By JOAN LOWY - Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- A bipartisan group of senators said Wednesday they have agreed to the outlines of a long-term transportation spending bill, boosting prospects for ending a stalemate that has kept highway and transit construction programs in limbo since 2008.
The bill would spend about $56 billion a year on highway and transit construction, said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. It has the support of Sens. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the senior Republican on the committee; David Vitter of Louisiana, the senior Republican on the highway subcommittee, and Max Baucus, D-Mont., the subcommittee's chairman.
The group is notable in part because its members span the Senate's ideological gamut. Baucus also chairs the Senate Finance Committee, which is responsible for figuring out how to pay for the plan.
The plan calls for spending roughly the same amount of money per year adjusted for inflation as was authorized by the last long-term transportation bill, which was passed in 2005 and expired in 2009.
Unable to figure out how to fund a new long-term plan without the politically unpalatable prospect of raising federal gas and diesel taxes, Congress has kept highway and transit programs limping along through a series of short-term cash infusions from the general treasury.


Read more: http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/05/25/2402428/senators-unveil-bipartisan-transportation.html#ixzz1NQ0WvAo0

http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/05/leland-yee-california-university-public-records-act.html#mi_rss=Capitol%20Alert

May 2, 2011  Stephen Frank's California Political News and Views

Job Growth? 1st CA City is #155!

May 03, 2011, 01:44 AM

How bad is California for job growth?  The answer is worse than you thought.

This is from New Geography.com   This survey looks at a total of 398 cities.

1.  Texas has 22 cities before CA has its first at 155--Merced

2.  New York has 7 cities before Merced.

3.  Gulfport-Biloxi is #26

4.  San Jose is 181

5.  San Fran is 218

6.  El Centro is #251

7.  Sacramento is 367 (out of 398)

8.  Los Angeles is 373

9.  Oakland is 395

New York City is #52

Do not blame me for California being in a Depression it can not get out of, the numbers speak for themselves--California is in a fiscal death spiral and the studies prove it.  Want a job?  Go to Texas.

Read More...

Budget Watch blog
Gov. Jerry Brown and state lawmakers last month passed what might have been the biggest package of spending cuts in state history, more than $11 billion in reductions to almost every part of the government.

When the next fiscal year ends less than 15 months from now, many of those cuts will have failed to deliver their promised savings.

As a result, even if Brown gets the entire combination of spending cuts and tax increases he is seeking from the Legislature and the voters, a new shortfall will likely emerge unless the economy outperforms projections and the state collects higher tax revenues that expected.
That’s been the pattern in Sacramento for many years.

For evidence, look no further than the brand new contracts the Brown Administration has just negotiated with many of its workers.

The budget package Brown is piecing together relies in part on a savings of 10 percent from these contracts. An independent analysis of the deals suggests they will save far less than that next year and will probably increase state costs in the long run.

The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst examined the proposed contracts for public safety workers, engineers and scientists. The safety workers’ deal would save less than 3 percent next year, the analysis said, while the two other contracts might save 6 percent.

That’s far less than the budget projected, but even those savings might be optimistic.

One reason is that all three deals end the three-day-per-month furloughs imposed by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and replace them with one floating unpaid day off per month for these employees. In his projected savings, Brown has counted the furloughs already taken this year. But by ending the program, his new contracts will actually cost the state more money between now and June 30 before any savings start to accrue.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/apr/05/under-scrutiny-big-cuts-are-not-so-much/

CA MEETS TEXAS VIA THE TAXPAYER

Friday, 15 April 2011 12:04

NEW: ABC – Anywhere But California



Katy Grimes: Thanks to Gov. Jerry Brown signing into law this week the global warming inspired 33 percent renewable requirement for utilities, we can expect more California jobs to head to Texas.

The law requires investor-owned and public utilities to obtain one-third of their electricity from renewable sources – in the state or from outside sources.

California utilities already pay 50% more for electricity than other states, which will lead to exorbitant cost increases for rate payers. Some experts say that parts of California will experience only a 19 percent increase, while Los Angeles will see a 74 percent increase.

