Despite all the talk of fixing it, California’s budget is still a mess. One of those “fixes” was implemented last summer when the state Legislature increased revenue projections by $4 billion to avoid balancing the budget. Of course, the problem with using such “phantom money” is that it often has a habit of disappearing when you need it most. And it has disappeared just when money for schools is needed. Now deep cuts are on the table. The people lose again.

Naturally the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office recently reported that the state will receive virtually none of the $4 billion in projected revenue, forcing the state to make some tough decisions in the coming weeks. On the table are major cuts to the education budget, including shortening the school year by a week, not to mention cuts to in-home healthcare programs, and programs for people with developmental disabilities.

Obviously Californian’s budget needs all the help it can get but it looks like it’s business as usual in Sacramento. For instance, an upcoming ballot measure sponsored by a career politician would baffle anyone that truly understands the mess California is in. The so-called California Cancer Research Act coming before voters in June, asks California voters to raise taxes by nearly $1 billion for a whole new perpetual bureaucracy. That is unacceptable to voters. Maddeningly this new program doesn’t even guarantee that the money will be spent in the state! Apparently former state Sen. Pro Tem Don Perata, the career politician pushing the measure, thinks Californians who already paying some of the highest taxes in the nation should reach deeper into their pockets just to potentially send that money across state lines to benefit others. And all the while the budget for the education for those same taxpayer’s kids is about to be slashed.

So, what is the “solution” proposed by Democrats in Sacramento? Raise taxes, of course.

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Earlier this month, news broke that a group calling itself the “Maryland Citizens’ Health Initiative” is pushing a $1 per pack cigarette tax hike in the state. Via the AP:

A Maryland health group is planning to push for a $1 increase in the state’s tobacco tax.

The Maryland Citizens’ Health Initiative says it will launch the campaign next week in an effort to build public support for increasing the tax to pay for public health needs.

[...]

Maryland last raised its tobacco tax from $1 a pack to $2 a pack during a special session in 2007.

Those who follow consumption tax policy will know that state cigarette tax increases have historically constituted a somewhat unreliable revenue stream.

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In the aftermath of the California legislature passing and Gov. Jerry Brown signing into law an “Amazon Tax,” it looks like taxpayers unhappy about the Golden State’s pursuit of the almost certainly unconstitutional measure may get an opportunity to kill it off.

According to KQED, this week, a formal request for a referendum to overturn the law was filed in Sacramento.  In order to make it on the ballot, backers will have to get something in the range of 500,000 signatures once the petition is cleared by the state’s Attorney General.  One question that will need to be settled is whether the referendum is allowed in view of the fact that the Amazon Tax was included in the budget, but signs point to this being a possibility.

According to Amazon.com Vice President Paul Misener, “This is a referendum on jobs and investment in California.  As Governor Brown has made clear, it is important to directly involve the citizens of California in key issues and we believe that Californians will want to vote to protect small business and keep jobs in the state.”

If placed on the ballot, the referendum could have a good chance of success.

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Last week, I highlighted nine ballot initiatives that were worth watching because of their policy implications and/or their role is showing whether voters wanted more or less freedom. The results, by and large, are very encouraging. Let’s take a look at the results of those nine votes, as well as a few additional key initiatives.

1. The big spenders wanted to impose an income tax in the state of Washington, and they even had support from too-rich-to-care Bill Gates. The good news is that this initiative got slaughtered by a nearly two-to-one margin.  I was worried about this initiative since crazy  Oregon voters approved higher tax rates earlier this year. In a further bit of good news, Washington voters also approved a supermajority requirement for tax increases by a similar margin.

2. Nevada voters had a chance to vote on eminent domain abuse. This is an initiative that I mischaracterized in my original post. The language made it sound like it was designed to protect private property, but it actually was proposed by the political elite to weaken a property rights initiative that the voters previously had imposed. Fortunately, Nevada voters did not share my naiveté and the effort to weaken eminent domain protections was decisively rejected.  This is important, of course, because of the Supreme Court’s reprehensible Kelo decision.

