Vulture lawyers feeding on high-speed rail

Corruption in all directions
High-Speed Rail is nothing more than a "full employment" act for lawyers looking to drain dry both sides.

• By a pure accident of fate, the trial lawyers fully fund the Democrat Party that demands the useless pork barrel rail system that will employ an army of lawyers for years on end.
• A perfect circle of corruption.
• The property rights of local people are being crushed in order to line the pockets of lawyers up and down the state.

Real estate attorneys are seizing a monumental opportunity as the People's Republic of California lumbers ahead with its high-speed rail plans in the central San Joaquin Valley.

The Fresno Bee reports that with 1,100 or more pieces of property in the path of the proposed route between Merced and Bakersfield, lawyers who specialize in eminent domain cases could see business spike over the coming months as the state's High-Speed Rail Authority starts trying to buy land for rights of way.

A sign posted at a home close to the train's proposed
route near Hanford, in Kings County.

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2012/12/25/3113242/valley-land-a-likely-issue-for.html#storylink=cpy

"I think there's going to be a lot of attorneys who have never handled an eminent domain case who will suddenly be experts," said C. William Brewer, an eminent domain specialist with the Fresno law firm Motschiedler, Michaelides, Wishon, Brewer & Ryan.

Up and down the Valley, the rail authority anticipates spending tens of millions of dollars to buy the land it needs in Merced, Madera, Fresno, Kings, Tulare and Kern counties. The agency hopes to begin construction next year on a stretch of about 30 miles from northeast of Madera to the south end of Fresno -- the first portion of what is ultimately planned as a 520-mile system linking San Francisco and Los Angeles.

But some vocal property owners, including farmers, are loathe to part with their property and have vowed to force the state to use its power of eminent domain -- a potentially costly and time-consuming ordeal.

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2012/12/25/3113242/valley-land-a-likely-issue-for.html#storylink=cpy

Eminent domain, or condemnation, is a legal process by which a government agency can declare a public need for property and sue to acquire it if the government cannot reach agreement with the landowner. A judge decides whether the agency is entitled to the property; in a second phase, a jury decides the fair market value and other compensation due the owner.

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2012/12/25/3113242/valley-land-a-likely-issue-for.html#storylink=cpy

KFI 640 AM John and Ken on California's High Speed Rail

The rail authority last week identified four companies that it plans to hire, at a cost of $34 million, to negotiate the rights-of-way purchases in the Valley: Hamner Jewel Associates of Pismo Beach, Continental Field Services Corp. of Virginia, Universal Field Services of Oklahoma, and Golden State Right of Way Team in Sacramento.

Those four companies will be tasked with not only negotiating with property owners to buy their land, but also to survey, appraise and perform environmental assessments on the properties, handle utility relocation, and provide relocation assistance to businesses and homeowners that will be displaced by the line.

Amtrak Rail Map.
California already has a rail system in place.
But leaving the current system in place means
there is no new tax money to steal.

After the state appraises a parcel, it can make an initial offer to a landowner. The owner has the right to have his own appraisal done at the state's expense.

But if there is a chasm between what the state wants to pay and what the owner believes he or she is due, the state can proceed with a public hearing on what's called a resolution of necessity to seize the land. Negotiations, however, can continue all the way through the process, even into a trial.

"These public agencies typically send out a right-of-way agent, and these guys are pretty savvy," Brewer said. "Their job is to try to talk the property owner into accepting the initial offer and discourage them from talking to an attorney."

Attorneys don't come cheap. Some charge based on their billable hours invested in a case. Some charge a contingency fee based on a percentage of the amount ultimately recovered, while others base their contingency percentage only on what they successfully gain for their client above the government's original offer.

In some instances, if a judge determines that the government's offer was unreasonably low, the court can order the state to pay the property owner's legal fees as part of the award.

