Politics: A new beginning

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
Governor Arnold's first day in office. So much for his plan to balance the state's budget -- we're another $4 billion in the hole after he spiked the car fees, and he wants to borrow $15 billion. Oh yeah, and tell the legislators to find something to cut.

Just to be clear, and after reading the article, by "spiked the car fees" you did mean something like "got rid of the car fees", no?

What are they saying about that screwy property tax system y'all were talking about a few months ago? That seems like an obvious place to start for taxes. At least, it sounds like y'all need some new taxes, because I can't imagine that a state is really doing 30B in wasteful spending on discretionary items. Right?
Ahh, right.

Hello

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
Just to be clear, and after reading the article, by "spiked the car fees" you did mean something like "got rid of the car fees", no?

Right.

What are they saying about that screwy property tax system y'all were talking about a few months ago? That seems like an obvious place to start for taxes. At least, it sounds like y'all need some new taxes, because I can't imagine that a state is really doing 30B in wasteful spending on discretionary items. Right?
Ahh, right.

You can't cut the sort of money necessary to fix things with making a lot of cuts in things people care about, like education. Arnold clearly has no stomach for that. And when one of his advisers, Warren Buffet, floated the idea of increasing property taxes, the outrage shut him up good.

I think the problem in California is that municipalities have no money because of the long-term squeeze in property taxes, and thus the state government had been spending a lot of money on things that counties and cities pay for in other states. But I've never seen anyone explain it this way, so maybe I'm confused.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

If other states decide to stop recognizing Massachusetts marriages, what happens to heterosexual couples married there and living in other states? Can a state discriminate among which marriages it gives full faith and credit to? I assume so, but maybe someone here knows the answer.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
I think the problem in California is that municipalities have no money because of the long-term squeeze in property taxes, and thus the state government had been spending a lot of money on things that counties and cities pay for in other states. But I've never seen anyone explain it this way, so maybe I'm confused.

This sounds right to me. Prop 13 and another prop with a number I can't remember preclude localities and special districts from imposing anything more than "usage fees" and certain kinds of sales taxes. So counties and cities are funded by block grants from the state, which unlike localities can collect the income and capital gains taxes which largely fund state operations in our post-apocalyptic world.

This is why you saw police chiefs and firefighters begging Arnold not to rescind the vehicle license fee. He ate their lunch.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
If other states decide to stop recognizing Massachusetts marriages, what happens to heterosexual couples married there and living in other states? Can a state discriminate among which marriages it gives full faith and credit to? I assume so, but maybe someone here knows the answer.

There's an "infringes state public policy" exception to FF&C. If recognizing the validity of a foreign state's judgment would be detrimental to some public policy, you're not obligated to give deference. I don't know whether the policy has to be fundamental; I doubt it.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
This is why you saw police chiefs and firefighters begging Arnold not to rescind the vehicle license fee. He ate their lunch.

Are y'all talking about a personal property tax on cars or something like a vehicle tag/sticker tax or something else?

If it was the first (personal property tax on cars), that sounds like a boatload of lost revenues. How in the world did they attempt to justify it before cutting huge parts of the budget?

If it was the middle one (standard vehicle tag/sticker tax), that sounds irrational, at least insofar as everybody else in the U.S. does it without complaining (or almost everybody). How in the world did they attempt to justify it?

Basically, how did local chiefs get money from the tax? If he screwed Bratton, it may come back to haunt him. Can you imagine seeing him on TV saying "well, the reason homicides are up 25% this year after falling 25% in my first year, is because Ahnuld took all of our funds away and we had to lay off everyone on 1st watch". Jeezus, that does not sound good for y'all.

Hello

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
Are y'all talking about a personal property tax on cars or something like a vehicle tag/sticker tax or something else?

I think it was both, but more of the former. At least, I recall you could write off a chunk of the VLF on your federal return, which indicates it was really a personal property tax in the eyes of the feds.

Oh, and it was used as an easily adjustible revenue source. That's why it was raised in 2003, and why it was lowered in 2003.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

It's a license fee. There's a requirement of a supermajority for the legislature to pass a tax, but someone decided that this is a fee, not a tax.

Apparently car sales around the state have been slumping as people have been waiting for Arnold to get rid of the fee increase. Which is kind of silly, since car dealers are making much more off you in other ways.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
requirement of a supermajority for the legislature to pass a tax, but someone decided that this is a fee, not a tax.

if Mary Carey had won, and enacted the breast augmentation payment, would that have been a fee or a tax? and might it not have harmed the film industry, down the road.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
If it was the first (personal property tax on cars), that sounds like a boatload of lost revenues. How in the world did they attempt to justify it before cutting huge parts of the budget?
Hello

To be clear, this was trippled by Davis without legislative approval (see Ty's post above). Arnold is just putting it back to the status quo before the power grab by Davis (which, by most accounts, would eventually have been overturned by the courts, though several years and a boat load of revenues down the line).

[The Larry Davis Experience]

Originally posted by sgtclub
To be clear, this was trippled by Davis without legislative approval (see Ty's post above). Arnold is just putting it back to the status quo before the power grab by Davis (which, by most accounts, would eventually have been overturned by the courts, though several years and a boat load of revenues down the line).

