ANAHEIM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER HARRY SIDHU FORMALLY ANNOUNCES HIS CANDIDACY FOR RE-ELECTION TO SECOND TERM IN OFFICE

July 23, 2008

Anaheim, CA – Anaheim City Council Member Harry Sidhu today formally announced his candidacy for re-election to a second term on the Anaheim City Council. As an Anaheim City Council Member and most recently as a Republican candidate for the 33rd State Senate District, Councilman Sidhu has garnered prominent local, county and state elected official support and strong fundraising assistance for his common sense leadership.

He has a proven record of protecting the taxpayers and property rights. As a successful businessman, Councilman Sidhu also brings real world experience to the halls of government. He is an experienced, trusted Republican leader who seeks to continue to serve and give back to his community through ongoing public service in Anaheim. The general election will take place November 4, 2008.

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“In conclusion, I am predicting today that the theory that mankind is mostly responsible for global warming will slowly fade away in the coming years, as will the warming itself, and I trust you would agree, Madam Chair, that such a result deserves to be greeted with relief.” - Dr. Roy Spencer, climatologist and scientist, formerly with NASA, now at University of Alabama at Huntsville, testifying before Senator Barbara Boxer’s committee on climate change research.

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We sort of understand the principle of graduated tax rates. Sorta. We think it’s intended to hurt people (those with more money) who are most unlike the people who write the codes, although a lot of those Democrat tax-lovers are awfully wealthy themselves. It’s a complicated world.

But this is our real difficulty with the tax code. How come it’s OK at one time for the maximum tax rate to be 91 percent (yeah, you read it right) but another time for the maximum tax rate to be only 7 percent (yeah, you read that one right too).

That’s some disparity, huh? All we can figure is that the people who want to hurt other people imagine fluctuating thresholds of pain.

If you get that one figured out, work on this one for us, will you? The 10 percent richest Americans (well, the 10 percent top earners anyway) paid 71 percent of all federal income tax in 2006. That doesn’t leave much to pay for the 90 percent of folks who are left, does it?

If you wonder about that one, get a load of this: 97 percent of all income tax was paid by the top 50 percent of wage earners. That means an equal number of wage earners paid only 3 percent of the tax.

We remember reading in a good book where 10 percent was a reasonable amount of money to give for causes even more important than government work. And we don’t recall any mention that if you earned more you should not just pay more, but pay a bigger portion of what you earn.

Why’s that a good idea? And where’s that written?

Oh yeah, in those 44,000 pages.

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Al Gore arrived last week to deliver a “major” speech calling on his countrymen to abandon all fossil fuels within 10 years because if we don’t, well life will be next to ruined it’ll be so globally warm. (There’s another of those deadlines you want to be sure to put on your calendar to check the accuracy this prophet of doom.)

The thing is, Mr. Gore showed up at his speech with an entourage of two Lincoln Town Cars and a full-sized SUV, which incidentally sat idling with air conditioners humming away while Gore was inside talking (presumably in air conditioned comfort as well).

We weren’t there (we’re trying to minimize our carbon feet prints), but we’re fairly certain Mr. Gore didn’t share this alarming yet-unwarming factoid:

“Greenland isn’t melting,” Lorne Gunter reports. “And while Artic sea ice may have thinned in the past three decades by about 3 percent per decade, according to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Date Center, Antartic ice (which is about 20 times as voluminous as the Artic kind) has grown by 12 percent per decade.”

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Before Americans buy into the European way, they might check how things are developing across the pond where the fight against so-called global warming has been waged longer, and stronger - with (gee here’s a surprise) unintended consequences. (Emphases ours)

“Labour’s foolhardy policies are shaped by the conviction that, in the words of David Miliband, tackling climate change is ‘the mass mobilizing movement of our age.’ The principles of fairness and equality used to stand at the heart of centre-left governments. Protecting the interests of poor and disadvantaged members of society was essential to the popular appeal of left and labour parties. Those parties have substituted these ideals with an environmental program in which saving the planet for the generations of the future has taken priority over the principle of liberating the underprivileged and disadvantaged from poverty and restitution today. Britain’s Labour government may believe that its climate policies are saving the planet. But in the process they are destroying the foundations of the party.” - Benny Peiser, Financial Post, 27 May 2008

