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JayB

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"California controller to suspend tax refunds, welfare checks, student grants.

 

John Chiang announces that his office will suspend $3.7 billion in payments owed to Californians starting Feb. 1, because with no budget in place the state lacks sufficient cash to pay its bills.

By Evan Halper and Patrick McGreevy

January 17, 2009

 

Reporting from Sacramento -- The state will suspend tax refunds, welfare checks, student grants and other payments owed to Californians starting Feb. 1, Controller John Chiang announced Friday.

 

Chiang said he had no choice but to stop making some $3.7 billion in payments in the absence of action by the governor and lawmakers to close the state's nearly $42-billion budget deficit. More than half of those payments are tax refunds.

 

The controller said the suspended payments could be rolled into IOUs if California still lacks sufficient cash to pay its bills come March or April.

 

"It pains me to pull this trigger," Chiang said at a news conference in his office. "But it is an action that is critically necessary."

 

The payments to be frozen include nearly $2 billion in tax refunds; $300 million in cash grants for needy families and the elderly, blind and disabled; and $13 million in grants for college students.

 

Even if a budget agreement is reached by the end of this month, tax refunds and other payments could remain temporarily frozen. Chiang said a budget deal may not generate cash quickly enough to resume them immediately."

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-budget17-2009jan17,0,4472460.story

 

 

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Looks like they may have to stop upgrading the fleet of state vehicles every 9 months, cut back on travel to those useless out-of-state "seminars", and implement a 40-hour work week for administrators. :shock: Cutting services to non-citizens might be a place to start as well. We had such high hopes for The Governator but it looks like even He became contaminated by the big government Dem machine. I'm starting to wonder if California has the makings of a (real) revolt.

Edited by Fairweather
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I thought the title indicated you were looking for a place to live and wanted advice on one.

 

Does this news mean that you can now send in a IOU instead of paying your taxes? Cause fair is fair! :lmao:

 

:wave:

 

I would start the interest accumulating on the refund as well, then deduct that from next years taxes owed. Id set a reasonable rate :grin:

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Can't comment directly to the originating post other than the following:

 

US Constitution, Article 1, Section 10, Clause 1

1. No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit ; make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility. [ I'm not versed in constitutional law so maybe this has no bearing on IOUs issued by the state. ]

 

The US Constitution prohibits the states from issuing their own currency, however, will local currencies become a part of our future?

 

New age town embraces dollar alternative

--Reuters

 

 

Also: THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES

AND HONEST MONEY, PART 5

 

 

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Wow, conservative policies to bankrupt the state have, well, bankrupted the state. Don't worry, gogetum entrepreneurs and corporations will pick up the slack as long as the self-regulating market and tax cuts for the rich are allowed to sprinkle their magic fairy dust...

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Who would have guessed that the Obamanation would start in the Peoples Republic of California...

 

Lars...please! :shock: 8 years of repubs! Sure it's the Nancy pantspelosi state, but Arnold is straight up Repub and has been in office for quite some time, and claims to be a social liberal but a fiscal conservative no less. Obama isn't even the Pres so why drag his name in here. George Bush has been the pres for 8 years and is exiting stage right, just in time.

 

One of the things that has bitten them in the ass is all the stuff people think sounds so good ("ooh, I support the poor better vote yes, ohhhh, I support the handicap better vote yes, Ohhhh I support the environment better vote yes on this too"} and vote yes on in the primary. I eliminates the discretionary amount left in the general fund as that crap MUST be funded, but there is no such mandate for schools etc etc. Californians, for the most part, have done this to themselves. If we can but remember but a single thing about these elections it would be this: "JUST SAY NO!"

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issues01121807.gif

 

Revenue boom pretty well traces the housing boom. I think that personal income tax accounts for roughly 40-45% of California's tax revenues, and sales tax for something like 20-25% of total revenues.

