Just a little over a month ago, we reported that House Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee had called off a hearing on a natural gas boondoggle that would have lined the pockets of T. Boone Pickens and George Soros with taxpayer dollars. We were proud of the GOP for taking a step back and reconsidering a plan that could have been an unqualified disaster as government funds were directed not to programs that would assist in the development of market-friendly alternative fuels, but would have forced demand- and supply-side subsidies for natural gas, creating an unstable and unnatural market.

This week, unfortunately, House Ways and Means leadership has placed these energy subsidies and “tax credits” back on the agenda.

On April 6, 2011, Rep. John Sullivan (R-OK) introduced H.R. 1380, the New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions (NAT GAS) Act of 2011.  The bill currently has 184 bipartisan cosponsors, although a number of Members of Congress have removed their names as cosponsors.  Referred primarily to the Ways and Means Committee, H.R. 1380 includes tax credits related to compressed and liquefied natural gas (CNG and LNG), including credits for the fuels themselves, credits for the purchase and production of vehicles powered by CNG and LNG, and credits for refueling property related to CNG and LNG.  Whether such credits represent good energy policy or an intrusion into the free market has been the subject of vigorous debate.

In announcing the hearing, Chairman Tiberi said, “Energy security and comprehensive tax reform are two of the most important priorities we can pursue to create jobs and ensure the long-term strength of the U.S. economy.  As the committee with jurisdiction over energy tax policy, the Ways and Means Committee should examine whether there sometimes can be tension between these priorities, and how this Committee can design tax policies that achieve our energy security goals while also staying true to the principles of simplicity, fairness, and growth that drive the Committee’s tax reform agenda.”

Anyone paying attention to Big Government would know the “tax credits” contained within this act are only tax credits because Congress chooses to define them as such. These tax credits are really heavily disguised taxpayer subsidies, doled out to people who choose to make radical, impulse decisions about which engines they put in their large vehicles without considering the long term effects of their actions. One Washington report explained the bait-and-switch rather nicely:

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While the rest of America turns away from the big government stimulus spending programs of President Obama, at least one corporate executive is turning toward him to embrace his failed policies. Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt did the media circuit on Sunday to embrace the continuing liberal fantasy that if we spend enough money in Washington, we will fix the economy. To Eric Schmidt and Google, the only problem with the stimulus is we didn’t spend enough.

Schmidt on the Sunday Morning Shows, denounced Washington “bickering” as the reason for what ails the economy. Of course, Schmidt is offering a straw man argument to deflect blame away from Obama’s failed record of big government spending and crony socialism.

The trillion-dollar stimulus did not fail because it was not big enough or because of partisan bickering. As you may remember, the stimulus bill was passed quickly and with little debate out of the Democrat controlled House and Senate at the time. No, the trillion-dollar stimulus failed because the ideas it represented failed. Big government spending does not create jobs or economic growth – it didn’t work for the New Deal and it didn’t work for Obama’s Raw Deal.

It is shocking, however, to see Schmidt take to the airwaves to embrace failure. Of course, this may be a strategic decision. Schmidt and Obama have been thick as thieves since Google raised over $1 million for the president’s campaign. They have been rewarded – no different that Solyndra – with government contracts and policy decision that are designed to help the company. Obama has looked out for Google and now it looks like Schmidt is returning the favor.

But rather than spit in the eye of the Tea Party, conservatives and Americans concerned about our growing debt problems, Schmidt might be better served addressing some of the issues that brought him to Washington in the first place.

Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee will look into a host of decisions by the company that have violated the law, the privacy of the American people and the intellectual property rights of small businesses.

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President Obama called for tax hikes worth $1.5 trillion on Monday, but in a less remarked-upon move, members of Democratic leadership in the U.S. Senate have also been pushing for tax increases of their own.  However, unlike Obama’s proposal, which is squarely focused on enhancing the revenue that upper-income taxpayers are required to pay out, the proposal being pushed by Sens. Durbin, Murray and Begich (respectively, the Assistant Majority Leader, the Secretary of the Conference and the Chair of the Steering and Outreach Committee) aims to raise taxes significantly on some of the poorest Americans.

Via the Winston-Salem Journal:

A group of 14 U.S. senators — all Democrats — are using a familiar strategy as they try to raise the federal excise tax on tobacco products.

