Tea Party Express Rolls Through Sacramento

On August 28 from noon to 5pm thousands of Californians will once again march on the Sacramento Capitol as part of the Tea Party movement to protest a government they believe has spun out-of-control and is infringing on their freedoms and overburdening industries which compose the very fabric of California; mining, construction, ranching and farming.

Since Democrats took control of Congress and the White House, conservatives, independents, libertarians and disaffected democrats have become increasingly vocal opponents of the policies they see as growing government spending and power. They’ve taken to the streets in growing Tea Party rallies to decry the stimulus, last year’s bank bailout, the current health care reform efforts and debate over cap-and-trade energy legislation.

Now the Take Our Country Back PAC, has joined forces with the Tea Party movement to organize a 16-day national tea party tour, taking their small-government message to towns all over the country. Two 45-foot buses will snake their way across America, conducting a series of 35 tea party beginning in Sacramento Aug. 28 and ending with a “March on Washington” Sept. 12.

Although Tea Party participants started out as a group coming together to protest wanton government spending and taxes in general, the group is beginning to pick targets, like health care reform and ecologic law blocking business. At the August 28th rally in Sacramento the theme is simple: “March on Sacramento, Save California from Big Government Eco-regulation.”

Thousands of farmers, ranchers, loggers, miners and others from across the state will gather from noon to 5pm to speak out against policies, such as AB 32 a law passed in 2006 that will impose more greenhouse gas emission limits on businesses beginning 2011.

Rally speakers will also target decisions to protect the Delta smelt with waters that are no longer going to San Joaquin Valley agriculture. Tea Party members allege it is reducing state food production and forcing families to lose farms.

Declining Revenues Put Further Crunch on State Budget

Already suffering from a staggering economy, lawmakers recieved more bad news Tuesday during a hearing of the state Senate Budget Committee. At the hearing officials reported that declining property values and the potential loss of hundreds of millions in revenue due to furloughs could further strain California’s budget, contributing to shortfalls in the current and next fiscal years.

Tax officials reported Tuesday that total statewide property values fell by 2.4% in the latest fiscal year, the first such drop since California began keeping records 76 years ago in the depths of the Great Depression. As of June 30, the assessed value of all taxable property in California was $4.448 trillion, down $107.2 billion from a year earlier.

The loss means less money and more misery for already strapped state, local and school district treasuries. Essential public health and safety programs are facing more budget cuts and personnel layoffs, while schools probably will pack more children into each classroom, tax collectors warn.

California’s shrinking property values is yet one of the many tax problems facing the state. At a Senate hearing on Tuesday Franchise Tax Board and Baord of Equalization reported that the State’s two largest tax agencies won’t collect an estimated $350 million in revenue over the next year because furloughs and budget cuts have harmed their ability to audit returns and collect money owed by taxpayers, top state officials said Tuesday.

Furloughs at the Franchise Tax Board and budget cuts at the Board of Equalization account for only a fraction of the $1.3 billion in estimated savings – about $100 million in unpaid salaries. Officials told the Senate committee that the furloughs and cuts resulted in $177 million in uncollected revenue in the last fiscal year, an estimated $367 million this fiscal year, and an estimated $420 million in the 2010-11 year.

The tax agency officials testified that furloughs and budget cuts mean less outreach to taxpayers to explain tax rules, lost audit opportunities because statutory deadlines will have expired, and taxpayers going out of business before collection efforts can be launched.

CA Early Release of Prisoners & The Abdication of Responsibility

Recently, the Legislature passed a package of budget revisions to help California resolve its $26 billion budget crisis. At the time lawmakers closed the massive deficit, they agreed to cut $1.2 billion from the prison system without saying how to do it.

Capitol Weekly reports, “Legislative Democrats will push for a commission to create a new system for prison sentences as part of Democrats’ prison overhaul plan, which will be voted on the floor of both houses Thursday. 

As part of the plan being discusssed, the Legislature would release or divert from state prisons 27,000 inmates in the current fiscal year and another 10,000 in the fiscal year that begins next July.

Nothing says abdication of responsibility quite like forcing a plan to release 27,000 dangerous criminals before they have completed their sentences as their approach to cut corrections spending.

Liberals in Sacramento claim that the only people who will be released are low-risk offenders, and those convicted of non-serious or non-violent crimes, but this should give no comfort to parents and families throughout California. No euphemism can hide what these criminals really are. “Low-risk inmates” are not “low-risk” at all — they are inmates who have been incarcerated for crimes not considered “serious” or “violent.”

