Californian's Rejoice! Your taxes are going UP UP UP! (1 Viewer)

[StrikeS2k]

Prison doctor gets paid for doing little or nothingA California surgeon has mostly been locked out of his job: on paid leave, fired or fighting his termination. When he does work, it's reviewing records. He made $777,000 last year, including back pay.PrisonBy Jack Dolan, Los Angeles TimesJuly 13, 2011Reporting from Sacramento -- The highest-paid state employee in California last year, a prison surgeon who took home $777,423, has a history of mental illness, was fired once for alleged incompetence and has not been allowed to treat an inmate for six years because medical supervisors don't trust his clinical skills.Since July 2005, Dr. Jeffrey Rohlfing has mostly been locked out of his job — on paid leave or fired or fighting his termination — at High Desert State Prison in Susanville, state records show. When he has been allowed inside the facility, he has been relegated to reviewing paper medical histories, what prison doctors call "mailroom" duty. Rohlfing's $235,740 base pay, typical in California's corrections system, accounted for about a third of his income last year. The rest of the money was back pay for more than two years when he did no work for the state while appealing his termination. A supervisor had determined that Rohlfing provided substandard care for two patients, according to state Personnel Board records.Rohlfing won that case before the board and was rehired and assigned to "mailroom" work in late 2009."We want taxpayers to know we had no choice in this," said Nancy Kincaid, spokeswoman for the court-appointed receiver in charge of California's inmate healthcare. "If you are ordered to bring somebody back to work, and you can't trust them with patients, you have to find something for them to do."Rohlfing, 65, could not be reached for comment. His attorney, Joseph Polockow, said his assignment is an attempt by prison officials to get him to quit."If you stick a doctor in a room for eight hours a day with no patients, you're making it very hard on him and trying to drive him away," Polockow said.Rohlfing isn't the only doctor in California's cash-strapped prisons earning big money to shuffle paper. Dozens have been relegated to the chore in recent years, according to Kincaid, who said it's the standard assignment given to physicians when questions arise about their clinical ability. Some eventually return to treating patients, some quit and others are ultimately fired, she added.Last year, a prison doctor who was fired for letting his license expire and was later reinstated by the Personnel Board received $313,610 in back pay, records show. Another, fired for "extreme departure from the medically accepted standard of care," was reinstated and collected $298,787 in lost wages. And a surgeon who had been fired, then put on three years' probation, for missed diagnoses that led to the deaths of two inmates and treatment that robbed another inmate of vision, collected $193,779 in back pay.California's corrections system has a history of employing troubled doctors. When a federal court installed the receiver in 2006, judges noted that "20-50% of physicians at the prisons provided poor quality of care," and 20% had a black mark on their record when hired. Their shortcomings contributed significantly to the fact that a prisoner died "needlessly" every six to seven days in a state lockup, the judges said.Rohlfing's difficulties date to at least 1996, when he suffered a psychiatric crisis while working at a hospital in Fresno, according to Medical Board of California records. After he engaged in "bizarre, irrational and delusional communications," co-workers called police. Rohlfing fled when they arrived, led a car chase through the streets and was caught at his house.Two involuntary 72-hour commitments to psychiatric wards followed. The medical board, which licenses all doctors in California, placed Rohlfing on probation for five years, the board's records show.In August 2000, while still on probation, Rohlfing began working on a limited basis for High Desert State Prison in Lassen County in northeastern California. The state hired him full time in May 2003. Two years later, after the death of an inmate in his care, Rohlfing's clinical privileges were revoked, effectively removing him from the practice of medicine.A review of his cases by a supervisor noted that two patients with histories of heart trouble, who had gone to Rohlfing with chest pains and other signs of cardiac distress, had not been sent to an outside emergency room. The supervisor determined that they should have been transferred because the prison clinic lacked the equipment to perform necessary tests, according to Personnel Board records.Neither patient died or suffered permanent injury. But the supervisor, Dr. Robert Chapnick, determined in both cases that Rohlfing's care had been "significantly substandard." Rohlfing was put on paid leave for 18 months. In 2007, he was fired.Rohlfing appealed his termination to the state Personnel Board. It ruled that his examinations "may not have been textbook perfect," but they did not amount to the inexcusable neglect of duty needed to fire a prison doctor.Rohlfing got his job back in November 2009, but medical supervisors decided he still was not ready to treat patients. Instead, he was put on records duty. He also participates in a retraining program designed to "evaluate clinical skills and provide feedback to the physician and the employer," Kincaid said.The receiver believed that decisions by the Personnel Board were being based on an overly strict reading of state service rules, not on what might be best for patients, and successfully petitioned the court to order the board to hire outside medical experts for help with future cases.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prison-doctor-20110713,0,5931598.story

 

[EYLive]

Our beautiful high speed rail project.

It might go over budget? There may not be that many people riding it from LA to SF?Wow, who would have predicted that??



I still to this day can not believe THIS is what our ignorant voters thought was a good idea!!!!

They should have built one from union station to Vegas.The extention of teh purple line is up against heavy uppity Beverly Hills businesses.

I hope the expo light rail opens on schedule.

 

[tommyGunZ]

I actually live in Costa Mesa with Newport Beach less than a 100 yards from my doorstep (the towns featured in the article). I have already seen the effects of the cutbacks in everything from road repairs, to police surveillance (ghetto bird just got grounded last month), to dilapidated public parks. The municipalities and the state-run functions are an absolute joke and no one on the left is serious about tackling the issue.

Wait, you want big cuts in gov't spending, but you're also going to ##### about the roads and lack of police presence and dirty parks when the cuts are actually made?

 

[Statorama]

It's not the things they cut that gets me pissed, it's the things they DON'T cut instead

California’s budget crisis has reduced the University of California to near-penury, claim its spokesmen. “Our campuses and the UC Office of the President already have cut to the bone,” the university system’s vice president for budget and capital resources warned earlier this month, in advance of this week’s meeting of the university’s regents. Well, not exactly to the bone. Even as UC campuses jettison entire degree programs and lose faculty to competing universities, one fiefdom has remained virtually sacrosanct: the diversity machine.

Not only have diversity sinecures been protected from budget cuts, their numbers are actually growing. The University of California at San Diego, for example, is creating a new full-time “vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion.” This position would augment UC San Diego’s already massive diversity apparatus, which includes the Chancellor’s Diversity Office, the associate vice chancellor for faculty equity, the assistant vice chancellor for diversity, the faculty equity advisors, the graduate diversity coordinators, the staff diversity liaison, the undergraduate student diversity liaison, the graduate student diversity liaison, the chief diversity officer, the director of development for diversity initiatives, the Office of Academic Diversity and Equal Opportunity, the Committee on Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Issues, the Committee on the Status of Women, the Campus Council on Climate, Culture and Inclusion, the Diversity Council, and the directors of the Cross-Cultural Center, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center, and the Women’s Center.

It’s not surprising that the new vice chancellor’s mission is rather opaque, given its superfluity. According to outgoing UCSD chancellor Marye Anne Fox, the new VC for EDI “will be responsible for building on existing diversity plans to develop and implement a campus-wide strategy on equity, diversity and inclusion.” UCSD has been churning out such diversity strategies for years. The “campus-wide strategy on equity, diversity and inclusion” that the new hire will supposedly produce differs from its predecessors only in being self-referential: it will define the very scope of the VC’s duties and the number of underlings he will command. “The strategic plan,” says Fox, “will inform the final organizational structure for the office of the VC EDI, will propose metrics to gauge progress, and will identify potential additional areas of responsibility.”

What a boon for a taxpayer-funded bureaucrat, to be able to define his own portfolio and determine how many staff lines he will control! UC Berkeley’s own vice chancellor for equity and inclusion shows how voracious a diversity apparatchik’s appetite for power can be. Gibor Basri has 17 people working for him in his immediate office, including a “chief of staff,” two “project/policy analysts,” and a “director of special projects.” The funding propping up Basri’s vast office could support many an English or history professor. According to state databases, Basri’s base pay in 2009 was $194,000, which does not include a variety of possible add-ons, including summer salary and administrative stipends. By comparison, the official salary for assistant professors at UC starts at around $53,000. Add to Basri’s salary those of his minions, and you’re looking at more than $1 million a year.

UC San Diego is adding diversity fat even as it snuffs out substantive academic programs. In March, the Academic Senate decided that the school would no longer offer a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering; it also eliminated a master’s program in comparative literature and courses in French, German, Spanish, and English literature. At the same time, the body mandated a new campus-wide diversity requirement for graduation. The cultivation of “a student’s understanding of her or his identity,” as the diversity requirement proposal put it, would focus on “African Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, Hispanics, Chicanos, Latinos, Native Americans, or other groups” through the “framework” of “race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexuality, language, ability/disability, class or age.” Training computer scientists to compete with the growing technical prowess of China and India, apparently, can wait. More pressing is guaranteeing that students graduate from UCSD having fully explored their “identity.” Why study Cervantes, Voltaire, or Goethe when you can contemplate yourself? “Diversity,” it turns out, is simply a code word for narcissism.

UC San Diego just lost a trio of prestigious cancer researchers to Rice University. Rice had offered them 40 percent pay raises over their total compensation packages, which at UCSD ranged from $187,000 to $330,000 a year. They take with them many times that amount in government grants. Scrapping the new Vice Chancellorship for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion could have saved at least one, if not two, of those biologists’ positions, depending on how greedily the new VC for EDI defines his realm. UCSD is not disclosing how much the VC for EDI will pull in or how large his staff will be: “We expect that [budget/staffing] will be part of the negotiation with the successful candidate at the end of our search process,” says Senior Director of Marketing and Communications Judy Piercey. Since the new UCSD vice chancellor will be responsible for equity, inclusion, and diversity—unlike the Berkeley vice chancellor, who is responsible only for equity and inclusion—the salary at UCSD will presumably reflect that infinitely greater mandate.

