*NOTE: SPECIAL SURVEY EDITION. This week’s edition includes an interactive survey. After you finish reading, please make sure to assess my plan and tell me what you think!

Taxes: Taxes are always a big issue in politics and public policy. However, right now there is a crescendo of agreement building in Washington that it’s time to make some fundamental change to our tax system.

The debate in Washington of late has been confined to the so-called Bush tax cuts, all of which are scheduled to expire at the end of this year. Essentially, should we extend all of them, none of them, or some of them? The erudite readers of these missives (that’s you) have heard all of this before and know the arguments for and against the extension and all about taxing the “rich” and such. So, I won’t repeat them here. Economists are unified in their predictions of recession if we are allowed to go over the “fiscal cliff” on December 31 and allow all of the tax cuts to expire and the sequestered spending cuts… Read More

Reed Royalty, who founded the Orange County Taxpayers Association (OCTax) in 1986 and has served as its only president since, announced his retirement at the organization’s second annual “Roses, Radishes and the Royalty Awards” dinner last week at The Island Hotel in Newport Beach.

In his remarks, Reed cited some of OCTax’s milestones. He said, OCTax’s “first defining success” was the original Measure M campaign for transportation in 1990, which he chaired. He said “Measure M literally enabled Orange County’s future. Can you imagine living here without Measure M’s improvements to our freeways and streets?”

Reed said Measure M was the birthday of OCTax’s “perfect” Mission Statement: “taxes should be fair, understandable, cost-effective and good for the economy.” He said, “If a tax meets those criteria, it’s a good tax; if it doesn’t, it’s not.” He told his audience, “You don’t leave this room tonight until you can recite those four principles.”

There are too many instances to recount where Reed has weighed in for taxpayers over the years, some with a high profile, other times when the spotlight was somewhere… Read More

There is and will be much to dissect about the disinformation campaign for Governor’s Brown’s measure on the November ballot to massively increase the income and sales taxes of Californians. I guess we can start with the Governor use of the word TEMPORARY, which is defined by Merriam Webster as, “lasting for a limited time.”

Today the Governor sent out an email blast that, in its entirely, said:

“Dear Jon,

Yesterday, the campaign to protect schools and public safety launched a new Yes on Prop 30 website and a video urging voters to take a stand.

The video features major law enforcement and education leaders from across the state who endorse Proposition 30.

After years of cuts, California’s public schools, universities and local public safety are at the breaking point. In the last four years alone, schools have been hit with $20 billion in cuts and a loss of more than 30,000 fewer educators. Today, California has among the largest… Read More

– Real pension reform cannot take place this Fall because there will be no time to put reforms on the ballot for the voters to lock into place. After all, who would trust this legislature not to reverse any reforms, retroactively, as soon as there is an upswing in the economy?

– Attempts by the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors and the City Councils in Fontana and Ontario are advancing an absurd expansion of eminent domain that you really couldn’t make up if you tried. They would use the power to seize mortgages — seriously. Just take them from the lenders as if they were the equivalent as a parcel of land impeding a highway expansion. All in the name of a non-existent responsibility of government to mettle in people’s personal finances. This goes nowhere.

– I still maintain that the efforts by Senators Mimi Walters, Joel Anderson, CRP Chairman Tom Del Beccaro and others to qualify a referendum on the new Commission-drawn State Senate lines were appropriate. As drawn, it is overwhelmingly likely that the GOP will lose enough seats to lose the ability to stop 2/3 vote bills. The judges opted out of drawing any new… Read More

Thanks to the rapacious desire of the members of the California Redistricting Commission to play around with Assembly District lines in Los Angeles County, the newly minted 66th Assembly District in the South Bay Area [see map] is now a prime opportunity for a Republican pickup. The largest cities in this new coastal district are Redondo Beach, Torrance and Rancho Palos Verdes. Unlike some districts which, thanks to the passage of Proposition 14, have two candidates from the same party battling it out this November, the 66th features a more traditional Rep on Dem matchup, with the Republican being businessman Craig Huey, and the Democrat being Al Marasuchi.

While the Marasuchi ran unopposed as the only Democrat on the ballot, Huey was victorious in a robust primary against Nathan Mintz. Actually, the GOP dustup ended up not being very close Huey got 38% of the vote while Mintz got 21%. It is very significant to note their combined percentage of the vote was a strong 59% to the Democrat’s 41%. This augers well for the GOP in the Fall. A fun factoid is that in Torrance,… Read More

In the article below on city bankruptcies, the LA TIMES gives the impression that San Bernardino’s BK is largely due to Prop 13. Not so.

I don’t have the city historical property tax figures, but doubtless they closely refect San Bernardino COUNTY property tax. Consider:

http://www.sbcounty.gov/assessor/Archives/annualreport2008web.pdf

http://www.sbcounty.gov/assessor/Documents/20120629AssessmentRoll.pdf

Yes, from 2008 through 2012 the tax revenue dropped about 2.7% a year. This last year it actually ROSE a modest 0.8%.

But consider the longer term. From 2005 to 2012 the property tax rose an average 3.7% a year compounded. That hardly constitutes a paucity of revenue.

The problem for San Bernardino is the… Read More

Yet another reputable study — this one reported in the LOS ANGELES TIMES –guts an underlying assumption of HSR believers. See the article below. Japan’s experience with HSR over 30 years demonstrates that “. . .as an engine of economic growth, [HSR] ‘will have only a marginal impact at best.’ ”

Moreover, HSR would likely PROMOTE suburban sprawl, the bain of liberal land use planning theology. And yet the Democrats soldier on into the Central Valley with HSR, reality notwithstanding.

It reminds me of the fatal British army foray into the desert in the historical move Khartoum — staring Charlton Heston. Oblivious to reality, the British generals marched their ill-equiped troops into a sandy death trap, arrogantly assuming that they were right BECAUSE they were British.

Such is the mentality of HSR believers. And I do mean BELIEVERS. It parallels a religious mindset (ironic, given that liberals generally hate religion)– a blind belief in HSR unrelated and undeterred by overwhelming evidence that it is a very, VERY bad idea. Indeed, another parallel would be the gullible believers in Ponzi schemes and MLM… Read More

So I guess the uniforms for the United States Olympics Team were made in China. I am thinking (and this is just a hunch) that this decision was made based on a few key factors — which would probably include at the top of the list the quality of the uniforms, and the cost to produce them. If you agree with me on this, then you have to ask yourself this question — why is it is cheaper, or are there better quality goods available from China, than here in the United States?

I would not be surprised to find that the delta between buying uniforms domestically verses abroad was the added costs of production here in the United States to to multiple types of taxation, as was as regulations that drive up the cost. In the end, I think I have to weigh in to defend the decision of the U.S. team — because every dollar they save in purchasing uniforms means more money for training athletes, and covering costs for them and their families.

If we want to have the 2016 U.S. Olympics Team wearing… Read More