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2012/12/25/3113242_p2/valley-land-a-likely-issue-for.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2012/12/25/3113242_p2/valley-land-a-likely-issue-for.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2012/12/25/3113242_p2/valley-land-a-likely-issue-for.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2012/12/25/3113242_p2/valley-land-a-likely-issue-for.html#storylink=cpy

(Fresno Bee)

Chevron moving 800 California jobs to Texas

Texas gets 800 more California jobs

• More taxpayers leave the People's Republic.
• Insane Socialist Democrats attack and attack the "evil" oil companies that provide natural gas to heat our homes, oil for our economy and good paying jobs.
• Being of low intelligence, Democrats fail to understand that you need taxpayers if you want to fund your la-la land Socialist welfare state.

SAN RAMON, Calif. — Chevron Corp. is moving 800 jobs in the San Francisco Bay area to Texas.
.

The shift of about a quarter of the petroleum giant's San Ramon headquarters staff will take place over two years.

The San Francisco Chronicle says the employees, most of them in technical positions dealing with information and advanced energy technologies, will be transferred to Houston.

Chevron notified employees in an email.

Chevron was founded in California in 1879.



San Ramon will remain Chevron's corporate headquarters, where there are currently about out 3,500 employees. Another 3,000 Chevron employees work elsewhere in the San Francisco Bay area, most of them at the company's refinery and technology center in Richmond.

The jobs that will move to Houston come from five organizations within Chevron dealing with information technology, advanced energy technologies and business development.

In recent years, Chevron and its competitors have placed more emphasis on oil exploration and production, known as the "upstream" end of the oil industry. High petroleum prices have made pumping and selling oil far more profitable than refining it into gasoline, known as the industry's "downstream" side.

Chevron's business investments reflect that trend. The oil company, America's second largest, plans to spend $36.7 billion on large capital projects next year. About 90 percent of that money will go toward upstream operations - building facilities to extract oil and natural gas from the earth - while 7 percent will be devoted to downstream.


Read more: (sfgate.com)          (KTVU.com/news)

The future of California

$483,581 in pay for one policeman

The Rape of the Taxpayer
Police are supposed to stop rape.  Instead police around California eagerly join in a rape of the taxpayers.

• Outlandish pay and pensions for government workers with no money to pay for them.

California Highway Patrol division chief Jeff Talbott retired last year as the best-paid officer in the 12 most-populous U.S. states, collecting $483,581 in salary, pension and other compensation.

Talbott, 53, received $280,259 for accrued leave and vacation time and took a new job running the public-safety department at a private university in Southern California. He also began collecting an annual pension of $174,888 from the state reports Bloomberg News.

Union-negotiated benefits, coupled with overtime that can exceed regular pay and lax enforcement of limits on accumulating unused vacation, allow some troopers to double their annual earnings and retire as young as age 50.

The payments they get are unmatched by those elsewhere, according to data compiled by Bloomberg on 1.4 million employees of the 12 states. Some, like Talbott, go on to second careers.

Comrade Governor Brown hasn’t curbed overtime expenses that lead the 12 biggest states or limited payouts for accumulated vacation time that allowed one employee to claim a $609,000 check last year for accrued leave at retirement.

California’s liability for the unused leave of its state workers has more than doubled in eight years, to $3.9 billion in 2011, from $1.4 billion in 2003, according to the state’s annual financial reports.

Inflated Earnings

California’s highest-paid state troopers make far more than those in other states, with overtime and lump-sum payouts that inflate earnings, data compiled by Bloomberg show. They also enjoy a retirement benefit that allows them to leave after 30 years with annual pensions totaling 90 percent of their salaries, a standard that became the model for police departments throughout the state.

While more than 5,000 California troopers made at least $100,000 in 2011, only three in North Carolina did, the data show.

Talbott’s $483,581 in total pay -- adding six months of his $174,888 annual pension, based on his June 30, 2011, retirement date -- is almost four times as much as the $122,950 collected by the top-paid officer in North Carolina, a commander, the data show.

