On Balance, Prop 45 Worthy of a “YES” Vote

Santa Barbara Current supports Proposition 45, the ballot measure which expedites certain infrastructure projects for review under the notorious project-killer law commonly known as the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), but with major reservations.

Winston Churchill is quoted as having said that “Russia is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” This is pretty much how we feel about Proposition 45. While we are pleased that it includes infrastructure projects – transportation, water, healthcare facilities, telecommunications, wildfire prevention, etc. – we are dismayed that it excludes gas pipelines, power plants, and nuclear generation facilities, while giving favorable treatment to wind, solar, geothermal, and other so-called green energy projects.

The problem is that California has the highest electric rates in the country because of its reliance on the intermittent nature of renewable energy. Solar and wind depend entirely on the weather and time of day, consequently, the state must spend billions of dollars to import oil and natural gas to ensure the electrical grid remains stable when the sun goes down or the wind stops blowing.

We expect Proposition 45 will do very little to change that equation. It may even put upward pressure on higher utility rates for Californians.

It is unfortunate that nuclear generation plants – a form of the cleanest energy man can produce – has been dramatically reduced in California over the last few decades. If we were able to build these projects, we could reduce our reliance on fossil fuels while stabilizing the grid from volatile price spikes due to intermittent renewables.

But Prop 45 doesn’t address this issue.

We have mixed feelings too about the expedited CEQA review of infill housing under Prop 45. While generally we like the fact it encourages the building of much needed housing, we also don’t like that it takes another tool away from localities and California residents to control their own zoning and land use.

In Santa Barbara and many other cities, we see developers using the state mandate to build massively dense housing projects that are totally out of character for suburban communities. This proposition may even help accelerate this process.

Lastly, and unsurprisingly, jails, prisons and immigration detention facilities are excluded from the expedited review under CEQA as envisioned in Prop 45. Currently, whether you like it or not, there is a critical shortage of space in immigration facilities resulting in severe overcrowding. And before anyone attempts to politicize the issue, the Biden and Obama Administrations also faced a severe overcrowding crisis within holding and detention facilities.

If you genuinely care about illegal immigrants from a humanitarian perspective, California shouldn’t make it harder to build these facilities.

Finally, there are local jails in many jurisdictions that are overcrowded because of a decade-long realignment strategy, sending low-level felony offenders to local county jails rather than state prisons. Increasingly, they are being released early, creating an additional public safety threat for Californians.

So, one might ask with all the attendant problems with respect to this proposition, why would SBCurrent support it? The reason is because the provisions in the ballot measure probably do more good than harm in the long run. California needs to invest in new infrastructure and modernize existing systems. Roads, bridges, water systems, and mass transit, are rapidly deteriorating, and currently there is almost nothing on the drawing board to fix this.

Not only is there a lack of funding but also regulatory hurdles, such as CEQA, which kills new project before they can even get started. If this is not remedied soon, it will hasten California’s economic decline and make us more vulnerable to catastrophic disasters, such as wildfires, droughts, and floods.

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California Current’s Nov. 3, 2026 Statewide Propositons Voter Guide Below:

NO on 1. The Con Job

NO on 2. Supersizing California’s Slush Fund

NO on 3. The Forever Tax

NO on 4. Your Money, Their Campaigns

NO on 5. Recall Revenge

NO on 37. Robin Hood in Reverse

NO on 38. Pork Barrel Science

YES on 39. Trust, but Verify

NO on 40. Tax Billionaires Today, Tax Everybody Tomorrow

YES on 41. Sergey’s Silver Bullets

YES on 42. Sergey’s Silver Bullets

YES on 43. Stop Getting Steamrolled by Special Taxes

PENDING on 44. Clinic spending rule

YES on 45. Pondering Prop 45

Note: Props 41 and 42 share one article. The Prop 44 analysis pending.

Government always wants another slice of your paycheck. The easiest way is a special tax placed on the ballot under cover of a “citizen initiative.” Proposition 43 would do away with that dishonest development.

California has two kinds of local taxes. A general tax that goes into the general fund and can be (mis)allocated and (mis)spent by our elected officials. Such general taxes are passed with a simple majority.

A special tax is earmarked money that is tied to a named purpose: schools, parks, homelessness, fire, trains, basically anything that sounds good and popular. Before 2017, all special taxes required a threshold of 2/3 majority to pass. Prop 43 would reestablish that 2/3 majority threshold for special taxes.

Voters originally set that higher threshold on purpose. Proposition 13 in 1978, and Proposition 218 later, made a special tax hard to pass. If City Hall wants money locked to one cause, it needs two-thirds of the voters. A school board wants the same? Two-thirds. This higher threshold was based on the fact that earmarked taxes are much easier to sell to the electorate and once sold create constituencies hellbent on their continuation. Taxing you for a dedicated public pot was not meant to be easy.

Yet, California’s courts opened a workaround for special taxes lowering the two third’s threshold to just a simple majority. The 2017 case California Cannabis Coalition v. City of Upland was about a marijuana fee and election timing. Later courts stretched its logic to the vote threshold. File the same special tax as a “citizen initiative,” and a simple majority, 50 percent plus one, can pass it. The purpose stays special. The bar drops to a majority, opening the flood gates to more special taxes that are easy to pass; fifty percent is a low threshold in a state such as California with its massive bureaucracy and where public unions make up a significant bloc that always votes in favor of more spending.

Proposition 43 would end that shortcut beginning on January 1, 2027. Special taxes would again – staying true to the original Prop 13 – need two-thirds majority, no matter who puts them on the ballot.

Return to Prop 13’s Original Intent by Voting YES on Prop 43

The amendment is simple. No one may impose, extend, or increase a special tax without a two-thirds vote. New value-based property taxes would also be barred, except Proposition 13’s 1 percent rate and voter-approved bonds. Cities, counties, special districts, school districts, and community colleges would live under one rule. If the tax is special, it would need two-thirds approval.

Look at who those “citizen initiative” petitioners often are. Not neighbors with clipboards and a playground sketch. Public-employee unions are the main organized funders of city tax campaigns. A University of California analysis of 116 city tax measures found unions giving to 78 of them. On those races they supplied much of the money. Police and fire locals did much of the same self-interested funding when the tax would benefit their members.

Government agencies quickly learned that using “citizen initiative” made tax increases much easier. In San Francisco, a school district and its teachers’ union drafted a parcel tax for teacher pay and classroom staffing. A deputy superintendent edited the language. The union then asked three residents to sign as official proponents. A district-sponsored special tax would have needed two-thirds. The court treated it as a “citizen initiative” anyway.

Virtuous Packaging of Sneaky Taxes

The wrapping on special taxes is always virtuous, even if the outcome is not. Special taxes almost always name a cause few will campaign against, such as teacher salaries. child care, homelessness, fire protection, trauma centers, trains, parks, and community colleges. The deceptive wrapping is cynically used to make it easier to reach into your pocket.

It is worthy to note that what appears on the ballot as Proposition 43 is a watered-down version of the measure Howard Jarvis’s allies first filed. That version restored a two-thirds vote and reached back into special taxes already passed by simple majority. Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D, Oakland) wrote the weakened replacement that let previously approved majority-vote special taxes stand. She shepherded it through the legislature where it passed 68–2 and 35–1. She then flip-flopped and urged Californians to reject the very amendment she had authored. The Democrat supermajority undermined Jarvis’s taxpayer stronger initiative. Then they walked away from the compromise that replaced it, in the cynical hope that special taxes continue to be easy to pass in California.

Proposition 43’s official title builds on the legislature’s deception. In 1978, Proposition 13 was objectively described as a “tax limitation” on the ballot because that is what it was. This year, Attorney General Rob Bonta completely turns the Proposition 43 ballot wording upside down by labeling it a “voter limitation” by inserting this statement on the ballot: “Limits Voters’ Ability to Raise Revenues for Local Government Services.”

The Prop 13 title named it a restraint on government. The Prop 43 title implies a loss for the public. Bonta’s creative writing does not mention a two-thirds threshold. It does not mention special taxes. It invites you to think you – not City Hall – are being limited.

Vote YES on Prop 43.

California is not an undertaxed state. California’s local governments already rank among the highest funded in the country. Lincoln Institute figures for 2023 put local general revenue here near $10,600 per person. The national average is about $6,900. Only New York’s local governments collect more.

At issue is whether another dedicated claim on your income must clear a 2/3 supermajority of voters or only a majority assembled by the special interest groups that often spend the money to benefit themselves.

Push back on the legislature’s deceptive attempt to make it easier to tax so their local minions can continue to overspend your hard-earned tax dollars.

Protect yourself.

VOTE “YES” ON PROP 43.

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Most Californians appreciate how important the governor’s race is. It is, of course, extremely important that Steve Hilton win in November. But, what many do not often understand is precisely how important the attorney general race is, because it is the Attorney General who decides whether the law is enforced or not.

Last Thursday’s Santa Barbara GOP Lincoln/Reagan Dinner at Timbers featuring Republican Attorney General candidate Michael Gates, who, after the dessert plates were cleared and while checkbooks were still open, electrified the rowdy crowd with insight into one of the most important races in California, a race even political junkies rarely understand.

“Of all of the races you can possibly think of in California right now,” Gates said, “the most important race in this entire state of California right now, if we want to rescue California, is the attorney general’s race.” He added, “that is not a self-serving statement. I will prove it to you.”

And prove it he did, explaining that while it is the governor who sets the agenda, it’s the attorney general who decides whether the law is enforced, and whether a law the public itself just passed survives the first lawsuit.

Candidate Gates, polished and articulate, is a lifelong Californian, married nearly 30 years, father of five, grandfather of four. He made his name as a trial lawyer defending police and refusing to settle. “If my officers would go out and put their life on the line to keep me safe, I was not going to settle their cases.” He never lost a cop case and is admitted to the Supreme Court bar. As Huntington Beach City Attorney for more than a decade, he took those fights statewide, from COVID beach closures to parental rights. In January he went on the trail full time. “I’m sacrificing time with my wife of almost thirty years, five kids, and four grandkids,” he said. “This is the moment.”

