Vote – Page 2

What Employers Need to Know About Election Day

November 6, 2018 By Chris Micheli 1 Comment

Under California law, employers and employees have rights and obligations related to election day. These provisions of law are found in the California Elections Code as set forth below:

If a voter does not have sufficient time outside of working hours to vote at a statewide election, the voter may, without loss of pay, take off enough working time that will enable the voter to vote. (Elections Code Section 14000(a))

No more than two hours of the time taken off for voting shall be without loss of pay. The time off for voting shall be only at the beginning or end of the regular working shift, whichever allows the most free time for voting and the least time off from the regular working shift, unless otherwise mutually agreed between the employer and employee. (Elections Code Section 14000(b))

If the employee on the third working day prior to the day of election, knows or has reason to believe that time off will be necessary to be able to vote on election day, the employee shall give the employer at least two working days’ notice that time off for voting is desired, in accordance with this section. (Elections Code Section 14000(c))

Although this requirement has passed as of this article, not less than 10 days before every statewide election, every employer shall keep posted conspicuously at the place of work, if practicable, or elsewhere where it can be seen as employees come or go to their place of work, a notice setting forth the provisions of Section 14000. (Elections Code Section 14001)

Note that both Sections 14000 and 14001 shall apply to all public agencies and their employees, as well as to employers and employees in private industry. (Elections Code Section 14002)

Chris Micheli is a Principal with the Sacramento governmental relations firm of Aprea & Micheli, Inc.

This article was originally published by Fox and Hounds Daily

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: Election Day, Vote, Voting

10 Reasons NOT to Vote

November 2, 2018 By John Philip Sousa, IV 11 Comments

We live in divided times. Polls tell us that about equal numbers of voters prefer Democrats and Republicans. Only about 5 or 6 percent of the electorate consider themselves truly undecided and persuadable. That means little things can make a huge difference in the election’s outcome.

With just 2 weeks to go, polls tend to show that high enthusiasm among Democrats will result in historic turnout levels. Republicans, on the other hand, appear more complacent, more satisfied with the way things are and less motivated to turn out.

Given that just a 2 or 3 percentage point drop in turnout among Republicans mean Democrats take control of Congress next year, I thought I’d list a few reasons why Republicans might want to consider skipping this election. Here goes …

1. If you like higher taxes, and you hate the explosive growth, new jobs, and higher incomes, that have lifted every American family — especially the poor — then don’t vote.

2. If you enjoy the polarization, blame shifting, and finger pointing in Congress, don’t vote. It seems like the moment the results of the last election were announced Democrats have been doing everything they can to create chaos and stop any progress at all. Imagine the congressional investigations they’ll launch if they take control of Congress. With Democrats in charge, expect even more resist, disruption, and delay.

3. If you want more violence in the streets, stay home. Groups like ANTIFA attack regular Americans with Democrat encouragement. Black Lives Matter regularly advocates for violence against police. Put Democrats in control and voters will send a clear message to these groups that their approach works and they should step it up in time for the 2020 Presidential elections.

4. If you want to replace rule of law with rule by the mob, don’t go to the polls. We all watched while Democrats found now Justice Kavanaugh guilty by allegation without the slightest shred of proof. They sought not to prevent confirmation by appealing to reason or argument. They worked to destroy a man’s reputation, career, and life — along with his wife, 2 daughters, and distraught mother — without presenting even a hint of justification.

5. If you want to stop the confirmation of conservative judges and appointees, forget about voting. Democrats have successfully stopped or delayed more presidential appointments than any congress in the last hundred or so years. Put them in charge of Congress and the trickle of confirmations will grind to a total stop.

6. If you think open borders for anyone who cares to enter is a good idea, then do nothing on November 6th. If you hate the idea of a wall, border security, or immigration enforcement; then Democrat control is for you. Don’t vote, let Democrats win, and we’ll see millions of new migrants enter America scot free. Not only that, but we’ll also see many billions more in spending on things like welfare, health care, and education for immigrants who flock here.

