Bracing for Wails from Tax Spenders
Over the last few years, the biggest problem with the state budget has been what to do with all the additional money. California’s general fund spending has nearly doubled in six years.
This begs the obvious question of why the state hasn’t returned more money to the people. A tax cut or tax rebate could offset some of the increased costs of electricity, natural gas and even gasoline that are being absorbed by families and businesses very much due to inaction and wrong action of the governor and the Legislature.
Instead, the governor’s budget proposes a $1.2 billion tax increase on the general public and only $108 million in targeted tax reductions. From where has all this new tax revenue come? Much is the result of growth in the economy, population and incomes of Californians. But in a sense, you could attribute the entire surplus of the last few years to the rise in the stock market.
California is one of the few taxing jurisdictions on earth that gives absolutely no rate preference to capital gains income. Also, over 60% of Californians now own stock in some manner. Add to that substantial increases in all the stock market averages in the last few years. All told, 15% of the revenue in the entire state budget last fiscal year was from capital gains taxes.
Fast forward to today. Have you noticed the stock market averages lately? Most have fallen dramatically from their highs from the spring of 2000. The talk is all of stock options being “under water.”
Unless there is a huge recovery in the market before the end of 2001, capital gains revenue to the state will drop significantly. Of course, anything can happen in the market and that is exactly the point. We need to recognize these revenues for their capricious nature and not plan ongoing expenditures with them.
Prepare yourself for the wailing of those who added programs in the last couple of years that now are without a funding source. Prepare yourself for a call for increased taxes. And prepare to be called callous when you explain that we are already overtaxed and that these programs should never have been instituted in the first place on an unstable revenue source.
In today’s world, our state surplus and the stock market are inexorably intertwined. The programs of liberals are dependent on the exercise and prosperity of capitalism. It has always been thus.
John Campbell
(Campbell, of Irvine, is the Republican assemblyman representing Orange County’s 70th district.)
El Toro, cont’d
An open letter to The Irvine Company:
I’ve enjoyed reading your recent series of company image ads. I have especially enjoyed “Paper, Scissors, Glue and The Irvine Company” which reads: “Every idea is a new idea to a young mind. Everything seen is seen for the first time. Every moment of every day is a discovery, completely fresh, just waiting to be transformed into something wonderful, something meaningful, something that will become the future. If these are the minds of our children, what places could possibly be more important than our schools?”
When I was a young child, my family moved to Irvine, where I was exposed to some of the finest schools and where I began developing and expressing my creativity with paper, scissors and glue. Never in my wild imaginative dreams did I ever think that as an adult, I would one day be deeply involved with the master planning of the reuse of the MCAS El Toro Air Station site. Through the eyes of a child, one can apply paper, scissors and glue to El Toro.
With a clean sheet of paper one can see that the 4,700-acre site can accommodate a world-class international airport in addition to a Great Wildlands Park, both worthy of The Irvine Company’s trademark master planning which protects the community’s quality of life. With scissors, one can cut out the vast open space of the Irvine Ranch and hold it up as a trophy to the achievements of the paper draft reuse plan. The glue: good planning; creating the perfect balance between ideas, engineering and feasibility.
The Irvine Company is correct in that there is no place more important than our classrooms. Irvine Company, return to your first love, pick up the paper, scissors and glue. Apply your good planning to El Toro. I am sure that your classroom can produce an outstanding reuse plan fitting to your Irvine Ranch which strikes a balance between the pro-airport and pro-park groups, such as I have proposed.
Russell Niewiarowski
The New Millennium Group
The OCX-V-Plan
Santa Ana Heights
America’s Protectors
One if by land
The FBI earlier this year found and arrested, right on D.C. parkland, an agent accused of spying for Russia.
Two if by sea
One of our Navy subs, in the midst of millions of square miles of Pacific Ocean, somehow against all odds surfaced at the very spot occupied by a tiny Japanese fishing ship, flipping it.
Three if by air
An Air Force reconnaissance plane, flying along thousands of miles of South China coastline, somehow got hit by an aggressive Chinese fighter pilot, who then went down with his damaged craft.
With unsettling incidents like that, I guess I’ll have to find a different verse to recite to lull myself to sleep at night.
More seriously, we owe thanks to President Bush and his advisors for their grace and diplomacy under fire. And words cannot express our gratitude to the 24 courageous Americans downed in China and to Navy Air Force pilot Shane Osborne.
We rarely take the opportunity to thank the men and women of the Marines, Army, Navy, Air Force, CIA, FBI, and Secret Service for all they do for us. They are special Americans!
Michael Arnold Glueck, M.D.
Newport Beach