Gates then points out that “Sixty-five percent of poll respondents say that California is headed in the wrong direction. Four years ago, that figure sat in the low forties. Californians have woken up.” Against incumbent Rob Bonta, who he refers to as “a disaster,” Gates credits Bonta as “largely responsible for the fact that California is a dumpster fire,” and that he, Gates, is running as the change candidate for the office as someone who can make a rescue stick, or slip away.

Article V, Section 13 of the California Constitution makes the attorney general the chief law officer of the State, charged to see that the laws are uniformly and adequately enforced. He supervises every district attorney and sheriff. When a county will not enforce the law, he may prosecute with all the powers of a district attorney.

“There isn’t a deputy sheriff… there isn’t a sheriff… there isn’t a prosecutor, who’s not ultimately under the attorney general,” he notes. Gates believes that George Gascon’s Los Angeles was not a local mishap, that it was an indictment of the state’s top cop. “The fact that those DAs were ever soft on crime is the Attorney General’s fault,” he says. If another Gascón appears, Gates vows that he would “reach down and prosecute those cases myself.”

Huntington Beach is one of California’s bigger cities, with 200,000 residents and 15 million visitors a year, “the recipe for high crime,” Gates notes. However, as City Attorney, he told prosecutors to reject back room deals and “demand maximum penalties.” Huntington Beach became one of the safest cities in California, while Bonta’s California ranked among the most dangerous in the country. The difference, Gates said, was will. “No excuses, no exceptions.”

Compliance With Federal Law

The AG’s civil power does not wait on the governor. Bonta can sue anyone he wants, and he has. He is leading the lawsuit to block Paramount’s merger with Warner Bros., a case Newsom has urged him to settle after Paramount threatened to leave California. “He does all the civil cases.” That same independent docket is how Bonta sued hospitals, “including a children’s hospital,” to force “trans surgeries on minors.”

On day one, Gates said, under his leadership those hospital suits will be dismissed. California will comply with federal law instead of filing a hundred suits against Washington. “Who is responsible for making sure California is compliant with federal law? It’s the attorney general.”

A new governor still needs that officer. “If Hilton gets elected and Bonta gets re-elected, how much do you think Hilton will be able to get done?” Bonta, Gates warned “is going to sue him every day of the week.” Winning the Capital’s corner office is necessary. It is not sufficient.

In 2008 Californians wrote traditional marriage into its Constitution, “marriage equals a man plus a woman,” and they did it at the ballot box, 52 percent to 48 percent. Then the lawsuit. “It was challenged in court and then it failed because Kamala Harris didn’t show up to court to defend it.” Harris did not repeal the measure. She refused to defend it, and in doing so she undermined the will of the people. When the attorney general will not appear, the people’s law has no lawyer. It dies by default.

That is the warning for Proposition 39, the voter ID measure on the November ballot. “If you want to keep your voter ID when it passes,” Gates said, “you need Michael Gates as your attorney general.”

Someone will sue.

“Whose responsibility is it to show up to court to defend the law of the land? The attorney general.” Bonta, who already sued Huntington Beach over local voter ID “hates election integrity” and “will not show up.” If he is re-elected, “voter ID will be taken from us by operation of law,” the will of the People be damned.

“Career politics versus career lawyer,” Gates said of Bonta, a legislator-appointed AG in 2021. Gates has spent his life in courtrooms, not karaoke rooms with lobbyists. He jumped in because “California is crying out to be rescued,” and because “as goes California, so goes the nation.”

California can elect a new governor and still lose the rescue in court. The attorney general is the lawyer who either defends the law the voters passed or lets it vanish. Michael Gates is asking to be that lawyer. “Look at Article Five, Section 13,” he said. “It’s all right here.”

California law hinges on who is sworn in as Attorney General.

Bonta represents a brick wall of continued lawfare, division, waste, and fraud.

Gates opens the pathway to saving California.

Vote MICHAEL GATES for Attorney General!

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Weaken the Wealth Tax Werewolf While You Still Can

Vote YES on Props 41 and 42

Late last year, Sergey Brin packed up, rode out of the Golden State, and crossed over to Nevada, the Silver State. He carried two silver bullets with him: Propositions 41 and 42, which are meant to stop Proposition 40 – the billionaire tax – before this initial hunt of the ultra-rich broadens into open season on every Californian’s financial nest egg.

Brin can afford this ammunition. He is worth more than $250 billion, the fifth-richest person on Earth and the second-largest fortune built in California, after his Google co-founder Larry Page. The class conflict and envy embedded in Prop 40 was tailored for uber successful men like these. Sergey moved his official residence to Nevada before the January 1, 2026, cutoff, so the tax may well miss him.

With much of his paper wealth beyond California’s grasp, why is he still risking a high-stakes gunfight with California’s political machine? And why should a voter cast his lot with this lone ranger rather than the machine itself?

The answer is simple. Sergey Brin may not share the views of every hardworking Californian, but on the wealth tax he is aligned. In protecting himself, he is also protecting you.

To understand why he is in the battle, consider his self-interest, the company he keeps, and, perhaps most important, the place from which he came.

Sergey’s girlfriend, Gerelyn “GG” Gilbert-Soto, is very public in her support of President Trump. Late in December 2025, at a Christmas party in a Marin redwood treehouse, Brin told Gavin Newsom to his face that he was leaving the state. Then he backed “Building a Better California” with more than $100 million dollars in firepower, along with John Doerr, Chris Larsen, Michael Moritz, Patrick Collison, and Eric Schmidt, to fund “Yes on 41 and 42” and to fire back.

Sergey Brin’s early Soviet years left a bitter taste of socialism’s real-world failures. “I fled socialism with my family in 1979 and know the devastating, oppressive society it created in the Soviet Union.” He told The New York Times, “I don’t want California to end up in the same place.”

No one should.

At a White House dinner on September 4, 2025, Brin told Donald Trump: “You are applying a lot of pressure on Maduro, and I think that’s fantastic. That’s what a U.S. president should do. I hope it will also be the same for Cuba and other places.” Those are not the words of a progressive Karen Bass Democrat.

Prop 40, and then 41 and 42, grew out of SEIU UHW’s reaction to Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill. One big piece of that law required able-bodied adults to get the lead out and work or lose Medicaid. Fair enough and well past due. But in California, the requirement for such personal responsibility means a cut in Federal Medicaid spending in the tens of billions a year. With 120,000 dues-paying members, that reduction hit SEIU UHW’s bottom line hard. Rather than tighten their own belts, the union’s mission pivoted from caring for the poor to eating the rich. Prop 40 is that grotesque act in statute: a raid sold as justice, drafted so the next raid needs only a new date and a new list.

Buried in the Prop 40 text:

“The Legislature may amend the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act, by statute passed in each house… two thirds of the membership concurring, if the statute is consistent with and furthers the purposes of the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act.”

The risk is a simple two thirds vote to apply this wealth tax to any Californian they wish at any time of their choosing.

“As Goes California, So Goes the Nation.”

Comrades Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders would take a wealth tax built on such a California chassis and drive it through D.C. at breakneck speed. Killing Prop 40 does not kill the appetite to eat the rich or take away the wealth of others. California is a pilot project that the Democratic Socialists of America dream of introducing nationally. forestalling a national wealth redistribution campaign is why, in part, Sergey is funding 41 and 42. These are silver bullets: clean shots, not a spray of lead; they weaken the California wealth tax werewolf before it bites and infects others.

Sergey’s Two Bullets

Prop 41 says a new special tax on this ballot cannot park its money outside the Gann spending cap, and it requires audits of programs funded by such taxes.

Prop 40 does park the take outside Gann and doesn’t require an audit. If 41 passes with more Yes votes than 40, 40 is gone.

Prop 42 forbids a new state tax on simply owning personal property, stocks, businesses, savings, intellectual property, and forbids a tax that is retrospective. Prop 40 does both. If 42 passes with more Yes votes than 40, 40 loses again.

Neither measure requires 40 to lose a majority vote. Each need only a larger Yes total than 40 on the issues where they intentionally collide. Courts, per usual, will decide what conflicts.

You need not love or even like billionaires to enthusiastically root for this lone ranger’s fight. He could just ride off in the sunset or cower in a gilded cage like so many others. Billionaires can go anywhere, in luxury and comfort.

Most people cannot.

Props 41 and 42 protect you and whatever financial wealth you have been able to build.

Keep California from turning even more Soviet.

Vote YES on both Prop 41 and Prop 42.

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Slippery-Tongued Newsom is For and Against the Billionaire Tax

Once every millennium, the Current agrees with Governor Newsom on a very important issue facing California voters. This time we both agree that Proposition 40 – the wealth tax on billionaires in California –, should be defeated by the voters on November 3.

But not to get too soft-hearted about this newfound agreement with Newsom, since he only cares about losing the goose that laid the golden eggs in this state, which is the likely mass exodus of billionaires from California if this insane proposition passes, so he opposes it for California. However, he is in favor of a wealth tax for the entire country.

For any reader not up to date with this groundbreaking referendum, Proposition 40 would impose a one-time (hah, hah) 5% wealth tax on California billionaires, payable in annual instalments of 1% over five years (with a deferral charge). The tax is based on the worldwide net worth of taxpayers valued as of December 31, 2026.

There are so many problems with this tax we almost don’t where to begin to cite them all. The proposition was foisted upon us by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a major labor union in California.

Rather than get into minutiae of all the difficulties, maybe it would be instructive to look at which countries have gone down this road before and what subsequently happened after imposing the tax.

Before we do, it is important to note that no state in the United States has ever had a wealth tax, since the tax would likely be declared unconstitutional by virtue of retroactivity, along with apportionment issues. However, a few countries have had a wealth tax, such as France, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Luxembourg and Argentina. Can you guess what they all had in common? If you answered the tax was repealed in every one of these countries, you would be right. It was repealed because of capital flight, brain drain, high administrative and valuation costs and, lastly, because of disappointing revenue yields.

