Free Republic

Gov. Jerry Brown's 2012 budget calls for $4.8 billion in cuts to public schools if voters reject the tax increases he is trying to place on the November ballot. The budget, which says the state faces a $9.2-billion deficit, was erroneously released online Thursday, several days before the governor was due to roll it out. His office was scrambling to arrange an early-afternoon news conference to discuss it. The Times obtained a copy of the document. It paints a better fiscal picture than just a year ago, when the state faced a $26-billion deficit. Brown's budget anticipates closing the current...

Democrats will do anything to pander for Hispanic votes in 2012. They’re even in favor of amnesty and cash handouts to illegal aliens, if that’s what it takes. The latest scheme from California liberals is a move to force over-burdened taxpayers to foot the bill to put illegals through college. On Thursday, the California Senate Appropriations Committee passed AB 131, which would allow undocumented pupils to sign up for public financial aid at state schools. At the same time, the Golden State’s dire fiscal straits have forced cutbacks in public-education spending for actual citizens. This particular bill is one of...

Gov. Jerry Brown named a so-called "jobs czar" last week and said he'll propose "a series of things" to boost California's poor economy. More or less simultaneously, Brown's Department of Finance revealed that revenues in July were about 9 percent below state budget assumptions. Those assumptions had been suddenly and mysteriously upgraded by $4 billion just before the budget was adopted in June, making it much easier to balance – on paper anyway. Meanwhile, the state Senate's top Democrat, President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, declared, "We intend on our own, as the majority party, to do all that we can,...

Who will own the electric car? A new report on electric cars released by The Greenlining Institute -- “Electric Vehicles: Who’s Left Stranded?” -- says the cost of the vehicles, plus the potential inconvenience of charging them, could keep these cars out of minority communities that have some of the worst smog problems in the state. “There’s the message and there’s the messenger,” said the Greenlining Institute’s C.C. Song, lead author on the report. “The marketing just doesn’t reach to these communities. People of color, growing up, the cool cars are the Mercedes, the Lexus,” she added. The report calls...

While the Obama Administration halts deportations to work on its secret amnesty plan, hospitals across the U.S. are getting stuck with the exorbitant tab of medically treating illegal immigrants and some are finally demanding compensation from the federal government. The group that represents most of the nation’s hospitals and medical providers recently urged President Obama to work with Congress to reimburse them for the monstrous cost of treating illegal immigrants. Federal law requires facilities to “treat and stabilize individuals” regardless of their immigration status, but federal support for the services remains “virtually nonexistent,” according to a letter submitted by the...

U.S. state and local governments will need to raise taxes by $1,398 per household every year for the next 30 years if they are to fully fund their pension systems, a study released on Wednesday said. The study, co-authored by Joshua Rauh of Northwestern University and Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Rochester, both of whom are finance professors, argues that states will have to cut services or raise taxes to make up funding gaps if promises made to municipal employees are to be honored. Pension funding in U.S. cities and states has deteriorated in the wake of the 2007-2009...

Context: A standard Safeway in an upper-middle class East Bay suburb of San Francisco, 8:30 PM PST. I just got home from the grocery store where I went to get a few items for my wife (vegetables, chicken) etc. and was getting my retired Dad a gift card so he can make ends meet. He is not doing well and living on Social Security and a part-time job, and I know he needs the money for food (and dog food). I was going through the self-check out but there was a sign "no gift cards" so I went back into...

Welfare benefits for the children of illegal immigrants cost America's largest county more than $600 million last year, according to a local official keeping tabs on the cost. Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich released new statistics this week showing social spending for those families in his county rose to $53 million in November, putting the county government on track to spend more than $600 million on related costs for the year -- up from $570 million in 2009. Antonovich arrived at the estimate by factoring in the cost of food stamps and welfare-style benefits through a state program known...