It’s easy to spend money when it’s not your own. That’s the case with the proposed massive tax hikes on California drivers announced Wednesday by Gov. Jerry Brown.

The $5.2 billion in taxes imposed annually are aimed squarely at the middle class — citizens who see their cars not as a luxury but as a necessity to get to work, take the kids to school and run their errands at the end of a long day. The governor and his tax-and-spend allies — including interests that get rich off the taxpayer dime — are pushing a gas tax hike of 12 cents per gallon on top of our already high gas tax plus higher vehicle registration fees that average out to about $50 per vehicle. This would leave California with the highest gas and car taxes in the nation by far.

Not surprisingly, taxpayers are not buying what the governor is selling. A Public Policy Institute of California poll shows that a majority of Californians, including 42 percent of Democrats, oppose the taxes. A recent California Chamber of Commerce poll showed that 80 percent of voters want to see spending reforms first, before new taxes.

Read the entire… Read More

California’s promise of opportunity for everyone has been all but eradicated by gross political mismanagement, political corruption, and watered down representation. It’s time to drain the swamp in California politics.

While California voters overwhelmingly supported Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, when polled, Californians show strong signs of wanting political reform in the Golden State.

They may get their wish if John Cox has anything to say.

Cox, who is running for Governor, and is the author of the… Read More

What’s wrong with this picture? California has the sixth largest economy in the world, but our highway system ranks 42th out of 50th states per the Reason Foundation’s most recent Annual Highway Report. That does not make any sense.

Along the lines of things that do not make any sense, the California Democrats have rolled out their new transportation package. The plan seeks to raise fuel taxes and user fees for motorists. But it doesn’t stop there. It also calls for a new tax based on a vehicle’s value and a new tax on zero-emission vehicles.

This is wrong and I will not support such a plan.

Furthermore, the hard-working taxpayers of our state should not shoulder the cost of this plan’s reckless and irresponsible spending increase. They have suffered enough.

The Golden State already has the nation’s highest sales and personal income tax, and the nation’s fifth highest gas tax. This plan would just be another burden to our working families and make living and doing business in California increasingly more difficult.

The California Department of Transportation spends roughly $10 billion on transportation-related expenditures. So… Read More

SB 2 (Atkins) hurts families struggling to maintain homeownership, places a significant financial burden on middle-class Californians and weakens the integrity of the land records system – one of the mainstays of our free enterprise economy.

Since 1850, California’s County Recorders have managed and protected the integrity of land records while preserving and defending public access to the information in their care. County Recorders collect a nominal fee on every document recorded to cover the direct cost of providing this valuable service.

SB 2… Read More

What is it with progressive politicians who believe that taxpayers won’t change their behavior because of tax policy? One would think that repeatedly seeing pie-in-the-sky revenue projections from big tax hikes that fall way short of reality would be a wake-up call.

In trying to project the impact of tax hikes on government revenues, the failure to account for predictable changes in behavior is called “static scoring.” And since many progressives mindlessly hew to this method of analysis, let’s call it “static cling.”

Static scoring is different from “dynamic scoring.” Dynamic scoring simply means taking into account predictable changes in behavior that result from tax increases (or tax cuts) to accurately project the amount of money that will be raised.

To read the entire column, please click here.… Read More

California’s infrastructure problems have taken front and center over the last month, but there is another example of the legislative schizophrenia hovering over the Golden State.

One legislator wants to lower the voting age in California from 18 years old to the age of 17, while another wants to raise the age of issuing a full driver’s license from 18 to 21. In short, one liberal believes minor childrenof our state are “mature” enough to vote in an election, while the other believes they are too immature to operate cars until they reach the ripe old age of 21.

Enter a note of sanity. California Assemblyman Travis Allen (R-Huntington Beach) has introduced the Voter Integrity Act of 2017. The measure allows voters to present eight different forms of identification to officials to receive a ballot during an election. It also allows a voter without proper ID to get a provisional ballot and even authorizes a free registered… Read More

A teachers union video released this week by Project Veritas shows a California teachers union covering up for abusive teachers.

In the video, a San Francisco teachers union official admits he has hit students before, but “made it look like an accident.”

The video, a continuation on a multiple-year-long investigation of various teachers unions across the country, shows Antonio Mankini, the… Read More

As Proposition 13 approaches its 39th birthday, it is still subject to the same dishonest attacks in the media that were used against it when it was on the ballot in 1978. Proposition 13 was one of the first victims of “fake news.”

“The bigwigs in labor and business went all out to defeat 13,” said its principle author, Howard Jarvis. “They tried to outdo one another in issuing doomsday prophecies about what passage of 13 would mean.” The media slavishly supported the exaggerated and dishonest claims, often endorsing them through editorials and by giving prominent placement to negative stories on the tax revolt.

The politicians, including Gov. Jerry Brown, and government agencies from top to bottom weighed in. Here is a typical example: Before the election, Alameda County Transit told the public that passage of Prop. 13 would result in the termination of 80 percent of its 2,000 employees. Two months later, the Fremont-Newark Argus reported on the aftermath of the passage of Proposition 13, “To date, no one in the district has been laid off and officials now believe there will be no massive layoffs.” The paper added that three local fire districts… Read More