As I wrote in Green Energy Bill Headed to Gov., in the entire history of energy in California, the state has never been able to create enough electricity to keep up with our own usage. This means that California buys 20 to 30 percent of its energy on the energy market from out-of-state energy sources, which leads to criticism of the stringent renewable energy standards. Many in the state say that increasing renewable energy standards will kill private business, as well as investor owned utilities.

“The other catch is that California legislators have imposed regulations on how much of the renewable energy is purchased outside the state, leaving many in the energy business to say that it can’t be done given how much energy we already purchase from other out-of-state sources, and because wind and solar power are not reliable,” explained an energy expert who asked to remain unnamed.

The California delegation visiting Texas legislators and Gov. Rick Perry are meeting with former California businesses now located in Texas. In a meeting with the Governor, California Assemblyman Dan Logue (R-Linda), organizer of the trip, said that businesses risked uprooting families along with the business, to move to Texas where they can compete nationally and globally, at a lower cost. “Last year California lost 1.2 million jobs while Texas created 163,000 new jobs,” said Logue.

“There’s a saying amongst business people,” said Logue, “ABC – anywhere but California.” And the reason for the trip said Logue, “is that in order to fix our budget and economy, California must address how to create jobs.”

I’ve written about Joe Vranich, The Business Relocation Coach, who helps businesses relocate. And unfortunately, too many of those businesses are exiting California. Vranich keeps track of the departures and writes, “Texas remains the top destination for departing California companies, as it has for several years. Experts at Site Selection magazine have awarded Texas the 2010 Governor’s Cup for most new and expanded corporate facilities announced over the year. Texas had the nation’s top ranking with 424 projects while California ranked 15th with 127 projects.”

Vranich lists the 69 companies that have left California so far just this year, and notes that the list doesn’t include businesses that remain in the state but choose to expand or open additional locations in other states.

According to Vranich, some of the reasons businesses leave California:

10. Energy costs
9. High and unfair tax treatment
8. Regulatory burden
7. Unfriendly legal environment for business
6. Most expensive place to do business
5. Provable savings elsewhere
4. Public policies and taxes create unfriendly business climate
3. Uncontrollable public spending
2. More adversarial toward business than any other state
1. Poor rankings for California on lists ranging from taxes to crime rates to school dropout rates.

Let’s hope the Texas delegation is able to get the attention of the other members of the Legislature. Because if this week is any indication of whether they can be shaken into reality, it’s not going to happen. Before breaking for their Spring Recess, legislators spent the last couple of weeks passing some really bad legislation through committees.

I’ll collect the bills and highlight some of the worst. This is where the shrinking Republican legislative membership is wreaking havoc on the future of the state – Republicans just are not able to stop bad bills in committees because there aren’t enough of them. And Gov. Jerry Brown has already demonstrated his willingness to sign legislation that will only further the devastate the state’s economy.

Gov. Perry’s website has video of the meetings.

The California delegation includes:

· Assemblyman Dan Logue
· Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom
· Assembly Republican Leader Connie Conway
· Assemblywoman Diane Harkey
· Assemblywoman Cathleen Galgiani
· Assemblyman Martin Garrick
· Assemblywoman Shannon Grove
· Assemblyman Brian Jones
· Assemblyman Steve Knight
· Assemblyman Mike Morrell
· Assemblyman Donald Wagner
· Donna Arduin – former California Finance Director, Arduin, Laffer & Moore Econometrics
· Julie Blunden – Executive VP of Public Policy/Corporate, SunPower Corporation
· Jeffrey Clark – State Government Affairs Southern Regional Policy Director, TechAmerica
· Carl Guardino – President, and CEO Silicon Valley Leadership Group
· Cynthia Guerrero – CG Consulting
· Jack M. Stewart – President, California Manufacturers & Technology Association
· Bryan Tucker – Senior Director, NA Operations/PMO Aviat Network
· Rock Zierman – President, California Independent Petroleum Association

http://www.calwatchdog.com/2011/04/15/abc-anywhere-but-california/

 

 

We've Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makersy STEPHEN MOORE

If you want to understand better why so many states—from New York to Wisconsin to California—are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, consider this depressing statistic: Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.

