This year California voters will choose a new Lt. Governor. The incumbent is running for State Treasurer, and several hopefuls are hoping to fill the open position. There is no Libertarian Party candidate for Lt. Governor. Among the others, the best choice for Libertarians is Gloria Romero, running this year as a Republican.

Gloria Romero was long an active Democrat. She served as Majority Whip in the California Assembly. Later she would become the first woman to serve as Majority Leader in the California Senate. She also served as Chair of the Senate Education Committee. This position laid the foundations for her later political activism.

As Chair of the Senate Education Committee, she came to understand how our government schools are failing the students they are supposed to teach. Sen. Romero authored the Parent Trigger and Open Enrollment Act, which gave parents some real control over the education their children would get. She has been “a consistent advocate for charter schools, parental empowerment, and merit-based education reform, believing education to be the central civil rights issue of our time.”

After leaving the California Senate, Gloria Romero became involved in the movement for school choice. School choice leaders were glad to have a public supporter from outside the Republican Party. But Democrats officeholders continued to oppose school choice, and Gloria Romero joined the Republican Party where her views on education were more welcome.

Education is the main issue of her campaign. You do not need to be a State Senator to know California schools are not providing an adequate education to many of our students. As long ago as the 1980s, newspapers reported that more than half of the students in the California State University system were enrolled in remedial English classes, and more than half were in remedial math classes. The California State University system accepts the top 33% of high school graduates, and this is the result.

To make her campaign a success, she needs support from outside the Republican Party, just as the school choice movement does. And the Republican Party needs a post-Trump generation of new leaders. The only hope for the Republican Party is to move away from Trump’s nationalist platform and re-adopt a commitment to limited government. The current leadership of the California Republican Party has been too supportive of Donald Trump, and it has marginalized itself. The Golden State, once home to Ronald Reagan, is now the abode of the incredible shrinking Republican Party.

A vote for Gloria Romero is a vote for education reform, for the idea of school choice. That is more important than party affiliation. But we can also hope that Gloria Romero offers a different type of Republican candidate, not controlled by the Trump nationalists who pose a threat to the Republican Party, and, more importantly, to the American Republic.

For more information, visit Gloria Romero’s campaign site @ https://www.gloriaromero4ltgov.com/

Proposition 2 asks if the state should borrow $10 billion to build new or renovate existing public school and community college facilities.

Endorsement: No on Proposition 2. Yet another flawed, very expensive school bond.

• Proposition 3 asks if the California Constitution should be amended to recognize the fundamental right to marry, regardless of sex or race. It would remove language in the California Constitution stating that marriage is only between a man and a woman.

Endorsement: Yes on Prop. 3 to affirm the state constitutional right to marriage

Prop 4

Proposition 4 asks if the state should borrow $10 billion in general obligation bonds for water, wildfire prevention, and protection of communities and lands.

Endorsement: No on Proposition 4, a giant feedbag of climate pork

Prop 5

Proposition 5 would lower the threshold to pass local bond measures for affordable housing and other infrastructure projects to 55% of voter approval, down from two-thirds in most cases.

Endorsement: No on Proposition 5, a path to higher property taxes and more wasteful spending

Prop 6

Proposition 6 would amend the California Constitution to remove the current provision that allows jails and prisons to impose involuntary servitude to punish crime.

Endorsement: No on Proposition 6. There’s nothing wrong with requiring prisoners to work.

Prop 32

Proposition 32 would raise minimum wage as follows: For employers with 26 or more employees, to $17 immediately, $18 on January 1, 2025. For employers with 25 or fewer employees, to $17 on January 1, 2025, $18 on January 1, 2026. After that, it would go up each year based on how fast prices are going up.

Endorsement: No on Proposition 32. Minimum wage mandates are the wrong way to make California more affordable.

Prop 33

Proposition 33 would repeal the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act of 1995, which currently prohibits local ordinances from enacting rent control on housing built after 1995.

Endorsement: No on Prop. 33. Expanding rent control will destroy California’s rental market.

