Archive for January, 2010
California’s Misplaced Priorities: Going for “Broke” with Universal Health Care
Thursday, January 21st, 2010California is in deep trouble- record unemployment, thousands of farms being destroyed by drought, perennial budget deficits in the tens of billions of dallars, and pension and salary obligations spiraling out of control– and the South Bay’s Representatives in Sacramento, Ted Lieu and Jenny Oropeza, are wasting the people’s time and money promoting the most insipid piece of legislation in Sacramento’s history. It’s time for us to send some real leadership to Sacramento!
California Spending 1.1 Billion Each Year Incarcerating Illegal Immigrants
Sunday, January 17th, 2010The Federal Government can’t keep our borders secured, and we here in California are footing the bill– to the tune of 1.1 Billion Dollars last year just to incarcerate illegal immigrants who shouldn’t even be here! Full Story Here.
We have over 20,000 illegal immigrants in California prisons– at a $53,000 per year incarceration fee each. [...]
2010 Budget To Take a Bite Out of State Pension Burden
Saturday, January 16th, 2010Good News: In this year’s budget, the governor proposes increasing employee contributions to increase what state employees pay into CalPers. This will increase it to 10% of employee pay (on average) from 5% today. So they are making state employees share more of the burden for their own retirement– that’s a good thing.
Bad News: they won’t [...]
California Debt Rating Downgraded Again
Thursday, January 14th, 2010As Reagan once said “there you go again.” S&P just downgraded our credit rating from A to A- out of fear of last year’s three month IOU fest- with the state budget process in gridlock - repeating itself. This means that dozens of state and local projects will be forced to divert money that is desperately needed elsewhere to [...]
Here we go again- another tax hike proposal
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010Yet another tax hike from Sacramento that they claim won’t get passed on to consumers: this one on oil companies. Alberto Torrico wants a 12.5% severance tax on oil companies to drill 1.5 billion dollars out of them to make up for him to not be able to tighten his belt. What’s even more outrageous is that he wants to put measures on the bill to prevent them from passing the cost off to consumers– how does he plan to show that one in court? What sort of complicated accounting audit scheme are they going to cook up to prove that they are passing the cost off to consumers? This is just ridiculous.
How Sacramento Policy is to blame for the Torrance Trash Fee Hike
Monday, January 11th, 2010The situation in Torrance is a drop in the bucket compared to the full cost of compliance for this bill. According to a report from the California Economic and Allocation Advisory Committee (EAAC) compliance with AB 32 will cost businesses and other entities that emit greenhouse gases between $48 billion and $143 billion to comply with over the next ten years- a huge liability which will likely drive hundreds of thousands more jobs out of the state.