But rather than discuss the many inherent hurdles the state would have to overcome to levy this tax, we prefer to look at the big picture or the most important part of why this would be such a fundamental change for our country. First, this is an attack on our economic freedoms and private property rights, which has been the greatest driver of economic prosperity and wealth for the greatest number of people since the emergence of Homo Sapiens.

Defeating the Magic of Innovation and Hard Work

To understand why, it is important to look at how these billionaires accumulated their wealth and how it impacts everyone if we should impose a system that attempts to confiscate some of it. In case you weren’t aware, the billionaires’ wealth didn’t magically appear one day. Most of them started a company that provided goods or services that were inherently valuable, so much so that people were willing to exchange their own wealth to acquire or consume their products.

This free or voluntary exchange of resources has led to unprecedented poverty reduction over the last two centuries, as well as rapid technological innovation, consumer abundance and choice, and individual and economic freedom.

If you think we are overstating the benefits of free market wealth creation, all you need to do is examine the inverse, which is state socialism that has resulted in chronic shortages of consumer goods, lack of innovation, economic stagnation, and political repression.

We can already hear from our detractors that we are overstating our case since all we are talking about is taking a very small amount of the wealth these billionaires have amassed. This is the same reasoning supporters of the 16^th Amendment gave which resulted in the establishment of our federal income tax system. The first tax was only 1% on those considered the very wealthy at the time. Over the years that metamorphized into a much higher tax. During the 1940s and ‘50s it was in the 90 percent range until it was reduced to 70% in 1965.

A billionaire wealth tax today would become a wealth tax on all of us very quickly if history is any guide.

Vote NO on Proposition 40

Confiscating wealth is an attack on our economic system and freedoms and would be a slippery slope as it opens the door to confiscation of private property and ultimately would diminish the incentive to create wealth, the very heart of the invisible engine that drives risk-taking and innovation. No matter how angry you may be over the unequal distribution of wealth, don’t cut your own throat by voting for this proposition.

We need to consign this tax to the dustbin of history by voting NO on Proposition 40.

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Prop 39 Deserves your YES Vote

Santa Barbara Current publisher James Fenkner has been analyzing the California referendum propositions on the ballot this year. Unlike most of these propositions, SBCurrent strongly recommends you vote YES on Proposition 39, the Voter ID law.

Will Proposition 39 cure all that ails us in California with respect to potential voter fraud and cheating? The answer is no but the Proposition is an excellent first step to restoring trust in our elections and providing a check on the spate of laws passed by our state legislature in recent years to make it ridiculously easy to vote in California.

Very few people know that you can vote in California without ever presenting an authorized and legitimate government-issued ID to officials in charge of our elections.

Simply put, Proposition 39 requires voters to show a govt-issued ID to vote in person or provide the last four digits of government ID number to vote by mail. It also directs the state to issue free ID cards to anyone who needs one and it requires election officials to maintain accurate voter rolls, including verifying citizenship.

You would think that it is simply commonsense to put in place procedures to help identify voters and to ensure they are legally residing in California and/or are U.S. citizens. But if you listen to the powers that be, they say the law will suppress the vote by making it harder to vote. They want virtually everyone to vote with very few safeguards.

They continually say that voter ID laws discriminate against minorities and poor people. If that is the case, we wonder why they support laws requiring an ID to get on an airplane, buy alcohol, open a bank account, rent or buy a house, get married, buy a cell phone, apply for welfare, Social Security or Medicare, and a ton of other stuff. But for some reason it is the end of our democracy to require it for voting.

Voting illegally is not only easy to do in California, but it also carries no negative consequences, as it is virtually impossible to verify the voter’s status after the ballot is counted.

Misleading Proposition Wording

To highlight this absurd argument, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who oversees writing the language for the referendums on the ballot, led the analysis with this sentence, “Prohibits citizens from voting unless they present government-issued identification.”

Just how disingenuous is that?

No one is suggesting or proposing that citizens can’t or shouldn’t vote. In fact, it’s just the opposite. The law is designed to ensure that non-citizens can’t vote.

The other argument opponents like to make about Prop 39 is that there is no or very little cheating with respect to voting in California and that, subsequently, this law is unnecessary. How convenient to make this argument when there is no practical way for anyone to verify that people registered to vote are indeed citizens of the U.S. Remember, as of today, you do not need a govt-issued ID or any ID that verifies citizenship to register to vote in California.

We would like to know how it would be possible to verify citizenship of voters if they are not required to prove it. All they need to do currently is attest and sign a voter registration affidavit that they are a U.S citizen. In California, the law does not require documentary proof of citizenship.

Although SBCurrent is unhesitatingly endorsing Proposition 39, we also don’t feel it goes far enough to restore integrity to our elections. In California, voting can extend weeks and even months after the election is over. Many close races can’t be called until considerable time has elapsed after election day.

This is preposterous.

“Harvesting” the No-Proof-Required Mail-In Ballots

The main problem with voting in California is the presence of universal mail-in balloting, where everyone receives a ballot in the mail whether they requested it or not. Apparently, the state of California believes dead people should be able to vote since many of the deceased are receiving ballots.

I guess you could call this the “cemetery vote.”

Further, the ballot can be mailed and supposedly postmarked on election day, thus ensuring the ballot won’t be counted until many days after the election is over. It can take considerable time to properly record the ballot since the signature has to be verified, an almost impossible task since most signatures are illegible nowadays.

In addition to the lax rules governing mail-in voting, California inexplicably allows ballot harvesting, a form of voting that is prohibited in most other states or has stringent limits on how it can work, and in fact is banned in most countries.

Not California, where anyone, not just a family member or person in the same household, can collect the ballot and submit it on behalf of the voter. In fact, most people are unaware that the people who collect the ballots on behalf of the voters can be paid by political parties or public labor unions in the state.

If you don’t think that is an invitation for shenanigans or chicanery, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

Vote YES on Proposition 39

Although we wish Proposition 39 were far more comprehensive, we see it as a necessary first step in correcting a maliciously conceived voting process.

We enthusiastically recommend a YES vote on Proposition 39.

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Prop 38: Making the Really Rich Richer… On the Public Dime

This proposition asks taxpayers to put $8.4 billion on the state credit card so a tight circle of ultra-rich founders can supercharge an institute they have already built. The diseases they name are real: Cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s, wreck lives, and immunotherapy is a serious field; nobody serious should pretend otherwise, but that does not make this a good use of public debt.

The question on this ballot is not whether those illnesses matter. It is whether California taxpayers should mortgage the General Fund for two decades to fund research that private capital and philanthropy is already doing.

The CA Legislative Analyst Office says the state would pay $500 million to $600 million a year for about 20 years to retire the bond. About half the proposed Prop 38 proceeds, more than $4 billion, is effectively reserved for a single UCLA-affiliated nonprofit called the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy, or CIII. The measure does not name CIII directly. Instead, it sets eligibility rules that, according to an official at UCLA, only CIII currently meets.

CIII’s co-founders are Gary Michelson, Meyer Luskin, Eric Esrailian, Arie Belldegrun, Michael Milken, and Sean Parker. On the Fair Political Practices Commission’s top-contributor list, Michelson, his affiliated Michelson Center for Public Policy, and Luskin, account for $26.2 million behind “Yes on 38” committee contributors.

Spending millions to steer more than $4 billion in grants to one’s institute is a novel use of the California initiative process.

CIII is built to develop therapies and intellectual property that can then be licensed to outside companies. Under Prop 38, taxpayers are asked to put up billions in cash but have little claim on any benefit. Under the measure, the first 10 percent of income from that research goes to the General Fund to help repay the bonds.

Ten cents on a dollar is not a partnership.

It’s a tip, and a paltry one at that.

Q. With billions at risk, thin oversight, and very limited upside, would any of these CIII co-founders be taking the taxpayer’s side of that trade?

A. Not bloody likely.

Voters shouldn’t take it either.

Private capital already funds much of this important work, and does so better at the treatment and therapies stages Prop. 38 targets. Private research and development spending worldwide on cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s already runs well over $150 billion a year. Industry originates about 90 percent of FDA approved products and spends an order of magnitude more on clinical development than government does. When a private program fails, the money stops and moves to whatever is more likely to work.

There is no evidence that public bonding produces more or cheaper cures. If Prop. 38 passes, $8.4 billion is designed to flow to CIII, the UCs, and other eligible entities whether results arrive or not. The General Fund keeps paying whether progress is made or not.

And if history is any guide, expect not.

We’ve Seen this Movie Before

In 2004, Proposition 71 borrowed $3 billion for stem-cell research, and voters were sold on the likelihood of a royalty stream that never arrived. The campaign fantasized about hundreds of millions coming back, even a billion or more.

In 2020, Proposition 14 added another $5.5 billion. More than 20 years after Prop 71, taxpayers have seen about $17.6 million in royalties. The two bonds cost about $14 billion, once interest is included.

That money did not produce a stack of FDA-approved products.

It did not deliver the marketed cures for Alzheimer’s, cancer, heart disease, or diabetes.

It just further indebted California.

Public-private bond measures like Prop 38 make big, emotional promises, but all they do is burn billions in tax money.

If the state is lucky, it gets pennies for dollars and little progress. If unlucky, zilch, and taxpayers are on the hook for it all.

Millions of well-intentioned voters will read Prop 38’s title – “Authorizes Bonds for Immunology Medical Research. Initiative Statute.” –and mistakenly think they are helping cure cancer. Absent any organized opposition to this Proposition, most voters will not know that most of the financing is already private and far more effective. It is private capital which makes the most dramatic headway in the battle against these diseases, not government grants and largess to connected insiders.

If Prop 38 passes, taxpayers will be shoveling billions in grants toward an institute founded and chaired by the same people funding the campaign.

The other half of Prop 38 funding will likely go to many of the same UC nonprofits and academic recipients upon whom billions in stem cells funding has already been spent.