7. If you want more sanctuary towns, cities, and states that protect criminal illegal immigrants, then ignore election day. Crimes committed by illegal immigrants include murder, assault, rape, robbery and many more. But in sanctuary states and municipalities, police are banned from cooperating with federal authorities responsible for prosecuting and deporting illegal immigrants who commit crimes. If you want more places where violent criminal immigrants are protected, vote Democrat in November!

8. If your heart’s desire is more government-controlled everything, then don’t vote. If you agree Obamacare doesn’t go far enough and that only a total takeover of healthcare by government is acceptable, then stay home on November 6th. Health care is only the beginning. Democrats now openly advocate socialism as a better approach than allowing free people, freely choosing, to decide our economic well-being.

9. If you’re ready to dispense with the Constitution and the freedoms it protects, forget about voting. If you agree with the left’s view that things like respect for personal freedom, individual dignity, and limited government are old-fashioned, then don’t vote. The Kavanaugh hearings were only a single shot in their assault on justice, rule of law, and freedom. They’ve been clear they also want to repeal the 2nd Amendment — by legislation or court decree. And it won’t stop there. With them in charge, our constitution and guaranteed rights will be little more than a memory.

10. If you like the idea of breaking the budget and running up even bigger deficits, don’t vote. Obama ran up our deficit by trillions of dollars — more than all the other presidents in America’s 200 year history COMBINED. More Democrats in Congress will make sure Trump and Republicans don’t return to the old-school idea of discipline and restraint in spending, that they can’t cut the size of government, make it more responsive, or bring new efficiencies.

These are just a few of the reasons you may want to stay home and let Democrats run rampant over the election this November.

Or, you can go to the polls and stop Democrat Socialist policies that will hurt our future, damage our economy, and destroy our freedom.

In this highly polarized, divided environment, every single vote counts, and with this election everything is on the line.

November 6th, it’s up to you.

John Philip Sousa IV is an entrepreneur, political activist, author and accomplished business person. John has worked in the financial services industry for over 40 years, built a highly successful marketing company, ran for congress at age 24, and in 2016 created and led the successful movement to draft Dr Ben Carson into his candidacy for President of the United States. John is author of John Philip Sousa, A Patriot’s Life in Words and Pictures and Ben Carson, RX for America.

This article was originally published by Stars and Stripes Forever PAC

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Vote

Will California Voters Approve $3.6 Billion Per Year in New Taxes?

October 22, 2018 By Edward Ring 11 Comments

With the 2018 general election a few weeks away, it’s time to review just how many tax increases are on state and local ballots in California. And while media attention focuses on the statewide tax measures, even bigger money is represented by the sum of hundreds of proposed local tax increases.

Every election cycle, the California Taxpayers Association (CalTax) produces a list of local tax and bond proposals. After every election, they provide information as to how many were approved by voters and how many failed. Using CalTax data, it can be seen that in November 2016, California’s local voters approved 181 bonds, mostly for school construction, totalling an incredible $32.3 billion. Annual payments on these bonds will cost California’s taxpayers an estimated $2.1 billion per year. At the same time, local voters approved 159 new tax measures, mostly increases to local sales taxes and parcel taxes, adding another $2.9 billion in annual payments.

If you add up all the voter approved new taxes in November 2016, state and local, you have to include not only $5 billion in new local taxes and payments on local bonds per year, you also have to add the voter approved statewide measures. That would include Prop. 51, adding yet another $9 billion in school bonds (estimated payments $585 million per year), and Prop. 55, the extension of the “temporary” increase to state income taxes on personal incomes over $250,000 per year (estimated collections, between $4 billion and $9 billion per year), and Prop. 56, the $2.00 tax increase per pack of cigarettes (estimated collections just over $1 billion per year).

Before turning to 2018, it’s important to also note that in 2016 the Democrats recovered their two-thirds majority in the state legislature, meaning they could pass new taxes without voter approval. And in 2017, that’s exactly what they did, adding twelve cents per gallon to the already high state taxes on gasoline and increasing vehicle registration fees. Voila, another $5.4 billion per year in taxes on Californians.