 

Quite a bit of the YOY growth in both income/sales was driven by housing related activity, mortgage-equity-withdrawal, HELOC spending, etc. Now that the housing market in California is undergoing a mean reversion back to levels determined by fundamentals, both employment/income and sales are cratering.

 

Exercising a bit of restraint on the spending side during the boom-years would have gone a long way towards preventing and/or alleviating the budget problems that California is experiencing.

 

I suspect that the fiscal picture is even worse for many cities/counties, and we'll see more of them go bankrupt before things bottom out in 2010-2012.

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Wow, conservative policies to bankrupt the state have, well, bankrupted the state. Don't worry, gogetum entrepreneurs and corporations will pick up the slack as long as the self-regulating market and tax cuts for the rich are allowed to sprinkle their magic fairy dust...

 

1. Which particular policies are you referring to here, and what is your best estimate of their fiscal impact in the current and, say, previous three budgets?

 

2. How much tax revenue does California's public sector generate on its own?

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I'm curious (as I don't know the answer plus I always like to throw a little bit of the kitchen sink into things) but how big a role did state investment in levered instruments play? For instance, if you take Orange County, CA as sort of a microcosm and look at how it played out there in 1994, you can see how investment (I think in this case in CDOs) figured. Now I'm probably talking out my ass here but I'm trying to understand what's going on.

 

Also, there was a budget crisis in 1992 while Republican Gov. Pete Wilson was in charge although he inherited that financial mess. I wonder if the 1992 crisis led to rethinking and change in behavior or did the "irrational exuberance' going into the latter half of the 90's and into the next decade also infect their minds?

 

 

 

Edited by STP
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Ignore my Emily Latilla style post up there. I had read on several occasions in several places that the approved voter mandated initiatives put a serious crimp in the discretionary spending available to the lawmakers and was responsible for the budget woes in Calif. (going back years and getting worse)

 

It appears I was wrong. Rather than deleting my earlier post and appearing smart, here's (somewhat) a refutation of that idea.

 

Link

 

So I say just move to Mexico.....what was the question? :lmao:

 

 

:wave:

 

 

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Wow, conservative policies to bankrupt the state have, well, bankrupted the state. Don't worry, gogetum entrepreneurs and corporations will pick up the slack as long as the self-regulating market and tax cuts for the rich are allowed to sprinkle their magic fairy dust...

 

1. Which particular policies are you referring to here, and what is your best estimate of their fiscal impact in the current and, say, previous three budgets?

 

2. How much tax revenue does California's public sector generate on its own?

 

Pfft. No worries, that one was for Lars.

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Per usual JayB develops amnesia at the most opportune moment. Could it be that cutting state and federal corporate taxes, waving royalties for resource extraction, shipping good jobs overseas then replacing them with pizza delivering/burger flipping jobs, etc ... then raise sale taxes on consumers has been implemented by market fundamentalists and has resulted in budget shortfalls? Could it be that it was the acknowledged goal of market fundamentalists to bankrupt government? Of course, it is was, on all counts and more.

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as of 2004: "Though California elected its governor on a platform of “jobs,jobs, jobs,” high-paid jobs may be California's fastest growing export.1 Offshoring – outsourcing of jobs overseas – has hit the Sacramento region: Hewlett-Packard's Roseville headcount has dropped by 1500 since year 2000, as their India headcount soars past 10,000.2 “We're trying to move everything we can offshore," affirms HP services chief Ann Livermore, citing substantially lower labor costs.

 

Intel too, has hired a thousand new software engineers in India and China4 while shaving a thousand workers from its Folsom site.5 Oracle’s 175 Rocklin employees had to train the workers from India who would replace them."

 

...

 

"Assembly member Carol Liu, D-Pasadena, sponsor of AB 1829 which would mandate that state funded contracts remain in the U.S., cautions that "offshoring may save money in the short run but it will cost us more in the long run as more and more Californians find themselves without jobs."

 

etc ...

 

http://www.programmersguild.org/docs/comstock_magazine_draft.pdf

 

I won't even go into quasi-systematic tax evasion enabled by tax heavens and deregulation.

