There are many areas of California law that are complex and difficult for even public policy experts to understand, let alone lay people like me. For example, try to discuss the finer details of Prop. 98 funding with even the most seasoned Capitol staff person, and you might quickly find their eyes, along with your own, glazing over. Another very challenging area of state policy to digest is how multi-state businesses pay taxes in California. Because some of these topic areas are so convoluted and confusing, we often just look to people who sound like experts to summarize them and help guide us through the public policy maze in search of ferreting out good ideas from poor ones.

For several years I have been writing at a cursory level about how multi-state businesses pay their taxes in California — we’ve all seen the broad descriptions “multi-factor apportionment,” “elective single sales factor,” and so forth. In this column I am going to do my best to really explain this issue of how California taxes multi-state businesses, for two reasons. The first, and I will elaborate further, is that up to this point I have been pretty… Read More

Today the Supreme Court upheld President Obama’s health care mandate. While I respect the Court’s ruling, it doesn’t change what we know to be true: Obamacare is a bad law that is wrong for America. Today the Supreme Court ruled that Obamacare is constitutional, not that it is a good or wise law. Obamacare is still a dangerous collaboration of bad legislating, smoke and mirrors calculations and dangerous policy. Under President Obama’s signature legislation, health care costs continue to skyrocket, and up to 20 million Americans could lose their employer-based coverage. Born from intensely partisan, back door deals and closed room meetings, Obamacare is a boondoggle of historic proportions. While no one can argue that our healthcare system doesn’t need reform, the partisan and closed door way in which this bad law was forced on the American people made it wrong from the beginning. Even though ruled constitutional, Obamacare is a law that will add trillions to our debt, increase… Read More

A “must watch” video, OBAMATAX, by FR friend Ben Howe…

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This is an expanded version of a letter to the editor concerning education that I submitted to the U-T newspaper. It didn’t run, but no need for my research to go to waste.

Dear U-T Editor:

Teacher Sharon Collins’ letter selflessly calls for higher taxes for education, citing socialist Sweden as her shining light. http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jun/21/letters-sd-schools-teachers-labor-pact/?print&page=all She didn’t do her homework.

She thinks Sweden values education more than America because they have a 25 percent sales tax (actually a VAT tax). But that high tax tells us nothing.

For a meaningful comparison, look at education spending per student. Of the 32 OECD counties (the economically advanced countries of the world) providing data, in 2008 Sweden ranks 6th in primary school per student spending, the U.S. 5th. Sweden ranks 9th in secondary school spending, the U.S. ranks 4th.

Sweden spent $9,080 per primary school student. The U.S. spent $9,940. Sweden spent $9,940 per secondary school… Read More

A whopping 0.14% of the bloated state general fund budget vetoed by Brown. Sadly, this paltry line item veto amount continues the California governor bipartisan tradition of vetoing almost none of the spending. The traditional amount is about 0.25% — one quarter of one percent. Jerry couldn’t reach even this low benchmark.

http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2012/06/gov-jerry-brown-vetoes-195-million-from-final-ca-budget.html… Read More

The NORTH COUNTY TIMES ran my op-ed on the effect of defense spending in San Diego County. My thesis is that, absent our massive federal defense spending (responsible for 1 in 4 jobs in the county), the San Diego economy is simply “awful.”

This fact is amazing, considering that that San Diego has the best climate in the nation. But our terrible government-imposed anti-business economic climate trumps our inherent advantages of nature.

http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/rider-without-defense-our-economy-awful/article_1dd19375-5511-5f94-83a3-c77070a7a4c8.html

NORTH COUNTY TIMES

RIDER: Without defense, our economy awful

June 26, 2012 • By RICHARD RIDER The North County Times recently reported on the latest study detailing the remarkable dependency of the San Diego County economy on national defense spending. The study, prepared with the assistance of the Point Loma Nazarene University Fermanian Business a Economic Institute, found… Read More

As unbelievable as it seems, in the midst of our never-ending budget crisis, the plan from Governor Brown and the legislature’s Democrat majority comes down to this: “Give us what we want, or somebody’s going to get hurt.” If you’re starting to feel like our state government is holding a gun to our head, there’s probably a pretty good reason for that. Because that’s sure what it looks like to me.

Just a few days ago we got to see the legislature’s leaders here in Sacramento smiling and patting themselves on the backs having sent their budget bill to the Governor’s desk. There’s just one catch: the law requires our legislature to pass a “balanced” budget each year. They haven’t, and this budget isn’t. The “balanced” part of the budget, the hard part, has been left on our doorstep – with a ransom note firmly attached.

It is utterly irresponsible for our legislature to approve a budget plan that relies on the assumption that tax revenues will balance with spending if – but only if – voters agree to increase taxes on themselves. That’s just not right. Drafting and passing a balanced budget by June 15th each year is… Read More

Yesterday, Sacramento Democrats finally passed the remaining so-called “trailer bills” to complete the work on their majority vote budget plan. The more we let the sunshine in on the Democrat majority vote budget, the worse it looks for the priorities of California’s hard-working families. In my view, Californians deserve better than a phony budget that was made up by Democrats as they went along in the process, violating the spirit of openness and transparency in state government that should be the guiding principle of every lawmaker.

Here are just a few of the worst features of the Democrat majority vote budget passed yesterday:

Plays Politics to Boost Governor’s Massive Tax Increase

To try and boost the passage of Governor Brown’s $8.5 billion tax increase measure, Democrats voted in their majority vote budget plan to manipulate the elections process. They passed a measure to move the Governor’s tax initiative up to the top of the ballot, even though his initiative qualified tenth among the measures that will appear on the November 2012 ballot. At the same time, the Governor’s education trigger cuts would still be… Read More