Why does Peiser say this? Here’s just one reason:

“Gordon Brown is facing a fresh tax rebellion as Labour MPs demand the repeal of a £200 increase in vehicle excise duty on environmentally unfriendly cars purchased in the past seven years. As lorry drivers prepare to stage a slow-moving protest through London today against rising fuel duties, a ministerial aide broke ranks to brand the levy an unacceptable retrospective tax that would discredit green taxes. More than 30 Labour MPs have signed a Commons early day motion demanding repeal of the £200 increase in duty, due to be introduced next year.” –Nicholas Watt, The Guardian, 27 May 2008

It’s a pretty common theme these days…

“Mr. Brown had joined other European leaders two years ago in placing targeted taxes on large vehicles, fuel, plastic bags and air travel with the goal of reducing carbon emissions by 60 per cent by 2050, in accordance with the Kyoto agreement. Experts had said that even with these policies, that target would be difficult to meet. But European voters have begun to rebel against these measures.” -Doug Saunders, Globe and Mail, 28 May 2008

Common indeed:

“After hundreds of angry drivers shut down highways in England Tuesday in protest against green automobile taxes, and drivers and fishermen in France and Spain paralyzed their ports and roads in a fuel-tax protest, politicians began to signal Europe’s ambitious emission-control policies may soon have to be abandoned. While Europe has led the way in using tax incentives to encourage people to buy low-emission cars and to build carbon-neutral houses in order to meet Kyoto targets, it has become increasingly apparent that inflation-battered voters are no longer willing to go along. Political leaders in Britain and France are seeking the reversal of tax policies designed to make polluting vehicles more expensive, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and some British ministers calling on their own governments and the European Union to relax ecologically friendly taxes in order to give relief to citizens suffering from fast-rising food and fuel prices?” –Doug Saunders, Globe and Mail, 28 May 2008

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Prop. 99 Proves to be a ShamCities Seek to Exploit New Law’s Purported Home Protections

Sacramento, CA – Last night, at a meeting of the City of Baldwin Park’s Project Area Committee, the city announced that it would begin the formal process of seizing approximately 100 homes by eminent domain to benefit a politically connected developer.

During the June election, proponents of Prop. 99 dismissed charges by critics that the measure included several loopholes that would allow government to continue seizing private property from unwilling sellers to give to a private developer.

“The Prop. 99 campaign told us that their ballot measure protected our homes from eminent domain abuse,” said Cruz Baca Sembello, a Baldwin Park homeowner. “So, how come I am losing my home to a developer’s bulldozer?”

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Urban author Jane Jacobs wrote that “new ideas need old buildings.” But redevelopment agencies — in their zeal for more tax dollars to fund bigger city bureaucracies — are so quick to knock down anything old that such ideas never get going. Yet Howser will be touring the urban renewal sites and telling the public how wonderful these government-subsidized projects are. If Howser really cares about the average Californian or about the state’s precious architectural history, he needs to talk to victims of redevelopment and show pictures of the state’s lost history … not do PR for those who use government power to destroy things and subsidize politically well-connected developers.

According to a CRA statement, “The series presents an opportunity for us to tell the redevelopment story in a compelling and intimate way. Huell and his crew will be visiting redevelopment projects in cities and counties throughout California that demonstrate inspiring, positive elements of redevelopment efforts.”

How outrageous, especially since this will be on taxpayer-funded TV and the program is funded by a group that gets its funds from government agencies.

CRA is the state’s biggest proponent of eminent-domain abuse and regulatory takings, and its agencies actively drive people off their property so that the land can be handed over for pennies on the dollar to big developers. Howser will be shilling for these corporate-welfare projects but will ignore the people whose lives have been disrupted or even destroyed by them.

Howser will be doing PR for those who drive poor, minorities, small business owners and others out of their homes and businesses at the behest of government bureaucracies working in tandem with Armani-suit-wearing developers who like the freebies.

What’s next now that Howser is in the PR business for bad guys?

Howser is a fraud.

Stay tuned for a follow-up. We’ll take a look at the salaries paid to government workers in both cities.