UCSD is by no means the only campus bullish on the diversity business, despite budgetary shortfalls hitting the UC system everywhere else. In 2010, Berkeley announced the UC Berkeley Initiative for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, funded in part by a $16 million gift from the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund. The “new” initiative duplicates existing “equity” projects, not least the Berkeley Diversity Research Initiative, established by Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgeneau in 2006. This latest initiative boasts five new faculty chairs in “diversity-related research”—one of which will be “focused on equity rights affecting the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community,” according to the press release, and “will be one of the first endowed chairs on this subject in the United States.” (Sorry, Berkeley, Yale got there first.)

The main purpose of the UC Berkeley Initiative for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion seems to be to buy for the academic identity racket the respectability that no amount of campus mau-mauing has yet been able to achieve. “Area studies such as ethnic studies, queer studies and gender studies tend to be marginalized and viewed as less essential to the university than such fields as engineering, law or biology,” glumly noted the press release. (The use of the term “area studies” to refer to the solipsist’s curriculum is a novel appropriation of a phrase originally referring to geopolitical specialization.) According to a campus administrator on the Berkeley Diversity Research Initiative’s executive committee, the new initiative will change the character of Berkeley’s area studies by “asserting [sic] them squarely into the main life and importance of the campus.”

Conferring academic legitimacy on narcissism studies is apparently a superhuman task deserving of superhuman remuneration. The salary and expense account of the likely new director of the UC Berkeley Initiative for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, John Powell—who is currently the executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University’s law school—will likely dwarf anything seen so far among diversocrats, according to inside sources.

UCLA’s diversity infrastructure has likewise been spared the budgetary ax. In the pre-recession 2005–06 academic year, UCLA’s associate vice chancellor for faculty diversity reported up the bureaucratic ladder to a vice chancellor for academic personnel, herself reporting to an executive vice chancellor and provost, who in turn reported to the university chancellor. Today, that associate vice chancellor for faculty diversity has been transformed into a vice provost position, while the vice chancellor for academic personnel above her has been eliminated. The new vice provost for faculty diversity will not be lonely; she can pal around with UCLA’s associate director for diversity research and analysis, its associate vice provost for student diversity, its associate dean for academic diversity, its director of diversity outreach, and its director of staff affirmative action.

The one observable activity performed by these lavishly funded diversity bureaucrats is to pressure academic departments to hire more women and minorities. (Even that activity is superfluous, given the abundant pressure for race and gender quotas already exerted by campus groups, every accrediting agency, and external political bodies.) Should a department fail to satisfy—as it inevitably will in every field with low minority participation—only one explanation is possible: a departmental or campus “climate” hostile to diversity, which then requires more intercessions from the diversity bureaucracy. The fact that every other college and university in the country is scouring the horizon for the identical elusive cache of qualified female and minority hires is not allowed into the discourse. Even less acceptable is any recognition of the academic achievement gap between black and Hispanic students, on the one hand, and white and Asian students, on the other, which affects the pool of qualified faculty candidates in fields with remotely traditional scholarly prerequisites. Student admissions offices are under the same pressure, which in California results in the constant generation of new schemes for “holistic” admissions procedures designed to evade the ban on racial and gender preferences that California voters enacted in 1996.

UC San Diego’s lunge toward an even more costly diversity apparatus was inspired in part by one of those periodic outbreaks of tasteless adolescent humor that every diversity bureaucrat lives for (and whose significance is trivial compared with the overwhelmingly supportive environment that today’s universities provide all of their students). But it was hardly out of character on a campus presided over by a chancellor fond of “social justice” rhetoric. And UC’s other campuses are equally committed to bureaucratic diversity aggrandizement, even without a pretext for accelerating those efforts.

This week, in light of a possible cut of $650 million in state financing, the University of California’s regents will likely raise tuition rates to $12,192. Though tuition at UC will remain a bargain compared with what you would pay at private colleges, the regents won’t be meeting their responsibility to California’s taxpayers if they pass over in silence the useless diversity infrastructure that sucks money away from the university’s real function: teaching students about the world outside their own limited selves. California’s budget crisis could have had a silver lining if it had resulted in the dismantling of that infrastructure—but the power of the diversity complex makes such an outcome unthinkable.

 

[OC Zed]

I actually live in Costa Mesa with Newport Beach less than a 100 yards from my doorstep (the towns featured in the article). I have already seen the effects of the cutbacks in everything from road repairs, to police surveillance (ghetto bird just got grounded last month), to dilapidated public parks. The municipalities and the state-run functions are an absolute joke and no one on the left is serious about tackling the issue.

Wait, you want big cuts in gov't spending, but you're also going to ##### about the roads and lack of police presence and dirty parks when the cuts are actually made?

My point is that we should have never have found ourselves in this situation to begin with. Too much spending goes to bloated public salaries and benefits rather than basic services (i.e., roads and police) all while we continue to push good taxpaying businesses out of the state. Awesome public policy right there.

 

[Sarnoff]

Dear California: I’m Leaving You. Here’s Why…

I’ve lived in California for my entire adult life, beginning way back when I was a naive 18-year-old living in the dorms of San Jose State University. (Talk about culture shock…coming from a small farm town in Indiana to the inner city of downtown San Jose!)

In 2009, after living in the Bay Area for nearly 10 years, I decided I wanted a change of pace. San Diego called my name, and I’ve been here since. But now I’m ready to move on…and I’m sad to say the reason why.

You see, I love it here in San Diego. The weather is amazing, the beaches are beautiful, and the people are friendly and generally entrepreneurial. It’s a refreshing change from the Bay Area, where everyone seemed like they were always “too busy” to hang out. Here, life is more laid-back, and I’ve grown to appreciate it.

But one thing I’ve struggled with about California for years is the government. (Yes, I’m going to break my own unspoken rule and wax political on my blog.) The government is notoriously business-unfriendly–with everything from high taxes on business earnings to badgering businesses into more work.)

Examples of the Crap California’s Government has Put Me Through

Okay, you want examples. Here are a few things I’ve had to deal with:

1. The State of California arbitrarily decided that all businesses that gross over $100,000/year should have an account where you have to report quarterly on the sales tax your customers pay you for goods sold. The only problem? My company only sold services–not products–which aren’t taxed in California. When I closed the account (by going into a local office and spending nearly an hour explaining my situation), they forced it open again and sent me a nastygram explaining that I would owe fines for not filing the quarterly report. You have to file it 4 times a year, and it takes time to fill out, even if you haven’t sold any products and owe the state nothing.

2. The state charges an income tax of 10% on all income over $47,055. This is in addition to the Federal income tax of 25% on income over $34,001. This is also in addition to an 8.25-9.25% sales tax (depending on where you buy products.) I paid enough in income tax for 2010 to the state of California alone to hire another new worker for my business. I’d bet a lot of money that I’m far more efficient at creating jobs as a small business owner than the state is given the same amount of money. I’d rather have that money to hire someone.

3. And a really dumb law for small business owners, which Meg Whitman promised to repeal: An annual fee of $800 just to have a corporation in the state of California. (Most states don’t charge you, or only charge you a few dollars, as an annual fee to set up a business. California’s is exorbitant, and it applies as long as you, the primary officer of the corporation, live in California…no matter where you incorporate.)

The Final Straw

But the final straw came recently. I had an inkling that if California voters elected Jerry Brown that I’d end up leaving the state. I campaigned hard for Meg Whitman, as she is extremely supportive of small businesses like mine. Alas, she didn’t win, and California elected a governor for another term who was a ridiculously weak governor in his first term.

And he managed to royally screw things up for small businesses again. Here’s what happened: I have a side income selling products on Amazon. Recently, I’ve invested far more time and money in building niche sites to help bolster my Amazon side income. It’s steadily gone up, from a few hundred dollars a year to what will amount to a few thousand dollars this year. Sure, it’s not a ton of money, but I get the payments in Amazon credit and use them to buy many everyday items.

And then Jerry Brown, our idiot governor, signed a budget that included what many have come to call an “Amazon tax”. Basically, the law says that if Amazon has affiliates (people like me who drive traffic to Amazon in exchange for a cut of sales made from people who click through our links), that Amazon has a “presence” in the state of California–and therefore must collect sales tax here. (Kind of like forcing small businesses to file ridiculous quarterly paperwork based solely on our earnings, not on whether we actually sell taxable goods…)

Amazon made the right decision: Instead of kowtowing to California, they immediately cut off all affiliates here in the state.

And that day, I decided to move. It was a “straw that broke the camel’s back” sort of thing.

Jerry Brown Makes an Idiot Move

Here’s the deal: Amazon sends me a 1099 every year. For those of you not in the United States, it means they send the state government, the Federal government, and me a “receipt” every year showing how much I’ve earned in affiliate commissions. I am then required to pay income tax on that money. And I was dutifully paying income tax on all money earned from Amazon for years.

The state of California just cost itself a bunch of money with that deal. Now, not only do they make less money from affiliates like me who paid income tax on income received from Amazon, but they don’t make any more money from Amazon, because Amazon still doesn’t have to pay sales tax to California.

This is, in effect, one of the dumbest laws ever passed. And it’s pretty much par for the course for someone like Jerry Brown.

I could get around the law by setting up a corporation in some other state and then setting up my Amazon payments to go through that corporation. But then I’d still have to go through the hassle of registering that corporation in California and paying the $800 annual fee (because I live here.) And, of course, I’d still have to pay all those bloody state income taxes. Why bother–when I can just move somewhere else and use that money to help my business and create jobs instead?

But Where to Move…?

The obvious states to move to were states with no state income tax, so that I can move there and immediately create a new job in that state instead of just paying state income tax with that money. The states with no personal income tax are Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming.

In addition, it would be nice to not pay business income tax, either. From the list above, only Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming have no corporate income tax. (See the full list of states with no income tax on Wikipedia.)

