#proposition 30

New Post has been published on http://citizensjournal.us/its-never-enough/

It’s Never Enough

    By Jon Coupal

Chicago, Carl Sandburg’s “City of the big shoulders,” is about to find out just how heavy a tax burden homeowners are able to bear. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has revealed his plan for a massive property tax increase to pay for unfunded pension obligations. And for taxpayers, it isn’t pretty. The mayor wants a $543 million increase in property taxes to cover police and fire pensions, as well as additional taxes and fees to close a projected $745 million budget shortfall.

How much this will cost the average homeowner is not yet clear. Emanuel is seeking approval from the Legislature to exempt those homes worth less than $250,000 from the increase, meaning more valuable properties would absorb the entire burden.

The uncertainty may also be contributing to a decline in home values in recent months, as shown by the Case-Shiller Home Price Index. Buyers may not be so ready to cut a deal that will see them inheriting a massive property tax hike.

In order to illustrate the seriousness of the city’s fiscal crisis, and perhaps to make it easier to extort more from property owners, Emanuel is claiming that without the additional revenue, public safety will be decimated. Twenty percent of the police force and forty percent of firefighters will lose their jobs, he threatens.

Still, two years ago, the mayor foreshadowed the coming tax increase when he warned that in order to pay the mounting bill for government employee pensions — a bill that would triple in 2015 when a balloon payment comes due — property taxes could be forced to go up 150%.

This is a frightening scenario for homeowners, but not so much for homeowners in California. For us, notwithstanding equally daunting pension problems, the good news is Proposition 13. Although city mismanagement is also common to California – a number of cities have been forced to file for bankruptcy in recent years, largely due to exploding government employee pension debt – officials are prohibited by Proposition 13 from soaking property owners to cover up their dereliction. While Chicago homeowners are sitting ducks for higher property taxes, in California, increases are limited to two percent annually.

Add to the property tax limitations that Proposition 13 gives voters the final say on new local taxes and requires a two-thirds vote of each house of the Legislature to increase state taxes, and it becomes easier to understand why it is a target of so many Sacramento politicians, most of whom owe their election to their government employee union allies. If they can eliminate the impediments to tax increases established by Proposition 13, the politicians will be in a much better position to repay and reward their political benefactors.

Without Proposition 13 Californians could soon experience what it is like to live in Chicago without ever having to leave their homes. And it could be even worse. Chicago’s budget director has already gone on record as saying Mayor Emanuel’s property tax increase is not enough.

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Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association — California’s largest grass-roots taxpayer organization dedicated to the protection of Proposition 13 and the advancement of taxpayers’ rights.

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New Post has been published on http://citizensjournal.us/beware-the-temporary-tax/

Beware the Temporary Tax

By Jon Coupal . A coalition of government employee unions has filed an initiative that would extend the temporary income tax hikes that were contained in Proposition 30 and approved by voters in 2012.

If this seems like, in the immortal words of Yogi Berra, “déjà vu all over again,” it’s not your imagination. This is just the tax raisers running their favorite play from “The Book of Dirty Tricks on Taxpayers.” First they persuade taxpayers to accept a tax by marketing it as temporary. Once taxpayers have become inured to paying it, the tax raisers move in to extend it or make it permanent.

Big spending politicians and their allied government employee unions count on taxpayers having short memories to make this scam work. For example, look at the 1.25% sales tax increase political elites pushed in 1991 to deal with a budget gap. A half-cent was supposed to be temporary but when it came time to expire the Legislature placed it on the ballot promoting it as necessary for “public safety.” Voters — by then used to paying the higher tax — swallowed the hook and we continue to pay the entire 1.25% increase initiated almost twenty-five years ago.

There is a saying in football that if a play works once, keep running it until the opposition shows they can stop it. In 2009, the Legislature achieved the two-thirds vote to impose two year increases in state sales and income taxes. Immediately they placed on the ballot, in a special election, an extension of these taxes for two additional years. Voters, still shocked by being hit with stiff tax increases, were having none of it and rejected the extension by almost two to one.

