California has an incompetent Governor. A state that takes in as much money as CA should not have one of the worst bond ratings in the country. Of course the worse the bond rating, the higher the interest rate and the more money taxpayers must send to Wall St. An accident? I think not.

Because it takes a 2/3 majority to pass a budget, a number Democrats do not have, a small group of Republican legislators are able to stop the budget process every year and impose their ideology on the majority. They and Arnold will not agree to a budget that does not make deep cuts in education and health care spending. They don’t care if these cuts will have devastating consequences on our standard of life.

In addition, for every dollar that CA sends to the federal government it receives back only 78 cents in services. In other words, CA is subsidizing the rest of the country.

The media, however, choose to spin this as a spending problem. They love their Schwartzenidiot. I view Arnold as a disaster much like an earthquake, or a fire. When he is gone, we will rebuild.

The cost will, for the most part, fall on individuals who will simply bear a new tax with no benefit. The incentive is not tied directly to the desired behavior, and companies can just say “forget it” and cut wages if they’re taxed directly. If individuals are taxed, companies will completely ignore it.

Compliance costs will be a nightmare. Either reams of forms or expensive GPS trackers employees have to carry in their cars. If the tax isn’t high enough, it won’t cover the cost of the program to generate the tax.

A better option would be to offer tax incentives to employers who implement telecommuting and flex time. It has low compliance costs, it directly ties the incentive to the desired benefit, and it doesn’t give the CA government more money to blow on wasteful programs.

California’s budget problems have nothing to do with low tax revenues, and everything to do with billions in waste.

If the voters are actually *insisting* they pay more for crumbling bridges that will fail in an earthquake — sunk costs — why wouldn’t they pay for the privileged of driving on highways, generally? The bridge toll is already a defacto driving fee for many trips.

Bay Area voters are overwhelmingly liberal, particularly as you get close to the “core” roadways going into in SF and Oakland (less so near San Jose/Silicon Valley). The ones in SF and the East Bay have access to California’s best commuter rail system. Many are young and don’t own cars. The older ones up in Marin lack good transit but are so rich and environmental they would scarcely complain.

A congestion plan would not only drive greater use of public transit, it would — critically — free up highway space for industrial cargo. Oakland/Hayward/San Leandro/Emeryville have lost industrial jobs, some of the last ways for blue collar workers to make good money, because companies can’t ship their goods out, due to highway and railway congestion. So you could get some business support for this.

However it would still be a tough sell, since the pain would be local yet the money would be dispersed statewide. And good luck selling it in LA to even out the impact.

Another desperately needed reform is to make the elite and business classes pay the full costs associated with immigration instead of privatizing profits while socializing costs. These include education, health care, justice system, torts against natives (e.g. when illegals kill them in crime, drunk driving, etc), EITC, all future excess governmental obligations like welfare, etc. Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation has demonstrated how most of our current immigrants cost natives much more than they contribute.

California is the quintessential example of how our elites lust for profits and cheap, exploitable labor has dramatically lowered the quality of life for the native citizens.

It will only get much worse if we don’t change our trajectory.

Right now everyone is getting a break on the costs that they impose on others by clogging the highways. Eliminating that break and eliminating the congestion would have some benefits for rich and poor alike. Companies would be able to charge lower prices for some products as transportation time and costs fell (keeping a $200,000 truck and professional driver stuck in traffic is expensive).

Emissions controls are also regressive. Should we eliminate emissions tests and standards because it makes cars more expensive? A rich person doesn’t mind paying a few hundred dollars extra for a car with a catastrophic converter (as they say down south); that extra money is painful for a poor person. A rich person can afford to trade in a car that fails emissions testing. A poor person might be forced off the highway if his car needs a $1000 engine repair to meet emissions standards. Breathing filthy air and dying of lung cancer is a small price to pay to ensure that everyone in the U.S. has equal access to transportation, no?

Two people are driving side-by-side on the road. One is going to his $15/hr job and the next one is earning $150/hr.

Furthermore, it’s much more likely that the person earning $150/hr has more opportunity to work remotely.

Another place where a toll applies is motorways in Italy (not the South though). While digging out the revenue for that scheme ain’t as easy, I *do* doubt that the revenue is massive. What is well known is that the toll boxes cause massive congestion anytime people move around at one (public holidays). A toll scheme that works should ideally not involve any stop to collect fees or whatever advantage of reducing traffic would be made null.

Everyone else: I’ve deleted all of the discussion about public versus charter schools because it is off-topic. A posting of the form “The public schools in California are so great that they could become a huge source of revenue and here’s how” would be on-topic (and contradict my original post), but nothing like that has emerged.

CA does not have a revenue problem – we have a spending problem. As Phil has written about extensively, special interests own the government and have robbed us blind. Any new money will simply feed the beast and be immediately wasted. Until we deal with the structural issues: out-of-control spending and unsustainable pay packages for unions, we cannot afford to provide any new fodder for state government.

As an example, if you had said, “the war in Viet Nam needs to be criticized and needs to be improved,” I would say no, it needs to be stopped.

And as far as “You also have stretched my “traditional public high schools HAVE to take everyone: the non-English speakers, the disinterested, the undocumented, etc.” into an attack on foreigners” Really? How? My point isn’t that you were attacking foreigners, but that you were using their forced inclusion as a reason for poor public school performance. (read your own post)

And now you say “Foreigners” often speak better English than natives and are often much more motivated to learn.” So now that is the problem with public school performance? That they HAVE to take students who are better at English and more motivated than students at charter schools???