 

When you look at some of the crimes that are considered non-serious and non-violent, you will see that some very dangerous individuals could be turned loose if they have their way. Human trafficking, injurious child abuse, stalking and threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction are just a few of the crimes considered non-serious or non-violent.

We know that the real impact of early release on our region and our state will not be reducing the budget, but causing more innocent people to become victims of crime.

Consider reports by the nonpartisan RAND Corporation, and other groups who study prison populations that found that the average prisoner on early release committed at least 13 new crimes before being taken back into custody. Recently the California District Attorneys Association sent a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger saying that reducing criminal sentences to help balance the state’s budget will lead to rising crime rates.

So what can be done to cut $1.2 billion from the corrections budget? Target the bloated prison bureaucracy and reduce unnecessarily high medical costs. The cost of prison bureaucracy has increased 105 percent in the last three years. California pays over $46,000 per inmate! Compare this to Texas’ yearly inmate cost of $18,031. One would assume our prisons are bursting at the seams, but our state inmate population was relatively flat during this three-year span. 

From 1997 to 2008, health medical care costs rose 325 percent. Inmates should not receive a premium health care package while so many others scrape together money to pay for their own health care, or have no health coverage at all.

Early release is not a responsible budget solution.  The first responsibility of Government is the public safety of its citizenry.  The call for early release of inmates is nothing more than an abdication of responsibility by those who support the plan and a slap in the face of all law abiding Californians. 

Sacramento Plans New Homeless Campground

Sacramento officials are working on a plan that would create a campground where homeless people could stay temporarily. A task force assembled by Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson has prepared a report for a proposed “Stepping Stone” campground that would house up to 60 people.

The campground would provide basic services such as running water and garbage pickup.  According to the Sacramento Bee, the camp would be run by a governing board of homeless people, with the help of a social worker or case manager, and would have strict rules against drug and alcohol use and violence.

The proposal would have to be approved by the City Council. If the facility is completed as hoped by the spring, it would open about a year after more than 100 homeless campers were forced to leave their controversial “tent city” outside of downtown.

The plan creates a legal “safe ground” where people without permanent housing could camp without police interference.  Backers say no site has been identified for the campground.

Political Ideology: “Conservative” Label Prevails in most of Nation

According to new data released by Gallup on Friday, conservatives outnumber liberals in all 50 states–including President Obama’s home state of Illinois–even though Democrats have a significant advantage over Reps in party identification in 30 states. Self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals in all 50 states of the union, according to the Gallup Poll.

At the same time, more Americans nationwide are saying this year that they are conservative than have made that claim in any of the last four years.In 2009, 40% percent of respondents in Gallup surveys that have interviewed more than 160,000 Americans have said that they are either “conservative” (31%) or “very conservative” (9%). That is the highest percentage in any year since 2004.Only 21% have told Gallup they are liberal, including 16% who say they are “liberal” and 5% who say they are “very liberal.” Thirty-five percent of Americans say they are moderate.

The bottom line as stated by Gallup is that despite the Democratic Party’s political strength — seen in its majority representation in Congress and in state houses across the country — more Americans consider themselves conservative than liberal. While Gallup polling has found this to be true at the national level over many years, and spanning recent Republican as well as Democratic presidential administrations, the present analysis confirms that the pattern also largely holds at the state level. Conservatives outnumber liberals by statistically significant margins in 47 of the 50 states, with the two groups statistically tied in Hawaii, Vermont, and Massachusetts.

Local gas prices sneaking back up again: $.18 in two weeks

Gasoline prices are creeping back up after declining steadily for about three months.  Gasoline prices have been moving up quickly around the country over the last few months, putting us back up to the highs of last summer. If you’re feeling a sense of deja vu, yes, it’s true, something similar seems to happen every spring. There has always been a strong seasonal in gasoline prices, with prices highest in the summertime when demand for gasoline is highest.

According to the Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento-area prices inched up a penny Monday, and more than 18 cents during the past week, a much-brisker pace than the national average, according to a report released late Sunday.

Sacramento’s average gas price is $3.03 cents, compared to $2.85 a week ago and the same a month ago. Last year, the nation was dealing with near-record-high gas prices, with Sacramento at $4.01 for regular unleaded. Sacramento-area’s record-high is $4.57 reached June 17.

Nationally, the average price at the pump increased 16 cents to $2.77 per gallon during the past two weeks, according to energy analyst Trilby Lundberg in Camarillo. Charleston, S.C., had the lowest price at $2.38, while Honolulu has the highest at $3.07.