PLEASE TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION!
Phase Two of the California Budget Crisis is now in play. Please contact your members of the State Legislature and tell them you oppose a budget agreement that includes tax increases of any kind. Click this link to contact them: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html
WHEN:
Now! A budget with tax increases could be taken up as early as next week, and our taxpayer allies in the Legislature are taking severe abuse from the tax and spend lobby. They need your help and support to stand firm.
WHY:
California has the highest income tax, sales tax and gas tax in the United States, and the highest corporation tax in the Western United States. Its 9.3% unemployment rate is the highest it has been in nearly 20 years. General Fund spending has increased 36 percent in five years, dramatically outpacing revenues. Last year, California experienced a net domestic out-migration of 150,000 people, many of whom took their businesses with them. Where did many of them go? Nevada (no corporate or income tax) Oregon (no sales tax) and Arizona (top income tax bracket is half of California’s). Enough is enough!
PLEASE ACT NOW!
Visit http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html
See other perspectives driving the legislature and decide whether you want to be heard or not. Get busy people, cause there is big push to pass budget at any cost.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow.
Why would you call my retort ad hominem?
In what way, shape, or form did I attack one of your beliefs in my last post?
Your hypocrisy knows no bounds… call me for something I didn’t do, but not call your own admin on his argumentum ad hominem. That’s cute and rather pathetic. Bias makes fools of normally intelligent men.
Oh by the way, nice ad hominem yourself Mr. Editor. Hey, as long as you keep being the biggest bully on your own playground and keep throwing out logical fallacies like softballs…maybe then….everyone will know how smart and great you really are!
~ EDITOR REPLIES — Look up ad hominem. Your attempt to relativize the argument by calling names “politics” without actually offering a real argument. Just like you did not respond to my riposte that provided the documentation you requested. So, apparently you are ducking the argument again with more outrage.
Sorry homey. We don’t play that here.
Nothing more from you on this topic until you put your cards on the table like I did. Stand and deliver if you can.
We look forward to you enlightening us not just with your razor sharp wit but some facts, too. Good luck.
Mr. editor,
Now it appears you are playing politics. that’s sad, I expect more from someone who is “blunt”.
i would really like to see your plan, not just the words…
“The $40 Billion deficit is the difference between the current budget and 2004 budget.”
i think it would make a great future blog, a side by side comparison.
~ EDITOR REPLIES — Playing politics? What sort of ad hominem attack is that? Since you can’t think your way out of your own 2-penny bag of Democratic candy dressed up as non-partisanship, let me lay it out again for you, since you whine about lack of specifics.
Since 2004 budget the State budget has increased by $40 Billion and California can no longer afford to pay. We managed to survive with the 2004 budget that was $40 Billion less, including better funding for schools. California would survive fine with same. This is a rather specific suggestion. See the 2004 Budget for details.
D’uh
I play paddy cake with my one year old daughter, not with anyone else.
Gloating or not, (which was not my want or purpose) the facts are still the facts and yes, the budget cuts will hurt certain areas more than others. If one can stand back, take off their D or R sunglasses and be objective, you’d agree.
But hey, those budget cuts won’t hurt all Republican areas, such as Orange County. I don’t think anyone running in any race would even be smart enough to point these cuts hurt the aforementioned areas, like I said before…. so who cares?
Again, I apologize for annoying you, but denial is very unbecoming of adults. I will try to be blunt… If partisanship is your playground and denial your best friend, make sure to wash your hands before you eat, you never know what scum you’ll collect on those R or D monkey bars.
- EDITOR APOLOGIZES — Yet it is incorrect to assume Orange County will not feel pain of cuts as there are pockets of poverty and working poor even in that County.
The economic foolishness of structural deficits (which the forthcoming budget will not answer) knows no party line as Democrats promote it and RepublicanS acquiesce to it.
The $40 Billion deficit is the difference between the current budget and 2004 budget.
The world would not end, education would be better funded, if, for the sake of the commonwealth and Constitutional obligations legislature simply implemented the 2004 budget for a period of two years to ride out crisis and implement multi year budgeting beginning 2010.
I’m sorry, editor.
