Tag "Joel Fox"
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Money and costs become central theme of cap and trade
When discussing California’s landmark cap-and-trade legislation set up to pay for carbon emissions, there is more conversation about money than there is about climate change. How much will the program cost? How will the money be spent? How will the
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Polls: Split-roll property tax initiative faces rough road
Two polls were issued last week, and while quite different in the territory they covered, both contained one question that examined the same issue – a split-roll property tax. In one way the results on that one question were quite
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Minimum wage debate heats up in Los Angeles
What if three different studies on the effects of a minimum wage increase in Los Angeles each came up with a different conclusion — who do you trust? That was a question asked at the Town Hall Los Angeles debate Thursday
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Minimum wage debate playing out in Los Angeles theaters
“All the world’s a stage,” wrote William Shakespeare, and political theater on the hot topic of the minimum wage is playing out in smaller Los Angeles theaters. We’re not talking about minimum wage as the topic of a play,
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CalChamber plans another successful year of defeating “job killer” bills
Sacramento’s been taking care of business. Last week, the California Chamber of Commerce, known simply as CalChamber, announced a preliminary draft of its “job killer” bills, an annual list of proposed legislation that will hurt the state’s business community and
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Desalination gaining support as long-term response to CA drought
With California’s snowpack at the lowest level in a century, Governor Jerry Brown announced Wednesday the first mandatory water reductions in state history. “Today we are standing on dry grass where there should be five feet of snow,” Governor Brown said at a
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CA leads nation in job creation — Should CalChamber ‘job killer’ list receive credit?
While surveys of business executives still rank California as one of the worst places to do business, the record on job creation has been bright in the Golden State over the last year. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported
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California’s income tax rate drives NFL players away
Last month on CalWatchdog.com, prompted by the efforts to build a Los Angeles football stadium and lure an NFL team, I wrote on how Proposition 13’s tax-vote provisions were influential in the moves and counter-moves on the stadium debate over public funding.
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Big UC changes may come from private ‘Committee of Two’ meetings
Ironically, in the midst of Sunshine Week, designed to create more open government and freedom of information, the “Committee of Two” considering the financial situation of the UC system – Gov. Jerry Brown and University of California President Janet Napolitano – are
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Top 5 taxes you may see on the 2016 ballot
Last June, I wrote a column forecasting which tax increase measures might be on the Nov. 2016 ballot given the conversations going on then. Time for an update. As is nearly always the case in the political world, situations and
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