While much attention has been paid to potential tax measures on the 2016 ballot, working in the background is an effort to overhaul the state’s tax system. The recently released Public Policy Institute of California poll shows how difficult a task that could be.

Presenting a proposal for overall tax reform is the Think Long Committee for California, part of the Berggruen Institute on Governance. A central change considered by the Think Long Committee is a tax on services. California has become a much more service-oriented economy in recent decades. Sales taxes on goods, once the main portion of state revenue, have dropped dramatically in the last half-century.

Newly installed Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, a Think Long Committee member, will be driving the discussion on tax reform in the Legislature. He has introduced Senate Bill 8, which proposes to look at a number of changes to the tax system. His bill discusses broadening the tax base by providing a tax on services, evaluating the corporate income tax and examining the impact of lowering the personal income tax.

Brown legacy

The Think Long Committee is also talking to Gov. Jerry Brown, hoping he will tackle tax reform as he puts together his “legacy” agenda.

The idea to broaden the tax base by including services and lowering the sales tax rate was tested in 最佳的在线扑克 the PPIC poll. A tax on services was rejected by 63 percent of likely voters (25 percent favored). Although that number fell to 49 percent opposed (39 percent favored) if a drop in sales tax rates accompanied the service tax.

PPIC reported the share of voters who think the state and local tax system is in need of major change is at its lowest point since PPIC started asking the question in Jan. 2010. The fewer voters who see flaws with the current tax structure, the more difficult it will be to propose radical changes.

Let’s point out, however, that a plurality still thinks major changes are in order.

When asked if the state and local tax system was in need of either major changes, minor changes or is just fine, 44 percent chose major changes; 38 percent said minor changes were in order and 16 percent opted for leaving things be.

However, as the poll indicates, any changes along the lines of major tax reform will require a massive education effort to convince the public, which has the final say.

By Wayne Lusvardi

Tom Elias’ Oct. 2 column in the Redding Record Searchlight newspaper inferred Proposition 31 is only being opposed by some right-wing crackpots. Actually, Prop. 31 is far from only a rightwing issue. It should be an left-wing issue as well. Perhaps the Occupy Movement will take it up.

Prop. 31 is another slush fund for billionaires to play with the public’s money in California. The sponsor of Prop 31 is California Forward, a political organization founded with $16 million in grants from foundations established by wealthy elites.  Nicolas Berggruen, a European billionaire, is the biggest sponsor of California Forward, with a $1 million donation to the pro-Prop. 31 campaign.  Berggruen owns the IEC vocational school chain, which could stand to benefit from Prop. 31.

Prop 31. creates unelected Strategic Action Plan committees that will add an unneeded layer of government between the state and local governments.  State gasoline taxes, property taxes for schools and junior colleges, and vehicle license fees can be diverted from cities and counties to these committees.

Billionaires are not supporting Prop. 31 only to bring about true “good government” reforms.

We only need to look at Proposition 71 from 2004. It granted $3 billion to  a new state stem cell research agency. Where did the money go?

Stem Cell Initiative as Forerunner of Prop. 31

The sponsor of Prop. 71 was Robert Klein, a wealthy real estate developer who donated $3 million to its election campaign. Upon approval by the voters, Klein installed himself as the Stem Cell Institute’s top paid officer, making $150,000 a year for half-time work. In 2008, Klein had to step down as president of the stem cell lobbying group Americans for Cures as a potential conflict of interest with his serving as board chairman of the stem cell agency.

The Sacramento Bee recently exposed that 90 percent of the monies granted thus far by the stem cell agency — $1.5 billion — went to research organizations of past and present board members of the agency.  In 2008, even the prestigious journal “Nature” opposed the incestuous cronyism at the stem cell agency.

Occupy Should Join Republicans in Opposing Prop. 31

The phrase “government by crony” is defined in Safire’s Political Dictionary: “An administration in which advisers qualify not by experience or talent but by their longtime friendship with the Chief Executive.”  Prop. 31 would expand this definition to include actual agency heads and government boards, not just advisers.