Talbott, who retired last June, took a job the following month as director of public safety at the University of Redlands. The university declined to release his pay.

Talbott’s former colleague James P. Leonard, 51, was the second-highest paid trooper in the country when he retired last year, collecting earnings of about $392,000, including salary, pension and a lump-sum payout of $201,555, according to data provided by the state controller and Calpers.

Talbott declined a request to be interviewed, said Patty Zurita, communications manager at the University of the Redlands in Redlands, California, where he now works.

For the full article go to Bloomberg News.

California's failed education system and the little red schoolhouse

The Old Leona Valley Schoolhouse was built around 1915.
The school was built by volunteer labor at a cost of only $1,500.

Too much money is the problem with education

• Strange as it may sound, the more money that is spent on California education, the higher the rate of kids dropping out and of illiteracy.
• These endless billions are not spent on education.  The money is stolen by special interest groups from businesses to bureaucrats to administrators to unions.  Everyone is feeding at the trough.

By Gary;

Let's get down to the basics.  What is really required for a child to learn?  Simply you need a room with four walls, a roof, a book and a teacher.

So the next question is, "Where the Hell are the countless billions spent on education going?" 

Stolen by interest groups is the answer.  Education spending has nothing to do with education.  The spending has everything to do with lining the pockets of businesses providing overpriced services, administrators, labor unions and pensions.

The articles below caught my eye.  The articles are about a simple one-room schoolhouse in Los Angeles County.

My mother and millions of other kids were educated in a one-room schoolhouse.  Somehow the world managed to survive and even learn.  Today many kids are being homeschooled.  That is as close to a one-room school as you can get.  Plus they are scoring well on tests.

So when the Education Lobby demands more taxes to feed their broken machine, remember the little red schoolhouse and just say no.

Leona Valley Schoolhouse Seeks Historical Status

 

LEONA VALLEY - A one-room schoolhouse could receive historical status. The Old Leona Valley Schoolhouse was built around 1915 by volunteers for about $1,500, according to the West Antelope Valley Historical Society.
.

It is one of the only schools still standing from the region's homesteading boom, when pioneers settled what was then the Leonis Valley. On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors agreed to ask the state to grant historical status to the schoolhouse.

The wood-frame building, once bright yellow with a red roof, reflects the Victorian ``little red schoolhouse'' tradition and was also used by local ranchers for dances, prayer meetings and other social events. It was moved from its original location in about 1938 and served for a time as a gun club, hosting Hollywood stars who came to the area to hunt and fish.
.

The simple structure sits at the top of hilly rural property on Elizabeth Lake Road, next to a museum that houses period artifacts and ancient wine making equipment from the Ritter family's winery. The Ritter family were among the first settlers in Leona Valley.
.

The historical society plans to submit an application asking the California Office of Historic Preservation to designate the schoolhouse as a California Point of Interest.
.

(avnewstodayonline.com)


97-year-old who taught in one-room schoolhouse


The LA Times spoke to Martha Forth, who obtained her teaching credential at USC, about starting work at a rural one-room schoolhouse in 1938 in an article titled, “Group aims to restore 1915 schoolhouse, teach local history inside.”

Forth, who is now 97, says that her heart sank when she saw the building. “I thought, I can’t do this,” recalled Forth.

The building stood in a field in the remote Leona Valley, about 10 miles west of Palmdale. There were a couple of outhouses, a windmill that pumped water to the building and no electricity.

Forth knew she had to take the job. It was August. City schools had already hired their new teachers in the spring. And with the country still in the Great Depression, it wasn’t wise to be too picky, she figured.

Decades later, Forth, now 97, described her teaching days at the Old Leona Valley Schoolhouse as some of the most rewarding of her life. Today she is among several old-timers, local history buffs and descendants of area pioneers who are supporting efforts to restore the heirloom structure and get it designated as an official California Point of Historical Interest.

“It would be wonderful if they could restore enough of it so that people realize what it really was like when it was a one-room school,” said Forth, speaking by phone from her home in Laurie, Mo.