Of those four states, Texas is by far the most palatable. I already spend a few weeks a year in Austin thanks to various speaking gigs. In fact, Austin and Las Vegas are the two cities I travel to most. I didn’t want to live in Las Vegas…so Austin it is.

Brian and I are moving to Austin before the end of the year. At this point, I’m not sure exactly when we’ll move, but it will be in November at the latest. And to California, I say: Love your weather–but good riddance!

About the Weather…

The beauty of running an Internet business is that we can truly live anywhere. Yes, Austin gets hot in the summer. But I don’t care, because I will have the income flexibility (thanks to both lower taxes and a lower cost of living) to spend a few months out of the year anywhere I like, as long as it has Internet access. That means I definitely see more long-term, international travel in my future–something I’ve wanted to do for a while. Austin will be a great “home base”, and with its thriving tech and Internet marketing communities, I feel confident we will pick up some great Whoosh Traffic customers there too.

California just isn’t worth it. My priorities have changed. I value income freedom and flexibility more than I value living near the beach. I value having a paid-off house I can call “home” more than I value having a half-million-dollar noose around my neck that declines in value by the day.

Republican vs. Democrat

And lest you think I’m “Republican”, let’s set the record straight on that, too: I believe in small government, dramatically lower spending, and the right for everyone to smoke marijuana and marry whomever they want (as long as both people are consenting adults.) I refused to vote Republican or Democrat in the last presidential election because both candidates believed we should spend our way out of a spending problem. And I abhor the Republicans’ current stance of cutting spending on everything but the military. I love Ron Paul as a politician, but I don’t understand how someone so obviously brilliant doesn’t believe in evolution, and it’s for that reason that I don’t want to see him run as President. If forced to define myself, I tell people I’m a Libertarian.

There, I should have pretty much pissed everyone off with that last paragraph. Now wage your wars in the comments. I’ll go run my business, create jobs, and continue to advocate for less government, fewer laws, and the freedom for us all to create more small businesses…from my new home in Austin, Texas!

 

[Dr. Awesome]

Still can't believe the morons of my state elected Jerry Brown again. I really do hate the fact people voted for him largely because he had a 'D' next to his name which made it a gimmie win.

I've lived here nearly all my life but damn if it's not tempting to go elsewhere.

 

[StrikeS2k]

Bill would require fitted sheets at hotels to protect housekeepersOther legislation would require hospitals to provide equipment or teams of workers to help nurses avoid back injuries when they lift or move patients. August 14, 2011|By Patrick McGreevy, Los Angeles Times Business owners and others who have long complained that companies are overburdened by state regulations say a proposal now moving through the Legislature shows that lawmakers have lost all touch with reality: It would require that hotels use fitted sheets."We are now going to make it a crime in California not to use a fitted sheet? Really?" state Sen. Sam Blakeslee (R-San Luis Obispo) asked during a debate before the Senate passed the measure in June.The bill, one of nearly 900 awaiting final action in the Legislature when it returns Monday from a monthlong recess, is intended to address back injuries sustained by hotel housekeepers. But it has revived a long-simmering debate over whether California has become a hyper-regulated "nanny state."In 2007, the Legislature was subject to national ridicule when it considered a bill to outlaw spanking of young children. Embarrassed lawmakers eventually shelved that proposal, but businesses have decried the Legislature's subsequent ban on trans fats in restaurant cooking, requirement that calorie counts appear on menus, and prohibition on dairies docking cows' tails.This year, businesses are crying foul over proposals to ban restaurants from cooking shark fin soup and using Styrofoam food containers — and the sheets bill. Its author, state Sen. Kevin De Leon (D-Los Angeles), said scores of housekeepers suffer back injuries each year lifting heavy mattresses to replace flat sheets, and the issue is a personal one for him."My mother was a housekeeper and worked herself to the bone," said De Leon, who said his measure would be the first law of its kind in the nation. It also would require special tools to enable maids to clean bathrooms without having to stoop or get down on their hands and knees."Housekeepers have the highest rate of lower-back injuries in the hotel industry, and these workers deserve much better," the senator said.More than 7,400 housekeepers working in California hotels have filed workers' compensation claims for injuries they say they suffered last year, including 883 who said they hurt their backs, according to the state Industrial Relations Department.Another proposal pending in the Legislature would require hospitals to provide patient-lifting equipment or teams of backup workers to help nurses avoid wrenching their backs when they lift or move patients.The hospital and hotel bills are being pushed by employee unions representing nurses and housekeepers. They are opposed by industry groups that say they share the goal of protecting workers but object to blanket rules dictated from Sacramento.The dispute is particularly intense this year as California struggles with a tough economy and high unemployment."Californians will be outraged when they learn that instead of focusing on the many real problems facing this state, lawmakers want to regulate bed sheets," said Lynn Mohrfeld, head of the California Hotel & Lodging Assn.The hotel industry says that it would have to spend at least $30 million to replace sheets and buy appropriate laundry equipment, and that De Leon's measure, SB 432, would open the door for more employee lawsuits. In response, De Leon is planning changes to his bill that would give hotels the option of adopting other methods of protecting housekeepers from back injuries, such as purchasing equipment to reduce strain.Just as hotels object to the potential expense of De Leon's bill, the hospital industry says it would incur steep costs if extra staff and equipment were required for medical facilities that already have worker-safety policies. The cost of providing a two-person lift team 24 hours a day, seven days a week, is about $375,000 per year, according to Jan Emerson-Shea, a vice president with the California Hospital Assn.The group opposes the hospital measure, AB 1136 by Assemblyman Sandre Swanson (D-Oakland). Emerson-Shea said the organization wants the bill changed to give each hospital more flexibility to determine whether a lift team or expensive equipment is needed.A lift team might be warranted at a hospital for adults but be unnecessary at a facility specializing in newborns and small children, she said. "If you are moving a 2-pound infant, you don't need a lift team."Stephanie Roberson, a lobbyist for the California Nurses Assn., said lift teams could be needed at pediatric facilities to move an obese child.Swanson said it is costly for the country to lose nurses to injury. More than 9,700 nurses filed workers' compensation claims for injuries last year in California, including 2,182 who said they hurt their backs, according to the state Industrial Relations agency."Nurses are critical to our healthcare system, and 12% of them are forced to leave the profession each year because of the disabling injuries caused by lifting patients," he said, citing a report in the International Journal of Nursing Studies.The objections of the hotel and hospital industries mean little to Nenita Ibe and Patricia Burress.Both were injured doing their jobs, Ibe as a hotel housekeeper in Santa Clara and Burress as a nurse in Long Beach. Ibe was among a busload of housekeepers who came to the Capitol recently wearing their hotel uniforms and asking for help."Every night I wake up from the pain and can't go back to sleep for hours," the Filipino immigrant told a legislative committee, recounting how she badly injured both arms while lifting mattresses.Burress' injury, which occurred while she tried to move a stroke patient at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, required emergency surgery and ended her nursing career."We are lifting patients constantly," she said in an interview. "If we would have had some sort of lift team, everything that happened to me would have been prevented."

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/14/local/la-me-bed-sheets-20110814

 

[RCon]

How do fitted sheets prevent the need for lifting mattresses again? Is fitted another word for "magic" or "helium-filled"?

 

[Dr. Awesome]

 

[Sarnoff]

Unemployment in LA is near 20%, so obviously, the mayor's solution to everything is to tax business more & raise commercial rent to save the economy.

L.A. mayor: Lift Prop. 13 tax limits on commercial property

By Dakota Smith, Staff Writer

Posted: 08/16/2011 10:45:41 PM PDT

Updated: 08/17/2011 12:00:11 AM PDT

With state and local governments facing continued financial crisis, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called Tuesday for sweeping changes to state tax laws, including lifting Proposition 13's limits on commercial property rates.

Speaking to the Sacramento Press Club, Villaraigosa called for changes to the state measure that has long been seen as an untouchable "third rail" of California politics.

"We need to strengthen Prop. 13 and get it back to the original idea of protecting homeowners," Villaraigosa said.

"Prop. 13 was never intended to be a corporate tax giveaway, but that is what it has become."

Proposition 13, approved by voters in 1978, places strict limits on how much property taxes can be raised every year. While government officials have complained for years about its limits on their ability to raise revenue, it has remained popular with taxpayers and politically difficult to challenge.

Limiting Proposition 13's protections to only residential property owners could yield anywhere from $2.1 billion and $8billion in new revenue for the state, which should be spent on education and housing, Villaraigosa said.

His plan would likely require voter approval and he suggested it could be dubbed the Homeowner and Public Education Protection Act, although he has not released a formal proposal.

He also proposed a tax on services in California, which he projected could generate up to $28 billion in revenue.