 

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Like all market fundamentalists, JayB blames increase in California state spendings but he doesn't explain where the increase comes from:

 

"State general fund spending has increased by some 33 percent over the last five years, from $77.5 billion in 2002-03 to $103.5 billion in 2007-08, but three-fourths of the increase can be fairly attributed to inflation (17 percent) and population growth (7 percent). That leaves about $7.4 billion in real spending increases.

 

The education, health and welfare spending that Democrats champion increased only slightly, if at all. Meanwhile, spending on prisons increased by $4.3 billion and payments to local governments to cover losses of revenue from license fees on cars account for another $3.1 billion. And who were the most adamant advocates for locking up more felons in prison (11,000 more over five years) and cutting those car taxes? Republicans.

 

Although Schwarzenegger ran on a pledge to end "crazy deficit spending," his first act as governor was to reinstate the car tax cut that predecessor Gray Davis had erased in a desperate bid to close the deficit. And Schwarzenegger has resisted suggestions that the state release low-risk inmates to save money."

 

http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/1176798.html

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Like all market fundamentalists, JayB blames increase in California state spendings but he doesn't explain where the increase comes from:

 

"State general fund spending has increased by some 33 percent over the last five years, from $77.5 billion in 2002-03 to $103.5 billion in 2007-08, but three-fourths of the increase can be fairly attributed to inflation (17 percent) and population growth (7 percent). That leaves about $7.4 billion in real spending increases.

 

The education, health and welfare spending that Democrats champion increased only slightly, if at all. Meanwhile, spending on prisons increased by $4.3 billion and payments to local governments to cover losses of revenue from license fees on cars account for another $3.1 billion. And who were the most adamant advocates for locking up more felons in prison (11,000 more over five years) and cutting those car taxes? Republicans.

 

Although Schwarzenegger ran on a pledge to end "crazy deficit spending," his first act as governor was to reinstate the car tax cut that predecessor Gray Davis had erased in a desperate bid to close the deficit. And Schwarzenegger has resisted suggestions that the state release low-risk inmates to save money."

 

http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/1176798.html

 

A billion dollar's here.....a billion dollars there, pretty soon it adds up to real money! :D (apologies to the late Everett Dirkson for stealing one of the best lines in history)

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Like all market fundamentalists, JayB blames increase in California state spendings but he doesn't explain where the increase comes from:

 

"State general fund spending has increased by some 33 percent over the last five years, from $77.5 billion in 2002-03 to $103.5 billion in 2007-08, but three-fourths of the increase can be fairly attributed to inflation (17 percent) and population growth (7 percent). That leaves about $7.4 billion in real spending increases.

 

The education, health and welfare spending that Democrats champion increased only slightly, if at all. Meanwhile, spending on prisons increased by $4.3 billion and payments to local governments to cover losses of revenue from license fees on cars account for another $3.1 billion. And who were the most adamant advocates for locking up more felons in prison (11,000 more over five years) and cutting those car taxes? Republicans.

 

Although Schwarzenegger ran on a pledge to end "crazy deficit spending," his first act as governor was to reinstate the car tax cut that predecessor Gray Davis had erased in a desperate bid to close the deficit. And Schwarzenegger has resisted suggestions that the state release low-risk inmates to save money."

 

http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/1176798.html

 

A billion dollar's here.....a billion dollars there, pretty soon it adds up to real money! :D (apologies to the late Everett Dirkson for stealing one of the best lines in history)

 

I am not sure how your comment relates to the article, especially since it leaves little doubt that no significant additional money per capita was spent on social programs despite deteriorating employment.

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Like all market fundamentalists, JayB blames increase in California state spendings but he doesn't explain where the increase comes from:

 

"State general fund spending has increased by some 33 percent over the last five years, from $77.5 billion in 2002-03 to $103.5 billion in 2007-08, but three-fourths of the increase can be fairly attributed to inflation (17 percent) and population growth (7 percent). That leaves about $7.4 billion in real spending increases.