Senate Bill 1403 would provide annual funding to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act by essentially doubling the excise tax on cigarettes and small cigars.

[...]

For example, the federal excise tax for cigarettes would go from $1.006 a pack to $2.01.

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It should come as no surprise that the radical left is rallying behind former Ohio Attorney general Richard Cordray to head to powerful Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) – a newly created government agency designed to regulate the American economy with little oversight from Congress.

MoveOn.org and other liberal groups are demanding Republicans play dead and allow Cordray to be confirmed by the Senate for a five year term where he can singlehandedly dictate regulations government nearly any financial transaction in America.

Quietly another interest group is rallying to Cordray’s corner – the securities lawyers.  Daniel Fisher, writing at Forbes.com noticed that despite the constant bashing of the financial industry by Cordray, he is wildly popular with securities class action lawyers and law firms:

Lawyers at Labaton Sucharow contributed $125,000 to various Cordray campaigns between 2008 and 2010, according to Ohio campaign-finance records. Delaware-based Labaton represented Ohio in the AIG case, which it settled last year for $1 billion including something like $90 million in fees (the final fee payout, surprisingly, isn’t on the AG’s website).

Lawyers at crosstown Delaware rivals Grant & Eisenhofer ponied up $25,000 for the Cordray campaign; they represented the state in a lawsuit against Marsh & McClennan that netted the state’s outside lawyers 13% on a $400 million settlement. Other out-of-state law firms that took a keen interest in Cordray’s campaign included Atlanta’s Chitwood Harley, which gave $146,000; Berman deValerio of San Francisco and New York’s Bernstein Litowitz, known for its generosity in seemingly obscure state political races, which gave $50,000.

That’s because Cordray has a scandalous record of “taking money from lawyers who profit from private litigation that often follows closely on the heels of government investigations…” So, the reality is that President Obama’s liberal white-hatted regulator appears to be neck deep in a pay to play scandal with trial lawyers.

Republicans appear ready to hold the line on the nomination with 44 Senators signing a letter refusing to support any nominee until the CFPB is reformed and proper checks and balances are put into place.  But there is a bigger story and a bigger scandal brewing.

It looks like it is finally going to happen. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has finally gotten their net neutrality regulations through the bureaucratic mess, and now it [IS] only a matter of times before they start to take effect.

The National Journal reports:

Open Internet regulations, or network-neutrality rules, have cleared the final regulatory hurdle before getting on the books, a Federal Communications Commission spokesman said on Monday.

The rules, which limit how cable and phone companies can treat legal Internet traffic, are strongly opposed by Republicans in Congress, who have unsuccessfully attempted to repeal them on several occasions.

The FCC passed the regulations in December over Republican objections, creating the defining saga of commission Chairman Julius Genachowski’s tenure so far and fulfilling an Obama campaign promise.

The Office of Management and Budget, which had a procedural role in OK’ing the regulations thanks to the Paperwork Reduction Act, had to review new data-collection responsibilities that the rules apply to Internet service firms. “OMB signed off late Friday,” an FCC spokesman said in an e-mail.

While President Obama’s recent pushback on the EPA’s proposed ozone standard raised hopes among businesses and consumers – three quarters of whom now think that America is overregulated – he seems to think that he should be able to solve all his problems by eliminating one.

But last time we counted, there were ten regulations on Eric Cantor’s list of top job-destroyers, and seven on the list of billion-dollar rules that Obama sent to Speaker Boehner.

Here’s a look at some of what’s still out there:

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA):

The EPA’s Utility Maximum Achievable Control Technology rule (MACT) rule requires coal-fired plants to reduce emissions of particular toxic air pollutants – namely mercury emissions. As is typical with these pie-in-the-sky EPA regulations, the MACT rule would require plants to achieve standards that are not economically feasible and/or install equipment that is not commercially available.

The Utility MACT rule could force the shut down of enough coal-fired power plants to equal about 30-70 gigawatts of electricity generation nationwide, resulting in double-digit rate hikes for consumers and costly upgrades to some power plants.