To be, um, more clear, the action by the eeeevil spendthrift Gov. Davis to increase the car tax was actually a restoration of the car tax to the level it was at before the virtuous and responsible Gov. Davis pushed for and signed a law cutting the car tax back in the heady days of 1998.

http://www.stopthecartax.com/about/timeline.cfm

In fact, Davis wanted to the tax to be cut even more back then:

Democrat leaders originally opposed any cut in the vehicle license fee, or car tax. The final product reduced the governor's original car-tax cut proposal from 75 percent to 67.5 percent. While his initial proposal called for a first-year 50 percent reduction in the tax rate, effective next January 1, the compromise provides a permanent 25 percent offset against the 2 percent tax based on the value of a vehicle. The $1 billion-a-year reduction amounts to $42.75 per car based on the average annual car tax of $171. The offset also applies to commercial vehicles.

Depending on revenues, the car-tax reduction would be 35 percent in 2001, 46.5 percent in 2002, and 55 percent or 67.5 percent in 2003. The formula for triggering the increase to a 35 percent offset requires 2000-2001 revenues at least $1.5 billion above the Department of Finance forecast, and it takes two years of meeting the minimum revenue test before any level above a 25 percent offset can become permanent."

http://www.caltax.org/MEMBER/digest/sep98/sep98-4.htm

I also disagree with the analysis of the "most accounts" you cite. My understanding is that the legislature didn't have to act because the action was taken in the context of the prior legislation. I don't have the numbers in front, of me, but I'd be surprised if state revenues were $1.5 billion above projections in two years over the period of 2001-2003.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by The Larry Davis Experience
To be, um, more clear, the action by the eeeevil spendthrift Gov. Davis to increase the car tax was actually a restoration of the car tax to the level it was at before the virtuous and responsible Gov. Davis pushed for and signed a law cutting the car tax back in the heady days of 1998.

Please, it was McClintock's bill and baby.

Originally posted by The Larry Davis Experience In fact, Davis wanted to the tax to be cut even more back then:

And what, the GOP held up more tax cuts?

Originally posted by The Larry Davis Experience I also disagree with the analysis of the "most accounts" you cite. My understanding is that the legislature didn't have to act because the action was taken in the context of the prior legislation. I don't have the numbers in front, of me, but I'd be surprised if state revenues were $1.5 billion above projections in two years over the period of 2001-2003.

I guess we'll never know, now that the Governator's running things.

[sgtclub]

I don't think I agree with this in principle, but it's an interesting take.

http://www.nydailynews.com/business/...p-121930c.html

[Lou Dobb's column]

[The Larry Davis Experience]

Originally posted by sgtclub
stuff about car tax

You know, I was going to respond again but when I looked back at the article that, ahem, I myself posted, I realized that the Governor they were talking about was Wilson, not Davis. So, *cough*, I guess much of what I wrote there could be, um, disregarded.

YOU'VE WON THIS ROUND, SGTCLUB, BUT I'LL BE BACK....(Larry disappears in cloud of smoke amid sinister Skeletoresque laughter)...

Aaaanyway, I still think it wasn't necessarily illegal. But, as you rightly point out, we'll never know...because AS has taken away that large revenue source without identifying how it is that he will replace it for the cities and towns (and firefighters and policemen) who depend on that money. Yeah, I know you didn't point out that last bit. I took some liberties, it's what I do apparently.

Do people think AS's plan to finance the deficit with a big bond issue is a good idea? While McClintock himself has spoken out against it, I can't understand why the anti-tax folks who jumped all over Buffett for the Prop 13 comments and derided the car tax hike as akin to theft aren't rallying equally hard against this one. I mean, the debt service has to come from somewhere, and interest on $15-20 billion over 20 years is one heck of a vig. Sounds an awful lot like the new era of "fiscal responsibility" at the federal level to me.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by The Larry Davis Experience
Do people think AS's plan to finance the deficit with a big bond issue is a good idea? While McClintock himself has spoken out against it, I can't understand why the anti-tax folks who jumped all over Buffett for the Prop 13 comments and derided the car tax hike as akin to theft aren't rallying equally hard against this one. I mean, the debt service has to come from somewhere, and interest on $15-20 billion over 20 years is one heck of a vig. Sounds an awful lot like the new era of "fiscal responsibility" at the federal level to me.

Fo shizzle, mah nizzle. On the old PB, some out-of-state ass-hat blamed California's fiscal crisis on overregulation, saying we were "destroyed" by it. My pre-recall response:

Looking around, I'm seeing very little evidence that California has been "destroyed" by anything. For example, we still vastly exceed all other states, and all but I think seven nations, in GDP. And the Bush administration is telling us that a return to prosperity is just around the corner, and we know he's a truth-teller. In the meantime, if you derive pleasure from thinking we've been destroyed, have at it.

What we do have, inarguably, is a problem. California's political culture since the 1970s has caused a irresistible force (legislative and initiative mandates to move basically discretionary spending into untouchable parts of the budget --- thanks a f*cking bunch, Arnold Schwarzenegger) to meet an immovable object (near-exclusive budgetary reliance on revenue from personal income and capital gains rather than more stable property taxes).

I would have applauded the GOP for advocating for budget austerity based on spending controls, regardless of the revenue picture. But the silence is deafening. The modern GOP has made it clear that California's fiscal crisis is actually a good thing, because starving the state of a source of predictable tax revenue, while spending like a drunken sailor, will cause some kind of wonderful Malthusian population crash in the halls of state government, right? Right?

Bush's brightest advisors are setting the nation up for the same kind of feast-feast-feast-feast-FAMINE! diet. Have fun, boys. Laugh while the laughing's good.

Not my best post ever, but it used "Malthusian," so I kinda liked it.