Leona Valley is in the mountains to the west of the Mojave Desert
community of Palmdale in Los Angeles County.

Leona Valley is still rural today.

Government Psychiatrists Paid $822,000

Just drop your pants and bend over 
Idiot Democrats need more of your money to pay for $822,302 a year government psychiatrists

• The psychiatrist was paid almost five times as much as Comrade Governor Jerry Brown.
• Mentally ill Democrats could care less about spending.  After all, it is all "magic" money that appears on command after periodic gang rapes of taxpayers who work of a living. 

The lunatics have taken over the mental asylum called the People's Republic of California.

Last year government employee Mohammad Safi took home $822,302, all of it paid by taxpayers.

Mohammad Safi is a graduate of a medical school in Afghanistan.  He began working as a psychiatrist at a California mental hospital in 2006, making $90,682 in his first six months.

Bloomberg News reports Safi benefited from what amounted to a bidding war after a federal court forced the state to improve inmate care. The prisons raised pay to lure psychiatrists, the mental health department followed suit to keep employees, and costs soared.


Last year, 16 California psychiatrists, including Safi, made more than $400,000, while only one did in the other 11 most populous states, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The jockeying between agencies for the same doctors demonstrates a payroll system run amok and chronic mismanagement, said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean at the Yale University School of Management and founder of a training institute for chief executive officers.

“Even though this all took place in California, such apparent recklessness is almost too over the top for Hollywood,” Sonnenfeld said. “These irresponsible public officials have artificially constrained the market with an unnaturally limited supply pool, either due to laziness, incompetence, corruption or all of the above.”

Safi’s compensation was almost five times as much as Governor Jerry Brown’s last year.

(Bloomberg News)

 

California - Free Cell Phones for Homeless

A Karl Marx Wet Dream  -  Free taxpayer paid for crap for everyone

• Assurance Wireless' Lifeline taxpayer funded plan will provide 250 "free" minutes of talk time and 250 "free" text messages per month to the poor and homeless.

 

 

From each accord to his ability, to each according to his need for wireless services.

Now we have some sick Socialist wet dream come true.  The homeless and other poor people in the People's Republic of California are on track to get virtually free cell phones so they can keep in touch with family and others "crucial" to improving their lives.

The cell phones would be handed out through a Federally funded Lifeline program - already operated by service provider Assurance Wireless in 36 other states - that is likely to win final approval in the next couple of weeks from the California Public Utilities Commission reports the San Francisco Chronicle.



State PUC officials have been reviewing the Lifeline proposal from Assurance Wireless for three years. Word came that all but a minor detail had been approved, ending years of effort by advocates for homeless people.

"This is great - it is transformative for homeless and low-income people," said Bevan Dufty, San Francisco's head of homeless initiatives, who has been one of the program's most ardent advocates. "I expect San Francisco to be in the forefront and a model city for this program.

Dufty said if the program launches as expected, it would greatly help an initiative he is trying to start that would let the homeless call a 311 number to find out where and when a shelter bed is available. This would reduce staff work and save the homeless hours of waiting in line and walking miles between booking offices.

"This cell phone program is an exciting change for homeless people and for the state of California," said Jennifer Friedenbach, who as head of the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness also urged approval.

The state's decades-old Lifeline program pays for all but a few dollars of the monthly phone bill for poor people, generally meaning those whose annual income is below $14,702.

(San Francisco Chrolicle)

Bankrupt Los Angeles votes to build a $125 million streetcar



Los Angeles had the finest public transportation system in the world
until the government tore it out in order to spend money on buses.

Democrat Los Angeles votes to go deeper into debt

• The bankrupt city of L.A. wants to spend $125 million on a new streetcar that will travel only four miles.
• New taxes would be placed on property owners.

Downtown Los Angeles voters have approved a streetcar funding measure aimed at helping the city get people out of their cars.