Realizing they had not waited long enough to allow taxpayers to become accustomed to higher taxes, government employee unions, working with Gov. Brown returned to the ballot in 2012 with another “temporary” increase in sales and income taxes in the form of Proposition 30. As the primary spokesman for the tax, the governor traveled the state repeating the mantra, “It’s for the schools, its temporary.” Voters were persuaded to approve another “temporary” tax increase. Now those who benefit the most from higher revenues – California has the highest-paid state and local public employees in all 50 states according to the Department of Labor – are back seeking to extend taxes, that were scheduled to expire in 2019, for another dozen years.

If the Proposition 30 extension, now being called the School Funding and Budget Stability Act, appears on the ballot, it has a good chance to pass. This is because the burden will fall on a minority, upper income taxpayers, and many voters will overlook that high taxes will cause some of our most successful residents to leave for more tax-friendly states, meaning that they will no longer pay any taxes to California.

The most important thing for voters to remember, however, is that if they agree to any temporary tax, it may as well be considered as permanent. As for the Proposition 30 temporary tax, it likely will join the ranks of other “temporary” taxes that seem never to disappear. Among those is the federal telephone tax established to pay for the Spanish American War, which remained in place for 108 years after the war ended.

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Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association — California’s largest grass-roots taxpayer organization dedicated to the protection of Proposition 13 and the advancement of taxpayers’ rights.

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The governor and his Democratic legislators — who constitute supermajority, veto-proof numbers in both the state Senate and Assembly — are all agog over the returns from 2013’s tax revenue. Turns out that at the end of California’s fiscal year, June 30,…

By Nikya Harris

Advertisement for Proposition 30

Students protesting

Castlemont High School is always judged by the bad things that happens in our school community. Proposition 30, which passed in the recent election, works to improve schools like Castlemont.  The proposition seeks to protect schools and local public safety,  by temporarily increasing personal income taxes on the highest earners.

If we had more after school programs, and educational programs then our school would be a success. The passage of Prop 30 gives our kids hope.

 According to the online source www.calaborfed.org, “Prop 30 gives Californians a real opportunity to take a stand for schools and public safety. Prop 30 is the only initiative that will protect school and safety funding, while addressing the state’s budget problems.”

  11th grader Carla Lee said that, “People with more resources and money always manage to succeed" but us, the poor people, “never really get the chance to chase our dreams.” Lee also said that, “Not only Castlemont, but other Oakland public schools will benefit from Prop 30, it will give our young teens a better shot at chasing their dreams”.

 According to www.calaborfed.org, “ Schools and community colleges will lose over half a billion in funding …... students attending the University of California would see tuition increase by 20%" if Prop 30 did not pass.

 Former Merritt College student Joean Harris said that, “Things have totally changed since I was in school.  Getting into community college wasn’t nearly as hard as it is now a days."  Harris continued to state that “Prop 30 is just what Oakland needed.  Young teens need that extra push to complete high school and Prop 30 is that extra push that they need."

While the passage of Prop. 30 may very well mean that tuition and fee increases will stop (or freeze momentarily), there is no evidence that the University of California will use any of the money generated from this tax to actually fund education. Of the $250 million UC expects to receive from Prop. 30, some $10 million a year will go to repay bad bets made by the UC Board of Regents. The UC Board of Regents has become a revolving door with Wall Street (which I will show in detail). Millions in CA Prop 30 tax revenues will be diverted from higher education to Wall Street, thanks to UC Board of Regents.

“These swap deals are part of a dramatic change in UC's relationship with Wall Street. In 1990, none of UC's top management or regents had direct ties to the major Wall Street banks. Today, those banks have a growing foothold among top UC management with direct oversight over UC's finances. For instance, the chief financial officer, Peter Taylor, came to UC from Lehman Bros., where he was managing director for public finance until Lehman collapsed in the largest bankruptcy in American history. While Taylor was at Lehman, the company was hired to help expand UC's debt load. Lehman ultimately was party to one of UC's interest rate swaps - a bad deal that has already cost the university more than $23 million.”