• Proposition 34 would require certain providers to spend 98% of revenues from a federal discount prescription drug program on direct patient care. It would also authorize statewide negotiation of Medi-Cal drug prices.

Endorsement: Yes on Proposition 34 to check the abuses of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation

Prop 35

Proposition 35 would make permanent the existing tax on managed health care insurance plans, which, if approved by the federal government, provides revenues to pay for Medi-Cal health care services.

Endorsement: No on Proposition 35. Let the Legislature figure out how to fund Medi-Cal.

• Proposition 36 would allow felony charges for possessing certain drugs and for thefts under $950, if the defendant has two prior drug or theft convictions.

Endorsement: No on Proposition 36, a revival of failed and unjust policies 

Full Post on California Propositions @ https://www.ocregister.com/2024/10/16/opinions-about-californias-ballot-propositions-for-the-nov-5-2024-election/

by Dan Walters, in the Orange County Register

While endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign for the presidency this month, Newsom declared, “With our democracy at stake and our future on the line, no one is better to prosecute the case against Donald Trump’s dark vision…”

Trump is “lighting democracy on fire,” Newsom told ABC News.

Fears that a second Trump presidency could be an authoritarian nightmare are well justified, given his many declarations of what he would do if elected. However, if one needs an example of how unchecked political power undermines democracy, Newsom’s California is available.

Newsom himself has displayed a penchant for governing by decree, especially evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, with his Democratic Party holding total control of state government, its officeholders feel entitled to act as they please, ignoring those who might disagree.

The ruling party’s autocratic streak was demonstrated last month, when Newsom and the Legislature passed a state budget and dozens of “trailer bills” to implement its provisions. Both the budget and the trailer bills could be enacted with simple majority votes, thanks to a 2010 ballot measure, Proposition 25, that reduced the voting margin from two-thirds.

Prop. 25 was aimed at removing any Republican role in the budget, and it succeeded. However, it also created a way for governors and legislators to make changes in laws having little or nothing to do with the budget through trailer bills that could not be challenged by the referendum process.The video player is currently playing an ad. You can skip the ad in 5 sec with a mouse or keyboard

This year’s batch of trailer bills contain two pithy examples of the syndrome.

Assembly Bill 174 contains a slew of items mostly having to do with governmental operations, but one passage exempts the Legislature’s Capitol annex project from the California Environmental Quality Act. It aims to shut down efforts by two groups critical of the massive construction project to require changes.

The self-serving CEQA exemption not only was inserted into the bill in semi-secrecy, but it continues the rather shameful practice of granting such exemptions on a case-by-case basis rather than undertaking a comprehensive reform of the often misused law.

The second example, Senate Bill 167, is even more outrageous. It sets a very dangerous precedent of rewriting state tax laws retroactively.

The state Franchise Tax Board recently lost an appeal of a corporate tax caseinvolving Microsoft and a years-long dispute over the tax treatment of foreign earnings. The state Office of Tax Appeals ruled for Microsoft, thus requiring the state to refund $1.3 billion immediately, with hundreds of millions in other refunds in the future.

Rather than swallow its loss, the Franchise Tax Board persuaded Newsom’s Department of Finance to include language in SB 167 that voids the appellate ruling and potentially allows tax collectors to go back years and impose more taxes on corporations.

The implications are scary. Californians could fully pay their taxes and then years later be hit with new tax bills because the Legislature has changed tax law retroactively and perhaps even secretly.

The California Taxpayers Association is raising alarms about the law’s potential effects, and its president, Robert Gutierrez, says a legal challenge is being considered.

“This legislation shreds well-reasoned, unanimous decisions of California’s Office of Tax Appeals and serves as a not-so-hidden tax increase,” Gutierrez said. “This is a cash grab that undermines the tax system and threatens the integrity of the tax appeals process in California, and it must be stopped.”

What could be more authoritarian than arbitrary and retroactive increases in taxes?

Source: Dan Walter @ Orange County Register ocregister.com/2024/08/01/newsom-denounces-trumps-authoritarian-tendencies-but-displays-some-himself/

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