Thread: California Hires Eric Holder for Legal Fights Against Trump White House

Yes, the news today by Gov. Brown is that the state has a 1.6 billion deficit. Taxes are probably coming....

I'm sorry Jean. I'm sure they will be wanting to raise taxes on you out there. I wish there was more we could do to help California, such a beautiful state and so many nice people. We'll continue fighting illegal immigration and soon that problem and expense wil at least be over soon.

As to the crazy lefties, well, it looks like they're not moving to Canada after all. Nothing much we can do about that except boycott their movies, and I'm all in on that one.

"Legislative leaders see a surplus with room to comfortably increase expenditures."
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Brown, Legislature differ sharply on California budget

• By JONATHAN J. COOPER Associated Press
• Updated 17 hrs ago

• Rich Pedroncelli

California Gov. Jerry Brown discusses his 2017-2018 state budget plan he released at a news conference Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2017, in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

• Rich Pedroncelli

State Sen. Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber, talks to reporters about California Gov. Jerry Brown's 2017-18 state budget at the Capitol Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2017, in Sacramento, Calif. Brown released his $122.5 billion state spending plan, and warned of a looming $1.6 billion budget deficit because of slow growth on tax revenues. Nielsen, the ranking Republican on the Senate budget committee said that "Our California budget is perilously balanced" and that "the governor has, along with the Republicans, opted to hold the line on our spending." (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Gov. Jerry Brown sees a budget deficit and an urgent need for spending cuts.

Legislative leaders see a surplus with room to comfortably increase expenditures.

Always at odds when it comes to the budget, the Democratic governor and the Democratic Legislature are particularly far apart this year as they embark on six months of spending negotiations amid uncertainty about federal funding under the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump.


Brown staked out a conservative opening position Tuesday, warning of a potential $1.6 billion budget deficit and proposing a spending plan that keeps general fund expenditures flat at $122.5 billion. Since costs rise every year, his plan would require cuts to keep pace, and he suggested eliminating billions of dollars allocated to education, state building construction, subsidized housing, college scholarships and child care providers.

He seeks to boost the state's reserve fund to $7.9 billion — up from $6.7 billion in the current budget year — to help soften what he warned is an inevitable recession after 10 years of economic recovery.

"You've got to save your money or you're going to lose the farm," Brown said, acknowledging that he expected "some shoving back and forth" with lawmakers as a final budget compromise is negotiated by June.

Democratic legislative leaders gave Brown's budget a tepid reception. Acknowledging the need for caution in the face of federal uncertainty, they nonetheless rejected Brown's proposed cuts to college scholarships and child care while insisting they will still push to increase spending on social welfare programs.

"This is not a time to eliminate important programs that lift up the middle class," Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, said in a statement.

Brown said months of lower-than-expected revenue, combined with the likelihood of a recession and the potential for drastic cuts in federal spending, demand restraint.

His projection for a deficit was a stark contrast with the forecast released in November by the Legislature's nonpartisan budget expert, Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor, who projected a surplus as high as $2.8 billion.

Drawing on that forecast, Assembly Democrats in December called for $1 billion in new spending for things such as expanding the state earned-income tax credit, mandatory full-day kindergarten and reducing college costs.

To maintain current spending, Brown proposes cutting $3.2 billion from future commitments, about half by giving schools and community colleges less than expected. He wants to stop enrolling new college students in the Middle Class Scholarships program, saving more than $30 million, cancel $300 million in upgrades to state buildings and drop a $400 million proposal for affordable housing that the Legislature rejected last year.

Brown also proposed canceling higher payments for state-funded child care providers.

The governor's budget includes $800 million more to cover people who joined Medi-Cal under Obamacare.

He also revisited his previous proposal, which has stalled in the Legislature, to increase gas and vehicle taxes to raise $4.2 billion per year for road construction and maintenance. In all, California's spending plan would reach $179.5 billion when restricted "special funds" and bonds are included.

