Randy

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Our take on California’s 10 props on the fall ballot

Saturday, July 6, 2024, 7:49 am | Randy Thomasson
After delaying a few days so that Newsom & Co.’s fake “crime bill” could get on the ballot (it didn’t), California’s Secretary of State late on July 3 assigned proposition numbers to the 10 measures officially on the November 2024 ballot.

Here’s your first look at them with SaveCalifornia.com’s draft descriptions (you’re going to really want to vote NO on Prop. 3 and really want to vote YES on Prop. 36):

NO Prop. 2 wasting more taxpayer money on the wasteful, dumbing down, politically-correct K-12 government schools and community colleges. This $10 BILLION bond would cost much more than that with high interest, and is more expensive than a direct tax.

NO Prop. 3 permitting polygamy, bigamy, child marriages, incestuous marriages (and even people-animal and people-object marriages) by superseding all marriage statutes with a very broad and subjective state constitutional amendment claiming a “fundamental right..to marry” whomever and whatever (the sky’s the limit). Prop. 3 won’t make any practical difference on same-sex “marriage,” yet by superseding all existing marriage definitions, standards, and limits, this radical constitutional amendment would open up “Pandora’s Box.”

NO Prop. 4 funding another lie-based, subsidization of environmental wacko groups via a $10 BILLION bond, costing even more with interest, more expensive than a direct tax.

NO Prop. 5 permitting higher property taxes (attacking Prop. 13 from 1978) by lowering the “vote threshold from 66.67% to 55% for local special taxes and bond measures to fund housing projects and public infrastructure.”

NO Prop. 6 calling it “slavery” to make prisoners do work they don’t wish to do.

NO Prop. 32 increasing the state minimum wage to $18/hr. for all California employees (killing even more jobs and businesses).

NO Prop. 33 permitting local governments to enact rent control (resulting in less available rental housing, as landlords seeking income sell their rental houses and duplexes).

YES Prop. 34 requiring the ultra-left-wing, politically-active AIDS Healthcare Foundation of Los Angeles “to spend 98% of revenues from the federal discount prescription drug program on direct patient care.”

NO Prop. 35 taxing health care providers to pay for government the California state government’s “Medi-Cal” program (further increasing insurance rates for the rest of us).

YES Prop. 36 increasing penalties for theft and fentanyl possession, and repealing the worst parts of Prop. 47 from 2014.

Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone,
and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.
John Adams, U.S. founding father and 2nd U.S. president

The immoral tyranny of Democrats & RINOs

Friday, June 21, 2024, 9:10 am | Randy Thomasson

The California Supreme Court has unconstitutionally called something they don’t like a “revision,” removing it from the ballot, and preventing California voters from even voting for protection against more money grabs. More

In the face of this tyrannical attack and significant loss, don’t collapse in cynicism. Instead, fight back by sharing this post. Tell others, “If you vote for Democrat Party politicians, you’re voting for tyranny and higher taxes.”

The “Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act” would have amended the California Constitution to define all state and local levies, charges, and fees as taxes. The initiative would have also required new or increased taxes to be passed by a two-thirds legislative vote in each chamber and approved by a simple majority of voters. It would also have increased the vote requirement for local taxes proposed by local government or citizens to a two-thirds vote of the local electorate.

How would you rule on keeping or removing ballot measures already qualified by hundreds of thousands of signatures of registered voters?

See these facts:

CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTION, ARTICLE II (regarding ballot initiatives)

Section 1: All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for their protection, security, and benefit, and they have the right to alter or reform it when the public good may require.

Section 8(a): The initiative is the power of the electors to propose statutes and amendments to the Constitution and to adopt or reject them.

Section 8(d): An initiative measure embracing more than one subject may not be submitted to the electors or have any effect.

Did you catch that? This is freedom for the People to qualify one-subject initiatives!

So where did a prohibition of a “revision” of the California Constitution come from?From the California Supreme Court itself, beginning in 1978. Yet now, the state high court has abandoned its respect for legal definitions and is grabbing more power.

Specifically, this Democrat-Party-dominated, 7-judge court is broadly defining “revision” to be any tough, single-subject reform, such as no money-grabs (tax increases, tax extensions, fee increases, etc.) without a majority vote of the People.

But Newsom’s activist judges are wrong. A “revision” makes changes throughout a written constitution, covering multiple subjects — which is vastly different from a single-subject initiative such as tax relief:

From the introduction of “The Revision of California’s Constitution” by Eugene C. Lee in 1991 (Lee was “a leading scholar of California state and local government and former Director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley”):

By explicit language in the constitution concerning initiatives and by court interpretation with respect to measures arising in the legislature, amendments are required to be limited in scope. As far back as 1894, the California supreme court distinguished between a “revision” of the constitution and a mere” amendment” thereof (Livermore v. Waite 102 Cal. 113). As reiterated in 1978, the court held that a “revision” referred to a “substantial alteration of the entire constitution, rather than to a less extensive change in one or more of its provisions” (Amador Valley Joint Union High School District v. State Board of Equalization 22 Cal. 3d 208).

Even a grammar expert with no political reputation knows the broad difference between a revision and an amendment:

“A revision…is a more significant alteration to a document that involves a complete review and reworking of its content. It is a process of making extensive changes to a document, often with the goal of improving its overall quality or effectiveness.”

Under these definitions, The Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act was not a “revision,” but a bona fide amendment that should have been allowed on the ballot in respect for our Constitution and for jealously guarding voter rights.

For the current state constitution has hundreds of sections within 35 articles. Yet The Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act would have only amended the California Constitution in 6 sections of 4 articles (Article XIII): Section 3 of Article XIII A, Section 1 of Article XIII C, Section 2 of Article XIII C, Section 3 of Article XIII D, Sections 1 and 14 of Article XIII.