SOURCE:   “Prop. 30 Funds for UC will go to Wall Street,” The San Francisco Chronicle

  By Adam Goldstein and Jacob Habinek (Nov.13, 2012)

“Prop 30 was passed last week by California voters in part to stem the tide of perpetual tuition hikes and the rapid decline of public higher education in the state. But because of the Regents’ predilection for gambling with student tuition money, much of that new tax revenue will be routed away from tuition relief and toward the very Wall Street firms that — with the Regents’ help — created the financial crisis that accelerated the higher education crisis in California in the first place. Since its founding, the UC system has always played a central role, both structural and symbolic, in making the California Dream possible. Over the last decade, it appears that the Regents leveraged that dream to make the UC system a player in Wall Street’s casino economy. As with any casino, the game was fixed. Now the rest of us are being forced to pay for their mistakes.”

I scrolled through the messages on Facebook- “Holding my breath!”, “Stressed out- need to get away from the television.”, and others that expressed that waiting to see how many votes Obama or Romney had captured was causing them a fair bit of worry.  

I was worried too, but not so much about the presidential election.  Rather, I was worried about Proposition 30, an initiative in the state of California to stop six billion dollars in tax cuts and to increase sales tax by a quarter of a cent.  While others had started to celebrate the victory of Obama and were waiting for Romney to throw in the towel, I had heard that 30 was losing badly.  What was the point of celebrating a renewed hope for America if voters refused to invest in its children?  I went to bed with a sense of unease.

As I awoke the next day, I searched for Proposition 30 to find if it had passed, and indeed, while I slept, the votes seemed to tip the other way, and 30 had indeed squeaked by with a narrow victory.

I’m not extremely knowledgeable about political topics.  The bulk of my political knowledge comes from what I hear from more political savvy friends of mine and unions that are around in the field of education.  So certainly the possibility exists that we may not see that money for some time, or at all.  Which would certainly be a shame.

But I refuse to be that cynical.  Part of the reason I got into this profession was because I’m an optimist.  I believe that one person can make a difference in a child’s life- no matter how small.  And whether or not I’m there to see that transformation take place before my eyes, or if it takes root sometime down the line through something I said or did, I believe that we do have the power to change hearts and minds.

Sadly though, I have gotten the feeling that some don’t feel the same way.  It wasn’t too long ago that teachers were regarded as heroes in the community.  And while I don’t feel the need to be hoisted onto shoulders and paraded through the streets (for one, I’m gangly and would probably catch someone’s face with my awkward, long legs), it’s nice to feel respected.  But the two running themes about teaching seem to be:

 We’re underpaid.

 We’re not particularly good at our job/ we don’t want to be there

The first term is somewhat subjective.  Underpaid?  Compared to what?  Certainly I don’t make as much as a professional athlete, but few do.  I live comfortably, mainly because I’ve been pragmatic and responsible in my spending and saving.  I’ll never have a yacht with my name on it, but a small dinghy might be within my grasp.

The other one is more concerning to me.  No one questions the firefighter if they want to be there putting out fires.  But the teacher is seen as someone who begrudgingly goes into work and sulks through the day with little to show for it.  Perhaps it’s because the process of putting out a fire is a better visual representation of a job well done, and it’s harder to represent that with teaching a student about adverbs.  It takes a lot of skill to get up there and refine and tweak a lesson until it’s perfect, something that I’m still learning how to do after a few years of teaching.  And while admittedly teaching wasn’t what I wanted to do since I was a child, it’s something I’ve grown to be more passionate about.

There’s the model of the terrible teacher- that teacher who sits in the classroom and reads the newspaper to his kids, lets them run wild in class, or takes advantage of the trust of a teacher/student relationship.  Do those people exist?  Of course they do.  But I feel they’re the outliers, the exception to the rule.  In general most of the teachers I’ve known have worked hard to become better, even if it wasn’t what they envisioned doing in the first place.  But that doesn’t make for a good lead.