Brown also proposed eliminating driver's license suspensions for people who fail to pay court fines — a move sought by social justice activists who say the practice traps people in poverty.

Many Republicans, who are more often aligned with Brown than legislative Democrats on spending, offered qualified support for the governor's approach but said he should look to fix roads with existing funds rather than new taxes.


Sen. Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber, the ranking Republican on the Senate budget committee, called the budget "perilously balanced" and urged Brown to continue holding the line on spending.

"We cannot be getting loose with the purse in California," he said.

Trump and the Republican-led U.S. Congress have vowed to repeal or alter many programs that affect California, from immigration to President Barack Obama's health care law. California has embraced the program and has enrolled about 5 million people in private health insurance or publicly funded Medi-Cal coverage.

The proposed budget assumes federal policies remain the same, but Brown noted the uncertainty is another reason to maintain the fiscal prudence for which he consistently advocates.

"If they do go down that road, it will be extremely painful for California," Brown said.

http://qctimes.com/business/governor...718b159f3.html

California revenue is growing. So why the talk of deficits?

Jonathan J. Cooper, Associated Press
Updated 3:10 pm, Wednesday, January 11, 2017


Photo: Rich Pedroncelli, AP
California Gov. Jerry Brown discusses his 2017-2018 state budget plan he released at a news conference Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2017, in Sacramento, Calif.


SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California's economy is expanding and voters just approved billions of dollars in tax increases, yet Gov. Jerry Brown this week projected a budget deficit for the first time in four years and called for spending cuts.

So what's going on?

The paradoxical budget picture is a result of revenue growing more slowly than economists had predicted after years of rapid increases from a hard-charging economy. While Brown expects revenue to be up 3 percent next year, Brown and lawmakers assumed revenues would be even higher when they planned the current budget, and they spent accordingly.

Costs are higher than expected, too.

Lower revenue and higher costs mean the state has approved spending money that Brown doesn't think it will collect. He is proposing to cut $3.2 billion allocated to education, state building construction, affordable housing, college grants and child care providers.

"The red always far outweighs the black, and the years of surplus are very few in number and very modest, and the deficits are much larger in magnitude," Brown, a Democrat, told reporters when he released his opening budget proposal on Tuesday. "And that really is the challenge of California."

Brown's administration says California's three biggest income sources — personal income taxes, sales taxes and corporate taxes — are all coming in below projections.

That's because recent growth in wages has been dominated by workers at the lower end of the wage spectrum who pay less in taxes, according to the Department of Finance. Many new jobs are going to people new to the workforce or re-entering it, who tend to make lower wages, and minimum wage increases are raising labor costs.

The higher labor costs, combined with fears of lower earnings in the coming year, are diminishing corporate profits and the taxes they pay.

And sales taxes are depressed by high costs for housing and health care — expenses that don't incur sales tax but eat up consumers' disposable income and crowd out other spending.

Meanwhile, costs are rising.

For the current budget year, Brown and the Legislature approved $6.2 billion in new optional spending on programs they care about; about $700 million of it is for ongoing costs for universities, state workers, the courts and prison system, and social services.

They also under-calculated how much it would cost to operate Medi-Cal, the publicly funded health plan for the poor, by about $1.8 billion.

Brown could also be wrong. The administration's revenue forecast for the next budget year is $4.1 billion less than the Legislature's estimate released two months ago, which projected a surplus.

Republicans say the problem isn't with revenue but with spending.

Despite the recent revenue slowdown driving Brown's current deficit projection, state revenue is up $36 billion since the worst of the budget bleeding that followed the Great Recession. Some of the extra money is thanks to robust economic improvement that drove up wages and employment, and some is the fruit of voter-approved tax increases on high-income earners.

About two-thirds of the $36 billion has gone to required education spending; by law, about half of state revenue must go to K-12 schools and community colleges. Per-student spending in the governor's budget proposal is up $3,900 since 2011-2012.

Brown and lawmakers have also expanded higher education funding. Costs are up for public-employee pensions and retiree health care costs. The higher minimum wage and collective bargaining agreements have increased state labor costs.