In a special election, voters supported creation of a tax-assessment district to raise as much as $85 million of the $125 million needed to build a 4-mile trolley loop.

The tax would only be levied on property owners if the project passes an environmental review and receives matching federal funds.

If approved, it could be running by 2015 and would link the Civic Center and far-flung destinations such as Staples Center arena, Disney Hall and the fashion district.

It would run mainly along Broadway, Hill and Figueroa streets. Proponents believe it could see 10,000 riders a day.

The area is already served by buses, shuttles and light-rail lines, but residents say it's still hard to get around. Civic boosters see public transit as one key in restoring the luster of an area that was a thriving center decades ago for dining, theater and shopping.

The last streetcar trundled along downtown streets in 1963 before being supplanted in popularity by more flexible choices provided by cars and freeways.

Read more: San Francisco Chronicle

Pacific Electric had over 500 miles of inter urban track in Los Angeles in the early 1900's. The image shows the "Red Cars" stacked for sinking in Los Angeles Harbor - sunk ostensibly for "fish habitat", but really sunk for General Motors Corporation profit.

The Los Angeles Red Car Rail System Built in 1901.
.
Government Insanity
#1)  First you build an extensive light rail system.
#2)  Then you tear down that extensive light rail system.
#3)  Now you raise taxes to build another light rail system
to replace the light rail system you just tore down.
.
Yes, the Government is run by idiots.

Republican lose yet another Assembly seat

A new Democrat elected by 145 votes. 
There will likely be a recount in the Fox-Smith race, which could push out the final election results even further. Ron Smith was a well-funded Republican out-fundraised Fox better than 10 to 1.  The GOP candidate was defeated in what had been a fairly conservative district.

More Republican Weakness
High Desert district of Palmdale and Lancaster goes Democrat

• Demographic changes in the once Conservative and Anglo Antelope Valley.
• Palmdale is now 54% Hispanic and 15% African-American.
• Lancaster is now 38% Hispanic and 20% African-American.

The final vote update from Los Angeles County on Sunday gave Democrat Steve Fox a slight lead over the presumed Republican victor in the 36th Assembly District, putting the seat in the Democrats' column by a margin of just 145 votes.

Fox trailed Republican Ron Smith by about 2,000 votes the day after the Nov. 6 election, according to local reports, but the gap narrowed in recent weeks as remaining absentee and provisional ballots were counted. The final count by Los Angeles County, one of three counties in the district, put Fox ahead with just over 50 percent of the vote.

A win in the 36th Assembly District gives Democrats control of 55 seats in the lower house – one above the supermajority Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez secured with another Election Day upset reports the Sacramento Bee.

Fox is unlikely to be a sure vote for Democrats in the 2013-14 Legislature, however. The attorney and teacher ran as a Republican in a 2008 Assembly contest and has signed the Americans for Tax Reform pledge against raising taxes.


Ron Smith for Assembly 

Smith said Sunday that he plans to seek a recount. He said a stronger-than-usual Democratic tilt for provisional ballots in his district and other races has left him with the belief that "there is a political group that has learned how to manipulate the election by playing with provisionals."

Those are ballots cast in cases in which a voter who has requested an absentee ballot has moved within a district without updating his or her registration, or when a voter not on the polling place roster shows up in person to cast a ballot.

"No one, including myself or any consultant, could have conceived that I was over three percentage points ahead after the election … and now the provisionals came in … that it would overturn the (results)," he said. "Mathematically, statistically, that just doesn't happen."

Given his lead, Smith had been preparing to be sworn into the state Legislature along with the other 79 members of the Assembly today.

"I had most of my staff getting ready to be hired, my picture was up on the wall, I had my office that was assigned to me, and I already had two pieces of legislation that were going to be introduced Monday," he said.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/12/03/5026015/pefpeojfesopf-poepo-jpof-efpeof.html#storylink=cpy

Republican Ron Smith had already been assigned an office.