Heads, they get the benefits.

Tails, you get the bill.

Vote NO on Proposition 38.

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I am going to start this commentary by asking a very important question, followed up by asking which state is going to be screwed based on the answer.

Q. What little known provision in the “Big Beautiful Bill” – the landmark tax legislation passed in 2025 – has the potential to upend public school education in the United States?

A. The Scholarship Tax Credit Program

The state most likely to get screwed is, of course, California, which is on the verge of making a monumental mistake which could adversely affect the lives of its six million students.

The provision in the Scholarship Tax Credit Program gives individual taxpayers a dollar-for-dollar tax credit of up to $1,700 per year for cash donations to eligible nonprofit scholarship-granting organizations. The beauty of the tax credit is that it makes it essentially free for the taxpayer to donate the $1,700, since their taxes are reduced by the amount of the tax credit.

Here is the awesome part: all the money will be used to provide scholarships for K-12 education expenses, which can include home schooling, parochial and private schools, tutoring, books, computer technology, and other approved educational expenses. What makes it revolutionary is that it is the first federal program in the history of our country which allows federal dollars to be used for private schools and alternative educational opportunities for kids stuck in failing public schools.

Of course, there is one catch to the immense possibilities in this law to revolutionize education in America and that is: each state must opt in to the program to be eligible to dispense the money to families in the state. To date, 31 states have officially opted in. Every state with a Republican governor or Republican legislature has opted in, and because of the obvious allure of the program, three states with Democrat governors – New York, Colorado and Virginia – have agreed to participate.

By now you might be wondering what about California, since no one can plausibly suggest we don’t need the money, given the absurdly low-test scores for which we are now infamous. Not surprisingly, the teacher unions in the state have given their marching orders to our feckless governor and state legislators to reject what would potentially be billions of dollars for children who are currently victimized by a public schooling edifice that is warehousing them in content-free classes, where they spend their time until they are spit out into the world woefully underprepared to face the rigors of an information economy.

Just to give you the magnitude of what California is passing up, if one half of taxpayers in the state took advantage of the tax credit that could result in a pool of money approaching $16 billion for California. With that amount of money, you could give 1.6 million students in the state $10,000 each year to completely cover private tuition, home schooling, and/or intensive tutoring. Of course, the state would have to actively market the tax credit to ensure taxpayers are aware of it so they could take advantage of the program.

To try to quantify what this could mean for Santa Barbara, eligible families can’t make more than 300% of median income, which for a family of four in our county is $355,800 per year. Obviously, this would mean almost all families, or specifically 93% of all families in Santa Barbara County, would qualify.

The possibilities are immense.

However, in what could go down as the worst blunder the state of California has made in a generation, expect officials here to inexplicably forego the money. This is shortsighted, foolhardy, and cowardly. As a famous Roman philosopher once said, “Any man can make a mistake, but only an idiot persists in his error.”

Thank you, California, for proving once again that stupidity knows no bounds. You have consigned millions of your children to a bleak academic future for no apparent reason other than the stupidity of a frivolous governor and the fear of upsetting activist teachers’ unions.

Damn the CTA! Take the Money, California!

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Proposition 37 Steals from the Future to Pay the Well-Connected

Robin Hood stole from the rich to give to the poor. Proposition 37 does the opposite. It wraps itself in the language of a middle-class rescue while directing the real benefits upward to new-home developers, trade unions, realtors, and households earning as much as $400,000-plus.

The sales pitch is seductively simple. Prop 37 would empower the California Housing Finance Agency (CalHFA) to issue up to $25 billion in revenue bonds. Those bonds would provide second mortgages covering as much as 17% of the price of a newly built home. Borrowers would put down just 3%. The bonds, we are told, will be repaid by the homebuyers themselves.

No direct cost to taxpayers.

Help for the middle class.

More construction.

Yeah, right.

What could possibly go wrong?

Start with the definition of “middle class.” By any ordinary measure, the households in line are rich. The income ceiling is 200 percent of Area Median Income. In Santa Clara County, that is $411,000 for a family of four. In other high-cost coastal counties the figures are similarly high: roughly $375,000 to $400,000. These are not the wages of the Central Valley, or of most Californians. They are upper-middle incomes and, in national terms, high incomes.

If Prop 37 passes, the program’s income threshold will be, by far, the highest of any state housing authority in the country.

This help, moreover, only buys new houses, ones that already cost more. Eligible homes must be new construction or the first sale of a converted non-residential building. Existing homes – the kind most ordinary buyers can afford – are excluded.

Prop 37 steers its subsidized demand exclusively toward housing product that is often priced at a premium of 19% to 40% more than equivalent existing homes, depending on the county and time period.

Prop 37 targets expensive new homes only higher earners can buy. The proposed law includes a new home price cap of 125% of the FHFA conforming limit, which currently translates into house prices between $1 million to $1.5 million depending on the county. Because that limit rises yearly with home prices, the cap itself ratchets up and is inflationary.

The average worker in Los Angeles, or a renter in the Central Valley, is nowhere near the $400,000 income cap and cannot use the loan on the used house they might buy.

Prop 37 does not require applicants to be first-time homebuyers. The California residency requirement is just one year. Prop 37’s core focus is not first-time buyers or longtime Californian residents.

Prop 37 is not designed for the Californian middle-class buyer.

More lending in a tight market does not make any product cheaper. When more buyers with preferential financing chase a limited number of new houses, those houses become more expensive.

What Happened to the Condominium Market?

Condos were once the first rung on the home ownership ladder. California’s construction-defect law crushed condos and inflated insurance. Research from the Terner Center at UC Berkeley and others has shown that the current liability regime contributed to the collapse in condominium production by 75 to 90 percent from its mid-2000s peak. It also drove insurance three to four times higher on for-sale multifamily projects than on identical rentals.

Prop 37’s construction-defect fix is designed to support union labor. Only developers who opt into the “qualified builder” track get the more builder-friendly rules: a stronger right to repair, releases after those repairs, and less long-tail lawsuit risk. That track requires higher labor standards that, in practice, run through union apprenticeship pipelines.

Why not just fix those construction-defect rules for everyone, so homes can be built more cheaply across California without favoritism? Prop 37 keeps the rules in place to incentivized developers to walk hand in hand with the trade unions.

This might explain why big labor enthusiastically backs Prop 37.

Nothing that makes California housing so expensive is removed with Prop 37. The state can continue to layer long permit times, high construction costs, delays and a defect-liability regime that has crushed condominium production. Publicly assisted housing already shows what those rules cost: studies find affordable and tax-credit projects run 1.2 to 1.5 times market-rate housing inside California; prevailing-wage requirements on that kind of work have been associated with $83,000 to $94,000 in added cost per unit. Proposition 37 does not impose those wage rules on new second-mortgage homes, and it does not repeal them anywhere else.

Bigger is Better When the Public is At Risk

Prop 37 leaves California’s high-cost machinery standing and juices up subsidized demand into it.

What Prop 37 does do is expand the agency that operates the system, and that expansion is how California creates an institution too big to fail. CalHFA currently manages less than $5 billion in assets. The proposition’s $25 billion authorization is a potential five-fold expansion. Should voters approve Prop 37, CalHFA could become the largest state housing-finance agency in the country.

“No taxpayer cost” is a flimsy fair-weather claim.

Second mortgages are inherently riskier than first mortgages and have been shown to increase housing market risk; in a downturn they absorb losses first. The Legislative Analyst’s Office correctly notes there is no direct General Fund liability. That technical truth coexists beside a larger, more important political reality: once an agency grows this big, the pressure for taxpayer support in a crisis becomes intense.

Voters are not being asked merely to authorize a loan program. They are being asked to stand behind a $25 billion book of junior debt and then pretend the state can walk away if those loans sour.

That is how “no direct cost” becomes “too big to fail.”

Passage of Prop 37 will leave the housing shortage largely intact as new house prices move higher. Prop 37’s leverage only intensifies the scramble for whatever new product clears the existing rules. Renters will see the first rung of the ladder move farther from the ground. Realtors, labor unions, and developers, have every reason to praise the measure.

Their gain is real and measurable.

The public’s, not so much.

The official Voter Guide records that no argument against Prop 37 was even submitted. That silence is what a measure looks like when the people who would lose by its passage are not invited to a seat at Sacramento’s insider-only table.

Prop 37 does not build a wide path to cheaper homes for the many. It builds a very narrow path of expensive new homes for the few.

Vote NO on Prop 37.

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Don’t Fall for Newman’s Revenge

Imagine you’ve hired a new man to paint your house who just didn’t work out. He shows up late, splatters paint on the floor, leaves sloppy edges around the trim and then overcharges you.

You’re done.

You fire him.

Then you hire someone who can actually finish the job.

That’s essentially how California’s recall has worked for statewide officers for more than a century. Two questions appear on one ballot: Should this person be removed? And if so, who should replace him? Voters decide whether to fire the official who failed, and they choose the replacement themselves.

Proposition 5, known as the “Eliminate State Officer Recall Successor Elections Amendment,” would change that. And not for the better. It keeps the first question but eliminates the second. Under Prop 5, if voters recall a state officer, they lose their say in who takes the job next. The recalled official can still run again later, but voters no longer get to name the replacement.

In plain terms, Prop 5 flips the employer-employee relationship. Voters are supposed to be the employers. They hire the politicians. They can fire them. Under the current system they also get to choose who comes next. Prop 5 leaves the firing power in place but takes away the hiring power. The job then goes to whoever the succession rules already point to, the former painter’s brother or cousin, rather than the person the voters may actually want.

Gutting a 100-Year-Old Progressive Reform

Power to politicians rather than to voters was never the recall’s original idea. In fact, it was the reverse. California voters wrote the current recall rules into the Constitution in 1911 as part of Hiram Johnson’s progressive reforms. The goal was to break the Southern Pacific Railroad’s grip and dismantle the political machines that treated public office as belonging to politicians rather than the public. It passed with 76.8% approval.