It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers. Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees. Is it any wonder that so many states and cities cannot pay their bills?

Read more . . .

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Activists Gear Up to Stop Tax Increase

MARCH 21, 2011  By JOHN SEILER

Opponents of Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed $12 billion tax increase already are spoiling for a fight. They’re not waiting to find out the fate of the governor’s proposal to put the matter before voters in June.

“We always have to be prepared are starting to develop a campaign strategy,” Jon Coupal told me today; he’s president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and has fought many anti-tax battles in California.

However, Coupal added, “Today, it looks increasingly like there won’t be a vote.” Fresh from attending the weekend’s Republican convention, he said that he’s hopeful that the Democratic majority in the Legislature will not be able to peel off the two Republicans votes in each house, the Assembly and Senate, needed to put the matter before voters.

But he’s not taking any chances. “I think we’ll be ready the way were two years ago,” he said, referring the successful effort to defeat a nearly identical tax increase advanced by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Read More . . .

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State budget rift grows between GOP, DemsPosted: Friday, March 25, 2011

SACRAMENTO ---- Democrats angrily rejected a long list of demands ---- 53 issues in all ---- that Republicans made Friday in budget negotiations with California Gov. Jerry Brown, and are now amping up threats to go around the minority party to ensure a special election on tax extensions.

Senate Republicans turned in their proposal to Brown on Friday afternoon after he complained he had yet to see a "term sheet" outlining their wishes. With time running out to get a special election on the ballot, Brown has pleaded with Republicans to lower their asking price for an agreement to allow voters to decide whether the $26.6 billion deficit should be closed with a mix of spending cuts and taxes. But after getting a quick look at the GOP demands in a meeting with the governor, Democratic Assembly Speaker John Perez said he is convinced the two parties are farther apart than they've ever been.

Read More . . .

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So you think the California budget deficit is dire?

By Greg Lucas | 03/24/11It’s been called California’s other budget deficit. And it certainly hasn’t had near the attention of the state’s $25.4 billion budget gap between revenue and spending commitments. 

But it’s almost as dire.

California’s employer-paid Unemployment Insurance Fund is insolvent.
The fund had a deficit of $10.3 billion in 2010, a deficit that is growing to what the state projects will be a $13.4 billion hole this year.Without increasing the amount of money businesses pay into the fund or reducing thebenefits paid to out-of-work former employees – or some combination of the two - the fund will stay insolvent.“For the foreseeable future,” says the Legislative Analyst in an October 2010 report.

Read More . . .

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California Republicans harden anti-tax stance

Monday March 21, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - After approving spending cuts in California Governor Jerry Brown's budget plan last week, state lawmakers this week will try to tackle its most nettlesome proposal -- a ballot measure that would ask voters to extend some temporary tax increases.

Standing in the measure's way are Republicans in the legislature's minority who oppose higher taxes or are facing pressure from supporters to oppose them.

Republicans at their state party convention over the weekend underscored their opposition by backing a resolution against a tax measure even if it was tied to policy changes they have long wanted.

A group of Republican state senators has been trying to negotiate some of those changes with Brown. They include proposals for a spending cap and an overhaul of the state's pension system for public employees.

Taxes, however, are trumping both.

Read more. . .

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Viewpoints: Be thankful for 'loyal opposition' by GOP
Share
By Diane Harkey
Special to The Bee
Published: Saturday, Mar. 26, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 11A
To be "bipartisan" in Sacramento means following the Democrats' agenda, continuing down the same path of overspending, regulation, taxation and debt that created our financial woes. Other states are bouncing back while our Golden State continues to lag in recovery.

There is no need to spin from budget dance to budget dance every six months. Unless we deal with the fundamental structural problems, we will continue to sway to the music of deficits and debt.

Unfortunately, the Democrats' "fix" will only ensure that we bounce from deficit to deficit, hurt the most vulnerable and then go begging to the taxpayers for more money. The budget proposal increases state spending by 31 percent over the next three years, assuming tax extensions and sending our responsibilities to local government.