"Homeowner and Public Education Protection Act", love that name for a tax increase

 

[StrikeS2k]

State's cap and trade program gets final approvalWyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Sacramento BureauSan Francisco Chronicle October 21, 2011 04:00 AM Copyright San Francisco Chronicle. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Friday, October 21, 2011Sacramento --California's plan to cap greenhouse gas emissions and put a price on carbon is set to take effect on Jan. 1 after the Air Resources Board voted Thursday to make final adjustments in the regulation.The state board first passed the cap-and-trade program last December. But the board, which normally allows its staff to finalize details, took the unusual step of personally tying up the loose ends of the nation's only comprehensive limit on greenhouse gases. It is the last major regulation the board considered to meet the requirements of AB32, California's greenhouse gas reduction law passed by the Legislature in 2006.The law requires the state to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The cap-and-trade element covers about 20 percent of that goal, with the majority of the other reductions coming from limiting the amount of carbon in fuel and requiring more efficient vehicles, renewable energy mandates and energy efficiency requirements.Model for the country"When the nation is ready to address the growing danger of climate change, as I believe it must and will, California's climate program will serve as a model for a national program," said Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board.Many environmentalists echoed that prediction, though any action in Congress appears unlikely in the near term. Business and industry groups stepped up their criticism of the program as the board neared Thursday's vote, predicting that it would lead to significant job losses and result in businesses leaving the state.Under the regulation, there will be a limit on carbon emissions starting in 2012 for emitters that produce about 85 percent of the state's carbon emissions. That amounts to about 350 businesses at 600 locations, though it will be implemented first for electrical utilities and large industrial plants and later on fuel distributors. Enforcement will not begin until 2013.The number of allowed metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions will be capped and then reduced every year until 2020. In all, the regulation is supposed to remove 273 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air by that year.Free and paid creditsBusinesses that emit more carbon dioxide than is allowed under the law will have to use "allowances" - or credits - to make up for the difference. The allowances will be mostly free when the program starts in a little more than two months, but eventually businesses will have to purchase credits in an auction - a sort of penalty for exceeding the limit. The board's major action on Thursday was to finalize how credits will be allocated.The opposition from the industrial sectors, like glass manufacturers and oil refineries, strongly objected to the initial requirement that forces these businesses to pay for 10 percent of their credits. They said paying for the allowances - one previous idea was that they be free - will be crippling as businesses in other states and countries will have a competitive advantage.Some businesses will remain at the 10 percent payment level - which means 90 percent of their allowances are free - while others will see their payment levels rise over time to about 70 percent. Thirty percent of the credits will remain free under certain conditions. In a letter to the board from the state's major industries and the California Chamber of Commerce, they called the 10 percent requirement an "unjustified, job-killing tax.""By forcing trade-exposed industries to purchase up to 10 percent of what were to be free emissions allowances, CARB will be in effect imposing a new tax on regulated entities. In addition to being legally questionable, this tax will lead to dramatically higher energy costs that will harm virtually every sector of our economy," they wrote.Higher water ratesMultiple representatives of water agencies, mainly in Southern California, also told the board that because the regulation covers their energy usage, water rates would increase.The cost will be about $2.50 per year per household, said air board spokesman Stanley Young, explaining that utilities are covered by the law because of the electricity used in moving water from Northern California to Southern California.Debra Man, chief operating officer for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which provides water for 19 million people, asked the board for an exemption from the regulation.She said cap and trade would result in "unnecessary and cumulative costs on our water rates."Major concessionsBut proponents hailed the final approval as another historic step by California to combat climate change and said the regulation is a compromise among many disparate interests and that environmentalists made major concessions."The petroleum industry has gotten most of what they've asked for," said Dan Kalb, California policy manager for the Union of Concerned Scientists.In addition to the allowances, emitters also could meet up to 8 percent of their required reduction by "offsets," which are other actions, such as planting trees, to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air.Cap and trade has been the most controversial portion of the effort to meet the carbon emission limits required by AB32. A coalition of groups seeking to protect the poor from the impacts of pollution sued to stop it, contending the plan would have a negative impact on poor communities living near large polluters and arguing the board did not sufficiently consider alternatives as required by state environmental law.A Superior Court judge in San Francisco agreed, though the work to finalize the regulation was allowed to go forward as staff at the board developed deeper analyses of options. The board also gave final approval to that change.E-mail Wyatt Buchanan at wbuchanan@sfchronicle.com.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/20/MN901LK83V.DTL

 

[tommyGunZ]

State's cap and trade program gets final approvalWyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Sacramento BureauSan Francisco Chronicle October 21, 2011 04:00 AM Copyright San Francisco Chronicle. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Friday, October 21, 2011Sacramento --California's plan to cap greenhouse gas emissions and put a price on carbon is set to take effect on Jan. 1 after the Air Resources Board voted Thursday to make final adjustments in the regulation.The state board first passed the cap-and-trade program last December. But the board, which normally allows its staff to finalize details, took the unusual step of personally tying up the loose ends of the nation's only comprehensive limit on greenhouse gases. It is the last major regulation the board considered to meet the requirements of AB32, California's greenhouse gas reduction law passed by the Legislature in 2006.The law requires the state to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The cap-and-trade element covers about 20 percent of that goal, with the majority of the other reductions coming from limiting the amount of carbon in fuel and requiring more efficient vehicles, renewable energy mandates and energy efficiency requirements.Model for the country"When the nation is ready to address the growing danger of climate change, as I believe it must and will, California's climate program will serve as a model for a national program," said Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board.Many environmentalists echoed that prediction, though any action in Congress appears unlikely in the near term. Business and industry groups stepped up their criticism of the program as the board neared Thursday's vote, predicting that it would lead to significant job losses and result in businesses leaving the state.Under the regulation, there will be a limit on carbon emissions starting in 2012 for emitters that produce about 85 percent of the state's carbon emissions. That amounts to about 350 businesses at 600 locations, though it will be implemented first for electrical utilities and large industrial plants and later on fuel distributors. Enforcement will not begin until 2013.The number of allowed metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions will be capped and then reduced every year until 2020. In all, the regulation is supposed to remove 273 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air by that year.Free and paid creditsBusinesses that emit more carbon dioxide than is allowed under the law will have to use "allowances" - or credits - to make up for the difference. The allowances will be mostly free when the program starts in a little more than two months, but eventually businesses will have to purchase credits in an auction - a sort of penalty for exceeding the limit. The board's major action on Thursday was to finalize how credits will be allocated.The opposition from the industrial sectors, like glass manufacturers and oil refineries, strongly objected to the initial requirement that forces these businesses to pay for 10 percent of their credits. They said paying for the allowances - one previous idea was that they be free - will be crippling as businesses in other states and countries will have a competitive advantage.Some businesses will remain at the 10 percent payment level - which means 90 percent of their allowances are free - while others will see their payment levels rise over time to about 70 percent. Thirty percent of the credits will remain free under certain conditions. In a letter to the board from the state's major industries and the California Chamber of Commerce, they called the 10 percent requirement an "unjustified, job-killing tax.""By forcing trade-exposed industries to purchase up to 10 percent of what were to be free emissions allowances, CARB will be in effect imposing a new tax on regulated entities. In addition to being legally questionable, this tax will lead to dramatically higher energy costs that will harm virtually every sector of our economy," they wrote.Higher water ratesMultiple representatives of water agencies, mainly in Southern California, also told the board that because the regulation covers their energy usage, water rates would increase.The cost will be about $2.50 per year per household, said air board spokesman Stanley Young, explaining that utilities are covered by the law because of the electricity used in moving water from Northern California to Southern California.Debra Man, chief operating officer for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which provides water for 19 million people, asked the board for an exemption from the regulation.She said cap and trade would result in "unnecessary and cumulative costs on our water rates."Major concessionsBut proponents hailed the final approval as another historic step by California to combat climate change and said the regulation is a compromise among many disparate interests and that environmentalists made major concessions."The petroleum industry has gotten most of what they've asked for," said Dan Kalb, California policy manager for the Union of Concerned Scientists.In addition to the allowances, emitters also could meet up to 8 percent of their required reduction by "offsets," which are other actions, such as planting trees, to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air.Cap and trade has been the most controversial portion of the effort to meet the carbon emission limits required by AB32. A coalition of groups seeking to protect the poor from the impacts of pollution sued to stop it, contending the plan would have a negative impact on poor communities living near large polluters and arguing the board did not sufficiently consider alternatives as required by state environmental law.A Superior Court judge in San Francisco agreed, though the work to finalize the regulation was allowed to go forward as staff at the board developed deeper analyses of options. The board also gave final approval to that change.E-mail Wyatt Buchanan at wbuchanan@sfchronicle.com.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/20/MN901LK83V.DTL

Sometimes it sucks to be the progressive state, but since national Cap and Trade is a virtual certainty in the near future, looks like CA will be out in front. Again.

 

[dickey moe]

State's cap and trade program gets final approvalWyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Sacramento BureauSan Francisco Chronicle October 21, 2011 04:00 AM Copyright San Francisco Chronicle. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Friday, October 21, 2011Sacramento --California's plan to cap greenhouse gas emissions and put a price on carbon is set to take effect on Jan. 1 after the Air Resources Board voted Thursday to make final adjustments in the regulation.The state board first passed the cap-and-trade program last December. But the board, which normally allows its staff to finalize details, took the unusual step of personally tying up the loose ends of the nation's only comprehensive limit on greenhouse gases. It is the last major regulation the board considered to meet the requirements of AB32, California's greenhouse gas reduction law passed by the Legislature in 2006.The law requires the state to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The cap-and-trade element covers about 20 percent of that goal, with the majority of the other reductions coming from limiting the amount of carbon in fuel and requiring more efficient vehicles, renewable energy mandates and energy efficiency requirements.Model for the country"When the nation is ready to address the growing danger of climate change, as I believe it must and will, California's climate program will serve as a model for a national program," said Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board.Many environmentalists echoed that prediction, though any action in Congress appears unlikely in the near term. Business and industry groups stepped up their criticism of the program as the board neared Thursday's vote, predicting that it would lead to significant job losses and result in businesses leaving the state.Under the regulation, there will be a limit on carbon emissions starting in 2012 for emitters that produce about 85 percent of the state's carbon emissions. That amounts to about 350 businesses at 600 locations, though it will be implemented first for electrical utilities and large industrial plants and later on fuel distributors. Enforcement will not begin until 2013.The number of allowed metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions will be capped and then reduced every year until 2020. In all, the regulation is supposed to remove 273 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air by that year.Free and paid creditsBusinesses that emit more carbon dioxide than is allowed under the law will have to use "allowances" - or credits - to make up for the difference. The allowances will be mostly free when the program starts in a little more than two months, but eventually businesses will have to purchase credits in an auction - a sort of penalty for exceeding the limit. The board's major action on Thursday was to finalize how credits will be allocated.The opposition from the industrial sectors, like glass manufacturers and oil refineries, strongly objected to the initial requirement that forces these businesses to pay for 10 percent of their credits. They said paying for the allowances - one previous idea was that they be free - will be crippling as businesses in other states and countries will have a competitive advantage.Some businesses will remain at the 10 percent payment level - which means 90 percent of their allowances are free - while others will see their payment levels rise over time to about 70 percent. Thirty percent of the credits will remain free under certain conditions. In a letter to the board from the state's major industries and the California Chamber of Commerce, they called the 10 percent requirement an "unjustified, job-killing tax.""By forcing trade-exposed industries to purchase up to 10 percent of what were to be free emissions allowances, CARB will be in effect imposing a new tax on regulated entities. In addition to being legally questionable, this tax will lead to dramatically higher energy costs that will harm virtually every sector of our economy," they wrote.Higher water ratesMultiple representatives of water agencies, mainly in Southern California, also told the board that because the regulation covers their energy usage, water rates would increase.The cost will be about $2.50 per year per household, said air board spokesman Stanley Young, explaining that utilities are covered by the law because of the electricity used in moving water from Northern California to Southern California.Debra Man, chief operating officer for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which provides water for 19 million people, asked the board for an exemption from the regulation.She said cap and trade would result in "unnecessary and cumulative costs on our water rates."Major concessionsBut proponents hailed the final approval as another historic step by California to combat climate change and said the regulation is a compromise among many disparate interests and that environmentalists made major concessions."The petroleum industry has gotten most of what they've asked for," said Dan Kalb, California policy manager for the Union of Concerned Scientists.In addition to the allowances, emitters also could meet up to 8 percent of their required reduction by "offsets," which are other actions, such as planting trees, to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air.Cap and trade has been the most controversial portion of the effort to meet the carbon emission limits required by AB32. A coalition of groups seeking to protect the poor from the impacts of pollution sued to stop it, contending the plan would have a negative impact on poor communities living near large polluters and arguing the board did not sufficiently consider alternatives as required by state environmental law.A Superior Court judge in San Francisco agreed, though the work to finalize the regulation was allowed to go forward as staff at the board developed deeper analyses of options. The board also gave final approval to that change.E-mail Wyatt Buchanan at wbuchanan@sfchronicle.com.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/20/MN901LK83V.DTL