The collapse of the California Republican Party

California voters gather around to see
a rare site - the nearly extinct Republican elephant.

The GOP is in a free fall
Republican voter registration in California has collapsed down to 29%

• Once solidly Republican Orange County is moving to the Democrats.
• The formerly GOP counties of Ventura, San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino all voted for Comrade Obama.
• In 2012 Republicans lost Congressional seats in solid middle class districts in San Diego, Ventura County, Palm Springs, the San Gabriel Valley and Sacramento.
• Democrats hold two-thirds plus majorities in the state legislature.

Orange County was once an instant synonym for Republican power, and the GOP's dominance looked impregnable. Now, battered by the recent election results and dismayed by the slow, steady decline in party registration, Republicans here are struggling to craft a new strategy.

The percentage of registered Republicans has eroded — it now stands at 41% — and the party has long since lost control of the political districts that envelop the county seat of Santa Ana, a Latino-dominated city of 330,000, and surrounding communities in the county's core.

The 2012 election brought more blows. For the second time, the once-red city of Irvine voted for Barack Obama over the Republican candidate. And a northwestern chunk of the county fell to the Democrats when GOP Assemblyman Chris Norby, an outspoken conservative, lost to Latina schoolteacher Sharon Quirk-Silva reports The Los Angeles Times.

Asked to explain the loss, Scott Baugh, chairman of the county's Republican Party, attributed it to "not fully appreciating the demographic shift and not seeing it in time."

Baugh and other Republicans say Latinos belong naturally in the GOP, citing a cultural emphasis on faith, family, education and the value of hard work.

If Congress deals with the immigration issue, "It's game on again in terms of a competition of ideas and values," Baugh said. "You could wipe out a decade of declining registration by demonstrating to the Latino community that the values they have are the values we have."

Right now, with the immigration issue near the top of Latinos' concerns, many Republicans say their core message of liberty, family values and a free market falls on deaf ears.

In only a few years there has been a serious drop in Orange County Republican voter registration in solid middle class neighborhoods. If the GOP cannot attract the middle class then the party is finished.

"The Republican Party has done such a poor job of, one, messaging; and two, letting themselves be demonized and not fighting back," said Teresa Hernandez, who runs the immigration reform committee for the Lincoln Club of Orange County, a conservative group. "If I knock on the door and say, 'I'm a Republican,' they don't want to hear what I say on the economy or education because they have it in their mind that I'm a bigot."

To appreciate the scale of the countywide political shift, consider that in mid-1996, when registered Republicans eclipsed Democrats 52% to 32%, no Orange County Democrat held a single partisan elected office on the county, state or federal level.

This is the county that yielded conservative firebrands Robert K. Dornan and Wally George, and has long been associated publicly with right-of-center social causes, as in the late 1970s, when a state senator from Fullerton launched a ballot measure to bar gay teachers from California schools.

By a recent count, about 34% of the county's roughly 3 million people are Latino — a powerful voting bloc with strong Democratic leanings. In the presidential election, President Obama won 71% of the Latino vote nationwide to Mitt Romney's 27%.

When President George W. Bush came to Irvine in 2006 to pitch his immigration reform plan — which involved a guest-worker program — some local notables in his own party refused to attend, criticizing his plan as amnesty for illegal immigrants. Dana Rohrabacher, the longtime Republican congressman from Huntington Beach, noted that a photo op with the president would be politically imprudent in such a setting.

Former Orange County GOP Assemblyman Van Tran
The anti-Communist Vietnamese community in California has given the Republicans a much larger share of the vote than most other immigrant groups. To win Republicans need to recruit candidates who can speak the language of immigrant groups and relate to their issues.

Irvine offers a window into the GOP's struggles.

• Irvive is now 40% Asian-American.

Joseph Cruz, an Irvine tax attorney and second-generation Filipino American, went to the polls feeling no hesitancy about which party to vote for. A path to citizenship for America's undocumented population was a top priority, which he said aligned him with Democrats.

