Budget and Finance

Gov. Brown’s Budget ‘Holds Kids Hostage’

JAN. 6, 2011 By KATY GRIMES In Gov. Jerry Brown’s world, welfare recipients are cashing in, while school children continue to get short-changed. Brown released his 2012-13 budget plan Thursday, warning that spending on K-12 schools, state universities and courts

Supreme Court Rebukes Crony Capitalism

CalWatchdog Staff January 6, 2012

The following first appeared in City Journal California. JAN. 6, 2012 By STEVEN GREENHUT On December 29, 2011, the California Supreme Court handed down what the state’s urban redevelopment agencies (RDAs) and their supporters called a “worst of all worlds” ruling—first upholding

Brown Budget Backs Tax Increases

CalWatchdog Staff January 5, 2012

JAN. 5, 2012 By JOHN SEILER Gov. Jerry Brown today released a budget proposal that reaffirmed his fealty to the public-employee unions. It’s for fiscal year 2012-13, which begins on July 1, 2012. The budget would rise to $92.5 billion

Beautiful Kim Faces Ugly Tax Increase

CalWatchdog Staff January 3, 2012

Commentary JAN. 4, 2012 By JOHN SEILER It sounds like a sequel to a Clint Eastwood movie: The Beautiful, the Bad and the Ugly.” The beautiful is Kim Kardashian. The bad are the tax increasers. And the ugly is the

In California, the Dream Is an Act

Katy Grimes July 26, 2011

JULY 26, 2011 The California dream of an affordable, top-notch state-sponsored education for all is nothing to dream about for legal California students. Just signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown was AB 130, the “California Dream Act of 2011,”

U.S.-Calif. Stuck in Stagnation Spiral

CalWatchdog Staff July 26, 2011

JULY 26, 2011 BY JOHN SEILER Welcome to the desert of economic and jobs growth. I keep reminding people that California actually still is part of the United States of America. That we are not the “eighth largest world economy,”

Rutten's Amazon Attack Ignores Reality

CalWatchdog Staff July 25, 2011

JULY 25, 2011 By JOHN SEILER L.A. Times columnist Tim Rutten continues his tax obsession in “Amazon’s shameful California tax dodge.” He just has it in for Amazon.com. He makes a weird comparison: At the turn of the last century,

Despite Gain, CalPERS Still Underfunded

CalWatchdog Staff July 22, 2011

JULY 22, 2100 By LANNY EBENSTEIN The recent announcement that the investment return of CalPERS for the 2010-11 fiscal year was 20.7 percent does not indicate that it, or other public sector pension funds, are now financially solvent. Indeed, the

Zombie Recovery: CA Jobless Rate Jumps

CalWatchdog Staff July 22, 2011

JULY 22, 2011 By JOHN SEILER California is suffering what I call a “Zombie Recovery.” The state economy is walking, but dead. Today the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released new numbers for June 2011 showing that California’s unemployment rose

Feds Wasted Most of $17 Bil. CA Stimulus

CalWatchdog Staff July 20, 2011

JULY 20, 2011 By JOHN SEILER How did the federal government actually spend the 2009 stimulus money in California? In March 2009 the California Legislative Analyst made a study of proposed spending on the officially named American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. But