The recall tool has always been used sparingly. Since 1911 there have been roughly 180 attempts to recall state officials. Only eleven collected enough signatures to reach the ballot, and only six of those succeeded: a couple of Progressive-era senators, two Assembly members in the mid-1990s, Gray Davis in 2003 (replaced on the same ballot by Arnold Schwarzenegger), and Josh Newman in 2018.

Prop 5 was written by Josh Newman, the same Democrat recalled in 2018 over a gas-tax vote. Given Mr. Newman’s infamy, Prop 5 looks like little more than a ham-fisted form of revenge against a system that provided some form of public accountability. Prop 5 is co-authored by Assembly member Isaac Bryan. It has the support of Secretary of State Shirley Weber, Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis, California Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, and the state Democrat Party.

The Pro Arguments are Wafer Thin

They say the current two-question ballot can produce a replacement who wins with only a plurality, that voters sometimes get confused by the second question, and that the system invites partisan operators to engineer recalls as shortcuts around normal elections.

A crowded field can produce a plurality winner—that is how multi-candidate races often work. The solution is not to take the entire choice away from voters and hand it to succession rules or a later process controlled by the same political class the early 20th century Progressives worked so hard to restrain. Ballot confusion is a real design-and-education problem, not a reason to erase one of the two core decisions. And the claim that the current system encourages frivolous recalls is not supported by the record. Of those nearly 180 attempts, only six succeeded statewide. The high cost of waging a recall is already enough to deter casual operators.

Beyond Mr. Newman’s own recall, the 2003 Gray Davis recall remains the clearest example of the system working as designed. Voters decided the governor had failed, and on the same ballot they chose his replacement, in that case Arnold Schwarzenegger. That is popular sovereignty in action. Prop 5 would have turned that moment into a vacancy filled by the lieutenant governor—then Democrat Cruz Bustamante—or a later election under different rules. The recall was placed in the Constitution precisely because the electorate did not trust the political class to police itself. Prop 5 dials much of that power back toward the political institutions those 20th Century Progressives sought to restrain.

Vote NO on Prop 5: Keep Replacements in the Hands of Voters

Supporters note that most other states fill vacancies by succession or separate election. California’s system was deliberately designed to give voters the final say, not so the existing order could simply continue. When the painter is bad, you should be able to fire him and hire the one you want—not the painter’s brother, not whoever the disgraced incumbent hoped to maneuver into place. That is the point of a recall. Prop 5 dilutes it. It shifts the replacement decision away from the people who just issued the pink slip.

After more than a hundred years, this is not a small procedural tweak; voters should choose a recalled politician’s replacement .

When homeowners or voters feel that a job has been poorly done, they should have the right to replace that subordinate and choose for themselves who best to finish the job.

Don’t let the recalled rewrite the rules that removed them.

Vote NO on Prop 5

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Proposition 4 Wants You to Pay for Politicians’ Campaigns

That’s the whole pitch, dressed up as “fair elections.”

Fair for whom, exactly?

For over five decades California has banned using public money to bankroll candidates. Voters put that rule in place for a very good reason: Nobody should be forced to fund the campaigns of the people who tax them.

Prop 4 would erase that ban.

That ban isn’t some dusty technicality. It came out of the Political Reform Act of 1974 and the sleaze around the CREEP payments during Watergate. The principle was simple: your tax dollars are for roads, schools, cops, and hospitals—not for paying consultants to tell you how wonderful their candidate is or how terrible his opponent looks.

Or to fund dirty political tricks.

Think about what Prop 4 means in practice. A small-business owner already struggling with high taxes and fees would now be required to help bankroll the very politician who just voted to raise them again. A parent frustrated with failing schools, such as I, would be forced to subsidize the campaign of a CTA-sponsored board member running to keep the status quo intact.

You don’t get a refund if you hate the candidate’s platform. Taxpayers on the Right will be forced to fund Leftist politicians. Taxpayers on the Left will be forced to fund Right wing politicians. You don’t get to check a box that says, “Not with my money.”

The state simply takes it and hands it over.

What’s worse is that the funding amounts, administration, and details are not even spelled out. Should it pass, the state and local governments would set up those undefined rules later. Those rules will be written, of course, by those already in charge of the place.

Prop 4 is Literally a Blank Check

Supporters say this levels the playing field. It doesn’t. It does, however, coerce you into picking up the tab for what may well be your least favorite politician.

Incumbents still get the money. Challengers still need to qualify. And every taxpayer—left, right, or checked out—ends up bankrolling attack ads and mailers for candidates they may actively despise. You don’t get to opt out. That’s not democracy.

Passage of Prop 4 would be compulsory speech enforced by taxation.

Look at the coalition pushing this thing. Common Cause. League of Women Voters. ACLU. The usual suspects who treat government expansion like a moral duty. If money buys political support, what are these groups really saying?

They’re saying private money is dirty when the other side has it, but perfectly fine when the public is forced to foot the bill. They don’t want less money in politics. They want your money redirected through the state.

Our elections already have serious problems and imbalances, and Prop 4 does nothing to fix them. California politics has the feel of a closed shop. One party owns Sacramento, most of the big cities, and the institutional machinery, thanks to powerful state sector unions that keep the whole thing running.

Competitive races are rare.

Turnout in many local contests is pathetic. When the same team holds almost every lever of power for decades, the system stops checking itself.

Meanwhile, California still acts as if requiring ID at the polls is some kind of mortal threat to democracy itself. Somehow most other democracies manage to confirm who’s voting without the sky falling. Here in the U.S., our overlords treat the absence of basic Voter ID as not only noble but also sacrosanct.

Prop 4 Doesn’t Touch Any of This

It doesn’t open up safe districts, call for voter identification, loosen the one-party hold, increase ballot integrity, or rein in ballot harvesting. It doesn’t make the process cleaner or more credible in any way.

What it does is open a new funding door: letting politicians dip into taxpayer money to pay for their own campaigns.

That’s not reform.

That’s adding another layer of self-interest to the system.

Once the public check book gets involved, the pressure to expand will never go away. The real problems stay right where they are, while a fresh set of conflicts and costs get locked in.

Vote NO on Prop 4

Every statist organization loves Prop 4. It lowers the cost of electing people who promise more programs, more rules, and more spending.

Prop 4, if passed, would be catnip for the “government is the answer to everything” crowd.

Clean money?

Please.

It’s just more tax money recycled through the untouchable political class’s hands.

Vote NO on Prop 4

California already can’t keep the lights on, house its people, or educate its kids without constant crisis, followed by requests for even more money and power. Now we’re supposed to believe the urgent priority is subsidizing political careers?

Prop 4 sells itself as “reform.”

It is anything but.

It takes a clear line—that taxpayers should not be required to fund political campaigns—and replaces it with a permanent invitation for politicians to help themselves to the public trough. Should Prop 4 pass, the same people who already run the farm will write the rules.

George Orwell saw it coming: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

Don’t buy the farm, California.

Vote NO on Prop 4.

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How Long Before the Bear Turns Its Gaze on You?

Two friends are hiking when suddenly a bear appears and charges toward them. One takes off running, and his friend shouts after him, “Are you crazy? You can’t outrun a bear!”

Without slowing down, he yells back, “I don’t have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you.”

Funny joke. Unless you live in California. After all, what animal is on our state flag?

Keep that thought.

Everyone Gets a B

There’s a political parable that has circulated for years. A liberal college student comes home for winter break complaining to her conservative father about how hard she works. She attends every class, studies constantly, and sacrifices nights and weekends. Her reward is a 4.0 GPA.

Her father asks about one of her friends. “She has a 2.0,” the daughter tells him. “She skips classes and parties.”

Her father offers a solution. “Why don’t you ask the dean to take one point from your GPA and give it to her? Then you’ll both have a 3.0. That would be equal.”

She’s furious. “Why would I do that? I worked hard for my grades. She did nothing. That’s not fair.”

Her father smiles. “Welcome to the Republican Party.”

Apparently, redistribution becomes considerably less attractive when somebody wants to redistribute your hard-earned success.

What Is Socialism?

Of course, a GPA isn’t money, but the parable makes a simple point: redistribution looks different when they’re taking what belongs to you.

Socialism is a political-economic system in which major resources and industries are owned, controlled, or substantially directed collectively, typically through the state, workers, or public institutions.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) calls for “aggressive wealth taxes on the richest individuals and corporations,” along with public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries. California carries the message “Tax the Rich,” proposing a 5% billionaire wealth tax.

Congratulations on Your Success

But who are “the rich”? Don’t worry. Right now, they’re talking about billionaires, and you aren’t a billionaire, are you?

Then relax and go back to work. Open your restaurant. Start your plumbing company. Build your real-estate business. Open a gym. Mortgage your house to keep the business alive. Hire employees. Work weekends. Skip vacations. Make payroll during recessions. Save instead of spending.

Perhaps all that sacrifice pays off, and you become successful.

Congratulations.

Now you’re becoming a target.

Back When the Income Tax Was 1%

But don’t worry. They’re only targeting billionaires.

Consider 1913. After ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, Congress enacted the Revenue Act of 1913. The new federal income tax primarily targeted high-income Americans. The normal rate was just 1%, if you made roughly $135,000 in today’s dollar value for a married couple.

Relax. They were only taxing the rich.

And is the federal income tax still 1%?

Relax, you’re not on the bear’s menu. Yet.

So, Who Is Rich Today?

Here in Santa Barbara, a family of four earning around $140,000 can fall within HUD’s low-income limits. Middle income reaches toward $190,000, while upper-middle income can approach $237,000, all above the $135,000 equivalent that triggered the 1913 income tax.

And of course it’s no longer 1% tax, it’s a 22% tax for the same income bracket.

These aren’t people lounging aboard superyachts. They’re paying mortgages or rent, groceries, insurance, utilities, tuition, and California taxes, while wondering how they can be living paycheck to paycheck and somehow be considered “wealthy.”