When considering how California’s proposed new taxes will fare with voters in November, history is a good indicator. In November 2016, ninety-four percent of local bond measures were passed by voters, and seventy-one percent of new local taxes were approved. Similarly, this past spring, in the primary elections of 2018, California’s voters approved eighty-three percent of local bond measures ($200 million per year in annual payments), and sixty-five percent of new local taxes ($228 million in new taxes per year). Statewide, Californians approved a $4 billion “water” bond (Prop. 68), which equates to another $260 million per year in annual payments.

Which brings us to November 2018. The table below shows 125 new local bonds are proposed. If they are all approved by voters, that will add another $1.2 billion in annual payments. In addition, 259 new local taxes are proposed, which if approved will total another $1.6 billion in annual payments. This time, along with the perennial hikes to sales taxes and parcel taxes, the other popular new mode of taxation is marijuana, with 73 of California’s cities and counties proposing to cash in on sales of recreational cannabis.

California’s Local Tax and Bond Proposals – November 2018

If historical trends apply this time, California’s voters will likely approve four-fifths (or more) of the local bond measures, and two-thirds (or more) of the local tax increases. This will equate to roughly $2 billion in new taxes and payments on bonds per year. And then there are the statewide initiatives.

On California’s November ballot there are four bond proposals, totaling $16.4 billion in additional borrowing. Prop. 1 issues $4 billion in bonds for housing programs and veterans’ home loans. Prop. 2 sells future revenue from the millionaire’s tax for $2 to guarantee $2 billion in bonds for homelessness prevention housing – that’s tax revenue that has to be made up somewhere else, so yes, it counts. Prop. 3 issues a whopping $8.9 billion in bonds for water-related infrastructure and environmental projects. And Prop. 4 issues $1.5 billion in bonds for children’s hospitals. Total payments on these bonds? Another $1.1 billion per year.

To summarize, in 2016, voters approved new taxes and payments on bonds (not including the $4 to $9 billion per year in “millionaire” taxes that were not new, but were continued by the passage of Prop. 56) totaling $6.5 billion per year. In the 2018 June primary, California’s voters approved another nearly $700 million in new taxes and payments on bonds. And this November, voters have the opportunity to approve (or reject), $3.6 billion per year in new taxes and bond payments.

For the children. For education. For safety. For safe drinking water. The list goes on, and the stories are compelling. But here’s the problem: Even if all of the 2018 tax and bond payments are approved, and those payments are added to the payments on new taxes and bonds already approved in Nov. 2016 and June 2018, the total is “only” $10 billion. Why “only”? Because the estimated payments on public employee pensions in California are estimated to increase from $31 billion in 2018 to $59 billion in 2024, and that is the “normal” scenario, not one reflecting the impact of a major correction in the value of stocks, bonds, and real estate.

Money is fungible. When more tax revenues go to pension funds, vital publicly funded programs are either defunded or new taxes are imposed to keep them alive. Similarly, when more tax revenues go to pension funds, maintenance projects that might have been funded using operating budgets, suddenly become capital projects requiring debt financing.

Californians may expect a deluge of new tax and bond proposals for many years to come.

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Bonds, California Taxpayers Association, CalTax, Election 2018, taxes, Vote, Water Bond

California DMV Registers 23,000 Voters Incorrectly

September 7, 2018 By Joel B. Pollak 19 Comments

California’s Department of Motor Vehicles, already under fire for excessively long lines, told Secretary of State Alex Padilla on Wednesday that it made key errors in 23,000 voter registrations filed under the state’s 2017 “motor voter” law.

In 2015, AB 60 went into effect, granting over one million illegal aliens in the Golden State the ability to apply for driver’s licenses without having their immigration status reported to federal authorities. In 2017, AB 1461, the “motor voter” law, automatically registered Californians to vote when they applied for driver’s licenses unless they were ineligible. State officials reassured the public that non-citizens would not be allowed to register to vote because database safeguards would prevent it.

