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Archives for the ‘Taxes’ Category

Out-of-control, unsustainable union pensions are costing average Californians

Sunday, August 31, 2025, 6:22 pm | Randy Thomasson

Have you noticed how California cities and counties are incrementally costing you more in higher taxes, fees, and bonds, while providing fewer or slower services?

The dirty little secret of California local governments is how their budgets are being eaten up by pension liabilities created by police unions, firefighter unions, and other government unions.

And they’re deceptively passing off the costs to you — telling voters they can’t have a library, or sewer lines, or a functional police or fire department without “increases.” And they do this with without disclosing to voters that these “higher costs” are all due to overly-generous and ever-growing pension contracts with local government unions.

And meanwhile, your local government tax bill keeps going up, and local government services keep decreasing. Does this concern you enough stop “feeding the beast” however you can?

Read these eye-opening California Policy Center articles to understand. Then learn how to resign your union but keep your job and money:

Is California doomed to repeat pension history? (4/30/25)
Pension costs are still eating government budgets (12/1/22)
Are government pension funds in crisis again? (10/7/22)
Why are we not talking about California’s pension problems? (5/14/21)
California is not creating jobs fast enough to support tax increases for pensions (8/27/18)
How to restore financial sustainability to public pensions (2/14/18)
Government cut services, staff to afford pension costs (6/27/17)
“Unsustainable” pension costs are the driving force behind local tax increases (10/17/16)
Average Costa Mesa firefighter makes nearly $250,000 per year. Why? Pensions. (9/20/16)
The pension monster and how much it’s costing you to keep it fed (8/1/16)

The American public at large, and unionized workers in particular, want a free choice when it comes to affiliating with a union. Around eight in 10 Americans consistently express agreement with the Right to Work principle, and polls of unionized workers show similar sentiment. The truth is, American workers by and large want to make a living free from coercive union power: Most say that they have “no interest at all” in joining a labor union. American workers thrive on freedom, and policymakers who claim to care about them should be prepared to defend workers’ freedoms.
Mark Mix, National Right to Work Committee, August 31, 2025


Union membership = worse government

Saturday, August 30, 2025, 9:27 am | Randy Thomasson

UPDATE August 30, 2025: We’ve added several new links at the end of this post to inform and equip you to leave your union behind for good!

UPDATE August 31, 2025: And see how bloated government union pensions are harming average citizens.

Original September 2, 2024 post:

Have you considered why California has such bad government? There are powerful forces supporting the New Communist Democrats, who are now three-fourths of both houses of the State Legislature, and who control all the statewide constitutional offices.

Yet the evil forces leading here aren’t the “useful idiots” (foolish voters dumbed down by the “public” schools, illegal aliens, self-centered government employees, etc.).

No, the wealthy, influential entities sustaining the iron-fisted rule of New Communist Democrats in California are both government unions and private unions. Don’t believe it? See how unions fund the Democrat Party Machine:

  • As reported in late 2023: “Democrats and their causes receive 95.7% of the cash from unions’ political action committees. In 2021-22 the Big Four gave more than $29 million to the SEIU’s United We Can super PAC and the NEA Advocacy Fund super PAC which support federal candidates for office. Another $16 million went to wealthy climate crusader Tom Steyer’s leftwing For Our Future Pac. Some $3 million went to Fair Share Massachusetts which supports a state wealth tax.

“Big money also flows at the state level, where public unions all but run many state capitals. In 2021-2022, the four largest government unions spent $27.9 million in Illinois, $24.9 million in California, $13.2 million in Minnesota and $12.1 million in Pennsylvania.

“Nearly 60% of unions’ annual political spending, or some $400 million, came from membership dues and about 40% came from unions’ political action committees for which workers make voluntary contributions for politics. While unions can’t send dues money directly to candidates, workers might be surprised to see their paycheck deductions funneled to outside groups that spend money on politics (including those that deploy the money out of state).”

  • As reported in 2021 after Gavin Newsom “won” his recall election, “Organized labor donated at least $25.7 million — or more than one-third of the total the governor raised to keep his job. Unions, of course, have deep ties to the Democratic Party and a stake in nearly every aspect of state government.”

Because of how unions and their “owned politicians” put deceptive tax hikes on the ballot, and since union bosses regularly spend union dues to elect and re-elect corrupt Democrat Party politicians, if you’re a union member, please resign from your union.

You have the legal right to do so, while keeping your job, benefits, and more of your own money. Here’s how government employees can get out and how private sector employees can stop funding the beast.

Remember, you have strong, fundamental free-speech rights to not be coerced into supporting objectionable union politics. Now that you’ve unpeeled the onion and found the rotten core, will you stop “feeding” the beast?