Sometimes it sucks to be the progressive state, but since national Cap and Trade is a virtual certainty in the near future, looks like CA will be out in front. Again.

You love the state losing jobs, do ya?

 

[StrikeS2k]

Sometimes it sucks to be the progressive state, but since national Cap and Trade is a virtual certainty in the near future, looks like CA will be out in front. Again.

You love the state losing jobs, do ya?

He's a union hack guaranteed employment. Why would he care?

 

[Sarnoff]

FYI Angelenos: It's now a $1000 fine for throwing a football, frisbee, or any other object besides a beach ball or volleyball on an L.A. County beach. Same fine for kids digging a hole 18 inches or deeper in the sand.

 

[Zegras11]

FYI Angelenos: It's now a $1000 fine for throwing a football, frisbee, or any other object besides a beach ball or volleyball on an L.A. County beach. Same fine for kids digging a hole 18 inches or deeper in the sand.

LA City spending $689K on Yacht repair

 

[jonessed]

Sometimes it sucks to be the progressive state, but since national Cap and Trade is a virtual certainty in the near future, looks like CA will be out in front. Again.

We're almost there already. Second highest unemployment in the country . Go team!

 

[StrikeS2k]

City Council OKs water rate hikeFebruary 8, 2012 | 2:34 pmUtility bills will rise by about $5 a month for the average residential customer in Los Angeles, thanks to an increase in water rates approved by the City Council on Wednesday.Officials at the Department of Water Power said the rate hikes were necessary because the utility needs to pay for $550 million in improvements to meet federal water-quality requirements.Eight council members voted for the for the increase. But four others –- Jan Perry, Mitchell Englander, Paul Koretz and Dennis Zine -- opposed it. Zine said he voted no in part because Frederick Pickel, who was confirmed last week as the city’s first ratepayer advocate and who is tasked with scrutinizing rate hikes, has not had a chance to review the increase.The increase to water rates is smaller than a bigger bundle of water and electric rate increases that DWP General Manager Ron Nichols began asking for last year. At the council's behest, Nichols agreed to put the bulk of those hikes on hold until the ratepayer advocate was named. But in December he said the utility could wait no longer on the water quality projects, which include covering several reservoirs and updating the DWP's water disinfecting system.With the new rates in place, the average bill for residential users will be $45.91, compared with $40.30 in 2011-12. The average bill for small commercial businesses will be $403.91, up from $361.07 last fiscal year. The increases will go into effect in March and April.Perry voted against the measure because she said the DWP needed to show it has cut employee costs before seeking additional rate hikes. On Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported that the DWP workers earn on average 40% more than other municipal workers, even those with the same job titles.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/02/dwp-rates-increases-city-council.html

 

[OC Zed]

FYI Angelenos: It's now a $1000 fine for throwing a football, frisbee, or any other object besides a beach ball or volleyball on an L.A. County beach. Same fine for kids digging a hole 18 inches or deeper in the sand.

Ahhh, the People's Republic of California.

 

[tommyGunZ]

FYI Angelenos: It's now a $1000 fine for throwing a football, frisbee, or any other object besides a beach ball or volleyball on an L.A. County beach. Same fine for kids digging a hole 18 inches or deeper in the sand.

LA City spending $689K on Yacht repair

Look at LA City creating jobs.

 

[OC Zed]

FYI Angelenos: It's now a $1000 fine for throwing a football, frisbee, or any other object besides a beach ball or volleyball on an L.A. County beach. Same fine for kids digging a hole 18 inches or deeper in the sand.

LA City spending $689K on Yacht repair

Look at LA City creating jobs.

 

[tommyGunZ]

FYI Angelenos: It's now a $1000 fine for throwing a football, frisbee, or any other object besides a beach ball or volleyball on an L.A. County beach. Same fine for kids digging a hole 18 inches or deeper in the sand.

LA City spending $689K on Yacht repair

Look at LA City creating jobs.

Yachts don't build themselves gb.

 

[OC Zed]

FYI Angelenos: It's now a $1000 fine for throwing a football, frisbee, or any other object besides a beach ball or volleyball on an L.A. County beach. Same fine for kids digging a hole 18 inches or deeper in the sand.

LA City spending $689K on Yacht repair

Look at LA City creating jobs.

Yachts don't build themselves gb.

You think taxpayers are the appropriate party to be paying for that?

 

[OC Zed]

The Great California Exodus

Joel Kotkin: The Great California Exodus

A leading U.S. demographer and 'Truman Democrat' talks about what is driving the middle class out of the Golden State.

By ALLYSIA FINLEY

'California is God's best moment," says Joel Kotkin. "It's the best place in the world to live." Or at least it used to be.

Mr. Kotkin, one of the nation's premier demographers, left his native New York City in 1971 to enroll at the University of California, Berkeley. The state was a far-out paradise for hipsters who had grown up listening to the Mamas & the Papas' iconic "California Dreamin'" and the Beach Boys' "California Girls." But it also attracted young, ambitious people "who had a lot of dreams, wanted to build big companies." Think Intel, Apple and Hewlett-Packard.

Now, however, the Golden State's fastest-growing entity is government and its biggest product is red tape. The first thing that comes to many American minds when you mention California isn't Hollywood or tanned girls on a beach, but Greece. Many progressives in California take that as a compliment since Greeks are ostensibly happier. But as Mr. Kotkin notes, Californians are increasingly pursuing happiness elsewhere.

Nearly four million more people have left the Golden State in the last two decades than have come from other states. This is a sharp reversal from the 1980s, when 100,000 more Americans were settling in California each year than were leaving. According to Mr. Kotkin, most of those leaving are between the ages of 5 and 14 or 34 to 45. In other words, young families.

The scruffy-looking urban studies professor at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., has been studying and writing on demographic and geographic trends for 30 years. Part of California's dysfunction, he says, stems from state and local government restrictions on development. These policies have artificially limited housing supply and put a premium on real estate in coastal regions.

"Basically, if you don't own a piece of Facebook or Google and you haven't robbed a bank and don't have rich parents, then your chances of being able to buy a house or raise a family in the Bay Area or in most of coastal California is pretty weak," says Mr. Kotkin.

While many middle-class families have moved inland, those regions don't have the same allure or amenities as the coast. People might as well move to Nevada or Texas, where housing and everything else is cheaper and there's no income tax.

And things will only get worse in the coming years as Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and his green cadre implement their "smart growth" plans to cram the proletariat into high-density housing. "What I find reprehensible beyond belief is that the people pushing [high-density housing] themselves live in single-family homes and often drive very fancy cars, but want everyone else to live like my grandmother did in Brownsville in Brooklyn in the 1920s," Mr. Kotkin declares.

"The new regime"—his name for progressive apparatchiks who run California's government—"wants to destroy the essential reason why people move to California in order to protect their own lifestyles."

Housing is merely one front of what he calls the "progressive war on the middle class." Another is the cap-and-trade law AB32, which will raise the cost of energy and drive out manufacturing jobs without making even a dent in global carbon emissions. Then there are the renewable portfolio standards, which mandate that a third of the state's energy come from renewable sources like wind and the sun by 2020. California's electricity prices are already 50% higher than the national average.

Oh, and don't forget the $100 billion bullet train. Mr. Kotkin calls the runaway-cost train "classic California." "Where [brown] with the state going bankrupt is even thinking about an expenditure like this is beyond comprehension. When the schools are falling apart, when the roads are falling apart, the bridges are unsafe, the state economy is in free fall. We're still doing much worse than the rest of the country, we've got this growing permanent welfare class, and high-speed rail is going to solve this?"

Mr. Kotkin describes himself as an old-fashioned Truman Democrat. In fact, he voted for Mr. Brown—who previously served as governor, secretary of state and attorney general—because he believed Mr. Brown "was interesting and thought outside the box."

But "Jerry's been a big disappointment," Mr. Kotkin says. "I've known Jerry for 35 years, and he's smart, but he just can't seem to be a paradigm breaker. And of course, it's because he really believes in this green stuff."