So it wasn’t a “revision” that was a “substantially alteration of the entire constitution,” but an amendment to the state constitution that only changed “one or more of its provisions.” What’s more, the Act satisfied the long-standing state high court standard of having a single-subject — taxes.

Bottom line, the California Supreme Court, comprised of 6 Democrats and 1 RINO, is unconstitutional for placing itself above the written State Constitution and yanking this constitutionally-valid taxpayer protection initiative from the ballot. They are anti-People tyrants!

The 7-member California Supreme Court has 3 nominees of Democrat Party Gov. Gavin Newsom and 3 nominees of Democrat Party Gov. Jerry Brown. Two of Newsom’s three picks were confirmed by current, corrupt, unconstitutional Attorney General Rob Bonta and two other members of the “Commission on Judicial Appointments,” so those are Bonta’s “picks” too. The sole “Republican” on the state high court is 75-year-old Carol Corrigan, a former Democrat, a self-proclaimed “moderate,” and a likely homosexual.

From the Los Angeles Times 2005Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Court of Appeal Justice Carol A. Corrigan, a moderate Republican, to the California Supreme Court on Friday in a move that is likely to shift the conservative-leaning court toward the center. In an interview before her appointment, Corrigan repeatedly described herself as a moderate and a centrist. She switched her party affiliation from Democrat to Republican in 1995 after then-Gov. Pete Wilson appointed her to the 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco. “I think I would probably be a centrist anyplace I found myself,” she said. “I was a moderate Democrat, and now I am a moderate Republican…. I am moderate on virtually all things.”

Can this be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court? A federal lawsuit can be tried, but it is unlikely to succeed. But what each of us can do is tell others that voting for Democrrats = tyranny and higher taxes. Because everything about this is state jurisdiction. The only exceptions might be Article IV, Section 4 “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government”) or the Fourteenth Amendment (“nor shall any State deprive any person of…property, without due process of law“). But winning at the U.S. Supreme Court is a bad bet, due to cowardly Republicans on the bench and too much “state jurisdiction” precedent to the contrary.

* * *

So when they begin to lust for power and cannot attain it through themselves or their own good qualities, they ruin their estates, tempting and corrupting the people in every possible way. And hence when by their foolish thirst for reputation they have created among the masses an appetite for gifts and the habit of receiving them, democracy in its turn is abolished and changes into a rule of force and violence. For the people, having grown accustomed to feed at the expense of others, and to depend for their livelihood on the property of others, as soon as they find a leader who is enterprising but is excluded from the honours of office by his penury, institute the rule of violence; and now uniting their forces massacre, banish, and plunder, until they degenerate again into perfect savages and find once more a master and monarch.
Greek historian Polybius (203 BC – 120 BC) in The Histories

Will the People be ‘allowed’ to decide on tax hikes and fees?

Saturday, May 11, 2024, 11:27 am | Randy Thomasson

As the above graphic shows, the current 7 judges (in pale pink fields) of the California Supreme Court, with the exception of one, were nominated by Democrat Party governors.

And since the Democrat Party wants to make the government bigger and the People poorer, when Newsom & Co. recently asked the State Supreme Court to remove from the ballot a rock-solid taxpayer protection initiative that’s already qualified, the state’s high court was “obliged” to hear it — because as recently as 2018, the Democrat-dominated Supreme Court has removed initiatives so the People couldn’t vote on them.

The well-written “Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act” would prohibit the Legislature from increasing a tax or fee or “a levy, charge, or exaction of any kind” without a two-thirds vote of the Legislature. And then the People of California would have to approve it with a majority vote! Same thing for local government tax and fee hikes and ” a levy, charge, or exaction of any kind.” See why the Democrat Party politicians and their establishment county and city tyrants hate this?

In the San Francisco state high court’s building on Wednesday, May 8, our side’s super-duper attorney, Tom Hiltachk, the official proponent of the initiative, told the judges:

  • The opposing attorneys’ claims are “based not on evidence submitted to this court but on the opinions of people in the government who do not want change.”
  • “What we have evolved into is it is an administrative state that has far too much power among non-elected bureaucrats, who no one knows their name, setting fees not for a fishing license fee, that’s not what this is about, but raising billions of dollars out of the economy without any legislative oversight.”
  • Hiltachk warned the judges that removing the initiative from the ballot would be “making a political judgment it should not make…instead that judgment should be entrusted to voters.” And he reminded the judges that California’s legal history is replete with ballot initiatives on taxes. “The people have the last word…this tug-of-war over taxation has been going on for over 100 years.”

After the hearing, Rob Lapsley of the California Business Roundtable talked to the media and succinctly explained why Newsom & Co., the League of California Cities, and big unions oppose this good initiative, saying, “The whole issue here is that they are scared to death of the people of California being empowered to vote on state and local taxes.”

Stop and realize the People of California could vote to reduce the full-time Legislature back to a part-time legislature, and this would not be an unconstitutional “revision” of state government. Similarly, the People could limit the size of the state budget, and this wouldn’t be an unconstitutional “revision” either.

Likewise, requiring the People’s approval for taxes and fees and other government money-grabs reflects the fact that, as the California State Constitution declares in Article II, Section 1“All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for their protection, security, and benefit, and they have the right to alter or reform it when the public good may require.” This means altering or reforming the system to give more power to the People to decide money-grabs is an absolute right.

The “Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act” will go on the November ballot in late June if no more than three of the six Democrat Party judges vote to remove it. Since Gavin Newsom has three judges, they might vote against the People’s rights. It could be that close.

That the power to tax involves the power to destroy;
that the power to destroy may defeat and render useless the power to create.
John Marshall, U.S. founding father and chief justice from 1801 to 1835, in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)