"Just last November, California voters approved an additional $10 billion of new taxes to line our government's pockets, yet the governor and the Democrats have managed to spend $2 billion more than the state is projected to collect," Assemblyman Travis Allen, R-Huntington Beach, said in a statement.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/C...f-10851413.php

New York's public authorities have $13,487 debt for every state resident

Federal Debt Clock

Today’s Federal Debt is $19,964,268,875,957.61

The amount is the gross outstanding debt issued by the United States Department of the Treasury since 1790 and reported here.
But, it doesn’t include state and local debt.
And, it doesn’t include so-called “agency debt.”
And, it doesn’t include the so-called unfunded liabilities of entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.

Federal Debt per person is about $61,184.

http://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/

[QUOTE
Tuesday, warning of a potential $1.6 billion budget deficit and proposing a spending plan that keeps general fund expenditures flat at $122.5 billion. Since costs rise every year, his plan would require cuts to keep pace, and he suggested eliminating billions of dollars allocated to education, state building construction, subsidized housing, college scholarships and child care providers.[/QUOTE]


1. How about eliminating Eric Holder's job to defend illegal aliens.
2. How about eliminating the millions of dollars Gov Brown plans to spend to defend illegal aliens from deportation.
3. How about eliminating the millions of dollars spent on healthcare, insurance and hospital procedures for illegal aliens.
4. How about eliminating the billions of dollars spent on illegal aliens providing government benefits, welfare, food stamps, SSI, free housing, free
anchor baby daycare, free education, free translators, free legal services and on and on and on

As of January 2014 (most current data available) California Debt per U.S. Citizen residing in CA is $20,449.

Illegal Aliens residing in CA are not included in the $20,449 share of the debt or the burden to fund it.

by CHRISS W. STREET
15 Jan 2017
newport beach
1,734 comments

Despite tax collection increasing by 50 percent in the last 9 years, California’s public pension insolvency is forcing Gov. Jerry Brown to propose a dangerously unpopular 42 percent increase in gasoline taxes and a 141 percent increase in vehicle registration fees.

Breitbart News reported on January 9 that Gov. Brown announced that for the first time since 2012, California’s $122.8 billion General Fund Budget is in deficit by $1.6 billion. Despite a near bankruptcy during the financial crisis, California’s tax revenues have increased by about $43 billion in the last 9 years. Brown on Monday only suggested relatively painless spending reductions to close the budget gap. He was very careful to not suggest highly controversial increases in gasoline tax or vehicle fees.

Democrat governors have been regularly spiking gas taxes and vehicle registration fees for decades. But 12 years ago, Democrat Gov. Gray Davis was recalled by voters after he pushed the state legislature to pass a vehicle registration fee increase from $46 to $158.

The legislature cancelled the increase and Democrats have avoided gas and vehicle increases since. When the Assembly tried to revive a gasoline tax last year, the issue was dropped after polls showed 63 percent voter opposed any increase.

Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger destroyed his popularity by pushing through the Proposition 1-A high-speed rail initiative in 2008 that added about 11 cents a gallon to the price of gasoline — for a project now referred to by Bloomberg News as a “fiasco.”

Gov. Brown’s willingness to try raising gasoline taxes by 17 cents a gallon, and on vehicle registration fees by $65, is a sign of the insolvency risk from the exploding cost of California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) public pensions. Brown’s draft 2017-2018 budget already includes a $524 million increase for the public pension contribution. That amounts to an 11 percent increase over this year’s $5.3 billion cost.

The CalPERS contribution increase would have actually been another $516 million more next year, but the world’s biggest pubic pension is allowing the State of California to “smooth” the higher pension funding cost by reducing its projected investment return expectation from 7.5 percent to 7 percent. But that smoothing will lock California into about a $524 million CalPERS contribution increase for each of the next four years.