What is different this year is the resurgence of a "loyal opposition." Republicans have switched from "let's make a deal" of the Schwarzenegger era to ensuring that if we don't have a role in diagnosing the cure, we are not going to swallow the medicine.

The governor's budget adds more than 1,300 positions this year, many in "enforcement" and tax collections, to further "revenue" enhancement. Hence, the first divide: what stimulates revenue to pay for state services – hitting those paying or employing with more enforcement and new taxes and fees, or encouraging and increasing private sector employment?

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/03/26/3504671/be-thankful-for-loyal-opposition.html#ixzz1HkwFFaw1

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Governor balks at GOP demands as budget talks teeter

Republicans give Brown a seven-page list of policy changes they say are needed before they agree to vote on his budget. They include ending seniority system for teacher layoffs and moving the 2012 presidential primary to March. A Brown aide calls it a 'hodgepodge.'
By Shane Goldmacher and Anthony York, Los Angeles Times
March 26, 2011
Reporting from Sacramento—
Gov. Jerry Brown accused GOP lawmakers of paralyzing budget negotiations by introducing dozens of new demands Friday.

The governor appeared to lose patience after Republicans gave him a seven-page document of policy changes they say need to be implemented before they would be willing to vote for his budget.

The dozens of items on their list include such wide-ranging proposals as ending the seniority system for teachers facing layoffs, moving next year's presidential primary to March and restoring funding to protect rural lands from development.

The document also asks Brown to abandon his push to eliminate redevelopment agencies, rewrite a tax formula favorable to corporations and ax a corporate tax break for businesses hiring workers in blighted areas.

Brown spokesman Gil Duran characterized the list as "a hodgepodge."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-state-budget-20110326,0,1008293.story

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Senate leader ready to end budget talks
By Juliet Williams/ Associated Press
Posted: 03/26/2011 07:12:59 AM PDT

SACRAMENTO -- Democratic leaders in the state Legislature said Friday they were growing frustrated after weeks of failed budget negotiations and might seek a way to reach a deal without Republicans, who submitted a wish list of more than 50 demands to the governor's office.
Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, warned that he could schedule a vote soon to force GOP lawmakers to make a decision but would not give up on a deal as long as Gov. Jerry Brown wants to keep negotiating.
Assembly Speaker John Perez, D-Los Angeles, dismissed the list of Republican demands as moving further away from what Democrats can accept, but GOP lawmakers emerged from the governor's office saying they were still talking.
The main point of contention is Brown's proposal for a special election to give voters a chance to extend temporary tax increases enacted two years ago.
If talks reach an impasse, Democrats could try to approve the special election on a simple majority vote, a move that would almost certainly be challenged in court because legislative ballot measures require a two-thirds vote.
Democrats, who have a majority in both houses, also could introduce an all-cuts budget that would take away billions of dollars more from schools or try to qualify an independent initiative on the tax extensions for a special election this November.
http://www.thereporter.com/rss/ci_17705991?source=rss

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March 17, 2011
Legislature approves main budget bill without new revenues

Both houses of the California Legislature passed the main budget bill today and have now solved roughly half of the state's $26.6 billion deficit, mostly through cuts and taking funds from special state accounts. But nobody's celebrating yet.

The Legislature has left unsettled two of the thorniest issues in Gov. Jerry Brown's budget proposal -- the elimination of redevelopment agencies and a special election asking voters to extend higher taxes on sales, income and vehicles.

Without those changes, the Legislature will have to cut deeper or find new pots of money other than taxes. So far, Brown and Democrats remain focused on finding enough GOP votes to place taxes on the ballot.
Thursday didn't provide much hope for an immediate bipartisan solution. Tempers flared in both houses Thursday, and the partisan divide was as evident as ever.

Democrats amended various budget bills to require only a majority vote, using powers granted to them by voters in last year's Proposition 25. That led to party-line votes throughout the day.

Meanwhile, debates in both houses led to Republicans asking for apologies from Democrats. In the Senate, rhetoric overheated during debate on a bill redirecting inmates from state prisons to local jails and shifting parole functions to local governments.