The EPA’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) will regulate emissions from coal-fueled power plants in the name of preventing polluted air to cross over from state to state.  However, the unnecessarily stringent demands and unrealistic implementation timeline are forcing plants across the country to shut down or cut back, which is predicted to stress the power grid to the point of blackouts.  Texas-based energy company Luminant announced a first wave of shutdowns and layoffs as the rule’s compliance deadline moves closer.

National Labor Relations Board (NLRB):

The Obama-appointed NLRB is backing Big Labor by leading a crusade against Boeing for opening a new plant and creating jobs in South Carolina. This is all because South Carolina is a right-to-work state where workers aren’t forced to join a union if they don’t want to.

National Mediation Board (NMB):

The NMB is the federal body that oversees labor relations in two key transportation industries – railroads and airlines.  The NMB has enacted changes to the rules that govern union organizing of air and rail workers that allow a minority of workers to vote to unionize the entire body of a company workforce, when unionization has historically required a majority vote.

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It’s funny what a million dollars in political contributions, support for the right candidate and a liberal meme can buy you in Washington these days.  For Google, it is buying them a free pass as they amass growing power in Washington and the marketplace.

AT&T, while unionized, does not have the same liberal bent as Google.  They are more a traditional Beltway player.  Open Secrets.org describes their strategy as “Although the company has historically favored Republicans in its political giving, people and political action committees associated with AT&T have as of late generally split their contributions between Democrats and the GOP.”

Recently both Google and AT&T made strategic acquisitions.  How they were treated by the politicized Department of Justice makes an interesting statement.

Google is a giant and growing by the day. Google purchased Motorola and ITA Software, which builds online flight and ticket information software for travel websites.  Google paid $700 million for ITA and Motorola for $12 billion.  The acquisition of ITA allows Google to corner the market for travel and Motorola gives Google monopoly on thousands of patents that will help stave off competitive threats and patent-infringement lawsuits.

Despite howls of protests from the travel industry, that feared Google would crowd out other travel websites when combined with Google’s search engine.  Yet the Justice Department approved Google’s purchase with a caveat, Google must also set up a formal reporting system for anyone who believes it is acting unfairly.  With regard to the purchase of Motorola, DOJ seems poised to approve the purchase as well.

But for AT&T, the Department of Justice has been less than hospitable.  DOJ has filed a lawsuit trying to block the purchase of T-Mobile, arguing that it will hurt competition.

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On September 6th, Senate Democrats will hold a confirmation hearing on Richard Cordray, President Obama’s nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)– a new regulation producing machine created by the Dodd-Franks bill. The Democrat Leadership in Senate is using the hearing to pressure the Republican Leadership to bow, allowing the liberal’s dream of a single agency that can regulate any financial transaction in America to become reality. Without your input and pressure, it might.

As we already know, the CFPB was designed to be a regulatory agency “one like we have not seen before,” according to Senator Chris Dodd. Originated by Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren, the CFPB is created to be a “one-stop” shop to regulate all consumer financial products in America – from mom-and-pop store layaway plans to mortgage loans and applications. The Bureau was given unprecedented regulatory powers with no checks and balances while the head of the CFPB is an unelected bureaucrat who can pick and choose what industry to regulate.

Obama’s first pick for this dictatorial position was anti-capitalism crusader Elizabeth Warren who was resoundingly rejected. No matter who the head of this agency becomes, it has too much unmitigated and unaccountable power.

That is why back In May, 44 of the 47 Senate Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, sent a letter to Obama vowing to block any nominee to serve as director of the CFPB absent key changes, including eliminating the director’s position in favor of a board and forcing the agency to be dependent on Congressionally appropriated funds for its operating budget.

Democrats apparently believe that their problem the first time was that they had the wrong nominee to head the agency. So now, President Obama has nominated lesser known but every bit as liberal trial lawyer Richard Cordray to assume the position of dictatorial ruler over US businesses.

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Illinois State Treasurer Dan Rutherford is attempting to derail a move that would finally make Illinois a major player in Republican Presidential politics.

The dispute revolves around a proposed rule change to the process of selecting delegates to the Republican National Convention.

To understand the situation, you must understand the Illinois system.  Currently, the Presidential Primary in Illinois is a so called “beauty pageant” – meaning the winner of the Primary election does not receive ANY delegates to the Convention.  Under the current rules, delegates run individually and are not bound to any candidate.  In addition, each delegate and alternate delegate is required to collect hundreds of signatures to qualify for the ballot and then run a campaign in an area the size of a Congressional district.  This process makes Illinois irrelevant in Republican Presidential Primaries.

