Debra j saunders biography of christopher
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# Debra Saunders
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As he was sworn in as governor at Sacramento’s Memorial Auditorium on Monday “with no mental reservations,” Brown gave Californians reason to be optimistic that he might succeed where predecessors Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger failed. In the face of a $28 billion shortfall, Brown’s team is floating savvy cuts in California government.
And reason to be pessimistic: Brown talked up “sensible and bold” regulation, when state employers really want to hear that Sacramento will bring them regulatory relief so that they can start hiring again.
Worst of all, Brown doesn’t seem to recognize that California voters are dangerously schizophrenic. Seven years after they recalled then-Gov. Davis, they continue to elect and re-elect spend-happy Dems, while rejecting general tax increases and, to make matters worse, passing ballot measures that make California all that much harder to govern without raising taxes.
So what does Brown promise? Li
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California Gov. Jerry Brown won the blame game and lost the ekonomisk plan.
Brown began with a proposal to put a measure on the ballot to extend the 2009 tax increases on income taxes, sales taxes and the vehicle license fee. It was a gamble. Voters rejected a similar tax measure in 2009. Most GOP lawmakers have signed no-new-taxes pledges. Even Brown didn’t dare campaign on today’s tax strategi – and he’s a Democrat.
Then came the bargaining. Republicans say that Brown wouldn’t give on spending dear to the public-employee unions that helped elect him. The Brownies say that the Party of No kept heaping new terms onto their wish list so that negotiators never could get to yes.
Senate Republican Leader Bob Dutton told me he thinks Brown could have picked off two GOP senators if Brown had agreed to GOP proposals for pension reform, a spending cap and regulatory reform. But Brown would not give on applying pension reforms to current as well as future employees,