But don’t worry. Nobody is coming for them.

Well, at least until all the rich leave.

Meet the Socialists Next Door

Think this political movement is somewhere else? Look around.

Locally, Wendy Santamaria, Santa Barbara City Council District 1, was DSA-endorsed in 2024.

Oscar Gutierrez, District 3, was also DSA-endorsed.

Helena Pasquarella, a 2026 candidate for Congress in California’s 24th District, has been identified as a DSA member and endorsed by Ventura County DSA.

Santa Barbara County Supervisor Laura Capps’ 2022 campaign participated in an Isla Vista canvas organized with UCSB Young Democratic Socialists of America.

Socialist political organizing is here and taking root.

Don’t think Santa Barbara is isolated from policies taking hold elsewhere. Look at policies such as rent freeze, which would affect everyday mom-and-pop property owners, the primary owners of rental properties here, your neighbors. And all to address a century-old housing problem that our city has never meaningfully addressed.

It goes much deeper, but most people would rather not open their eyes and look.

The Rich Can Outrun the Bear

California recently lost roughly $12 billion in net adjusted gross income through interstate migration in a single tax year. Now California is proposing another tax on billionaire wealth.

I’m sure they’ll happily hand over another 5%.

Not.

They don’t have to disappear from California. They can establish residency elsewhere while still owning homes here and enjoying California. Their taxable income, however, can move with them. Suddenly Nevada, Texas, and Florida start looking very inviting.

Reality check: when taxpayers leave, the programs don’t. The bureaucracy doesn’t leave. The pensions don’t leave. The spending doesn’t leave. The tens of billions spent on services for illegal aliens don’t stop. The high-speed rail to nowhere spending doesn’t stop. The billions spent on homelessness without any meaningful impact and inadequate tracking of outcomes don’t stop.

Reckless government spending. Plain and simple. After all it’s not their money.

And you still have to pay the bill.

Yesterday, it was the billionaire. Tomorrow, it’ll be the millionaire.

Own a home in Santa Barbara? Checked your property value lately?

Then perhaps it’s you.

As deficits grow and taxable income leaves California, our own town will look for more money from the people who remain.

Like an addict looking for the next fix, the spending continues. Only the source of the money changes.

Back to the Woods

Remember our hikers. The billionaire doesn’t have to defeat California. He just has to establish residency somewhere else and take his taxable income with him.

Every person who escapes leaves one fewer taxpayer between you and the bear.

Helping someone with your own money, food, and time, is generosity. Government spending your money on a railroad to nowhere is something else entirely.

Look around the woods and notice who’s already running.

Californication

And one final thought. California politics and policies don’t always stay in California.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers may have put it best:

“And tidal waves couldn’t save the world from Californication.”

So, look around.

How long before the bear turns its gaze on you?

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The Boy Who Cried “Temporary!”

Prop 3 is not a new school-funding measure. It is the final act in a long confidence game, a tax that began life as temporary, was later extended, and now seeks permanence under the soft lighting of “children’s education and health care.” It is a classic fable of institutional self-interest dressed in the language of compassion. Every California public school should teach this story as a warning.

None will.

Without the ignorant and gullible public, it wouldn’t work.

In 2012, voters approved Proposition 30, marketed as “Temporary Taxes to Fund Education.” The first word was the tell. Governor Jerry Brown and the California Teachers Association (CTA) sold it as a short-term bridge across a $6 billion recession shortfall. High earners would pay a bit more; the sales tax would rise a quarter-cent; the money would “protect” California classrooms. It passed with 55 percent of the vote.

“Temporary,” they said. “Trust us,” they said.

Four years later the CTA returned with Prop 55. This same coalition that had educated much of the electorate now asked that electorate to extend the income-tax rates through 2030. Proposition 55 passed with 63 percent. The “temporary” measure easily becomes a medium-term one.

The pattern was set: declare “crisis,” extract money, declare new crisis, extract again.

Now Comes Proposition 3

It’s billed as the California Children’s Education and Health Care Protection Act. Its purpose is simple: remove the expiration date on Prop 30. What began as temporary and was then prolonged would, under the new Prop 3, become permanent.

Shakespeare understood this move.

In Macbeth he warned us of those who “Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t.” Prop 3 is that flower covered serpent: wrapped in the soft language of children’s education and health care, while delivering a permanent tax increase that serves the adults who administer it, not the students in whose name it is advanced.

The numbers are enormous. Since 2012 the higher rates have generated more than $120 billion, according to the California State Controller’s office. That is twenty times the original shortfall Brown cited.

Twenty times.

Let that sink in.

This is one of the largest, if not the largest, temporary to permanent tax in California history. Should voters naively approve Prop 3, enhanced tax receipts on the order of billions of dollars a year will only grow with inflation and will continue forever.

And what did California receive for the money?

Fourth-grade reading scores on the national assessment have essentially flatlined. In 2012 the average was 213 (out of 500); in 2024 it was 212. Math moved from 234 to 233 (also out of 500). State proficiency rates tell the same story. Roughly half of students met English standards in 2012; today the figure remains stubbornly below that peak. Math proficiency has recovered only partially and still sits under 40 percent. Meanwhile the public-school system has lost roughly half a million students since the original temporary tax passed. Fewer children. No clear gains in mastery. Larger tax bill for Californians. And there is no certainty that standards haven’t been lowered to avoid embarrassment.

Where did the money go? Classroom teachers saw nominal salary growth that modestly outpaced inflation. The average for a tenured teacher now sits just above $103,000. Good money for a tough job of which California has many. Median teacher pay – which includes a summer holiday – is 40% more than California’s median income.

Yet this is not the main story.

Bureaucrats and Administrators Win Again

The dominant beneficiaries of billions in tax revenue have been administrators. Their ranks and pay expanded even as enrollment shrank. Principal and district-level salaries commonly reach $250,000 in most California districts to well over $500,000 in others.

For example, since the passage of Prop 30 in 2012, the Cajon Valley Union school district academic outcomes have continued to decline. The results for this district are currently among the lower-performing mid-sized districts in California. Less than a third of the district students read at grade level. Less than a quarter of the students are proficient in math.

Yet poor outcomes have not stopped district administrators from becoming richly compensated. Superintendent David Miyashiro who has presided over much of his district’s academic decline since 2012 took home $592,416 in total compensation in 2024.

This is the Boy Who Cried Wolf in institutional form. First the wolf was a recession shortfall. Then it was the risk of “devastating cuts.” Now it is the expiration of a tax that was never supposed to last. Each time the shepherds—CTA union leadership, school administrators and their political allies—have “sounded the alarm,” and each time a majority of voters were suckered in.

The flock (student enrollment) grows thinner.

The shepherds (bureaucrats) grow fatter.

No one (be it the voters or the students) is the wiser.

The CTA’s interest is not mysterious. More revenue means more leverage in contract negotiations, more positions, more dues, and more power over an increasingly undereducated electorate.

More of everything except higher educational outcomes.

If the goal were higher reading and math scores, the last fourteen years of elevated revenue would have produced visible results.

They have not.

If the goal were simply to keep the lights on for a shrinking student body, the scale of the haul would still look excessive. Institutional growth and excess compensation have absorbed the resources that voters had intended to be used to improve student outcomes.

California voters have been patient. They have accepted the “temporary.” They then accepted the extension. The question before them now is whether they will accept the permanent version of the same fairy tale. The fable warns that the boy who cries wolf eventually loses the trust of the village. Prop 3 proponents have lost that trust. Don’t be fooled a third time.

The permanent tax increase of Prop 3 will be wrapped in the soft language of “protecting the vulnerable.” Look under the innocent flower to the “serpent under’t”. The record is clearly visible in test scores, enrollment figures, and salary schedules.

Vote NO on Prop 3

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Proposition 2 Doubles California’s Already Bloated Slush Fund

Like all good political deception, the case for Proposition 2, formally known as the Budget Stabilization Account Cap Increase and Gann Limit Changes Amendment, includes a note of truth. California’s tax revenues do swing wildly.

That truth has been twisted by supporters of Prop 2 into a call for the doubling of the amount put aside for “emergencies” or other “unexpected” occurrences. “It’s just a sensible ‘rainy day’ measure,” they say. But if one looks into the proposal, they’ll find that description holds no water.

The real score?

Proposition 2’s passage would create a supersized slush fund out of which billions of unaccountable spending will pour. Its passage will amend the state’s constitution and allow legislators to spend an additional $20 to $25 billion however, whenever, and on whomever they see fit.

Proposition 2 would raise the cap on California’s Budget Stabilization Account from 10 per cent to 20 per cent of General Fund revenues. In boom years, this would create an extra $20 billion to $25 billion of taxpayer funds which sits outside the usual spending constraints. Prop 2’s architecture is that of a huge discretionary reserve under the control of the same people who have spent the past decade treating every surplus as permanent and every shortfall as a reason for additional taxation.

“It’s a Fiscal Emergency!” Really?

The coalition of big spenders advancing Proposition 2 includes Governor Gavin Newsom, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, Senate President pro Tem Monique Limón and Assembly member Jesse Gabriel. None are fiscal conservatives who have recently discovered the virtues of restraint. They are counting on a simple marketing strategy to float this idea in November and hope that most voters won’t read the deadly boring small print. Or have forgotten how Sacramento works.

If this constitutional amendment passes, don’t be surprised to find an increase in California’s “Rainy Days.” The process for accessing these funds is easy: the governor simply cries out “emergency” and a simple majority of votes in the legislature releases the money into the general fund.

In the 2024/25 fiscal year, $5 Billion poured out. In the 2025/2026 fiscal year, another $7.1 Billion was drained. A “fiscal emergency” were the governor’s magic words to unlock billions.

Anyone recall the emergency?

California already has mechanisms intended to capture surplus revenue. Proposition 98’s education guarantee and the Gann Limit already impose a degree of discipline on budget spending. Proposition 2 provides the wiggle room to sidestep this established framework by placing enormous sums outside those mandated spending limits. The practical effect of Prop 2 would be less voter influence over a much larger pot of money, rather than tighter control.