First, on the surface, this may seem like a system that allows maximum participation from Illinois citizens.  But, in reality, collecting signatures and running a campaign in a Congressional District is an expensive operation. Only 4 states in the entire country even use this archaic 19^th century process. It ensures that the only people who have the resources to qualify for the ballot are well known and well funded – and where does this funding come from?  The Presidential candidates who run slates of delegates that will be loyal to them.  Excluded from this process are hardworking Republican loyalists with “low name ID,” Tea Party activists, and anyone else not deemed a high value asset.

Second, and most damaging, is the system ensures that once the delegate slates have been filed, the Presidential campaigns disappear from Illinois.  The Presidential election, as stated, is irrelevant when you are counting delegates.  Why waste the money to win nothing? And it’s a drain on resources to attempt to run 60+ individual delegate races. So the campaigns allocate the resources to help high profile delegates get on the ballot. And then they are gone by December – weeks before the Iowa caucuses.

But recently, new rules have been proposed that would instantly make the state relevant – really relevant.

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Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi is joining her Kentucky colleague Jack Conway in waging a war on for-profit colleges – with taxpayer funds – while turning a blind eye to problems in non-profit and state schools.  Except, in Bondi’s case, there are demonstrable instances of mismanagement, fraud, and abuse in those taxpayer-funded colleges that she appears to be ignoring for the time being.

A few examples of taxpayer waste that Bondi should be focusing on:

• State-funded Daytona State College, Florida A&M University, Edison State College, and Miami-Dade College all currently face losing their accreditation due to issues ranging from low performance standards to admitting students without required courses to employing too few professors.

• Florida’s biggest state universities are under fire for rampant abuses within their athletic programs.  Numerous Florida State University athletic teams have been forced to vacate wins due to academic misconduct, while University of Miami athletes have been discovered accepting illegal gifts and money.  The University of Central Florida is also under investigation for recruiting misconduct.

• The Florida state college corruption extends all the way up to state elected officials; former Florida House Speaker Ray Sansom came under fire for securing funding for a building at Northwest Florida State College that was in fact an airport hangar for political donors’ private jets.

Sounds like enough material for some high-profile state investigations, right?  Actually, Attorney General Bondi is focusing her government investigation on a handful of small, for-profit schools.  The charges against the schools largely revolve around allegedly false claims used by recruiters leading to enrollment of students who were under-qualified and/or unable to repay their loans upon completion.

Could it be that Bondi and others, including federal regulators, are attacking for-profit colleges chiefly because they have taken a piece of the higher education pie in recent years that was traditionally serviced by state-run community colleges and vocational schools?  The fervor with which state officials in Florida, Kentucky, Texas, and other states are going after for-profit schools suggests motivation beyond the desire to prevent a few gullible students from falling for glitzy ad campaigns.

At the federal level, the Department of Education’s proposed ‘Gainful Employment’ rule would create new narrow metrics to define “gainful employment” based on student debt-to-income levels and loan repayment rates.

What the DOE’s formulaic approach is missing is that these institutions serve student communities with significant risk factors such as low incomes, full-time employment, and delayed enrollment which adversely impact degree attainment and account for their having a higher loan default rate than less inclusive institutions.  Even with these challenges, the fact remains that for-profit colleges have a better record of graduating low-income and minority populations than public institutions and private, not-for-profit schools, at a substantially lower total government and taxpayer cost.

In the latest turn of events relevant to California’s move to force out-of-state, online-only retailers to collect and remit to it California sales taxes– an effort that legal experts say is likely unconstitutional– Golden State liberals are pursuing a new legislative scheme to invalidate a referendum that appears headed to the ballot and which would nix the “Amazon Tax.”

From the Sacramento Bee:

A group of California legislators plans to push a new online sales tax bill in a move to thwart tax opponent Amazon.com.

Lawmakers today used a “gut-and-amend” procedure that takes an existing bill and substitutes an online sales tax measure. The bill passed the Senate Appropriations Committee today.

In late June, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill requiring Amazon and other online retailers to begin collecting sales tax on California transactions. The bill passed on a regular, majority vote. Amazon has refused to collect the tax and launched a referendum to have it overturned.

