The left’s unmistakable trend toward weaponizing the tax code.
What was once a neutral instrument used for the purpose of collecting revenue for legitimate governmental functions is now employed to punish behavior that powerful people don’t like.
In California, Obamacare will increase individual health insurance premiums from 64% to 146%.
The article is a very detailed response to the claims made last week by California that Obamacare is lowering rates.
Pushback: A California tea party group sued the IRS on Monday for its harassment of conservatives.
The day of reckoning looms: An audit of California’s fiscal state has found it to be $127 billion in the red.
Were California’s state government a business, it would be a candidate for insolvency with a negative net worth of $127.2 billion, according to an annual financial report issued by State Auditor Elaine Howle and the Bureau of State Audits. The report, which covers the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012, says that the state’s negative status — all of its assets minus all of its liabilities — increased that year, largely because it spent more than it received in revenue. [emphasis mine]
None of this is a surprise. California voters chose Jerry Brown and the Democrats to lead them into more debt.
A Democratic voter discovers he’s actually a tea party racist.
Today was a bad day. After meeting with my tax accountant, I am now cutting a very large check to the State of California, all of which resulted from Proposition 30 and the “retroactive tax” that was levied on my 2012 income. This despite the fact that I already paid my 2012 taxes back in September.
While the law stipulates that I must surrender this money, I refuse to acknowledge this as a tax at all. This is not a tax. This is an asset seizure plain and simple. The term “retroactive tax” is a despicable euphemism. It is no different than when Hugo Chavez used the benign-sounding “nationalize” to describe his seizure of private property in Venezuela.
He then notes that he is not a tea party member or even a Republican and that he voted for Obama twice.
Wanna bet that in the next election he’ll still vote Democratic? Based on the history of the past three decades, I expect that even after this experience, he will still refuse to abandon the faction he has adopted (the Democratic Party) and change his vote.
If it’s the government it’s okay to steal your property.
We’re here to help you: A zoning board and the LAPD have shut down a thirty-year-old successful burger stand, apparently because they think it attracts crime.
Watch the video at the link. The result of this brain-dead action will be an abandoned building in an abandoned neighborhood. Good going, California!
Even the cows are fleeing California’s regulatory climate.
Success! California now has the highest poverty rate in the nation.
California’s state legislature and governorship have both been held by the Democrats for years. Both have repeatedly raised taxes. Both have repeatedly failed to balance the state’s budget. And both have been and continue to be eager to increase government regulation on the state’s citizenry. What could go wrong?
Update: In related news, Los Angeles’ film and television industry has lost 16,100 jobs in past seven years, mostly due to businesses leaving the state.
Leftwing civility: An elderly couple in California have received death threats and their property vandalized because they put a Romney sign on their front lawn.
Modern Democrat accounting: Borrow $164 million, pay back $1.25 billion.
Sadly, this is only one of several examples in California of school districts borrowing money that requires them to pay loan shark interest. No wonder cities in California are going bankrupt.
Does this make you feel safer? Arizona — in corporation with the federal government — has now joined California and Texas in scanning and recording the license plates of all cars traveling near the Mexican border.
Muslim tolerance: “Get the [expletive] Jews out of my pool!”
Note that this happened in Santa Monica, California, not Iran.
The day of reckoning looms: Another California city, San Bernardino, has decided to declare bankruptcy.
We’ve only just begun: Stockton, California, has filed for bankruptcy, making it the largest bankruptcy of any U.S. city in history.
The McCarthyism of the environmental movement: A UCLA professor who exposed corruption while also challenging the legitimacy of certain California fuel regulations, has sued the university for firing him.
Enstrom charged in 2008 that his colleagues exaggerated the adverse effects of particulate matter in order to justify expensive diesel fuel regulations to the California Air Resources Board (CARB). Enstrom testified in the same year to the state Senate that the lead contributor to the CARB report, Hien T. Tran, paid $1,000 for his Ph.D. from a fake university, and members of a CARB panel had exceeded their mandated three-year term limits by decades.
Shortly after Enstrom revealed the misconduct, UCLA began sending him notices of termination and has refused to compensate him for more than a year’s worth of work….
Tran was eventually suspended for 60 days, and one professor who had served on the CARB panel for 26 consecutive years was removed and later put back on the panel. John Froines, who has publicly supported diesel fuel regulations, was on a committee that voted to dismiss Enstrom.
Read the whole thing. It illustrates why attending UCLA for a science education is clearly a waste of time. They don’t want to teach their students science. They want to teach them propaganda.
Theft by government: A county government in California, rather than buy private property through eminent domain, is using zoning regulations to force owners out so the county doesn’t have to pay any compensation.
An evening pause: You can build anything out of duct tape!
Competition wins again: Faced with high prices and a near monopoly by China, the mining of rare Earth metals is once again rising worldwide.
Theft by government: California officials have confiscated two stuffed animals from a local bar, after having been on display for about a half century.
Both animals, while now endangered, were not endangered when they were killed, stuffed, and placed in the bar. Their existence is completely irrelevant to saving either species. For the government to confiscate them is nothing more than a expression of naked power. Worse, if there was no payment for them it is illegal. The Bill of Rights has this clause that says government cannot take a citizen’s property without just compensation.
As I said, theft by government.