Under Prop 2, every time a “rainy day” occurs, California taxpayers will get soaked.

Recurring “Inconveniences”

The scale of the additional slush fund capacity is worthy of perspective. During COVID, the Employment Development Department is estimated to have lost around $20 billion to unemployment fraud. Problems in Medi-Cal provider fraud, In-Home Supportive Services, and homelessness programs, have produced documented losses with estimates of ongoing leakage that run into the billions each year. The state has, on more than one occasion, found itself unable to track outcomes for tens of billions spent on homelessness. Rather than address these billion-dollar leaks with any great urgency, Sacramento politicians are hoping to divert more taxpayer funds under their own control and less public scrutiny.

If the genuine goal were budget stability, one might expect at least some attention to the tax structure that produces the swings or addressing the administrative failures that allow so much of the money to escape once collected.

Large-scale fraud should not be treated as a recurring inconvenience, Yet no structural repair of the budget process appears anywhere in the current Prop 2 proposal.

What Prop 2 does feature is a larger claim on future capital-gains receipts and unencumbered freedom in their subsequent (mis)use.

Way back in 1972 Albert Hammond channeled California’s rainy days as a way to contrast deceptive marketing with the hidden, grim reality beneath it:

“It never rains in California,

But girl, don’t they warn ya?

It pours. Man, it pours.“

Proposition 2 doesn’t fix the plumbing or repair California’s leaky financial roof. It simply pours billions of unaccountable dollars into the hands of the same spend-happy politicians who’ve squandered it before.

Vote NO on Proposition 2.

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(Editor’s Note: This November, California’s electorate will decide on 14 new measures packaged as Propositions. Some are straightforward. Most are not. They come wrapped in carefully chosen titles, emotional appeals, and selective details that can make the real trade-offs hard to see.

In order to give you better tools with which to understand and influence the elections and policies shaping our state, California Current will dig into each of these propositions. We will look at what they actually propose, where the money goes, who is pushing them, and what sits beneath the surface. The goal is simple: help readers make clearer, more informed choices rather than voting on branding alone.

As with all our articles, readers are welcome to comment and share. – J.F.)

Prop 1: Veterans and Affordable Housing Bond Act

Beware the very first proposition you’ll see on your November ballot.

It’s a con job.

Don’t fall for it.

Democrat legislators named Prop 1 the “Veterans and Affordable Housing Bond Act of 2026” to make it sound noble; it’s anything but.

Prop 1 proposes borrowing a mere $11.25 billion from taxpayers “for our veterans.”

I would say “Hah,” but this is no laughing matter.

And, just so you know who’s behind this charade, Santa Barbara’s own California Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón, along with her partner in crime, Democrat Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, and the usual Democrat leadership put it there. Governor Newsom signed off.

If you think “Veterans” are at the heart of this fraud, you’d be mistaken. Here’s the actual split: roughly $1.25 billion is set aside to support CalVet home loans, just one ninth of the total raise.

The other $10 billion? Multifamily subsidies, “supportive housing,” farmworker projects, student beds, tribal grants, and something called “innovation funds,” whatever that means.

Veterans are given top billing on the bond. The housing industrial complex, filled with NGOs (non-governmental organizations) whose leadership lives off their quarter-million-dollar-plus salaries, pocket the vast majority of the money. Taxpayers get the bill, with interest.

We’ve Seen This Movie Before

The same “veteran” bait-and-switch was successfully exploited in 2018’s Proposition 1 and before that, in 2014’s Proposition 41.

Both passed.

Both spent the money, pouring a total of $4.6 billion into local government agencies and NGOs.

The small units those programs produced routinely cost $400,000 to well over $500,000 each. That’s multiples of what private builders spend on similar construction. Prevailing wage rules, layered requirements, and California’s special brand of process make sure the costs stay ridiculously high.

And the results? Homelessness keeps rising. Rents keep climbing. The shortage never budges. The bureaucracy gets bigger. The nonprofits and connected developers do just fine.

That same crowd, with the same fraudulent intent, is back with another multi-billion-dollar ask, once again hiding behind veterans.

Just as California’s film business hacks pump out sequel after sequel to any and every successful movie, California’s political flunkies re-animate Propositions over and over again no mater the original Proposition’s outcome.

The pattern is obvious once you look.

Take a group that actually sacrifice for this country – military veterans, law enforcement officers, firefighters – and wheel them out so voters will feel bad about saying no to more debt and more of the same failed programs. The only winner in this make-believe façade is the permanent progressive infrastructure of overpaid bureaucrats, nonprofits, housing authorities, and regulated developers.

Point this out and suddenly you’re the one who lacks compassion.

Central Valley Republican Senator Shannon Grove, an Army veteran herself, called the Prop 1 packaging “shameful.” She says it’s “a homeless bond with a veterans garnish.” She is right. Underneath the marketing it’s the same product: hundreds of millions a year in new General Fund debt service for decades, more money shoved through the same channels that already make housing scarce, and zero serious confrontation with California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) delays, zoning restrictions, or the glacial public process that gums everything up.

What’s missing is more revealing than what’s in the measure. California’s housing authorities already control thousands of public units. Los Angeles alone manages more than 6,000. Those should be prioritized for veterans through preference, renovation, or structured transfers that actually create ownership opportunities. That would give people who served but who have been left behind a shot at the American Dream, a real choice instead of another waiting list where other people inevitably cut ahead. But that would mean admitting the existing public model has failed. Progressives won’t go there. Their answer is always the same: more borrowing, more taxes, more programs under their control.

Proposition 1 won’t even begin to fix the housing shortage. It leaves the rules and costs that created the shortage untouched. It piles on more debt. And it uses the prestige of people who have actually served honorably to paper over a system that keeps failing.

The troops deserve better than to be marketing fodder for yet another worthless progressive bond.

Prop 1 isn’t about “Saving Private Ryan”. It a modern, dystopian version of “The Sting”, without any of the charm or good looks of Robert Redford and Paul Newman and where the hapless marks are millions of California taxpayers.

Vote NO on Proposition 1.

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Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha To Be California State Holidays

Leave it to the clowns in Sacramento to turn a simple question of school calendars into another master class in selective pandering. Assembly Bill 2017, rammed through with the eager backing of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Assemblymember Matt Haney, aims to make Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha official state holidays. Schools could slam shut, kids get free excused absences, state workers pocket the day off, and every classroom in the state gets nudged toward “educational activities” on the Islamic observances—whether your family gives a damn or not.

This isn’t about letting kids miss school for grandma’s funeral or a genuine religious obligation. California already has that covered with excused absences for sincere beliefs. No one’s forcing Muslim families to choose between faith and truancy. AB 2017 is pure symbolism—a shiny trophy for one pressure group at the expense of everyone else’s common sense.

The numbers make the hypocrisy laughable. California’s Jewish population dwarfs its Muslim one—roughly double, by solid estimates. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur aren’t some niche observances; they’re the beating heart of Jewish religious life, days of atonement and community that have carried the faith through hell and high water. Yet crickets from the equity warriors. Especially rich timing, with antisemitic garbage spiking and Jewish schools and synagogues beefing up security. If this is about demographics or “inclusion,” the math doesn’t add up. It’s selective favoritism, plain and simple.

Multiculturism: California’s One-Way Thoroughfare

This is textbook leftist pandering, greased by the red-green alliance—the cozy hookup between identity-obsessed progressives and Islamist advocates who know exactly which buttons to push. The left loves nothing more than lecturing the rest of us about diversity while kicking traditional American norms to the curb. CAIR and company demand accommodations here that they’d never extend in reverse. Try floating Christmas closures or Yom Kippur state holidays in any of the Muslim-majority spots overseas.

Good luck with that.

Multiculturalism California-style is a one-way street: bend over backward, get called bigot if you push back, and never expect the same courtesy in return.

The multicultural fantasy has always been a mirage. It preaches endless tolerance but ignores the asymmetry. California’s Christian-rooted holidays—like Christmas—aren’t some dusty sectarian leftovers. They grew out of the Western, Judeo-Christian soil that built this state: its laws, its calendar, its public rhythms. Over time they have become broadly cultural, giving most folks a shared breather regardless of personal belief. They’re the organic baseline, not some unfair perk. Diluting or subordinating that heritage to every new demand doesn’t create pluralism. It erodes the cultural glue that lets real diversity function.

The Assembly has already rubber-stamped this thing 64-1, proving how deeply the fix is in. Now it’s trudging through the Senate Education and Appropriations committees, with fresh amendments and a floor vote likely on the horizon.

Taxpayers, parents, and local school boards should be paying attention—the Sacramento freight train rarely slows down once it gets rolling.

This Bill Should Die

Nobody is saying that Muslim families can’t observe their holidays. They can and should. But turning public institutions into vehicles for official religious elevation, complete with curriculum nudges, crosses into territory government has no business entering. Local districts already juggle these issues through bargaining and common sense. Statewide mandates just invite more costs, more chaos, and more endless claims from the next group with a good lobbyist.

Sacramento’s identity-politics crowd never misses a chance to thump the DEI drum, yet here they are, stone deaf to Jewish concerns and the broader heritage that shaped California. The red-green alliance knows how this game works: progressives get to feel virtuous, advocates get their wins, and the rest of us get higher taxes, disrupted schools, and the quiet sense that some faiths are more equal than others.

Kill this bill. Californians deserve straight talk and equal rules, not another round of multicultural theater that only runs in one direction. Real pluralism means neutrality under the law, reciprocity where it counts, and respect for the culture that actually built this place—not its slow-motion surrender.

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When SpaceX went public, much of the media focused on one headline: Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire.

It is a remarkable achievement and certainly newsworthy. But I believe most of the media missed the much bigger story. According to reports, approximately 4,400 SpaceX employees became millionaires through company stock ownership.

Think about that for a moment.