See how to resign from the union and still keep your job and benefits:

Sample union resignation letter for private sector employees
Sample union resignation letter
How to resign your union membership in California

More links, added August 30, 2025:

Your right to work rights – in three minutes
Resign from any government union in any U.S. state
Government employee: How can I resign my union membership and stop paying union dues?
About your legal rights: private sector employee
Private sector employee: How do I cut off the use of my dues for politics and other nonbargaining activities?
An employee’s guide to union dues and religious do nots
For teachers: Opt-out of the union

The biblical view of man is work-oriented. It affirms that man was placed on the earth to subdue it to the glory of God (Gen. 1:28; 9:1-7). It is not each man’s right to work. It is his duty to work. What is his lawful right is his right to compete for the job he wants, his right to compete for the labor services he wishes to pur­chase. No one has a right to my job, including me. Anyone should have the right to compete for my job, including me. And I have the right to compete for his.
“A Christian view of labor unions,” Gary North, July 1, 1978

5 baby-killing centers closing in Northern California

Saturday, July 26, 2025, 12:23 pm | Randy Thomasson

The planned closure of five Planned Parenthood “clinics” in Northern California is a victory for pre-born babies everywhere.

Because we were all in the womb once. And for you, or me, or anyone to be tortured and killed is murder, which screams to heaven for justice.

So be glad that California’s number one baby-killers — Planned Parenthood – is losing three hundred million dollars of your federal tax money. So they announced they’re closing five abortion clinics in Northern California!

As Life News reported July 25:

California’s Planned Parenthood affiliates, the state’s largest abortion company, have lost $300 million in federal funding following the new federal law that defunds America’s biggest abortion business.

The congressional reconciliation bill, dubbed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed by President Donald Trump earlier this month, prohibits Medicaid reimbursements for nonprofit health clinics that kill babies and receive more than $800,000 in federal funding annually, effectively cutting off federal support for California’s 114 Planned Parenthood clinics.

Planned Parenthood Mar Monte announced the closure of five health centers in Northern California and the Central Coast on Thursday, attributing the decision to federal funding cuts enacted through President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill.” The closures, affecting abortion centers in South San Francisco, Gilroy, Seaside, Merced, and North Highlands, mark a significant victory for pro-life advocates who have long sought to redirect taxpayer dollars away from abortion businesses.

What this means is:

1. Without federal tax dollars, you can expect more of California’s 114 Planned Parenthood abortuaries to close — making surgical abortions rarer in California, thus saving more innocent boys and girls who are literally waiting to be born.

2. Dangerous chemical abortions or abortion pills, which always kill babies but also harms many mothers, will likely increase in California, as the baby-killing Democrat Party politicians try to make abortion “more convenient.”

3. Democrat Party politicians will likely push baby-killing all the more, trampling parental rights, religious freedom, and business owner rights, as they try to kill more pre-born babies (which they never mention but always “justify”).

But none of this is justifiable, because murder cannot be justified, and abortion is murder. Why? Because science proves beyond a reasonable doubt that babies in the womb are human beings, growing since conception.

In California, the most dangerous place for a child is in his or her mother’s womb. Ironically, you’re safer as a convicted murderer on “death row” in San Quentin, where our Democrat-Party-controlled government pays to feed, clothe, and protect convicted murderers, but will also pay an abortionist to literally tear you apart in the God-designed sanctuary of your mother’s womb.

The state’s self-appointed guardian of abortion is the California Supreme Court. In 1981, the state high court redefined the California Constitution’s guarantee of paperwork privacy to mean “abortion,” and redefined “medical care” to include “abortion,” coldly declaring that “the asserted state interest in protecting fetal life cannot constitutionally claim priority over the woman’s fundamental right of procreative choice.”

In other words, no matter a girl or woman’s age, ability to pay, or number of prior abortions, the State of California will spend your taxpayer dollars to kill unwanted, preborn babies. If that wasn’t clear enough, the California Supreme Court, in 1997, struck down the parental consent for abortion law passed by the State Legislature by declaring that it violated the California Constitution’s right to “privacy.” Again, a green light to “privately” murder the smallest human beings!

Because the Liberal Left and the state bureaucracy is trying so hard to hide the truth about the humanity of babies in the womb, you have power when you expose the lie. 

Please see and share these pro-life facts with others:

Fetal development week by week
Fetal development: The first trimester
Abortion facts
U.S. abortion statistics
Planned Parenthood abortionists killing more babies than ever
Images of aborted babies

For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well.
My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.

The Bible, Psalm 139:13-16