I thought you and the reading public would be able to get what I was saying, no assumption… no matter how small is a good one it seems.
I was commenting on this and I should have quoted it in my post. I apologize.
“your point about cuts hurting Republican counties is just mean, and is cooked up news from so-called “neutral and professional” journalists with an axe to grind.”
What the admin did there was spin and misdirection. No news source trying to question the integrity of another news source should play the game of “politics”. Don’t tell me its mean or “cooked up”, tell me why, prove it, be better than mainstream infotainment.
Budget cuts will really hurt the central valley of California, which is for the most part Republican. Will Democrats there be able to use this in the up coming election seasons…doubt it, I’m sure some will try.
Hopefully I was clear enough for the editor.
~ EDITOR RESPONDS — You are too subtle for me. Usually subtle gets subtle results. Let me be plain and blunt as is my wont.
Please don’t try to ask us to believe that those breathlessly pimping the story about how cuts would affect Republican counties were not gloating about it, ’cause they were.
If you want to play paddy cake with that journalistic circle jerk, have at it. Just clean up after yourself.
Better-yet, RUN FOR OFFICE YOURSELF. GOOD LUCK!!!
Richard,
We feel your pain. New Jersey is the highest taxed state for the last 3 years. We have got to do something on the local level. I became active this year in campaigning for the best person to replace the tax-and-spend liberal governor in our state. Many others have joined in the campaing, even though they had never before been involved. We as tax-payers have a say, but the pols are so far removed that we must make our voices heard. Even then, they are not listening and don’t want to. But we can make a difference. Vote, campaign, petition, fax, letters, protest. All of these things are available now, but may not be in the future unless we use them to REALLY CHANGE THINGS. May God bless your efforts and your heart to move into action!
Jennifer
To The Editor:
Taxifornia should be the new name of California.
According to the Web site , California has the highest state sales tax rate — currently 7.5% — in the nation. Counties and local communities in California can add to this rate of 7.5%.
In terms of individual income tax rates, California’s top income-tax bracket is 9.3%. Only Vermont has a higher top tax bracket : 9.5%.
In states that have a single corporate tax rate, not a progressive rate, California has the sixth highest corporate income tax rate in the nation. Only Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island are higher.
California does not need to raise taxes.
If the state does increase taxes, businesses will leave the state, cut payrolls, cut jobs, or close down.
Higher taxes mean more unemployment and greater economic rot.
Richard S. Colman
Orinda, CA
Feb. 9, 2009
The integrity of journalism can always be questioned, but the California Non-Partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office is pretty legit. Though we all have the right to our own opinion, we don’t have the right to our own facts. Data doesn’t lie and it impossible to spin everything.
EDITOR REPLIES — Not sure what your cryptic message meant. Please don’t be so oblique.
For instance the legislative office is quite clear about the facts of the California budget crisis, and is quite up front about the problems with spending money you don’t have then borrowing even more to backfill an ever increasing debt and chasm between income and spending.
So if one is going to get snippy about facts, then stop taking just the bits that make your argument for you and fess up to the big picture.
First, Mark, your point about cuts hurting Republican counties is just mean, and is cooked up news from so-called “neutral and professional” journalists with an axe to grind.
That said, I must say you are half right when you say No New Taxes falls short of the problem. That’s because tax cuts should always accompany deep spending cuts. This is the only way out of the California budget crisis, and all the adults in the room know this simple fact of life.
By your lights and that of the Democrat leadership in the Legislature, you would have California continue to fund government debt with even more government debt.
It may seem there’s no bottom to that tin can, but the sudden stop is gonna hurt.
Just saying no to new taxes isn’t going to get us out of this hole. The only plan that the “No New Taxes” crew put forward covered about half of our massive budget deficit and would have eviscerated funding for public schools. So it wasn’t even really a viable solution because it still fell way short of fixing the problem.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/15/MN0P14OGGO.DTL&type=politics
There have to be new taxes and budget cuts because “No New Taxes” isn’t a proposal, it’s an obstructionist slogan. Additionally, it’s worth noting that any cuts are going to hurt Republican leaning counties the hardest so why not continue to let Democratic leaning counties foot most of the bill?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/06/MNGS15O7NI.DTL