In the governor's dreams, green jobs will replace all of the "tangible jobs" that the state's losing in agriculture, manufacturing, warehousing and construction. But "green energy doesn't create enough energy!" Mr. Kotkin exclaims. "And it drives up the price of energy, which then drives out other things." Notwithstanding all of the subsidies the state lavishes on renewables, green jobs only make up about 2% of California's private-sector work force—no more than they do in Texas.

Of course, there are plenty of jobs to be had in energy, just not the type the new California regime wants. An estimated 25 billion barrels of oil are sitting untapped in the vast Monterey and Bakersfield shale deposits. "You see the great tragedy of California is that we have all this oil and gas, we won't use it," Mr. Kotkin says. "We have the richest farm land in the world, and we're trying to strangle it." He's referring to how water restrictions aimed at protecting the delta smelt fish are endangering Central Valley farmers.

Meanwhile, taxes are harming the private economy. According to the Tax Foundation, California has the 48th-worst business tax climate. Its income tax is steeply progressive. Millionaires pay a top rate of 10.3%, the third-highest in the country. But middle-class workers—those who earn more than $48,000—pay a top rate of 9.3%, which is higher than what millionaires pay in 47 states.

And Democrats want to raise taxes even more. Mind you, the November ballot initiative that Mr. Brown is spearheading would primarily hit those whom Democrats call "millionaires" (i.e., people who make more than $250,000 a year). Some Republicans have warned that it will cause a millionaire march out of the state, but Mr. Kotkin says that "people who are at the very high end of the food chain, they're still going to be in Napa. They're still going to be in Silicon Valley. They're still going to be in West L.A."

That said, "It's really going to hit the small business owners and the young family that's trying to accumulate enough to raise a family, maybe send their kids to private school. It'll kick them in the teeth."

A worker in Wichita might not consider those earning $250,000 a year middle class, but "if you're a guy working for a Silicon Valley company and you're married and you're thinking about having your first kid, and your family makes 250-k a year, you can't buy a closet in the Bay Area," Mr. Kotkin says. "But for 250-k a year, you can live pretty damn well in Salt Lake City. And you might be able to send your kids to public schools and own a three-bedroom, four-bath house."

According to Mr. Kotkin, these upwardly mobile families are fleeing in droves. As a result, California is turning into a two-and-a-half-class society. On top are the "entrenched incumbents" who inherited their wealth or came to California early and made their money. Then there's a shrunken middle class of public employees and, miles below, a permanent welfare class. As it stands today, about 40% of Californians don't pay any income tax and a quarter are on Medicaid.

It's "a very scary political dynamic," he says. "One day somebody's going to put on the ballot, let's take every penny over $100,000 a year, and you'll get it through because there's no real restraint. What you've done by exempting people from paying taxes is that they feel no responsibility. That's certainly a big part of it.

And the welfare recipients, he emphasizes, "aren't leaving. Why would they? They get much better benefits in California or New York than if they go to Texas. In Texas the expectation is that people work."

California used to be more like Texas—a jobs magnet. What happened? For one, says the demographer, Californians are now voting more based on social issues and less on fiscal ones than they did when Ronald Reagan was governor 40 years ago. Environmentalists are also more powerful than they used to be. And Mr. Brown facilitated the public-union takeover of the statehouse by allowing state workers to collectively bargain during his first stint as governor in 1977.

Mr. Kotkin also notes that demographic changes are playing a role. As progressive policies drive out moderate and conservative members of the middle class, California's politics become even more left-wing. It's a classic case of natural selection, and increasingly the only ones fit to survive in California are the very rich and those who rely on government spending. In a nutshell, "the state is run for the very rich, the very poor, and the public employees."

So if California's no longer the Golden land of opportunity for middle-class dreamers, what is?

Mr. Kotkin lists four "growth corridors": the Gulf Coast, the Great Plains, the Intermountain West, and the Southeast. All of these regions have lower costs of living, lower taxes, relatively relaxed regulatory environments, and critical natural resources such as oil and natural gas.

Take Salt Lake City. "Almost all of the major tech companies have moved stuff to Salt Lake City." That includes Twitter, Adobe, eBay and Oracle.

Then there's Texas, which is on a mission to steal California's tech hegemony. Apple just announced that it's building a $304 million campus and adding 3,600 jobs in Austin. Facebook established operations there last year, and eBay plans to add 1,000 new jobs there too.

Even Hollywood is doing more of its filming on the Gulf Coast. "New Orleans is supposedly going to pass New York as the second-largest film center. They have great incentives, and New Orleans is the best bargain for urban living in the United States. It's got great food, great music, and it's inexpensive."

What about the Midwest and the Rust Belt? Can they recover from their manufacturing losses?

"What those areas have is they've got a good work ethic," Mr. Kotkin says. "There's an established skill base for industry. They're very affordable, and they've got some nice places to live. Indianapolis has become a very nice city." He concedes that such places will have a hard time eclipsing California or Texas because they're not as well endowed by nature. But as the Golden State is proving, natural endowments do not guarantee permanent prosperity.

Ms. Finley is the assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com and a Journal editorial page writer.

A version of this article appeared April 21, 2012, on page A13 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Great California Exodus.

 

[DiStefano]

Looks like buffeting the rich isn't working for them. So who can they tax?

Three guesses and the first two don't count.

 

[cstu]

According to Mr. Kotkin, most of those leaving are between the ages of 5 and 14 or 34 to 45. In other words, young families.

More than the taxes, the schools suck unless you can afford to live in certain pockets with good schools or want to live in the suburbs where you have to commute a couple of hours every day.

 

[cstu]

In a nutshell, "the state is run for the very rich, the very poor, and the public employees."

Yep.

 

[Sarnoff]

According to Mr. Kotkin, most of those leaving are between the ages of 5 and 14 or 34 to 45. In other words, young families.

More than the taxes, the schools suck unless you can afford to live in certain pockets with good schools or want to live in the suburbs where you have to commute a couple of hours every day.

Time to break up the teachers unions.

 

[StrikeS2k]

California ranked 50th in CEO study of states with the best business climate:

California’s enduring place of perpetual decline continues in this year’s ranking. Once the most attractive business environment, the Golden State appears to slip deeper into the ninth circle of business hell. The economy, which used to outperform the rest of the country, now substantially underperforms. And its status as the most ruinously contentious place to operate remains undisturbed in eight years. Its unemployment rate, at 10.9 percent, is higher than every other state except Nevada and Rhode Island. With 12 percent of America’s population, California has one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients. Each year, the evidence that businesses are leaving California or avoid locating there because of the high cost of doing business due to excessive state taxes and stringent regulations, grows. (See “Eastward Ho!”) According to Spectrum Locations Consultants, 254 California companies moved some or all of their work and jobs out of state in 2011, an increase of 26 percent over the previous year and five times as many as in 2009.

http://chiefexecutive.net/best-worst-states-for-business-2012

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

Cali has lower income taxes compared to NYC, right?

 

[BoneYardDog]

Kind of like comparing obama to Bush, no one wins...

 

[tommyGunZ]

Thread is > 3 years old...still waiting for my California taxes to go up.

 

[DiStefano]

Thread is > 3 years old...still waiting for my California taxes to go up.

That's all right. Jerry's going to give you a chance to suck it up and vote for the tax.

"Governor Jerry Brown spoke at the 2012 Outlook Conference put on by influential local business group the Bay Area Council at San Jose's California Theater. The event also featured speeches by President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the CEOs of duPont, LinkedIn and PG&E.

Speaker after speaker continually returned to the theme of the hard work and political compromise needed in order to reverse the perceived trend of American decline, and Brown was no exception.

While noting he was essentially dealing with many of the same problems as when he first served as governor in the 1970s, such as high school graduation standards, pension reform and transportation, Brown lamented how the widening ideological divide between the two parties over the subsequent decades has made solving those problems significantly more challenging.

"Politics is always a somewhat nasty business, but it's gotten more difficult, more partisan, more polarized," he told an audience largely comprised of high-ranking business executives. "There's less independence now because the parties control collection [of funds] and therefore control most of the money. And we need independent thinkers now more than ever; we need to find the agreement to make tough decisions."

The Governor pitched a hard sell on his package of tax increases, which he noted had likely gathered the requisite 800,000 signatures to qualify for the November ballot. Brown noted if the proposition is voted down, it would automatically trigger cuts that he called "pretty darn tough."

"Suck it up and vote for the tax," he urged."

 

[flapgreen]

I love going on vacation there.

 

[FavreCo]

16 B deficit.

 

[jonessed]

Thread is > 3 years old...still waiting for my California taxes to go up.

That's all right. Jerry's going to give you a chance to suck it up and vote for the tax.

"Governor Jerry Brown spoke at the 2012 Outlook Conference put on by influential local business group the Bay Area Council at San Jose's California Theater. The event also featured speeches by President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the CEOs of duPont, LinkedIn and PG&E.

Speaker after speaker continually returned to the theme of the hard work and political compromise needed in order to reverse the perceived trend of American decline, and Brown was no exception.

While noting he was essentially dealing with many of the same problems as when he first served as governor in the 1970s, such as high school graduation standards, pension reform and transportation, Brown lamented how the widening ideological divide between the two parties over the subsequent decades has made solving those problems significantly more challenging.

"Politics is always a somewhat nasty business, but it's gotten more difficult, more partisan, more polarized," he told an audience largely comprised of high-ranking business executives. "There's less independence now because the parties control collection [of funds] and therefore control most of the money. And we need independent thinkers now more than ever; we need to find the agreement to make tough decisions."

The Governor pitched a hard sell on his package of tax increases, which he noted had likely gathered the requisite 800,000 signatures to qualify for the November ballot. Brown noted if the proposition is voted down, it would automatically trigger cuts that he called "pretty darn tough."

"Suck it up and vote for the tax," he urged."

Right after Brown sucks it up and fixes public pensions. He created that mess and now he can fix it.

