Quote of the Day

It’s not only Nevada, it’s all over.
The “logic” from the Right is that government is intrinsically incompetent – and the only way to make it competent is to CUT taxes.
Go figure.

Tommy,
Neither the Greens nor the Communist Workers Party has created California’s dysfunctional tax system, or its fiscal dumbness. We, the California voters did. When we passed the legendary Prop 13, to bring tax relief to old people, widows, & orphans, we forgot to include tools to make billion-dollars corporations responsible for paying their fair share of property taxes. Result: As the value of corporate-owned land rose 2-, 3-, 10-, 20-fold through the years, the property taxes to local towns & school districts stayed essentially the same as they had been when Prop 13 took effect [1978].Even when companies changed ownership, their tax lawyers’ machinations allowed the new owners to keep stiffing the local schools.
Guess who’s (partially) making up the local tax revenue losses? Right: the state of California.
As this article states:
“The biggest hole in California’s tax system is the way we assess nonresidential property. We rely on a loophole-ridden law, irrational economics, distorted public finance and unsound land use. We need to split the property tax roll and simply tax nonresidential property on the basis of current market value, adjusted annually.
Such a rational change would generate about $8 billion for our hard-pressed cities, counties and schools.”

http://www.sacbee.com/2009/10/11/2243947/viewpoints-start-annual-assessments.html

So you might want to add this to your “leeches list”:
E&J Gallo (wineries) – Bain Capital; Kohlberg Kravis, Roberts&Co., Vornado Realty Trust – Goldman Sachs; Bain Capital; TPG Capital – CVS Caremark Corp. (Long’s Drugs) – JP Morgan Chase (Washington Mutual) – Wells Fargo (Wachovia Corp.) – Shell Oil Company (Pennsoil/Quaker State/Jiffy Lube) – Bain Capital (Guitar Center) – Apollo Management (Smart & Final) – KSL Capital LLC (Club Corp golf courses) – (bought Univision Communications): 5 private equity firms – (bought SunGuard): 7 private equity firms – Bain Capital (Burlington Coat Factory) – SaveMart (Albertsons) – Blackstone Group (Hilton Hotels) – Intrawest Corporation (Mammoth Mountain Ski Resort).

This is a list of some of the corporations/companies/”entities” that are leeching off of the residents of California to the tune of billions of dollars per year, at the expense of residential property owners and loss of state & local services.

For more info, see:

http://www.truth-out.org/proposition-1361948

http://www.caltaxreform.org/pdf_ppt/SystemFailureFinalReportMay2010.pdf