2010 California Election Forum

Approaching the Obama definition of “rich”

As cities and schools face financial crisis, the outrageous salaries of public officials seem to be sliding under the radar.

For example, in the small city of Rancho Palos Verdes, the City Manager was just given a raise to $193,415, approaching Obama’s designation of “rich.”

What do the salaries of your local government managers look like? Are they bloated and excessive or are they fair market salaries?

Email me your thoughts at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Just how deep do they expect our pockets to be?

The Governor, liberal state legislatures and a handful of moderate Republicans want to now extend the tax increase and tax you more.

In the last Reality Alert Update, I provided a calculator to show you how much your tax increase will be, beginning April 1. Click here to see it.

The historic tax hike is taking money out of your pocket and putting it into the hands of a bloated, special interest driven bureaucracy (spending is up 40% in just 5 years!).

Surprise. We now find out it is not enough. The deficit that needs to be covered is now going to be another $8 billion.

The solution is to cut the runaway spending spree back at least to 2003 levels, adjusting for inflation. This should be minimum, just the start of trimming waste, duplication and unnecessary programs.

The liberal politicians spent a total of $78 million in the 2002–2003 state budget fiscal year. The state spent a total of $105 million in 2007–2008.

This is how they planned to shrink the bureaucracy?

All of these taxpayer rip-offs are really adding up

The California state government’s waste boggles the mind. Here is a putrid example:

Governor Schwarzenegger created the California Performance Review with “the ultimate goal…to restructure, reorganize and reform state government to make it more responsive to the needs of its citizens and business community.”

Great idea, unless you ignore their suggestions…

The CPR recommends cutting 88 state boards and commissions that are unnecessary and inefficient. They meet once or twice a month and pay the political appointee over $100,000.

The aptly-named “waste board” (the Integrated Waste Management Board) is an example of a taxpayer rip-off to the tune of $2 million per year… It shouldn’t be hard to cut a committee whose name describes its worth!

But rather than taking his own committee’s advice in the midst of our budget deficit, the governor keeps appointing ex-politician friends to cozy jobs at our expense. For example, after Senator Carole Midgen lost reelection, the Governator appointed her to the waste board at $132,000. Nice consolation prize!

It’s time to cut waste, not increase taxes.

Pray for the court as important decisions are made

Oral arguments before the California Supreme Court will begin on March 5. Add this to your prayer list…and your church’s prayer list. Pray for the judge and for Ken Starr, who is representing Proposition 8.

• Protect Marriage loses donor protection case. As you know, I have been the target of a “blacklist” by No on 8 groups. This is because my name and all names of donors who supported Proposition 8 were made public by the Secretary of State.
  
  This invasion of my privacy has a chilling effect on free speech and contributions. So, Protect Marriage went to court to stop this practice but lost. To see one such group, click here.
• Google leads fight against Proposition 8. Google filed an amicus brief opposing Prop 8. If this disturbs you, check out the Google alternative http://www.goodsearch.com/.
• Anti-8 ballot measures. I’ve counted six, none likely to gather enough signatures to be on the 2010 November ballot.
• Churches against Proposition 8. The following churches are urging the California Supreme Court to reject the will of the voters on Prop 8: California Council of Churches, the United Church of Christ and the Episcopal Bishops of California.
• Pastor Jim Garlow of Skyline Church. This Rancho San Diego pastor was on the Larry King Show. You can view the key segments here:
  1. Rev. Jim Garlow - The Fight for Parental and Religious Rights
  2. Proposition 8 on Larry King - Part 2
  3. Proposition 8 on Larry King - Part 3
     
     What do you think? Email me at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .
• Unions against Proposition 8. If you’re a union worker, do you support your name and dues money being used to overturn the Prop 8 vote? More than 50 unions claim to be speaking for 2 million members that support gay marriage. The legal brief presented to the court included the AFL-CIO, Teamsters, United Steel Workers, Screen Actors Guild, California Federation of Teachers and the California Nurses Association. Email me your thoughts at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
• Prop 8 donors final count. No on 8: 43.3 million, Yes on 8: 39.9 million
• Cities and counties against Proposition 8. Watch your city. So far, Sacramento, San Francisco, Berkeley, Cloverdale, Los Angeles, Davis, Long Beach, Palm Springs, Fairfax and West Hollywood have asked the court to invalidate the Proposition 8 vote. The counties of Humboldt and Sonoma also are urging the court to rule against 8.

State legislature to vote on Proposition 8 resolutions. On Tuesday, February 17, the State Assembly and Senate will have hearings on resolutions that ask the court to overturn Proposition 8. Our Reality Alert Update will keep you informed on what to do by phone and email.

What are you going to cut from your budget to replace the $1,500 most families will lose due to the biggest tax increase in California history?

This increase will:

• Cause every working family to earn less
• Increase costs to many businesses, creating great unemployment and less growth and opportunity
• Cause more taxpayers to leave the state

If you’ve got kids or lots of cars, you’re going to be hurt the hardest.

This badly hurts small businesses too.

This increase makes California the highest-taxed state in the nation. In other words, you’d be a lot better off with more money to spend for yourself in 49 other states.

The liberal Democratic legislature, the tax-and-spend governor and a few Republicans who broke their promise to increase taxes have failed to make the cuts in our bloated state government.

Quite frankly, it’s immoral as they force you to pay for unnecessary waste, duplication and corruption.

In past issues of Reality Alert we outlined cuts, all ignored. Spending in the past 5 years has gone up 40%...but is anyone better off?