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Read more: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/03/legislature-approves-main-budget-bill.html#ixzz1GyFii4x2

 CA BUDGET TARGETS THE VULNERABLE AND PROTECTS PERKS

It is absolute HOGWASH that Brown's new budget is full of even handed cuts across the board. In typical leftist fashion, his cuts (which are really transfers) target the most vulnerable in our state...the mentally ill, healthcare for small children and the developmentally delayed. The people for whom most of us want a security net will be hit first and suffer in ways we cannot predict. As the suffering unfolds, we will be expected to demand tax increases to right the wrongs of our greed.

Oh, and we'll see less spending on transportation...i.e. The freeways and roads we depend on for jobs and commerce.

But, wait. What about the public employee unions? Oh, yah, they are safe from cuts. No pension reform. No cutting the workforce via outsourcing, etc, etc.

BOTTOM LINE: $12 billion in tax increases and only $8 billion in "cuts" (transfers).

http://hjta.org/california-commentary/hardly-transparent

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Lawmakers cash in during long weekends

Meeting for a few minutes Friday, they get four days' pay
BY MICHAEL GARDNER
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2011 AT 6:59 P.M.
Per diem For local lawmakers, 2010
Senate:
Mark Wyland, R-Solana Beach $27,095
Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego $27,655
Mimi Walters, R-Lake Forest $27,095
Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego $29,081*
Dennis Hollingsworth, R-Temecula $28.934*
*Budget negotiations kept them in Capitol more days. Ducheny and Hollingsworth termed out in 2010.
Assembly:
Nathan Fletcher, R-San Diego $27,804
Marty Block, D-San Diego $28,372
Joel Anderson, R-La Mesa $28,372
Mary Salas, D-Chula Vista $27,520
Martin Garrick, R-Solana Beach $23,406
Lori Saldana, D-San Diego $28,513
Diane Harkey, R-Dana Point $28,230
Kevin Jeffries, R-Lake Elsinore $28,513
*Anderson elected to Senate in November. Salas and Saldana were termed out in 2010.
Source: Legislative records
Legislative pay
Alabama: $3,958 a month, plus $150 a week while in session
California: $95,291 a year, plus $142 per day in session
Florida: Pays legislators $29,697 per year plus $133 per day for expenses, but requires receipts
Illinois: Lawmakers receive $67,836 per year plus $139 per day expense money
Maryland: $43,500 a year, plus $96 a day for lodging and $32 a day for meals
Ohio: $60,584 a year, no per diem for expenses
Source: National Conference of State Legislatures
By convening for less than a half hour on Friday, the 80 members of the Assembly and 40 members of the Senate entitled themselves to $568 each.
That’s almost a $70,000 cost to taxpayers.
The reason? On top of their $95,291 annual salary, lawmakers can collect $142 per day when the legislature is in session. Those daily payments halt if the legislature takes off four or more days.
By convening for a short time on Friday, the legislature kept the Presidents Day holiday as a three-day weekend, meaning they could collect the daily payments while on recess Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
“It’s abuse,” said Ted Costa, a longtime Capitol watchdog and leader of the group People’s Advocate.
The “per diem” payments are designed to offset the cost of maintaining two households. The expense payments can inflate member salaries by $25,000 to $30,000 a year, and in most cases it’s tax free. Even those who live within 20 miles of the Capitol and do not maintain two households can still collect the money, but they do pay taxes on it.
Cumulatively, taxpayers sent lawmakers about $3.2 million to cover their daily living expenses in 2010, according to legislative payroll records obtained by The Watchdog.
The short pre-holiday session was not an anomaly. Last month, for the Martin Luther King holiday, lawmakers also adjourned after 20-minute sessions.
Legislative leaders defend the practice, noting that on those Fridays work is still being accomplished: bills are introduced, and budget negotiations continue. This time, Assembly and Senate fiscal committees met to consider passing the first draft of a 2011-12 spending plan.
“There is a lot of business conducted, especially with the budget deadline,” said Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and the president pro tempore. “There are significant conversations going on that will only intensify in the coming weeks.”
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/feb/18/lawmakers-cash-in-during-long-weekends/

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