Not 4,400 venture capitalists. Not 4,400 hedge fund managers. Not 4,400 Silicon Valley executives. The 4,400 employees included not only scientists and engineers but also welders, electricians, machinists, technicians, mechanics, and quality inspectors. They were the skilled tradespeople who helped build one of the most advanced manufacturing companies in human history.

That is the real American Dream story, and it is the one we should be talking about.

For decades, America created wealth this way. The auto, aerospace, shipbuilding, defense, and computer revolutions, generated prosperity that spread far beyond corporate boardrooms. Engineers, technicians, and skilled laborers shared in the success of the companies they helped build.

Somewhere along the way, we began treating manufacturing as yesterday’s economy and software as tomorrow’s. SpaceX brings us back to our American roots. Unlike many Silicon Valley success stories, SpaceX doesn’t simply write code. It builds things.

Every one of those activities requires thousands of skilled workers. As an engineer, my job was never to replace skilled labor. My job was to make skilled labor more productive. I have worked on the nation’s most complex defense systems. During my Navy career, I led teams supporting ballistic missile defense missions that launched multiple test vehicles into space. I have worked alongside the country’s brightest engineers.

I have also worked alongside thousands of technicians, mechanics, electricians, welders, quality inspectors, logisticians, and skilled tradespeople who made those missions possible.

A billionaire doesn’t build a rocket.

A software engineer doesn’t build a rocket.

A rocket is built by a team.

That relationship between engineering and skilled labor made America the most technologically advanced nation on Earth.

Scientists discover.

Engineers design.

Technicians implement.

Skilled labor builds.

When all four work together, extraordinary things happen. That is why California should pay attention to what is happening around us. California remains one of the world’s great innovation centers. We still have extraordinary universities, venture capital, entrepreneurs, and talent. We helped invent the modern technology economy.

But leadership is never permanent. Tesla moved its headquarters to Austin, and SpaceX moved its headquarters to Texas. While important manufacturing remains in Hawthorne today, nearly all of SpaceX’s major new investments, including Starship, Starbase, and the company’s headquarters, are occurring in Texas. California should not assume tomorrow’s manufacturing will automatically remain here.

An increasing number of manufacturing, energy, and technology companies are choosing to expand in states that are actively competing for industrial investment. The question is not whether California will continue producing ideas. The question is whether California will continue producing things.

Innovation creates inventions. Manufacturing creates middle-class wealth.

We launch rockets from Vandenberg. We have UCSB. We have Cal Poly. We have one of the nation’s best skilled trade workforces. We have aerospace expertise, defense infrastructure, and venture capital, just a few hours away. If any place in America should become the next center of aerospace and advanced manufacturing, it should be the Central Coast.

We are the launchpad for someone else’s prosperity, while much of the economic opportunity is being created elsewhere.

We are watching other states aggressively compete for those opportunities. Austin is increasingly positioning itself as a challenger to Silicon Valley. Texas is not just attracting headquarters. It is attracting factories, manufacturing, investment, and talent.

California is approaching an economic tipping point.

We can continue making California less competitive for advanced manufacturing, energy, and industry, or we can recommit to producing things.

The future of manufacturing is not yesterday’s smokestacks. It is clean rooms, robotics, aerospace, semiconductors, and advanced energy.

The lesson of SpaceX is not that Elon Musk became ultra-wealthy. The lesson is that 4,400 employees became wealthy alongside him. Unlike many Silicon Valley IPOs, in which much of the wealth accrued to founders, executives, and software engineers, SpaceX created extraordinary wealth for a much broader manufacturing workforce, including skilled trades.

We did not even court SpaceX to build manufacturing facilities here on the Central Coast, even though we conduct nearly 100% of their polar orbit launches.

Think about what that means:

A welder paid off his mortgage.

An electrician sent a daughter to college debt-free.

A machinist started a small business.

A technician became financially independent.

A young family bought its first home.

That is what happens when America makes things.

California did not become the world’s technology leader by accident. We earned that position by producing the technologies, products, energy, and industries that changed the world. The question is not whether we still lead today. It is whether we are making the decisions that will allow us to keep leading tomorrow.

Otherwise, we will keep launching someone else’s future.

•••

Bob Smith is a retired Navy veteran and candidate for California’s 24th Congressional District.

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Happy Birthday, USA!

Today, we celebrate the day in 1776 that The Declaration of Independence was signed and made public. This was a seditious instrument, shaped and written by Thomas Jefferson (with the advice and consent of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston, Founding Fathers all). What these men did (some 56 brave men with much to lose eventually signed the document) when they put their names on it 250 years ago, was to have signed their own death warrant if their act of rebellion had not led to a successful conclusion against the mighty empire of Great Britain.

Lucky for them (and us) their effort succeeded.

Today, we at Santa Barbara Current celebrate the launch of the first edition of California Current, which we plan to publish once a week, most likely on Saturday.

Why are we doing this, you ask?

The reason is simple: Santa Barbara Current is an outlier, a righteous raft afloat in a sea of flotsam controlled by clueless UCSB grads, gluttonous government unions, and selfish scions of various local political dynasties. And, unfortunately, the City of Santa Barbara is a well-supplied outpost for radical governance even more deep-seated than its more populated cousins in San Francisco, Sacramento, and Los Angeles.

We have hope that our efforts to help overturn the misguided policies of the cabal that has a stranglehold on politics in this city will ultimately be successful. But, until the state of California gets out from under the power and influence of the veto-proof super majority of Democrats in the state legislature, our efforts in tiny Santa Barbara will be for naught.

So, we’re launching California Current to give the sane, reasonable, and responsible citizens of California additional tools with which to understand and influence the elections and policies shaping (or, we should say, mis-shaping) this state. Our once-a-week publication will be devoted to all things California; we may even feature dispatches from our bigger cousins in L.A. and San Francisco.

We hope too that after reading our latest offering you’ll offer up your own opinions and comments in agreement or disagreement; a conflict of ideas always makes for thought-provoking discussion and often creates closer bonds between readers and writers.

The California Legislature

As the ballot for the upcoming November 3rd mid-term election takes shape, it has become obvious that we are in the battle of our lives. The group of ever-more radical Democrat office holders in the state legislature regularly pass more than a thousand bills each year. Almost every one of those bills are signed by the (Democrat) governor and nearly all include additional spending.

As of early July, here is what “voters” (and we use that word suspiciously, as millions of easily altered ballots are mailed to addresses indiscriminately throughout the state) will be faced with:

• A proposition by the State Legislature to provide public funds to qualifying candidates who agree to spending limits and other rules. In other words, free money for politicians, paid for by taxpayers.

• An Initiative to increase the cap on California’s so-called “rainy-day fund” from 10% of the budget to 20%. Oh, and by virtue of raising that cap, those monies become exempt from the Gann spending limit. In other words, there is likely to be way more “rainy days” in coming years. They’ll spend the money.

• Lots of new bond initiatives that will increase the budget deficit substantially. An $11.25 billion bond, for instance, targeted to “multi-family housing and youth housing programs.” Oh, and some of that money is supposed to go to veterans too.

The Voter ID and Citizenship Verification initiative would require government-issued photo ID at polls or for mail-in ballots, and would provide free voter ID cards. It would also mandate annual citizenship verification reporting by election officials. We are skeptical that the current government would be assiduous in verifying anyone’s “citizenship,” and we don’t understand how this could work to deter voter fraud, since anyone here legally or otherwise can easily apply for and receive a driver’s license, good for a photo ID. But, I guess it’s a start towards more honest elections if it passes.

Another initiative will set timelines and limits for environmental reviews of certain “essential” projects (housing, transportation, water, energy, health/safety infrastructure) to speed approvals and limit litigation. It sounds good, but is not likely to produce any real results until the makeup of the legislature and the various city and county planning departments change.

Plenty of New Taxes On The Way

The “One-Time Wealth Tax on Billionaires” imposes a tax (up to 5%) on certain assets over $1 billion for individuals and trusts. The money is slated to be directed to “healthcare, education, and food assistance,” but if you believe that, well, just don’t believe that. The money will go to pay ever higher salaries and bigger benefits for government workers. We do believe there are more non-billionaires in the state than there are billionaires, so this could pass. Governor Newsom says he won’t sign it, but don’t count on that.

And, if you think this wealth tax will stop at “billionaires,” you’d be wrong.

Another initiative will make permanent the additional income taxes on high earners that was passed in 2012 and slated to (ha, ha) expire in 2031). The money is earmarked “to fund K-12 schools, community colleges, and related programs.” Again, it will do no such thing. The money will fund ever higher salaries and bigger benefits for government employees.

The Second Mortgage / Homebuyer Loan Program will authorize up to $25 billion in bonds for a “second-mortgage assistance program for middle-income first-time buyers of new/qualified homes.” Most likely, many of those “middle-income” buyers will be government employees or friends and/or relatives of government employees.

Another $8.4 billion is being asked to pay for a UC-affiliated research institute and grants focused on immune-system treatments for diseases like cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s, with pricing requirements for resulting drugs. Whoop de doo.

Local Measures

Santa Barbara and other counties, cities, and districts will also have their own local propositions/bonds (e.g., school funding, zoning, taxes). All of which means more and higher taxes for you.

Official Resources

If you want to stay updated and to read the full texts, summaries, fiscal analyses, and arguments of everything on your ballot, go on to the California Secretary of State’s Qualified Ballot Measures page (sos.ca.gov); the upcoming Official Voter Information Guide. Ballotpedia also has detailed pages.

For the most current list on your ballot, visit sos.ca.gov/elections or you can try your luck at Joe Holland’s Registry office and hope to find someone working there. It’s not likely, but, hey, a little optimism is in order. If you want to see how liberals and Democrats feel about the issues, voter guides from the League of Women Voters or CalMatters will be available.

See you next week!

•••

…these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States… And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor. – Thomas Jefferson

…But whatever is our fate, be assured this Declaration will stand; it may cost blood, but it will stand; it may cost treasure, but it will stand, and it will richly compensate for both. – John Adams

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