"People assume it's a Latino thing," Cruz said of immigration reform, but as an Asian American, he feels estranged from Republicans who "haven't said anything that's really solution-based."

Cruz, 36, reflects the changing face of Irvine, Orange County's third-largest city and its emblematically master-planned centerpiece, where the Asian population has shot from 8% in 1980 to nearly 40% now.

A decade ago, nearly half of Irvine voters registered Republican. It now stands at 33%, barely outnumbering Democrats. It's possible Irvine may soon join the county's two largest cities — Santa Ana and Anaheim — where Democrats already outnumber Republicans.

Countywide, Romney beat Obama 52% to 45%, but in Irvine, the percentage was nearly inverted: voters chose the president over Romney 52% to 44%.

Cruz said his Philippines-born father, who found a path to U.S. citizenship by joining the U.S. Navy in the 1960s, votes Republican out of a belief in low taxes and a strong military. But "it's hard for me, a working professional, a child of immigrants who's not white, to associate myself" with the Republican Party, Cruz said.

The GOP's decline in Orange County doesn't translate automatically into Democratic votes. Independent voters constitute large percentages in Orange County's three biggest cities. In Irvine, by the latest count, those who registered "other" stood at about 35%, a larger percentage than the two big parties.

With the election wounds fresh, the GOP is debating with added urgency how to recast its message and strategy.

Aggressively recruiting Latino candidates for the GOP is crucial, said Hernandez, of the Lincoln Club. "If they're Hispanic and Republican and want to run, we need to bend over backward to help them run," Hernandez said.

Jobs - Goodbye California, Hello Arizona

From San Francisco to Arizona
The on-line customer review firm "Yelp" was founded in San Francisco, but magically when it came time to expand they went to lower cost and lower tax Scottsdale, Arizona.

Thank a Socialist Democrat!
A business group in Arizona is flying CEOs to the state to take jobs away from California


ABC News reports that Phoenix, Arizona is jumping into the fray, trying to bring California businesses to their city.
On election night, Governor Jerry Brown celebrated the passage of Proposition 30. 54 percent of voters decided to raise income taxes on the state's top earners and agreed also to a hike in sales taxes.

"We think the recent tax package that was passed that really targets what we call high performers or producers from an economic perspective will really start to dislodge the serial CEO and Management talent from the Silicon Valley," said Barry Broome, chairman and CEO of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council (GPEC).

In a bid to turn that into an opportunity, the GPEC launched a new program this week aimed at luring California companies away.

"We think this is gonna happen," Broome said. "We know Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, South Carolina are gonna be in the market talking to California businesses so we want to make sure we get present an opportunity for Greater Phoenix."

Under the California 50 Program, the Phoenix group hopes to fly in 50 CEO's. They're interested in luring leaders of companies with 200 employees or more to introduce them to Arizona's lower tax structure.

Some California companies like Yelp have recently expanded into places like Scottsdale, a suburb of Phoenix.

(ABC News)

Yelp employees at the foosball table in their new Scottsdale office.
The new Scottsdale office of an Internet business review company is hiring up to 170 more people this year.
.
Yelp’s sales development positions start at $30,000 and gradually increase to $57,000, with training opportunities, while account managers start at $40,000.
.
About 80 employees moved into their office at the Scottsdale Galleria.  With a foosball and ping pong table, Wii system, free breakfast and lunch, and outings to baseball games and tubing trips on the Salt River, Yelp appeals to younger workers.
.
(az4advancedbusiness.com)

The One-Party Marxist People's Republic of Californa
In addition to voting to "soak the rich" with new taxes, California voters ushered in a new era in state politics not seen in nearly eight decades: Now, for the first time since 1933, the ruling party would have two-thirds majorities in both chambers and free rein in a startling transformation that neuters Republicans.