The votes are in, but the controversy rages on

Here are 4 things you should know about what is happening with Proposition 8:

1. Final Vote

The final vote tally is in: 599,602 more “yes” votes were counted for Proposition 8. That’s 52.3% “yes” to 47.7% “no.” The people have spoken, but Attorney General Brown and other liberals don’t respect democracy or the voters…only their own social engineering.

Incidentally 43 of the state’s 58 counties voted yes. 75% of the voters of two counties—Kern and Tulare—voted yes. 75% of the voters of Marin and San Francisco counties voted no.

2. Attorney General blatantly ignores the law

To the surprise of many, Attorney General Jerry Brown refused to uphold his oath of office and his Constitutional role to “support and defend” the California Constitution to make sure the laws—namely, Proposition 8—are enforced.

Instead of filing a brief to defend Proposition 8, as he was legally supposed to do, on December 19 he filed a brief urging the California Supreme Court to invalidate Proposition 8.

This is the reason we asked Christians not to vote for Brown 4 years ago. Unfortunately, too many Christians did, and the result is a harmful blow to our side of the issue as the judges make their decision.

3. Outspoken pastor gives a public voice to Prop 8 supporters

Pastor John MacArthur has been an outspoken advocate for Proposition 8 and Biblical truths.

Here are four 2-minute clips of MacArthur on Larry King’s show:

Uncertainty. Indifference. Fear.

Why were some churches active in helping with voter registration and explaining Proposition 8 to their congregations…while others were silent or barely mentioned the proposition?

Proposition 8 passed by a narrow margin. And millions of Evangelical voters did not vote, or actually voted against 8 because of confusion.

Why the silence?

That was the question I asked our readers in the last issue of Reality Alert (click here to read the article). And I received some interesting responses.

After all, the real issue here was the direct challenge to God’s view of marriage.

Now back in the hands of the court that started it all

The same judges who declared the voter-approved Proposition 22 on marriage to be unconstitutional…and declared same-sex marriage to be a “civil right”…will now review three lawsuits seeking to declare that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

Arguing for us is Andy Pugno. He should do a great job.

Also arguing for upholding the decision of the voters will be an opponent of Proposition 8, Attorney General Jerry Brown. During the Proposition 22 court case, his representation was totally inept in defending 22 and marriage. We should expect a repeat performance.

Does tax on plastic bags make "cents?"

Democratic liberals in the State Legislature want to impose a tax on each plastic bag you use at the store.

But like most government programs, they don't look at the unintended consequence of their actions.

The first obvious consequence is that this social engineering bill will push the cost up for us all; hurting the poor and those on fixed incomes (i.e., seniors) the most.

The second unintended consequence is that the tax hurts the environment. That's right, plastic actually is better than paper.

Let me explain.

One hundred million new plastic grocery bags require the total energy equivalent of approximately 8,300 barrels of oil. Here's how this energy usage breaks down: extraction of the raw materials, manufacturing, transport, energy exerted in product use and curbside collection of the bags. Of that, 30% is actual oil and 23% is natural gas used for bag production. The rest is for fuel used along the way.

That sounds like a lot until you consider that the same number of paper grocery sacks use five times that much total energy.

A paper grocery bag isn't just made out of trees. Manufacturing 100 million paper bags with one-third post-consumer recycled content requires petroleum energy equivalent to approximately 15,100 barrels of oil plus additional energy derived from other sources, including hydroelectric power, nuclear energy and wood waste.

When the cashier bags a purchase in paper, the consumer doesn't see that it took at least a gallon of water to produce that bag (more than 20 times the amount used to make a plastic bag), that it weighed 10 times more on the delivery truck and that the paper bag took up as much as 7 times the space as a plastic bag during transit to the store.

Finally, one paper bag ultimately results in producing between tens and hundreds of times more greenhouse gas emissions than a plastic bag.

7 common sense steps to solving the California budget crisis

California is in a financial mess:

• We have runaway spending from politicians who promise, promise, promise.
• This spending has surpassed inflation and population growth by huge amounts. It's a spending addiction!
• The budget deficit and wild spending is now greater than it was under the irresponsible recalled Governor Gray Davis.
• The states' general fund revenues have increased about 32% in the last 4 years--and we have now close to a $20 billion deficit!

What we need now is:

1. Cut unnecessary programs. It's mind-boggling that thousands of wasteful programs are taking your hard-earned income. California government needs to build roads, provide better court services and build more prisons.
   
   But give me a break. Why should the government take your money and license locksmiths and fund hundreds of other wasteful programs? Why should the government be marketing agricultural products or help some businesses and not others?
2. Cut waste. Back in 2004, the California Performance Review outlined $32 billion in potential savings over 5 years simply by eliminating duplicate and overlapping boards and commissions--hundreds you've never heard about and shouldn't even exist.
3. Sell surplus property. Millions and millions wasted every day.
4. Outsource and privatize. Hundreds of programs don't need to be government run--they can be handled by private sector businesses.
5. Stop the pension insanity. One city, because of its public employee pension program, just filed bankruptcy. And there are more on the way. The only solution to this crisis is reducing government salaries and benefits for future employees. Now it's better to work for the state than the private sector. This shouldn't be.
6. Deregulate. To generate more revenues, do away with regressive, business-killing regulations. These hurt jobs and retard business growth...reducing tax revenue for the state.
7. Reduce taxes. We are now the 4th highest-taxed state in the nation. The wealthy, upper-income households are fleeing California. Businesses are moving. New business is staying away. Reducing taxes will increase revenue.

What policy does your assembly or state senator have to reduce the deficit?