But Larry Levin, a spokesman for Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Oakland, said the new legislation would be different. It would pass on a two-thirds supermajority and would carry an “urgency” clause. That means it can’t be subject to ballot referendum, Levin said.

Backers of the legislation reportedly believe they can get two-thirds of each chamber to vote for the bill in question.  Skeptics however charge that that will be tough in light of Republican numbers in both chambers, and GOP opposition to the “Amazon Tax” already exhibited during previous legislative battles.

Proponents of the tax increase will need to get the support of three GOP members in the Senate and two in the Assembly to clear the two-thirds majority hurdle.

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There is one thing you can say about Google – they don’t give a damn. They don’t care about intellectual property rights. They don’t care about privacy of their users. And they don’t appear to care about the law in general.

Google has been fined an incredible $500 million by the Department of Justice for knowingly and illegally assisting Canadian pharmacies illegally importing drugs into the United States.

Google has admitted that as early as 2003 they were made aware that it was illegal for pharmacies to ship controlled and non-controlled prescription drugs into the United States from Canada. But Google facilitated the sales and importation of these drugs by marketing their AdWords program to Canadian pharmacies.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) takes the position that they cannot ensure the safety and effectiveness of foreign prescription drugs. In fact, even though Canada has its own regulations regarding drug safety, Canadian pharmacies that ship prescription drugs to U.S. residents are not subject to Canadian regulatory authority, and many sell drugs obtained from countries other than Canada that lack adequate pharmacy regulations.

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Last week, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and a number of other Congressmen with states who rely heavily on energy production for economic stability, sent a letter to EPA head Lisa Jackson expressing some concerns over her agency’s impartiality. At the heart of their complaints, a series of backdoor regulations the EPA has put into place in recent months: regulations that are not only harming American energy industries, but which are actively destroying jobs in a already troubled economy.

Now, the EPA doesn’t seem to mind that it wields extensive power that it’s using to change the very fabric of the American financial system, but residents of states whose economies are dependent on energy job growth – and the leaders of these industries – are starting to see a problem.

Before, it might have just been industries that environmentalists considered “problematic,” but a recent EPA rule is about to put a wrench in the operations of nearly every carbon-dioxide-expelling creature or industry on the planet. The National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Ozone, part of the Clean Air Act, currently demands that ozone emissions be limited to 75 parts per billion. That standard was put into place only two years ago, and companies are only now beginning to come into compliance. Instead of allowing industries to meet this standard, though, the EPA immediately moved the goalposts: they are now considering standards that would limit ozone emissions to only 70 or, more stringent yet, 60 parts per billion.

Apart from economic and social context, these numbers seem meaningless. But consider this: if the EPA were to choose the lesser of the standards, 70 parts per billion, only 24% of the 675 US counties who monitor ozone would be in compliance. If the bar were lowered to 60 parts per billion, only 4% of counties would make the cut. All of the areas that didn’t meet the standard would become subject to strict EPA scrutiny, as well as billions in fees and fines. Some of the more egregious offenders might even lose federal highway funding, and find themselves under the never-ending watchful eye of Lisa Jackson’s already-intrusive environmental watchdogs.

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Brian Hall made an insightful observation about the growth and power of Google – one that is worth discussing.  Hall notes that Google has stopped innovating and is using its power to copy, emulate, bully, threaten and manipulate.  The news that Google was purchasing Motorola seems to bolster Hall’s analysis.

Hall wrote:

• Yelp gets popular? Copy their info; shove Yelp to the bottom of the page and put Google Places and reviews at the top.
• Groupon won’t sell? Spend billions from other businesses to destroy them.
• Twitter and Facebook innovate on search? Take their content, whine when they try and stop you then spend billions to prevent their growth and hopefully destroy them.
• Apple working on a touchscreen smartphone? Spend billions from another business and copy everything you can, down to swipes and apps.
• Need a smartphone operating system with Java. Take Java and use it for your own ends.
• Need a location mapping technology and Skyhook won’t sell? Spend billions from your monopoly profits and strongarm your partners and drive Skyhook out of business.
• Buy up the big travel search sites.
• Claim you are open source but share nothing related to what your business claims to be about — search, and nothing related to how you make your money — advertising
• Claim you are open and standards based but control who gets access to your smartphone operating system

Like all rich monopolists, they spend millions hiring high priced lobbyists and public relations teams inside the Beltway — for their direct benefit.