Breitbart News reported in December that Stanford University’s “U.S. Pension Tracker” calculated that if CalPERS used the 2.75 percent interest rate on 20-year U.S. Treasury bonds as a “conservative” expected investment rate of return, the state would have a $964.4 billion unfunded actuarial public pension debt, or about $92,748 per household.

But under this conservative scenario, California would be required to start contributing an extra $3 billion to CalPERS immediately. Given that CalPERS only earned a 2.4 percent investment return in 2015, and just 0.61 percent last year, the 2.75 percent expected investment return may actually not be that conservative.

Gov. Brown has little flexibility to raise taxes to fund CalPERS, because “Taxifornia” already has the highest personal tax rate of 13.3 percent and its sixth highest corporate rate of 8.84 percent. According to a study by the Pacific Research Institute, the brutally high tax burden has been the cause California’s abnormally slow growth, its net exporting of U.S. citizens and its shrinking labor force for over a decade.

http://www.breitbart.com/california/...ilout-calpers/

Funny! Where Mexico goes, so goes California. Well, on the bright side that will run the Mexican gas buyers back to Mexico.

by TOM FITTON
19 Jan 2017
Washington, DC

I’ve often observed that, when it comes to public policy, the Obama Justice Department has been a locus of evil. And therefore it was concerning to see that the man who ran that Obama agency for years, the disgraced Eric Holder, has gotten himself a new, government-related gig.

On January 4 liberal California legislative leaders announced that they are using tax dollars to hire former Attorney General Eric Holder and his law firm to assist them in anticipated federal challenges to several state policies such as climate change and immigration. Leftists controlling the Democratic Party are especially concerned that a new Trump administration might actually start enforcing the rule of law against California’s dangerous and unlawful sanctuary policies. Evidently, Eric Holder will waste taxpayer funds defending this lawlessness.

In a statement, Kevin de Leon, California Senate President Pro Tempore, said, “With the upcoming change in administrations, we expect that there will be extraordinary challenges for California in the uncertain times ahead.” The California Attorney General, who represents the State’s interest in court, already has a budget of $190 million.

In response, we have filed a records request with the California Legislature Joint Rules Committee seeking to examine legislative records regarding the state’s employment of former Obama U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr.:

All contracts between the California Legislature and former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. or Covington and Burling.

All communications between the California Legislature and former U. S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. or Covington and Burling about the Legislature’s retention of Holder and/or Covington and Burling.

Holder was one of Obama’s longest-serving and most controversial Cabinet members.

On June 28, 2012, he became the first U.S. Attorney General to be held in contempt of Congress on both civil and criminal grounds. The contempt charge came in connection with Holder’s refusal to turn over documents about his agency’s lies on Operation Fast and Furious, the Obama administration’s gun-walking scandal. JW exposed numerous outrages associated with this scandal.

Under Holder the Justice Department dismissed its voting rights case against the New Black Panther Party. The Justice Department originally filed its lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party following an incident that took place outside of a Philadelphia polling station on November 4, 2008. According to multiple witnesses, members of the New Black Panthers blocked access to polling stations, harassed voters and hurled racial epithets. A video of the incident, showing a member of the New Black Panther Party brandishing a police-style baton weapon, was widely distributed on the Internet. JW exposed a number of Obama DOJ lies regarding the Black Panthers, which a federal judge validated in Judicial Watch v. United States Department of Justice (No. 1:10-cv-851).

In 2013, the Obama Justice Department was caught spying on The Associated Press by collecting months’ worth of phone records of reporters and editors. Fox News’ James Rosen was among those targeted by Holder’s Justice Department.

Thanks in part to JW’s success in exposing his corruption, Holder was forced to resign from the Justice Department in 2015 and rejoin his old law firm of Covington & Burling.

Our records request is designed to expose how California state legislators are wasting tax dollars to take care of another corrupt politician – Eric Holder – with the intention of deliberately resisting the rule of law on immigration and other matters. His record at the Clinton and Obama Justice Departments demonstrates a willingness to bend the law in order to protect his political patrons.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...on-connection/