When I grow weary of being a lonely conservative in Los Angeles, when I get frustrated at living in one of the bluest of cities in the bluest of states, when I begin to despair of being represented by a liberal at every last level of local, state, and federal government . . . I [...]
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As Washington stares at rising national debt and projected deficits for years to come, many states are faced with the opposite problem: whether to spend their budget surpluses and, if so, on what. At least a dozen states ended fiscal 2011 with surpluses. Indiana reported one of the largest, with an extra $1.2 billion in [...]
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As states around the country continue to face ongoing projected budget deficits, many elected officials are advocating consumption tax hikes in an effort to close budget holes (see Dayton, Mark and Democrats, Minnesota). However, New Hampshire recently cut its cigarette tax in a move to increase revenue and now Michigan—the state generally regarded as having [...]
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The latest from the Big Labor efforts to strip Republicans of control of the Wisconsin state senate. State labor unions have always been major players in elections here, however, this kind of outside influence on Wisconsin legislative elections is unprecedented. Six million dollars from one interest group for only nine legislative elections? Note thate most [...]
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Legislators finally passed a voter ID bill this session, only to have Gov. John Lynch veto it. This week former President Bill Clinton compared it to Jim Crow laws. We suppose that as long as you’re going to make up stuff to discredit the opposition, you might as well go all in. Lynch vetoed the [...]
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The job-killing internet sales tax law just signed by Governor Jerry Brown will only accelerate the decline of our most populous state. Consider the facts. Already, on the recent ranking of states on the basis of their tax climates done by the Tax Foundation, California is almost at the bottom at #49. On the ranking of [...]
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Comments posted by a Ventura County Democratic Party official on his Twitter account last week in which he wrote that some east county Republicans who testified at a hearing in Oxnard should “just put your white hoods on already” do not represent the views of the county party, Chairman Richard Carter said Wednesday. Carter said [...]
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On Friday, a panel from the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Michigan’s ban on affirmative action. In a split decision (Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action vs Regents of the University of Michigan), Judges R. Guy Cole, Jr. and Martha Craig Daughtrey had the presumption to overturn the wishes of a solid majority [...]
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Conservatives hail it and liberals dispute the story, but one thing is certain about the Lone Star State’s employment success: The number is real. For the last few weeks, I’ve been unable to get a startling statistic out of my head: Since the recession officially ended, Texas has created more than 4 of every 10 [...]
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Senate President Stephen Sweeney went to bed furious Thursday night after reviewing the governor’s line-item veto of the state budget. He woke up Friday morning even angrier. “This is all about him being a bully and a punk,” he said in an interview Friday. “I wanted to punch him in his head.” Sweeney had just [...]
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This week marked the end of a legislative season in which Texas Gov. Rick Perry got pretty much everything he wanted — especially if what he wanted were talking points for a Republican presidential campaign. The Texas legislature passed a fiscally austere budget that left $6 billion in the state’s rainy-day fund, and bills requiring [...]
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Is the state of California about to go “South”? Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone apparently thinks so, after proposing that the county lead a campaign for as many as 13 Southern California counties to secede from the state. Stone said in a statement late Thursday that Riverside, Imperial, San Diego, Orange, San Bernardino, Kings, Kern, [...]
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Minnesota encountered its second government shutdown in six years on Friday as Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton and Republican lawmakers failed to reach a compromise on closing the state’s $5 billion budget gap. Meanwhile, lawmakers in Iowa averted a shutdown Thursday, and several other states waited for governors to finalize their budgets. Without a two-year budget [...]
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Gov. Jerry Brown has signed into law California’s tax on Internet sales through affiliate advertising which will immediately cut small-business website revenue 20% to 30%, experts say. The bill, AB 28X, takes effect immediately. The state Board of Equalization says the tax will raise $200 million a year, but critics claim it will raise nothing because [...]
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Texas lawmakers adjourned their special session Wednesday without passing a ban on Transportation Security Administration pat-downs, to the dismay of staunch conservative critics of the agency. The bill, which would have criminalized touching passengers’ genitalia during hand searches at airport security checkpoints, had already been watered down by the Texas Senate. The upper chamber of [...]
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