 

The education, health and welfare spending that Democrats champion increased only slightly, if at all. Meanwhile, spending on prisons increased by $4.3 billion and payments to local governments to cover losses of revenue from license fees on cars account for another $3.1 billion. And who were the most adamant advocates for locking up more felons in prison (11,000 more over five years) and cutting those car taxes? Republicans.

 

Although Schwarzenegger ran on a pledge to end "crazy deficit spending," his first act as governor was to reinstate the car tax cut that predecessor Gray Davis had erased in a desperate bid to close the deficit. And Schwarzenegger has resisted suggestions that the state release low-risk inmates to save money."

 

http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/1176798.html'>http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/1176798.html

 

A billion dollar's here.....a billion dollars there, pretty soon it adds up to real money! :D (apologies to the late Everett Dirkson for stealing one of the best lines in history)

 

I am not sure how your comment relates to the article, especially since it leaves little doubt that no significant additional money per capita was spent on social programs despite deteriorating employment.

 

You are not sure how it relates to the article?

 

Here: allow me to repeat it for you.

 

Like all market fundamentalists, JayB blames increase in California state spendings but he doesn't explain where the increase comes from:

 

"State general fund spending has increased by some 33 percent over the last five years, from $77.5 billion in 2002-03 to $103.5 billion in 2007-08, but three-fourths of the increase can be fairly attributed to inflation (17 percent) and population growth (7 percent). That leaves about $7.4 billion in real spending increases.

 

The education, health and welfare spending that Democrats champion increased only slightly, if at all. Meanwhile, spending on prisons increased by $4.3 billion and payments to local governments to cover losses of revenue from license fees on cars account for another $3.1 billion. And who were the most adamant advocates for locking up more felons in prison (11,000 more over five years) and cutting those car taxes? Republicans.

 

Although Schwarzenegger ran on a pledge to end "crazy deficit spending," his first act as governor was to reinstate the car tax cut that predecessor Gray Davis had erased in a desperate bid to close the deficit. And Schwarzenegger has resisted suggestions that the state release low-risk inmates to save money."

 

http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/1176798.html

 

A billion dollar's here.....a billion dollars there, pretty soon it adds up to real money! :D (apologies to the late Everett Dirkson for stealing one of the best lines in history)

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Here's another "truism", anything worth saying once is worth saying twice. Let me shoot it over for you again.

 

Like all market fundamentalists, JayB blames increase in California state spendings but he doesn't explain where the increase comes from:

 

"State general fund spending has increased by some 33 percent over the last five years, from $77.5 billion in 2002-03 to $103.5 billion in 2007-08, but three-fourths of the increase can be fairly attributed to inflation (17 percent) and population growth (7 percent). That leaves about $7.4 billion in real spending increases.

 

The education, health and welfare spending that Democrats champion increased only slightly, if at all. Meanwhile, spending on prisons increased by $4.3 billion and payments to local governments to cover losses of revenue from license fees on cars account for another $3.1 billion. And who were the most adamant advocates for locking up more felons in prison (11,000 more over five years) and cutting those car taxes? Republicans.

 

Although Schwarzenegger ran on a pledge to end "crazy deficit spending," his first act as governor was to reinstate the car tax cut that predecessor Gray Davis had erased in a desperate bid to close the deficit. And Schwarzenegger has resisted suggestions that the state release low-risk inmates to save money."

 

http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/1176798.html

 

A billion dollar's here.....a billion dollars there, pretty soon it adds up to real money! :D (apologies to the late Everett Dirkson for stealing one of the best lines in history)

 

 

Trying to help.

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"....

John Chiang announces that his office will suspend $3.7 billion in payments owed to Californians starting Feb. 1, .....

 

I don't know what it all means either JB. Maybe you can figure it out later? I can't imagine where they will get that 3.7 billion!

 

Now what was Jayb sayin' before you started flaming him....hmmmm? Lets re-read the thread shall we?

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