Budget and Finance
Back to homepageFired official slams state 'fire sale'
APRIL 16, 2010 By KATY GRIMES A complex administration plan to sell state-owned properties and then lease them back from the new owners is being compared to a short-term money raising gimmick by a recently terminited member of the commission
Read MoreRonald Reagan, tax hiker
APRIL 15, 2010 It’s Tax Day, so I decided to dedicate this space to celebrate California’s greatest tax and spend governor. The one who, more than any of the other 38 men who’ve run the state, hit residents with bigger
Read MoreGreenlining Series: Born in civil rights era
This is the second part in a series of articles about the radical Greenlining Institute produced by CalWatchdog and the Examiner. APRIL 14, 2010 By TORI RICHARDS and MARK TAPSCOTT It’s often said that even the best of intentions can
Read MoreMore pain, despite modest good news
APRIL 12, 2010 By STEVEN GREENHUT State officials have been optimistic about the state controller’s March cash receipts report that provided good news about burgeoning sales-tax revenues, but the Legislative Analyst’s Office released a letter today — the same one provided
Read MorePension crater bigger than thought
APRIL 12, 2010 A new report from Stanford University’s well-respected economic policy institute has revealed that those of us who have been warning about California’s severely underfunded public employee retirement systems have, quite frankly, been wrong. We have been understating
Read MoreEntire state government is broken
APRIL 9, 2010 “Democracy,” H.L. Mencken told us, “is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” I was thinking of this little slice of Mencken wisdom while reading an unintentionally
Read MoreCA doing 'everything wrong'
APRIL 8, 2010 By JOHN SEILER A book released April 7, 2010 ranks California among the “States That Do Everything Wrong” on their state taxes and budgets. The other states in that dismal category are Michigan, New York and New
Read MoreBig Brother in your car?
APRIL 8, 2010 By KATY GRIMES Sen. Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, has introduced a bill that would require the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to develop a program to assess drivers for vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax in California. Specifically SB1299
Read MoreFuzzy Math Lessons
The Sacramento Bee reported this morning that 79 schools in Sacramento are finding errors in their new $1.9 million math books. What is truly amazing is that the districts piloted for math books for one month before deciding to use
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