William Safire notes that most of the “government of” phrases of the last century (e.g., “government by organized money”) were probably coined to compare unfavorably with the phrase President Lincoln popularized: “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Said Gary Aminoff, president of the San Fernando Valley Republican Club, “The CRP at the convention voted Yes on 31. After the meeting, several people pointed out to the Board of CRP the reasons not to have endorsed it. They all said they didn’t catch it and if they had to do it over they would not support Prop.  31. It was too late to change it because it was voted on at the convention and would take another convention to undo it. I have since suggested they send out a statement stating this and I am still awaiting it.”

Both the left and the should understand that Prop. 31 will undermine representative government and would lead to crony revenue sharing in California.

By Wayne Lusvardi 

Now that stem cells have become obsolete, can California’s entrenched stem-cell research bureaucracy be phased out?  Or will it continue as a white elephant as the state’s budget deficit problems worsen? 

Last week it was announced that, for the first time, heart scar tissue resulting from a stroke had been changed back to normal muscle without using stem cells. This new method is called RNA reprogramming.  

Dr. Victor Dzau, a Duke University professor of medicine and chancellor of health affairs, said it this way: “Right now, there’s no good evidence stem cells can do the job” (of regenerating damaged cells).   And RNA reprogramming apparently regenerates tissues without the dangerous side effect of creating tumors as stem cells do. 

The new method developed at Duke uses a simpler way of regenerating cells than using stem cells.  It simply reprograms the RNA in the damaged cells of tissues back into normal cells.   This new method could potentially treat a variety of diseases, injuries and chronic conditions.  

RNA is an abbreviation for ribonucleic acid.  RNA acts as a messenger from the genes (DNA) in the nucleus of the cell to the ribosome, where proteins are refashioned for specific uses in the body.   Using RNA as a messenger to reprogram proteins is like updating the software in your computer.  

Stem cells are master cells that produce all the different cells in the human body.  It is harder to find out what a stem cell is and does or control it than it is for RNA.  

This newer RNA method of tissue regeneration has made stem cell research obsolete. 

Back in November 2011, the Geron Corporation announced it was pulling out of conducting any more stem cell research.  Geron had spent $150 million over 10 years with nothing to show for all its stem cell research.  Geron was the California-based company that the state’s Proposition 71 was especially designed to fund.   

Prop 71 as ‘Irrational Exuberance’  

In 2004 California voters approved Prop. 71 for $3 billion in stem cell research funding over 10 years.  Prop 71 was designed as an amendment to the state constitution to make it difficult to dismantle it.  The father of Prop. 71, Robert Klein, renamed it the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to give it a private sounding name.  Prop 71 was sold to the public during the “go-go” Real Estate Bubble, promising cures for cancer, heart disease, and paralysis.  

Shirley Tilghman, the president of Princeton University, warned back in November 2004 that stem cell research was a version of “irrational exuberance,” just as the subprime loan mania was. 

The start up of stem cell research was delayed due to lawsuits over the use of human embryos to harvest stem cells.  Soon after the stem cell institute was funded, it erected a large new stem-cell research facility at the University of California-San Francisco campus costing $123 million.  This signaled that the California stem-cell institute had become a permanent part of the state’s bureaucracy.  And with its new building came all the incurable bureaucratic pathologies of self-perpetuation. The California stem-cell institute has become like a stem cell with cancerous bureaucratic growth. 

State-Funded Stem Cell Research Is a Jobs Program 

The $300 million per year in public-funded stem cell research is a mere drop in the ocean of $78.9 billion in bio-med research funding in California in 2008.  State-funded stem-cell research reflects merely 0.4 percent of all bio-medical research in California.  State-funded stem cell research was not only minuscule, but also redundant — and thus unnecessary.  

California Gov. Jerry Brown has cut use of cell phones out for many state employees, saving about $41 million per year.  Why does he not call for voters to rescind Prop, 71 for $300 million of obsolete stem cell research a year?  Instead, Brown has called for cuts in welfare rather than in the provision of luxury public goods and programs such as stem cell research.  

The November 2012 election has a ballot initiative, Proposition 29, that proposes to add an extra $1 tax on each pack of cigarettes purportedly for medical research.  If passed, look for those funds to be diverted to perpetuate California’s stem-cell research bureaucracy funding.  

Science has made stem cell research mostly obsolete.  Will California keep up with science, or perpetuate a jobs program while health and welfare programs are cut?