by Brian Leubitz [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

Joe Matthews, a former LA Times reporter, and a fellow at the New America Foundation, pretty much shot down two (Republican leaning) radical business moderates, Tony Quinn and Joel Fox, on Fox's blog. As purely political analysis of why the proposition will likely lose, it's quite brilliant. I highly suggest the post if you are at all interested in the measure. But I just loved his take on why this is a waste of time:

I'm not a doctor, but I enjoy practicing medicine without a license. Recently, I've begun diagnosing a California disease called Redistricting Fantasy Syndrome. Most of the population doesn't know enough about redistricting to be susceptible to the disease. But in certain elite precincts, RFS has become a minor epidemic, striking down otherwise sensible moderate "goo goos" who persist in the belief that good process is good for you.

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[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Mark Paul
Senior Scholar
New America Foundation

There's been a lot of coverage of the demand by Republicans in the California legislature that any budget be accompanied by a new state spending limit. Unfortunately, most of the reporting has neglected one key fact: California already has a spending limit.

California's spending limit was passed as Act II of the late-1970s tax revolt set off by the famous Proposition 13 property tax measure. Approved by voters in 1979, Proposition 4, championed by Paul Gann, a co-author of Proposition 13, limited spending by local and state governments to the growth of population and the lower of inflation or per capita personal income. It required revenues collected in excess of the limit to be returned to taxpayers.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Gautam Dutta, Esq.
Deputy Director
Political Reform Program
The New America Foundation

After a fiercely fought primary election, no winner emerged in last week's election in the LA County Supervisor race between City Councilmember Bernard Parks and State Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas. With barely one-sixth of all voters participating, millions of dollars spent, and a race that turned increasingly negative, neither Ridley-Thomas nor Parks could muster a majority (50 percent plus one) in the nine-candidate field. As a result, both candidates must now duke it out for another five months until the November general election -- leaving voters in the crossfire of more mudslinging and personal attacks.

According to some political consultants and politicians, runoff elections are good for democracy. In theory, they give voters a “second look” to size up the top two finalists. But in all honesty, how much more will voters learn about Councilmember Parks and State Senator Ridley-Thomas that we don’t already know? What will we learn from another five months of attack mailers and sound bites?

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Mark Paul
Senior Scholar
New America Foundation

Once a land of savers, America is now the home of the thriftless. Americans' personal saving rate, in steady decline over the last quarter of century, finally plunged into negative territory this year. No surprise there. In modern America the struggle between debt and saving is a rigged contest. It's never been easier to borrow - credit cards, subprime home mortgages, home equity loans, payday loans. But when it comes to saving, about half of American workers, including more than 8 million Californians, are denied the opportunity to save the way people save best: on the job, through payroll deduction to a retirement plan. That is a critical problem.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Mark Paul
Senior Scholar
New America Foundation

Voting just three days before the 30th anniversary of the passage of Proposition 13, the landmark Jarvis-Gann initiative that cut property taxes and triggered a tax revolt across the country, voters in the primary election approved dozens of tax increases in local communities around the state.

By my count from semi-official election results available the day after the election, they passed 26 of 32 proposals to issue school and community college bonds; each of these measures, which raise local property taxes to repay the bonds, required a super-majority (55 percent) vote for passage. They approved 13 of 24 proposals to create or raise local per parcel property taxes to pay for a variety of services, including schools, libraries, parks, and law enforcement; parcel taxes can be passed only with a two-thirds vote. They approved tax increases not just in the liberal Bay Area but also in the Central Valley and Orange County. Overall, they passed 49 of the 75 tax-increase measures on local ballots around the state. And in many of the cases where the measures failed, it was with a majority that fell short of the required 55 percent or two-thirds requirement.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Mark Paul
Senior Scholar
New America Foundation

Like generals who are always fighting the last war, California's pundits are still fighting their way out of the last budget crisis. Latest case in point: George Skelton of the Los Angeles Times, who recently complained again that California's income tax "depends too heavily on the wealthy." In Skelton's world, the wealthy are just like those men mothers always warn their daughters about: they'll show you a good time, and then disappear, leaving you heartbroken. "Their incomes rise and fall steeply with the economy," he writes, "and therefore so do state budget deficits."

Except that's not why California has a budget crisis. As the state controller reported on May 9, personal income tax collections for the first nine months of the current budget year are $1.4 billion over the estimate in Gov. Schwarzenegger's January budget and within a whisker of the amount budgeted last summer. Through the first nine months California revenues are up 1.2 percent over a year ago, thanks entirely to the income tax, which has more than made up for the decline in sales tax revenues caused by the housing crash.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Mark Paul
Senior Scholar
New America Foundation

As usual, California faces a budget crisis. And just as predictably, Californians are mired in budget confusion.

How big is the crisis? a conscientious citizen might ask. The answer is: As big as you want it to be. Just take your pick. An "$8 billion budget shortfall," reports the San Jose Mercury News. "A $10 billion gap," says the Sacramento Bee. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger uses a more technical description: "$20 billion out of whack," he recently said.

This cacophony of numbers and nouns is a big piece of California's budget problem. Not only does California routinely fail to balance its budget, it can't even talk straight about its finances.

In normal accounting and common understanding, a budget is balanced when spending doesn't exceed revenues in a budget year. If revenues are greater than spending, the difference is a surplus; if spending exceeds revenues, the difference is a deficit. Revenues are the proceeds of taxes, fees, and interest on investments.