Mitch Daniels is likely, I’m told, to announce his candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination in the next couple of weeks. Michelle Bachman will, I think, enter the race in June. And it now looks as if Mike Huckabee is also going to run.
Saturday evening, while tout Washington was “enjoying” the White House Correspondents Dinner—and while some of us, I might add, were truly enjoying the lovely wedding of Mary Katharine Ham and Jake Brewer—Mike Huckabee was speaking to the annual meeting of the National Rifle Association in Pittsburgh. It was the right place to be if you’re interested in the GOP presidential nomination. And by all accounts Huckabee gave a very effective speech, striking a populist tone while vigorously taking on Obama’s agenda across the board, linking social and economic issues, and asserting “I want you to know that I stand here tonight as a gun-clinger and as a God-clinger unapologetically.”
Mike Huckabee will enter as the front runner, especially in Iowa. Will Mitch Daniels compete there since Michelle Bachmann is a native Iowan or gear up for New Hampshire, where he will go up against Mitt Romney?
Another poll indicative of the fact that the GOP Presidential race is wide open. The filed will solidify in a couple of weeks and definitely by mid-June.
The measure – which imposed a tight limit on local property taxes – was enacted just as California began to undergo massive demographic and economic shifts, and as the state Capitol's culture was changing.
The unintended consequence was that fiscal power of an increasingly complex state was shifted from local voters and officials into a Capitol that was becoming more crassly political, more ideologically divided and ill-equipped to make effective policy.
The result, more than three decades later, is political paralysis, as the chronic budgetary imbroglio attests.
It is impossible for the governor and the Legislature to make one-size-fits-all fiscal policy for the most complex society in the Western Hemisphere.
Jerry Brown, who was governor when Proposition 13 passed and is back in the gubernatorial saddle again, acknowledges this fundamental problem by proposing what he calls "realignment" – pushing some programs back down to county governments.
========
Read it all….
Uh No.
Dan Walters forgets what happened prior to Prop 13. The cities and counties would tax and spend like drunken sailors. So, would the state – hence the current state of affairs.
Education funding must be equalized because of Serrano Priest so taxpayers will leave heavily taxed counties to less taxed ones and demand the same services.
The Problem today is the failure to reform the welfare system, education system, and illegal immigration.
Without those reforms, taxes may be shifted from state to counties and taxes will massively increase for all. More businesses and young taxpayers will leave for less heavily taxed states.
Goerge Will’s column today illustrates the point that maybe the “Amazon Tax” may not be all that it is touted to be.
Tim Storm, an Illinois businessman until a few weeks ago, is now a Wisconsin businessman. Herewith a story about how states can reduce revenue by trying to increase them and about the economic benefits of federalism.
Storm, 42, is founder and chief executive of FatWallet.com. The company, until recently one of about 9,000 Illinois “affiliates” of Amazon.com, directs online shoppers to online retailers, which often pay affiliates commissions for referrals that result in sales. Storm’s company, which has 54 employees, used to be located in Rockton, Ill., but now is five miles up the road in Beloit, Wis.
One reason online sales are brisk is that the retailers are not required to collect state sales taxes. In 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court held that such taxes must be collected only by companies that have a “substantial nexus” — basically, a brick-and-mortar presence — in the state. Under this rule, Amazon collects sales taxes in only five states.
Illinois, comprehensively misgoverned and ravenous for revenue, has enacted what has come to be called an “Amazon tax.” It requires Amazon and other online retailers to collect the state’s sales tax. Amazon and many other retailers responded by severing their connections with their Illinois affiliates.
Storm responded by relocating to Beloit. No one knows how many other Illinois affiliates of the thousands of online retailers — transactions with Amazon are less than 1 percent of FatWallet’s business — will lose revenue, pay less in taxes, cut jobs or leave the state. When Texas sent Amazon a bill for $269 million because of the “nexus” of its Dallas warehouse, Amazon decided to close the warehouse.
Read all of the piece.
I understand that the California Democratic Party is voting on a resolution today that supports the “Amazon Tax” in California. It would be a mistake for this legislation to pass, as I have discussed many times before.
The Obama Administration unilateral decision to not enforce the Defense of Marriage Act is a load of crap. It reminds me of the Fleebaggers of Wisconsin who fled the state rather than participate and lose a vote on collective bargaining for public employees.
If the LEFT does not get their way, then they pick up stakes and leave. In other words, whatever it takes to win.
treatment centers - public benefit addiction treatment resource directory, offering comprehensive listings of treatment centers for drug addiction, alcoholism and dual diagnosis.
Comments Off 
Entries (RSS)