The following memo is from the California Democratic Legislative Leaders… (Maybe)

Dear Californians,

Just in case all you voters and taxpayers out there missed the news this past week, we Democrats just spent hundreds of thousands of your dollars to fight a ballot measure you passed in 2010, so that we can continue to waste your money, cater to our public employee union bosses so they’ll keep giving us campaign money, and play shell games with the budget and your lives.

You thought Proposition 25 would dock our pay if we didn’t pass a balanced budget on time…ha, ha, ha, got you.

Sorry to laugh, but let’s be absolutely transparent on this – we only put the pay-docking language in to get you to vote for the initiative. The real purpose of the initiative was to give us Democrats the ability to pass a budget without having to include those Republicans in the process (not that they would ever hold out for much). You did, and we Democrats now own the budget process.

Then, it all backfired. On the very first budget we send out after… Read More

It has been fairly well publicized that moderate GOP donor Charles Munger, Jr’s sister, Molly, has decided to make 2012 the year she stakes a major claim in California’s initiative process that her brother has navigated so frequently the past several years. Molly has pledged millions of dollars to fund an initiative that will utilize a tax increase on Californians to provide additional funding to schools. According to the initiative’s website it will raise billions in new tax revenue for school and education programs. The new tax revenues will come from all Californians, but targets the “top 1%” to carry the bulk of the burden, trying to capitalize on the latest “Occupy” movement rhetoric.

Of course Californians have repeatedly rejected new taxes the past several ballot cycles, and thanks to California GOP legislators, Californians were not asked to extend the tax hikes of 2009. Ms. Munger may very well find herself in an unintended fight with Jerry Brown’s own tax plan. So the possibility of Munger’s agenda being an immediate success may be at… Read More

One common labor union objection to defined contribution pension plans (401-k plans) is that the administration costs are “1%-3%” annually. They assert that it’s much less expensive to let CalPERS or other “experts” manage a huge pooled account.

And indeed that high 1-3% individual account annual cost would be a major impediment. IF it were true.

It’s not. Not if one makes even a rudimentary effort to control costs down to 0.2%. And in some cases, the cost can approach 0.1% a year.

No, not 1% a year. That’s ONE-TENTH of ONE PERCENT annually –TOTAL cost. And it can be even less.

Furthermore, the employer — public or private — can make and set such cost limitations for the employees. There are sensible restrictions the employer can suggest to avoid the gambler’s tendency to figuratively bet on the lottery with their pensions.

Let me add that the advice contained below is readily available for ANY investor — IRA’s, 401-k plans or just brokerage account investing of personal investments. Everyone should at least be aware of this option.

The “trick” is… Read More

Health Care is an important topic. Not just because of the obvious fact that we all need it and it directly relates to the continuity and quality of human life. But, also because it represents a major segment of our economy. And, the economic impact doesn’t just extend to medical care providers. It also affects employers, through whom most Americans obtain their health insurance if they are under 65 years of age, and the economy at large.

It will be no surprise to readers of this missive that I think ObamaCare is an unmitigated disaster. But, even if you think it was a good thing, the problems surrounding its implementation have injected even more government-created uncertainty into a major element of the economy. Uncertainty retards growth because it freezes capital, labor and decision makers. The uncertainty here is not just a result of the pending Supreme Court decision. It began long before that as it quickly became apparent that major elements of ObamaCare just don’t work. Even the White House has admitted this. Even more problematic, the provisions that the White House has already agreed not to implement have now put other parts of the law in question… Read More

Today, I voted in favor of the Interest Rate Reduction Act (H.R. 46828), legislation that will roll back wasteful Obama Care spending to pay for a one year extension of the current interest rate on subsidized Stafford Loans made to undergraduate students. The president has visited various battleground states urging Congress to prevent an interest rate spike his party set in motion in 2007. But now that House Republicans are taking action, Washington Democrats have decided to dangerously politicize and distort the facts.

House Democrats have grossly claimed that the Republican plan will “hurt women and children” because H.R. 4682 repeals the so-called Prevention and Public Health Fund, an Obama Care grant program that has become little more than a multi-billion dollar slush fund for the president to spend on his own priorities, and redirects its resources to student loan relief and deficit reduction. Democrats vehemently protest this plan while… Read More

Fresh off of a successful court victory where a judge ruled that Assemblywoman Beth Gaines can keep her ballot designation of Small Business Owner (she and her husband, State Senator Ted Gaines, co-own an insurance office), Gaines is in mailboxes now with a hard-hitting piece on her Republican opponent, Andy Pugno, over his occupation. Since the piece speaks for itself, I’ve put it up below. Yes folks, it’s officially campaign season!… Read More

This morning Assemblyman Curt Hagman will have his bill, AB 2429, heard before the Assembly Public Employees, Retirement and Social Security Committee. This piece of legislation is very straightforward. Ask yourself, should a part-time elected official (most city councils, school boards, water boards and so on…) be taking down full-time employee benefits? If your answer is no, then Hagman’s bill is the way to go. Simply put, beginning with January of 2013, those elected to part-time local offices may not receive any benefits for service, other than the allowable stipend under state law. Right now the vast majority of the state’s over 25,000 local elected officials are not only getting their monthly stipends, but are also taking down gold-plated health care plans. In some cases, after being re-elected a second time, they are awarding these part-time officials with lifetime healthcare benefits. One particularly egregious practice is where the local elected waives the healthcare insurance, and the local government which they oversee then pays them cash in lieu of taking it!

If a position is full time — then I think everyone understands that it… Read More

When the economy is hurting, it means that most people are having a tough go of it. Families who are managing tight budgets are doing everything they can to make every dollar stretch further. Of course, as we know, when California residents are less prosperous, that adversely effects the amount of taxes generated for government use. If your income is less (or nonexistent), that means you are paying less (or no) income taxes. If you have less money to spend on buying things, then you are generating less sales tax. It’s not a difficult situation to figure out. It falls on the shoulders of our state’s policymakers — the Governor and 120 state legislators, to address the consequences of shrinking tax revenues. But as we have seen in a state budget calamity that has been going on for year, Democrat politicians in California have been unwilling to implement billions of dollars in savings — even when those savings have been laid out in front of them, providing an actual road map towards saving vast sums of taxpayer funds.

We have seen recommendations in the form of findings from state audits, reports from grand juries, recommendations from the… Read More