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With a finite – and as far as most Democrats are concerned, insufficient – supply of taxpayer funds out there, its always interesting to see the choices that politicians with the power to spend the money make.

Take Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, for example. Yes, that Jack Conway, of ‘Aqua Budda’ fame. Conway has been on the warpath against for-profit colleges, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer funds to mount an investigation against seven academic institutions in the state.

Conway’s investigation recently got a big break. The smoking gun?  Owensboro-based Daymar College seems to have overcharged students for textbooks. That’s right; apparently Daymar encouraged students to purchase textbooks in the college bookstore even though they were available more cheaply through other retailers.

For anyone who has been to college this quarter-century, the textbook charges are laughable. Every school, from community colleges all the way up to the ritziest private universities, tries to snooker students into buying their textbooks at the bookstore then they could easily get them for less on Amazon.com.

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An article in The Tucson Weekly reported that the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, among other conservative foundations, have made significant donations to the University of Arizona’s FreedomCenter.  Most people would commend the Koch Foundation for their generous financial commitment to higher education.  However, there are a few left-leaning ideologues who have chosen to attack the donations on the basis of partisan distrust and personal politics, rather than placing the interests of students first.

David Gibbs, a professor of history and government in University of Arizona’s Political Science Department, is just such a person.  He makes the outlandish claim in the article that these donations are an “attempt to place the seal of academic legitimacy on their extremist libertarian views” and falsely accuses the Koch brothers of trying to influence academic opinion.

Gibbs makes these claims, despite a statement by the University of Arizona’s Dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences, John Paul Jones III, who said that “there has been no donor influence over the hires we’ve made at the Freedom Center.”  As the Dean of the School, Jones’ statement offers credence in putting to rest any fears that the Koch Foundation might somehow be infringing on the University’s academic independence.

This is not the first time that Gibbs has made radical statements.  In the past, he has written about a vast conspiracy by the CIA to influence academia.  He went as far as to claim that there exists “books in the library that were secretly edited by the CIA with no indication that this has been done.”  If there was no indication that the CIA edited these books, how can Mr. Gibbs factually claim to know that the CIA did indeed “secretly” edit books?

Unsurprisingly, Gibbs says that people within the political science department were unhappy with his statements regarding the connection that he was trying to establish between the CIA and academia.  After all, the comments did resemble those of a paranoid conspiracy theorist.  As a result, Gibbs left the political science department and transferred to the history department, where he had more liberty to tell his “unique” version of the past.

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California recently instituted as part of its budget solution an “Amazon Tax” aimed at forcing out-of-state, online retailers with no physical presence in the Golden State to collect and remit sales tax in respect of goods sold to Californians where the retailer in question advertises, or maintains an “affiliate” referral relationship, with websites based within state lines.

Prior to passage of the bill obligating collection and remittance in such circumstances, prominent online retailers including Amazon.com and Overstock.com had threatened to terminate relationships with affiliates, if the legislation became law.  Now that it has, and affiliate relationships are being severed, something critics of the legislation say was entirely foreseeable is occurring: Online businesses and entrepreneurs are leaving the state, thus risking an actual reduction, as opposed to marginal increase, in California’s tax revenue.

Last month, news broke of one California-based online entrepreneur who had decided to ditch California and move to Nevada in the aftermath of Gov. Jerry Brown signing the law.  ”I always figured that in California, home to Silicon Valley and a million tech startups, they’d never pass a law like this,” said Nick Loper, who formerly operated ShoesRUs and has now opened a new venture, ShoeSniper.

Per the piece in which Loper is quoted, more than 70 affiliates had at that stage already left California, according to online businesses.

Then, last Thursday, another online entrepreneur, Erica Douglass, posted a mock “It’s Over” letter to California on her blog. Douglass, who sold an internet company she had built for $1.1 million in 2007 when she was just 26, cited multiple reasons for moving to Austin.  Among them were unnecessary paperwork requirements mandated by the state, and high taxes as well as business fees.  However, the straw that broke the camel’s back, was according to Portfolio, Brown signing the Amazon Tax into law.

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