 

California's Cap and Tax will drive out Businesses

The Massive Socialist Cap and Tax drains millions out of business to fund unions and welfare

• Leftist use greenhouse gasses as the excuse for the Marxist re-distribution of the wealth.
• If these gasses were the issue they could simply be banned, but it is all about money, not gas.
• No new business in their right mind would deliberately locate inside California. 

Socialist "environmental" leaders this week hailed California's first cap-and-trade auction a success . . . . with millions of dollars re-distributed from the job creators Marxist style to those with wants and needs.

Comrade Governor Jerry Brown and Leftist state lawmakers assumed three auctions this fiscal year would generate $1 billion total for the state, half of which they want to plug the state budget deficit. But most of the $289 million raised this month is dedicated for utilities that were also major campaign donors. That will leave about $55.8 million for state programs.

A low auction price for 2013 credits and low demand for future credits suggest that California will fall well short of its $1 billion projection this year. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office estimates that if trends hold in the February and May auctions, the state may only raise about $140 million in the first year.

Even if the state took all of that for the budget it would still miss its budget projection by $360 million. The LAO previously questioned whether the state could legally use $500 million in cap-and-trade auction money for the budget.

"The likelihood of there being a hole in the budget has increased," said Tiffany Roberts, an LAO analyst who focuses on climate change issues. "Not only do we question the viability of using the $500 million, but if these assumptions hold, it's unlikely there's even going to be $500 million."

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2012/11/first-cap-and-trade-auction-a-bust-for-california-budget.html#more#storylink=cpy

(Sacramento Bee)

Jerry Brown's Prop 30 is unconstitutional

Unconstitutional 
Brown's Prop 30 raises taxes retroactively


By John Seiler
Cal Watchdog

One little known aspect of Proposition 30 is that it increases income taxes retroactively for 2012. Approved by 54 percent of California on Nov. 6, the initiative grabs $6 billion a year, mainly by raising income taxes on “millionaires” who make $250,000 or more a year.

But $5 billion from “rich” people is going to be due quickly for the 2012 tax year.

The U.S. Constitution explicitly bans “ex post facto” laws, which are laws that affect actions from before the law was enacted. For example, if tomorrow the U.S. government brings back alcohol prohibition, it can’t jail you for the beer you chugged yesterday. According to Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution: “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.”

And for good measure, Article I, Section 10 reiterates: “No State shall…pass any…ex post facto Law….”

Unfortunately, as in so many areas, federal courts have not enforced this part of the Constitution. The last time this came up was almost two decades ago, when President Clinton imposed higher taxes retroactive to Jan. 1 of that year.

Explained an Aug. 4, 1993 editorial in the Orange County Register, where I was an editorial writer:

“The retroactive scheme is a twist on what is called an ex-post-facto law, the unjust practice of making something illegal after the fact, so you imprison somebody for having done something in the past that was perfectly acceptable then but was declared illegal sometime later.

 

“That kind of ‘justice’ is common in tyrannical states, but it is outlawed under the United States Constitution.

 

“Not everyone will be hit with the new retroactive tax. In his speech last night plumping for the scheme, the president lamented, ‘I don’t like taxes any more than you do.’ No kidding. Perhaps that’s why the president’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, cashed in the family investments last Dec. 31 [1992], just hours before the new fiscal year began.

 

“Last December, most Americans still believed the Clinton promises of a middle-class tax cut. Hillary presciently put less trust in her husband.

 

“Last night Mr. Clinton announced, ‘It has been 30 years since a president asked Americans to take personal responsibility’ for American prosperity. That was when President John Kennedy cut taxes, producing a decade of prosperity. Mr. Clinton is doing the opposite.

 

“As ‘Tonight Show’ host Jay Leno quipped, if Mr. Clinton makes the tax increase retroactive to January, voters should be given a new election retroactive to last November.”

 

Following that analogy from Leno, next June or so California should hold a special election to decide the fate of both Prop. 30 and its sponsor, Gov. Jerry Brown.

 

Welcome to high tax and regulation California.