Regardless what a punk Carolina Panthers’ quarterback Cam Newton may or may not be, the ugly news that he will owe $137,900 in taxes — for losing the Super Bowl – shouldn’t be the thanks he gets.

The thanks is courtesy of California’s highest-in-the-nation tax rate of 13.3 percent, known as the “jock tax” – the nonresident income taxes that states and cities enforce on athletes performing in their jurisdictions.

As Kurt Bedenhausen explained in Forbes last week, “Newton will pay California 86.3% of his Super Bowl earnings if the Panthers win. Losing means his effective tax rate will be a whopping 172.2%. Oh yeah, he will also pay the IRS 40.5% on his… Read More

“If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

~Ronald Reagan

Despite California’s highest-in-the-nation taxes, a couple of Assembly Republicans have allegedly agreed to vote for Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax on health plans in the State of California.

Even if Brown is able to convince health insurers, he needs a two-thirds majority vote from the Legislature. And this is where Republican votes come in. Currently, Democrats do not have a supermajority, and need to peel off a couple of Republican votes for tax increases.

Predictably, Brown has been trying to convince Republicans his health plan tax is really “tax reform.”

“This is not a tax increase, no matter what anyone tells you,” he said during his State of the State address.

“It will be pretty easy to tell if this is a tax increase, or some sort of revenue neutral swapping of one tax for another,” said Jon Fleischman, publisher of the Flash… Read More

Rocky Chavez, a CaliforniaGOP candidate for U.S. Senate,isn’t just another empty suit or pretty face in politics. Chavez, a Republican Assemblyman from Oceanside, CA,served 28 years in the United States Marine Corps, rose to the rank of Colonel, and commanded 22,000 troops.

He later served as the acting Secretary of the California Department of Veterans Affairs, and then as the Vice… Read More

Hoping to bring back citizen representation, Tony “The Tiger” Lopezis running for Mayor of Sacramento. Lopez, a 3-Time WorldBoxingChampion, is a native of Sacramento, CA. Always a fan favorite in Sacramento, Lopez won the IBF junior lightweight title twice and the WBA lightweight title once.

“During his 16-year career, Lopez faced the gauntlet at 130-135 pounds, squaring off with the likes of Julio Cesar Chavez Sr., Joey Gamache, John John Molina, Jorge Paez, Brian Mitchell, Greg Haugen and Freddie Pendleton,” Ring TV wrote.

Since his retirement from the ring, Lopez has been serving the Northern California community for more than 16 years atTony “The Tiger” Bail Bonds. I sat down with Tony recently at his downtown Sacramento office and talked about his desire to be Mayor, his fighting career, the importance of his bail bonds business, and his philosophy of life and politics.

The History of the World

Lopez is instantly a warm and engaging… Read More

Sacramento grocery shoppers are livid. Even the liberals.

While shopping Jan. 3 at two Sacramento stores, I witnessed mounting shopper anger as they were told they’d be charged .10 cents per grocery bag. One woman screamed back at the checker, “This is ridiculous!” as she tossed all of her items back into the cart on her way out of the store. She then angrily threw the same loose, un-bagged items into her trunk and drove off… with an Obama 2012 bumper sticker.

At another large retailer, most shoppers were also caught off guard, and angrily acquiesced to the bag charges. And they weren’t silent about their anger. “Ten cents for this piece of &*#t?” one woman asked another shopper, holding up a new bag. (No, I wasn’t at WalMart)

Wait until these shoppers discover that California’s coddled welfare recipients won’t be charged for… Read More

From the State of California’s Department of Business Prevention comes another random minimum wage hike to help kill off more businesses.

The final phase of the 2013 Assembly Bill 10 went into effect Jan. 1, bumping the minimum wage to $10-per-hour statewide. AB 10 is the final step of a two-stage increase. California and Massachusetts are now the states with the highest minimum wage. Only California is also home to the highest income taxes, sales taxes, and high property taxes.

Bureaucrats Interfere

Work should be valued only… Read More

An horrifically inaccurate opinion article claiming fracking is making people sick in Kern County ran Saturday in the Sacramento Bee, without any fact checking, and without a counterpoint article.

In “Oil runs amok in Kern County,” author Rosanna Esparza, a community organizer in Kern County and Sierra Club member, takes issue with the Kern County Board of Supervisors’ November vote to approve a zoning change to streamline Kern oil and gas permitting. “California continues to be a leader on climate with actions such as the passage of SB 350 by the Legislature, which seeks to increase our renewable energy mix to 50 percent and double the energy efficiency of existing buildings,” Esparza wrote.

I am pro-environment and a… Read More

After years ofintense government and union harassment by theAgricultural Labor Relations Board and the United Farm Workers labor union,Gerawan Farming Inc. notified its workers that effective February 25, 2016, the company will fully close its entire table grape operation, in the County of Fresno. Pursuant to the Federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, known as the WARN Act, Gerawan has been forced into a position of closing an entire arm of its farming operations because of California government assisting a labor union attempt to take over a large company.And Gov. Jerry Brown has not once intervened to stop the unlawful harassment by the union or his own state agency.

The table grape operation closure does not affect any of the employees’ employment in other Gerawan farming operations, but now thousands of farm workers will lose well-paying farm jobs because of California’s corrupt state government. Gerawan always exceeds industry average wages and are the first to increase wages. Gerawan’s website shows their hourly wage for grape packline as $16.27, and upwards of $20.00 per… Read More