Free Republic

RunTime 13 m 13 s They told you it was a Billionaire Tax. 5%. One time. Only 200 people. Nothing to do with you. I went to page 26. One paragraph buried in 34 pages of fine print gives Sacramento the power to convert this into a tax on EVERYONE — your house, your 401k, your savings, your retirement — without asking you again. Ever. No ballot measure. No special election. No vote required. This is the same trick they pulled with AB 130. Newsom looked straight into the camera and told reporter Ashley Zavala he would NEVER sign a...

Gillian Cropp, a San Francisco medical researcher, ordered a new cell phone from Nextel. When it arrived in the mail the other day, she discovered that she owed $74.99 for the handset (which she expected) and $19. 12 in sales tax (which she did not). That's a nearly 25 percent tax. Or is it? Cropp learned -- after wading through a series of Nextel service reps - - that despite paying a discounted amount of $74.99 for her phone, she was being taxed for the more than $200 full retail price. "I was incensed," she said. "If you get a...