The 23,000 errant applications did not include any illegal aliens, the DMV says. However, there were other crucial errors, including registering people who had opted out of registration, and registering some people with the wrong party preference.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

The errors, which were discovered more than a month ago, happened when DMV employees did not clear their computer screens between customer appointments. That caused some voter information from the previous appointment, such as language preference or a request to vote by mail, to be “inadvertently merged” into the file of the next customer, Shiomoto and Tong wrote. The incorrect registration form was then sent to state elections officials, who used it to update California’s voter registration database.

A small number of the mistakes — officials estimated around 1,600 — involved people who did not intend to register to vote. State officials said no people in the country illegally — who are eligible to get a special driver’s license in California — were mistakenly registered to vote. An unknown number of errors included voters whose political party preferences were changed without their consent. Officials did not provide additional details about the errors they uncovered during a monthlong investigation.

The Associated Press reports that the state will inform voters whose details were entered incorrectly so that they can make corrections. The 23,000 flawed registrations represent a tiny fraction of the 1.4 million who have registered or updated their registrations from the beginning of 2017 through August 5, 2018.

Republican businessman John Cox, who is running against Democrat Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom for governor, has made reforming the DMV a key pledge of his campaign.

California is a key battleground in the 2018 elections, where Democrats are targeting seven Republican-held congressional seats. A few votes in each could sway the overall national result and bring back House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) as Speaker of the House.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

This article was originally published by Breitbart.com/California

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Department of Motor Vehicles, DMV, Vote, Voting

Let’s Educate the Voters About Proposition 13

August 20, 2018 By Jon Coupal 3 Comments

This week, progressive interest groups announced they had sufficient signatures to qualify an initiative for the 2020 ballot that is a direct attack on Proposition 13. Specifically, this so-called “split roll” initiative would raise property taxes on the owners of business properties to the tune of $11 billion every year, according to the backers. Because many small business owners rent their property via “triple net” leases, they too would be subject to radical increases in the cost of doing business.

Although there is a statewide election this November, the “split roll” measure will not appear on the ballot until 2020 because the proponents, either intentionally or not, did not submit their signatures in time for the 2018 ballot. They say they anticipate a better voter turnout in two years, which in itself may be wishful thinking. Ben Grieff, a community organizer with the ultra-progressive group Evolve, also said that the later election would be necessary to lay the groundwork for “a long two-year campaign” and that, “we need all of that to educate people.”

Well, educating people about Prop. 13 cuts both ways. And if past campaigns and polling are any indication, the more Californians learn about Prop. 13, the more they like it.

So let’s start today’s lesson with an overview of a class we’ll call “Why Prop. 13 is Good for California.” Here are the benefits of it in a nutshell.

Prop. 13 limits the tax rate on all real estate in California to 1 percent. Increases in the taxable value of property — often referred to as the “assessed value” — are limited to 2 percent per year. This prevents “sticker shock” for property owners when opening their tax bills compared to the previous year’s bill. Property is reassessed to full market value when it is sold. This system of taxing property benefits homeowners, because Prop. 13 makes property taxes predictable and stable so homeowners can budget for taxes and remain in their homes.

Renters benefit because Prop. 13 makes property taxes predictable and stable for owners of residential rental property, and this helps to reduce upward pressure on rents. If one believes that California’s current housing crisis is bad now, imagine how high rents would be if the owners of the property were forced to pass along their higher tax bills to their tenants. In truth, Prop. 13 increases the likelihood that renters, too, will be able to experience the American dream of homeownership.

Business owners, especially small business owners, benefit because Prop. 13 makes property taxes predictable for businesses, and it helps owners budget and invest in growing their businesses. This helps create jobs and improves the economy. California has ranked dead last among all 50 states in business climate by CEO magazine every year for more than a decade. Prop. 13 is one of the only benefits of doing business in California. …

Click here to read the full article from the Daily Breeze

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: HJTA, Jon Coupal, Prop 13, Proposition 13, Vote, Voters, Voting