 

[Fensalk]

I actually live in Costa Mesa with Newport Beach less than a 100 yards from my doorstep (the towns featured in the article). I have already seen the effects of the cutbacks in everything from road repairs, to police surveillance (ghetto bird just got grounded last month), to dilapidated public parks. The municipalities and the state-run functions are an absolute joke and no one on the left is serious about tackling the issue.

Wait, you want big cuts in gov't spending, but you're also going to ##### about the roads and lack of police presence and dirty parks when the cuts are actually made?

When governments target programs for cuts, they select those that make the voter feel maximum pain, to try to goad them into voting for a tax increase. That's why they threaten to cut teachers, police, and fire services. They don't threaten to cut the massive numbers of bureaucrats.Case in point: Jerry Brown offers a "stark" choice - either vote for a tax hike, or he is sadly going to cut education.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/07/BAOC1MM0FM.DTL

Gov. Jerry Brown's budget plan released last week poses a stark choice for Californians: approve a five-year $35 billion tax increase in November or watch the hatchet drop on public school funding - with cuts so deep the school year could be shortened by almost a month.

http://news.yahoo.com/california-facing-higher-16-billion-shortfall-213905732--finance.html

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California's budget deficit has swelled to a projected $16 billion — much larger than had been predicted just months ago — and will force severe cuts to schools and public safety if voters fail to approve tax increases in November, Gov. Jerry Brown said Saturday.

The Democratic governor said the shortfall grew from $9.2 billion in January in part because tax collections have not come in as high as expected and the economy isn't growing as fast as hoped for. The deficit has also risen because lawsuits and federal requirements have blocked billions of dollars in state cuts.

"This means we will have to go much farther and make cuts far greater than I asked for at the beginning of the year," Brown said in an online video. "But we can't fill this hole with cuts alone without doing severe damage to our schools. That's why I'm bypassing the gridlock and asking you, the people of California, to approve a plan that avoids cuts to schools and public safety."

In the end, you wind up with endless numbers of worthless bureaucrats, no services to help the people, and a massive state budget crisis. That is government corruption in a nutshell.

 

[DiStefano]

I actually live in Costa Mesa with Newport Beach less than a 100 yards from my doorstep (the towns featured in the article). I have already seen the effects of the cutbacks in everything from road repairs, to police surveillance (ghetto bird just got grounded last month), to dilapidated public parks. The municipalities and the state-run functions are an absolute joke and no one on the left is serious about tackling the issue.

Wait, you want big cuts in gov't spending, but you're also going to ##### about the roads and lack of police presence and dirty parks when the cuts are actually made?

When governments target programs for cuts, they select those that make the voter feel maximum pain, to try to goad them into voting for a tax increase. That's why they threaten to cut teachers, police, and fire services. They don't threaten to cut the massive numbers of bureaucrats.Case in point: Jerry Brown offers a "stark" choice - either vote for a tax hike, or he is sadly going to cut education.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/07/BAOC1MM0FM.DTL

Gov. Jerry Brown's budget plan released last week poses a stark choice for Californians: approve a five-year $35 billion tax increase in November or watch the hatchet drop on public school funding - with cuts so deep the school year could be shortened by almost a month.

http://news.yahoo.com/california-facing-higher-16-billion-shortfall-213905732--finance.html

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California's budget deficit has swelled to a projected $16 billion — much larger than had been predicted just months ago — and will force severe cuts to schools and public safety if voters fail to approve tax increases in November, Gov. Jerry Brown said Saturday.

The Democratic governor said the shortfall grew from $9.2 billion in January in part because tax collections have not come in as high as expected and the economy isn't growing as fast as hoped for. The deficit has also risen because lawsuits and federal requirements have blocked billions of dollars in state cuts.

"This means we will have to go much farther and make cuts far greater than I asked for at the beginning of the year," Brown said in an online video. "But we can't fill this hole with cuts alone without doing severe damage to our schools. That's why I'm bypassing the gridlock and asking you, the people of California, to approve a plan that avoids cuts to schools and public safety."

In the end, you wind up with endless numbers of worthless bureaucrats, no services to help the people, and a massive state budget crisis. That is government corruption in a nutshell.

The one thing they won't cut, of course, is those extravagant government pensions, which the unions have imposed. Unions give the money to the politicians, the politicians saddle the state with huge pension obligations, and the average taxpayer gets screwed.

 

[humpback]

16 B deficit.

And that's still only an estimate, which was projected to be $9.2 B in January. Why does it seem like it always ends up that way?

 

[DiStefano]

16 B deficit.

And that's still only an estimate, which was projected to be $9.2 B in January. Why does it seem like it always ends up that way?

Because liberals take pride in being "scientific".

 

[Fensalk]

The one thing they won't cut, of course, is those extravagant government pensions, which the unions have imposed. Unions give the money to the politicians, the politicians saddle the state with huge pension obligations, and the average taxpayer gets screwed.

and if Jerry Brown gets his tax hike, the money will ultimately get diverted into the pocket of bureaucrats and union officials, leaving the shortfall intact. And then they come around again with the same ultimatum: vote for high taxes or we cut schools.California's fate is to get bailed out by the federal government. There is no political will in the state to do anything else. The democrats in charge will probably wait until they can warp reality to blame everything on the republicans before demanding that Washington fix everything, tho.

 

[MaxThreshold]

I actually live in Costa Mesa with Newport Beach less than a 100 yards from my doorstep (the towns featured in the article). I have already seen the effects of the cutbacks in everything from road repairs, to police surveillance (ghetto bird just got grounded last month), to dilapidated public parks. The municipalities and the state-run functions are an absolute joke and no one on the left is serious about tackling the issue.

Wait, you want big cuts in gov't spending, but you're also going to ##### about the roads and lack of police presence and dirty parks when the cuts are actually made?

When governments target programs for cuts, they select those that make the voter feel maximum pain, to try to goad them into voting for a tax increase. That's why they threaten to cut teachers, police, and fire services. They don't threaten to cut the massive numbers of bureaucrats.Case in point: Jerry Brown offers a "stark" choice - either vote for a tax hike, or he is sadly going to cut education.

http://www.sfgate.co.../BAOC1MM0FM.DTL

Gov. Jerry Brown's budget plan released last week poses a stark choice for Californians: approve a five-year $35 billion tax increase in November or watch the hatchet drop on public school funding - with cuts so deep the school year could be shortened by almost a month.

http://news.yahoo.co...2--finance.html

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California's budget deficit has swelled to a projected $16 billion — much larger than had been predicted just months ago — and will force severe cuts to schools and public safety if voters fail to approve tax increases in November, Gov. Jerry Brown said Saturday.

The Democratic governor said the shortfall grew from $9.2 billion in January in part because tax collections have not come in as high as expected and the economy isn't growing as fast as hoped for. The deficit has also risen because lawsuits and federal requirements have blocked billions of dollars in state cuts.

"This means we will have to go much farther and make cuts far greater than I asked for at the beginning of the year," Brown said in an online video. "But we can't fill this hole with cuts alone without doing severe damage to our schools. That's why I'm bypassing the gridlock and asking you, the people of California, to approve a plan that avoids cuts to schools and public safety."

In the end, you wind up with endless numbers of worthless bureaucrats, no services to help the people, and a massive state budget crisis. That is government corruption in a nutshell.

Wait a minute...over in the WI thread Big Steel Thrill said things were going great in California. WTH?

 

[Rohn Jambo]

I'm in Boston, where sales tax is 6.25% and income tax rate has just been reduced from 5.3% to 5.25%.

 

[tommyGunZ]

The one thing they won't cut, of course, is those extravagant government pensions, which the unions have imposed. Unions give the money to the politicians, the politicians saddle the state with huge pension obligations, and the average taxpayer gets screwed.

and if Jerry Brown gets his tax hike, the money will ultimately get diverted into the pocket of bureaucrats and union officials, leaving the shortfall intact. And then they come around again with the same ultimatum: vote for high taxes or we cut schools.California's fate is to get bailed out by the federal government. There is no political will in the state to do anything else. The democrats in charge will probably wait until they can warp reality to blame everything on the republicans before demanding that Washington fix everything, tho.

So this is the Republican boogie man now? No facts, no data, just wild, non-specific accusations about faceless bureaucrats and how they're pocketing all of our tax dollars.

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

I'm in Boston, where sales tax is 6.25% and income tax rate has just been reduced from 5.3% to 5.25%.

6% / 0% in S. Florida

 

[jonessed]

The one thing they won't cut, of course, is those extravagant government pensions, which the unions have imposed. Unions give the money to the politicians, the politicians saddle the state with huge pension obligations, and the average taxpayer gets screwed.

and if Jerry Brown gets his tax hike, the money will ultimately get diverted into the pocket of bureaucrats and union officials, leaving the shortfall intact. And then they come around again with the same ultimatum: vote for high taxes or we cut schools.California's fate is to get bailed out by the federal government. There is no political will in the state to do anything else. The democrats in charge will probably wait until they can warp reality to blame everything on the republicans before demanding that Washington fix everything, tho.

So this is the Republican boogie man now? No facts, no data, just wild, non-specific accusations about faceless bureaucrats and how they're pocketing all of our tax dollars.

The massive pension liabilities are public record and well documented.