3. California voters were predictably disappointing. They rejected the initiative to legalize marijuana, thus missing an opportunity to adopt a more sensible approach to victimless crimes. The crazy voters from the Golden State also kept in place a suicidal global warming scheme that is driving jobs out of the state. The only silver lining in California’s dark cloud is that voters did approve a supermajority requirement for certain revenue increases.

4. Nearly 90 percent of voters in Kansas approved an initiative to remove any ambiguity about whether individuals have the right to keep and bear arms. Let that be a warning to those imperialist Canadians, just in case they’re plotting an invasion.

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California’s progressive-era experiment in direct democracy was supposed to elevate the voters above the special interests, allowing voters make law themselves through the statewide initiative process. That this process is now virtually owned by the special interests is yet another example of the immutable Law of Unintended Consequences in government.

A brief perusal of the California Secretary of State’s initiative campaign finance disclosure website shows that some $120 million dollars has been raised by 53 groups supporting or opposing California’s nine November ballot initiatives. By comparison, California’s two major candidates for governor have raised or given to their campaigns $176 million to date, exclusive of independent expenditures and political party spending on both sides.

Initiative spending

What’s common about most of this spending is that it is fairly transparent in that we know the identities of the people, the labor unions and the companies writing the checks. Sure, there are cut-out committees that ship money to each other in an attempt to obfuscate their spending, but, with a spreadsheet and enough patience, a person can figure out who is funding whom.

For instance, you can crack open the disclosure page for the biggest No on Prop. 23 committee and see that they’ve raised more than $23 million. This includes $1 million from Hollywood director James Cameron, $700,000 from America’s richest man, Bill Gates, millions more from rent-seeking Silicon Valley venture capitalists who hope to grow wealthier off the economic pain of average Californians. You can also see that the National Wildlife Federation gave $3 million. Sadly, here is where campaign disclosure gets weak, because the National Wildlife Federation doesn’t have to disclose its donors since contributions on an initiative are considered nonpartisan and thus, not subject to the stringent disclosure rules as money destined to directly influence a partisan campaign.

This oversight is especially egregious when it comes to Prop. 22, a densely written amendment to the California constitution (already the third-largest in the world) that consumes eight pages of fine print to accomplish its purpose: constitutionally lock in redevelopment agency protections to protect them from pressure to reform.

California’s redevelopment agencies are supposed to target so-called “blight.” What they often do instead is use eminent domain to take property from one set of owners and give it to another so as to increase the tax base for a city.

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I am constantly amazed by the double standards that characterize the environmental/liberal movement.

Billionaires are bad…unless they are called Oprah, Spielberg, or Soros.

Flying is bad too because of the emissions it produces is bad for the environment, or so environmentalists tell us. But it seems it is only other people flying that is damaging.

Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, Rajendra Pachauri, and the tens of thousands of IPCC fellow travelers spend their lives on planes and receive no criticism from their hypocritical environmental cheerleaders.

And the hypocrisy continues with their coverage of California’s Prop23, which aims to suspend Global Warming legislation that will increase energy bills and drive businesses and jobs out of the state.

Environmentalists, and their enabling environmental “correspondents” who work for establishment newspapers and blogs, cannot wait to let us know that much of the money supporting Prop23 is coming from “out of state oil companies.”

This is true, except these companies also employ thousands of people in California in real jobs.

But perhaps more importantly, it ignores reality.

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While Americans across the country have entered the political game to save our country, moving that proverbial ball of freedom towards the end zone, we’ve been sacked. Blindsided. We’ve been so focused on legislative elections (and rightly so) that most Americans don’t even know they’ve been hit – and hit hard.

But not by some big, burly monster like voter fraud or corruption. No, we’ve been knocked flat by the ignorance of the conservative electorate and cute little puppies licking our stunned, what-the-heck-just-happened faces.

Well, I’ll tell you what just happened.

It’s called the Humane Society of the United States cowardly hiding behind animal cruelty, lying to our citizens and taking our constitutional rights away – one state at a time.

This radical animal rights organization (HSUS), who spends less than 0.5% of its $100M + budget on actually helping animals, is using the referendum process to slowly, systematically eliminate food production in the United States.

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