By:
Bob Williams
12/29/11 7:40 PM
The California Department of Finance has confirmed that the state’s fiscal year revenues through June will be $2.2 billion short of expectations, prompting Gov. Jerry Brown to implement $1 billion in budget cuts.
These cuts include a $258 million busing subsidy, $320 million from public universities, $200 million in programs for the elderly and disabled, and $79.6 million from public schools — equal to half a day of schooling.
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Call it the half-percent solution. While they differ — a lot — in details, there is one fairly consistent theme in the competing proposals to raise Californians’ taxes: They assume increases in the range of $6 billion to $10 billion per year.
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By:
Dan K. Thomasson
12/20/11 12:16 AM
The Army kid who seemingly was responsible for one of the worst national security breaches in U.S. history is, to quote the poet Kris Kristofferson, “a walking contradiction,” who isn’t quite sure who or what he is.
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On April 11, 2000, the Giants opened their new ballpark. Even before it opened, it was heralded as “the miracle on Third Street.” But there’s another miracle on Third Street, just a few blocks north of AT&T Park, that’s celebrating its 30th anniversary this month. It’s called the Moscone Center.
On Dec. 2, 1981, the Moscone Center opened to great fanfare. A few days later on Dec. 6, it welcomed its first convention group — the American Academy of Dermatologists.
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California’s public schools received a rare bit of good news Tuesday when Gov. Jerry Brown largely exempted them from automatic reductions in state aid, citing improvements in the economy.However, Brown’s declaration that the economy is getting better and he doesn’t have to squeeze all automatic spending-cut “triggers” also lessened the air of crisis and therefore complicated Brown’s efforts to persuade voters to raise taxes next year.
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Jerry Brown made a rare gubernatorial appearance this month before a joint legislative committee that was delving — with obvious reluctance — into whether California’s public employee pension benefits should be overhauled.While seeking his second stint as governor last year, Brown had pledged pension reform and has since offered a 12-point overhaul that attempts to strike a middle ground between the defenders of the status quo and the radical changes that outside groups want.
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Demography, it’s been said, is destiny — a society’s age cohorts, genders, ethnicities, income distributions, home ownership, education levels and other characteristics determine its place in the larger scheme of things.While California’s demographics are always changing, we are now experiencing one of our periodic, destiny-changing evolutions:- Our population growth has slowed markedly, from about 2½ percent a year during the 1980s to scarcely 1 percent today.
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Gov. Jerry Brown has formally proposed a $7-billion-a-year increase in sales and income taxes to close the state’s chronic budget deficit.
Whether it will be the only tax increase on the November ballot is uncertain. Several others are in the works, and if they reach the ballot as well, voter confusion could doom all. But assuming that Brown’s stands alone, how would the campaign shape up?
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By:
Ed Reiskin
12/08/11 11:33 PM
I want to thank The San Francisco Examiner editorial page for the consistent attention it’s paying to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.
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By:
Marc Intermaggio
12/07/11 10:00 PM
Ranked-choice voting is rank. This exotic electoral experiment utterly failed to fulfill the most fundamental purpose of a democracy — majority rule. The effort to prevent costly runoffs produced the unintended consequence of disenfranchising tens of thousands of local voters — and discouraging even more from participating in the complex process. A very small number of San Franciscans ended up electing our municipal officials and deciding important measures in November’s election.
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URL: http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds?page=17&%24Version=1&%24Path=%2F&quicktabs_6=1&quicktabs_4=0