 

[StrikeS2k]

The Corner Can California Be Fixed?By Victor Davis HansonMay 15, 2012 9:33 A.M.Recently, I was driving down pot-holed, two-lane, non-freeway 101 near Monterey (unchanged since the 1960s) when the radio blared that on a recent science test administered to public schools, California scored 47th in the nation. As I looked at the congested traffic on the decrepit highway and digested the idea that our public schools are competitive only with Mississippi and Alabama, I wondered — is that what we get for a more than 10 percent income tax, 10 percent state and local sales taxes, and the highest gas taxes in the nation?To sum up why California has yet another deficit — this time a $16 billion whopper — is pretty easy: The number of demonized one-percenters who pay over 10 percent in their salary to the state has been shrinking, as thousands flee with their ideas, energy, business, and capital to nearby no-tax states, and others make less money due to more and more costs and regulations — while the number of those receiving all sorts of state housing, food, medical, education, and legal support is soaring. (In crude parlance, California increasingly is seen by some as a very bad deal, in terms of the sort of schools, safety, transportation, and housing per taxes paid in comparison to Reno, Tahoe, or Austin, but by far more people as a very good deal in comparison to the costs versus benefits in, for example, Oaxaca or El Salvador.)In the last two decades, the number added to the prison rolls (ca. 115,000) was not that much smaller than the number of new tax-filers (150,000). And of the last 10 million added to the state’s population, 7 million are on Medicaid.But California being California, such reductionist thinking is taboo, and we are not allowed to make any suggestion that there is a connection between fleeing entrepreneurs, massive and illegal influxes of undocumented foreign nationals in recent years, and record public salaries and unfunded pensions.So that said, are there any out-of-the-box things California might do to save or make a few billion dollars, other than the obvious measures of slashing spending and dismantling burdensome regulations?1) Slap a user tax on the some $10–15 billion that is estimated to leave the state in remittances to foreign countries, or at least through executive action make foreign cash remittances grounds for disqualification from state public assistance.2) Cancel high speed-rail asap.3) Open up immediately the estimated now off-limits 35 billion barrels of oil off the central California coast, the vast majority of which can be safely and cleanly exploited by on-shore horizontal drilling.4) Cap the amount one can receive from a California public pension, or multiple pensions at $100,000.5) Eliminate three-quarters of the thousands of public California board members, who stymie commerce and are mostly costly and unproductive term-limited insider politicians.6) Mandate one official language for state publications and office business.7) Cut by 75 percent the number of administrators at the UC and CSU systems (their numbers from 1993 have grown by 212 percent), and pay them at the commensurate twelve-month faculty rate.8) Clamp down on the vast underground and untaxed cash economy that has exploded to the point that one can buy tax-free almost anything needed, from a new lawn mower to a four-course meal, at roadside emporia and canteens. 9) Deport the 20,000 plus illegal-alien felons now in California state prisons to their countries of origin.10) Have George Clooney do another $40,000 per head Hollywood fundraiser, but with Sacramento, not Barack Obama, as the beneficiary.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/299975/can-california-be-fixed-victor-davis-hanson

 

[StrikeS2k]

McGurn: Jerry Brown vs. Chris ChristieMore states are realizing that the road to fiscal hell is paved with progressive intentions.By WILLIAM MCGURN In his January 2011 inaugural address, California Gov. Jerry Brown declared it a "time to honestly assess our financial condition and make the tough choices." Plainly the choices weren't tough enough: Mr. Brown has just announced that he faces a state budget deficit of $16 billion—nearly twice the $9.2 billion he predicted in January. In Sacramento Monday, he coupled a new round of spending cuts with a call for some hefty new tax hikes.In his own inaugural address back in January 2010, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie also spoke of making tough choices for the people of his state. For his first full budget, Mr. Christie faced a deficit of $10.7 billion—one-third of projected revenues. Not only did Mr. Christie close that deficit without raising taxes, he is now plumping for a 10% across-the-board tax cut.Related VideoEditorial page editor Paul Gigot on why soaking the rich isn't solving California's chronic deficit problems. Photo: Associated PressIt's not just looks that make Mr. Brown Laurel to Mr. Christie's Hardy. It's also their political choices.When the Obama administration's Transportation Department called on California to cough up billions for a high-speed bullet train or lose federal dollars, Mr. Brown went along. In sharp contrast, when the feds delivered a similar ultimatum to Mr. Christie over a proposed commuter rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey, he nixed the project, saying his state just couldn't afford it.On the "millionaire's" tax, Mr. Brown says that California desperately needs to approve one if the state is to recover. The one on California's November ballot kicks in at income of $250,000 and would raise the top rate to 13.3% from 10.3% on incomes above $1 million. Again in sharp contrast, when New Jersey Democrats attempted to embarrass Mr. Christie by sending a millionaire's tax to his desk, he called their bluff and promptly vetoed it.On public-employee unions, Mr. Brown can talk a good game—at Monday's press conference, he announced a 5% pay cut for state workers, and he has proposed pension reform. Yet for all his pull with unions (the last time he was governor, he gave California's public-sector unions collective-bargaining rights), Gov. Brown, a Democrat, has not been able to accomplish what Republican Gov. Christie has: persuade a Democratic legislature to require government workers to kick in more for their health care and pensions.Now, no one will confuse New Jersey with free-market Hong Kong. Still, because the challenges facing the Golden and Garden States are so similar, the different paths taken by their respective governors are all the more striking. And these two men are by no means alone.Our states today are conducting a profound and contentious rethink about the right level of taxes, spending and government. Most obvious is the battle for Wisconsin. There Republican Gov. Scott Walker finds himself pitted against public-sector unions that successfully forced a recall election for June 5 after the legislature adopted the governor's package of labor reforms last spring.Amid the turmoil—Democratic legislators fled the state to prevent a vote, while union-backed protesters occupied the Capitol—Mr. Walker looked weakened. Now he has taken the lead in polls. More than that, voters have taken the lesson: A recent Marquette University Law School poll showed only 12% of Wisconsin voters listing "restoring collective bargaining rights for public employees" as their priority.Indeed, the American Midwest today is home to some of the biggest experiments in government. Republicans now hold both the governorships and the legislatures in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio, and in Wisconsin they control all but the Senate. In each they are pushing for smaller, more accountable government. The outlier is Illinois, where Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn and his Democratic legislature pushed through a tax increase on their heavily indebted state.Now ask yourself this. Can anyone look at Illinois and say to himself: I have seen the future and it works?Indiana's Mitch Daniels, a Republican, is probably the only governor who can truly claim to have turned around a failing state. That may change if we get eight years of Mr. Christie in New Jersey. Louisiana's Bobby Jindal, also a Republican, may be another challenger for the title, having just succeeded in pushing through arguably the most far-reaching reform of any state public-school system in America.Hard economic times bring their own lessons. Though few have been spared the ravages of the last recession and the sluggish recovery, those in states where taxes are light, government lives within its means, and the climate is friendly to investment have learned the value of the arrangement they have. They are not likely to give it up.Meanwhile, leaders in some struggling states have taken notice. They know the road to fiscal hell is paved with progressive intentions. The question regarding the sensible ones is whether they have the will and wherewithal to impose the reforms they know their states need on the interest groups whose political and economic clout is so closely tied with the public purse.Mr. Brown's remarks Monday suggest the answer to this question is no.Write to MainStreet@wsj.com

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304371504577404503988018824.html?mod=hp_opinion

 

[tommyGunZ]

The Corner Can California Be Fixed?By Victor Davis HansonMay 15, 2012 9:33 A.M.Recently, I was driving down pot-holed, two-lane, non-freeway 101 near Monterey (unchanged since the 1960s) when the radio blared that on a recent science test administered to public schools, California scored 47th in the nation. As I looked at the congested traffic on the decrepit highway and digested the idea that our public schools are competitive only with Mississippi and Alabama, I wondered — is that what we get for a more than 10 percent income tax, 10 percent state and local sales taxes, and the highest gas taxes in the nation?To sum up why California has yet another deficit — this time a $16 billion whopper — is pretty easy: The number of demonized one-percenters who pay over 10 percent in their salary to the state has been shrinking, as thousands flee with their ideas, energy, business, and capital to nearby no-tax states, and others make less money due to more and more costs and regulations — while the number of those receiving all sorts of state housing, food, medical, education, and legal support is soaring. (In crude parlance, California increasingly is seen by some as a very bad deal, in terms of the sort of schools, safety, transportation, and housing per taxes paid in comparison to Reno, Tahoe, or Austin, but by far more people as a very good deal in comparison to the costs versus benefits in, for example, Oaxaca or El Salvador.)In the last two decades, the number added to the prison rolls (ca. 115,000) was not that much smaller than the number of new tax-filers (150,000). And of the last 10 million added to the state’s population, 7 million are on Medicaid.But California being California, such reductionist thinking is taboo, and we are not allowed to make any suggestion that there is a connection between fleeing entrepreneurs, massive and illegal influxes of undocumented foreign nationals in recent years, and record public salaries and unfunded pensions.So that said, are there any out-of-the-box things California might do to save or make a few billion dollars, other than the obvious measures of slashing spending and dismantling burdensome regulations?1) Slap a user tax on the some $10–15 billion that is estimated to leave the state in remittances to foreign countries, or at least through executive action make foreign cash remittances grounds for disqualification from state public assistance.2) Cancel high speed-rail asap.3) Open up immediately the estimated now off-limits 35 billion barrels of oil off the central California coast, the vast majority of which can be safely and cleanly exploited by on-shore horizontal drilling.4) Cap the amount one can receive from a California public pension, or multiple pensions at $100,000.5) Eliminate three-quarters of the thousands of public California board members, who stymie commerce and are mostly costly and unproductive term-limited insider politicians.6) Mandate one official language for state publications and office business.7) Cut by 75 percent the number of administrators at the UC and CSU systems (their numbers from 1993 have grown by 212 percent), and pay them at the commensurate twelve-month faculty rate.8) Clamp down on the vast underground and untaxed cash economy that has exploded to the point that one can buy tax-free almost anything needed, from a new lawn mower to a four-course meal, at roadside emporia and canteens. 9) Deport the 20,000 plus illegal-alien felons now in California state prisons to their countries of origin.10) Have George Clooney do another $40,000 per head Hollywood fundraiser, but with Sacramento, not Barack Obama, as the beneficiary.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/299975/can-california-be-fixed-victor-davis-hanson

No wonder your views are so far on the fringe, you read guys who have been clamoring for GWBush to come back for the past 3 years. Hanson is a moron.