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June 3 Open Thread

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And on to the links:

• Jerry Brown will have to explain the fact that he took a bunch of money from people now embroiled in the growing pension scandal. His office is now investigating the scandal. Personally, I’m really not all that worried that Brown will do anything but the right thing, but appearances matter in politics.

• Well, I still don’t think this is going to happen, but Santa Clara ok’d a plan to build a stadium for the San Francisco 49ers. The stadium will cost a total of $973 million, with about $79 million of that coming from public money in infrastructure funds. Another $35 million from a hotel tax, and the rest coming from private sources.

• Neil Sinhababu brings up an often-neglected part of our budget problems – the fact that California gets back only 78 cents in services for every dollar it pays in taxes.  California’s size has always made it underrepresented in the Senate in particular, and it will be difficult to ever close this gap, though the stimulus has improved the numbers somewhat.

• Even the folks at the U-T don’t think closing the parks is a good idea. Our parks are tourist attractions, so cutting them will hurt sales tax revenues, hotel tax revenues, etc. It’s just another poorly planned idea coming out of the WORST GOVERNOR EVER.

• The explosion in medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles has always been a puzzle to me, so this LA Times story helps me out.  Apparently, it’s a function of a phlegmatic city government – a moratorium on new dispensaries allowed for a hardship exemption, and 500 dispensaries have applied for it, and NOT ONE application has been acted upon by the relevant authority.  In the meantime, the pot stores keep opening.  The City Council is trying to close the loophole, but one might ask why?  Isn’t violent crime down in Los Angeles?  Has the proliferation of these dispensaries adversely affected the city in any way?  In a year, exactly two HUNDRED complaints have been filed across the city.  I think potholes get more complaints than pot.

• AD-15: Republican Abram Wilson will run again for state Assembly against Joan Buchanan, and obviously he hopes that he gets to run sooner rather than later, should Buchanan win Ellen Tauscher’s seat in Congress.  That makes Buchanan’s campaign dangerous, because of the threat to her Assembly seat.

• CalBuzz looks at the “lessons” learned from May 19. Or lack thereof.

• Sen. Pavley’s bill banning BPA moved out of the Senate. BPA has been linked to developmental problems in children and adolescents.

• Darrell Issa’s argument against paid family leave is that North Korea and Iran have it.  Really, that’s his argument.  Apparently he thinks that our laws should be MORE cruel than those countries.

• This is a fascinating case in Silicon Valley. The Justice Department is looking into anti-trust violations between tech companies on agreements not to poach each other’s employees.  It is a tool to artificially keep wages low.  Not cool techsters.

• Yay, the new Reagan statue is up in Statuary Hall (each state gets two in the Capitol), so now all Republicans can genuflect without having to go to church.

9 thoughts on “June 3 Open Thread”

  2. Reagan is seriously the most overrated political figure in decades.  That he is one of only two people California sends to Washington in statue form is really repulsive.

  5. I’m not sure how the 78 cents is calculated, but we might do better in the end if we send less to DC in the first place rather than trying to get more back.

    Can’t we do that by paying higher property and income tax rates here at home,  since both are deductible in the Federal tax calculation? Especially true if the tax rates are progressive.

    Either we pay in CA or we pay the Feds, no?

    If this is true, then I think it’s ironic that the tax control freaks are blithely paying more to the hated Feds in order to keep taxes low at home where the funds would contribute more visibly to the quality of life.

  6. One of the reasons I like Debra Bowen so much is that she was the only legislator who opposed replacing Thomas Starr King’s statue with Reagan’s. When are we going to look at Reagan’s record and call him out for being the disaster he was for the state and for the country?

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