California Doesn’t Get It: Cuts Tax Deductions for Children, Illegal Aliens Trained for Jobs They Can’t Legally Hold
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on June 23, 2009
California still doesn’t get it. The citizens of the state are sick and tired of paying for freeloaders and sick and tired of being mandated to pay more and more taxes. They said as much in their special election.
But no one is listening.
In trying to balance the state’s embarrassing budget, elected officials are cutting in all the wrong places, and not watchdogging and trimming away its government waste (let us not forget those padded salaries in San Francisco and teachers who are paid to not teach in Los Angeles). Additionally, Californians are paying for entitlement/welfare benefits for about 3 million illegal aliens in the state, to the tune of more than 10 billion dollars per year. Gov. Schwarzenegger has chosen to not cut this from the state budget, saying it was only a small percentage of the state’s total deficit. Instead, it was reported today that parents will lose a chunk of their tax deductions for their children. Say what?
Like I said, California just doesn’t get it. Citizens need to take action before the taxing frenzy and government waste costs them more than half of their hard-earned dollars.
San Francisco Chronicle, SFGate: State cuts tax exemptions for kids
Net Worth | By Kathleen Pender | June 23, 2009
California parents beware: Those little tax deductions running around the house are now worth less (in a strictly financial sense, of course).
To help balance its budget, California has reduced the state tax credit for dependents. The change will increase a family’s California taxes for 2009 by about $210 per dependent compared with 2008.
A family with one dependent that normally gets a state-tax refund will get back $210 less when they file their 2009 return next year. A family that normally owes money will have to pay $210 more. Multiply that by two or more dependents, and it really adds up.
This may come as a shock to parents who have been too busy shuttling between soccer games and viola lessons to keep up with the state’s budget fiasco. The Franchise Tax Board is trying to get the word out, so families can prepare.
At issue is the exemption you get for each person listed on your tax return. The credit reduces your tax bill dollar for dollar. (The exemption credit phases out for couples with more than roughly $326,400 in adjusted gross income and singles with more than $163,200. This column applies to those under the limit.)
The change essentially takes us back to where we were before 1998.
Before then, the credit was the same for adults and dependents. But in 1998, when the state was awash in cash, it roughly tripled the amount for dependents.
In 2008, the exemption was $99 for each adult and $309 per dependent.
Now that the state is swimming in red ink, it decided to take away that gift to families and set the dependent credit equal to the adult amount for 2009 and 2010. So the dependent credit will shrink from $309 to roughly $99. (The credit is indexed for inflation; the final amount for 2009 will be announced later this summer.)
Ridiculous government funding and waste… how many other programs like this are California taxpayers funding?
Los Angeles Times:
San Francisco D.A.’s program trained illegal immigrants for jobs they couldn’t legally hold
As she runs for state attorney general, prosecutor Kamala Harris faces questions over a program that trained illegal immigrant drug felons for jobs, kept them out of jail and expunged their records.
By Michael Finnegan | June 22, 2009A stranger, later identified as Alexander Izaguirre, snatched her purse and hopped into an SUV, police say. The driver sped forward to run Kiefer down. Terrified, she leaped onto the hood and saw Izaguirre and the driver laughing. The driver slammed on the brakes, propelling Kiefer to the pavement. Her skull fractured. Blood oozed from her ear.
Only after the July 2008 attack did Kiefer learn of the crime’s political ramifications. Izaguirre, police told her, was an illegal immigrant who had pleaded guilty four months earlier to a drug felony for selling cocaine in the seedy Tenderloin area.
He had avoided prison when he was picked for a jobs program run by San Francisco Dist. Atty. Kamala Harris, now a candidate for California’s top law enforcement post. In effect, Harris’ office had been allowing Izaguirre and other illegal immigrants to stay out of prison by training them for jobs they cannot legally hold.
The program, Back on Track, is a centerpiece of Harris’ campaign for state attorney general. Until questioned by The Times about the Izaguirre case, Harris, a Democrat, had never publicly acknowledged that the program included illegal immigrants. In interviews last week, she and her office offered inconsistent explanations.
Izaguirre’s trial this fall for the Kiefer attack — his arrest forced him out of the program and into jail — will put Harris in the middle of the controversy over San Francisco’s lax policies toward illegal immigrants.
The city has a history of shielding some illegal immigrant criminals from deportation. The assault on Kiefer occurred just a month after a triple homicide in San Francisco that put Mayor Gavin Newsom on the spot over the city’s repeated release of Edwin Ramos, the illegal immigrant accused of the slayings.
Izaguirre’s assault arrest, by contrast, drew almost no public attention.
Kiefer, then 29, was walking with a friend to a restaurant when the attack occurred. To her, it makes no sense that the D.A.’s office would set Izaguirre free after his earlier drug arrest — or enroll him and other illegal immigrant felons in Back on Track.
“If they’ve committed crimes and they’re not citizens, then why are they here?” Kiefer asked. “Why haven’t they been deported?”
Harris said she first learned that illegal immigrants were training for jobs in Back on Track when Izaguirre, then 20, was arrested for the Kiefer assault and other crimes on a purse-snatching spree.
Izaguirre had been selected for the program after two arrests within eight months; an alleged purse-snatching preceded his arrest for selling cocaine. Because completion leads to the expunging of a felony conviction, the program has a waiting list of potential entrants. Selections are made solely by the district attorney’s office.
It was a mistake, Harris said, to let illegal immigrants into the program, a “flaw in the design.”
“I believe we fixed it,” Harris said in an interview at her office in San Francisco. “So moving forward, it is about making sure that no one enters Back on Track if they cannot hold legal employment.”
Exactly how many illegal immigrants have been included since the program began four years ago is not publicly known.
Harris said that after Izaguirre’s arrest she never asked — and has never learned — how many illegal immigrants were in the program. Sharon Woo and Sharon Owsley, the prosecutors who oversee the program, said they too never asked and have never learned the number.
But after the interviews, Harris spokeswoman Erica Derryck said the D.A.’s office had in fact “assessed who would not have been able to meet” the new requirement for legal papers to obtain a job.
“We deliberated on how best to handle this group, given that they entered the program under different criteria,” Derryck said — in other words, as illegal immigrants.
The San Francisco chapter of Goodwill Industries International handles day-to-day oversight of Back on Track participants for the D.A.’s office. Carlos Serrano-Quan, a Goodwill supervisor, said it appeared that fewer than a dozen illegal immigrants had been in the program.
Whatever the number, Harris said that once she realized that illegal immigrants were enrolled, she allowed those who were following the rules to finish the program and have their criminal records cleared. It is not the duty of local law enforcement, she said, to enforce federal immigration laws…
Additional reading:
Fire Andrea Mitchell!: California bankrupt – yet a “special nurse” makes $350,000
GayPatriot: Easily Debunking Villaraigosa’s Claim of CA’s Broken Budget System
The Lonely Conservative: California Needs a Bailout, Gee I Wonder Why
Bob’s Bites: Go Ahead, Laugh at California. You Are Next
Scott’s Slant on Politics: There’s Absolutely No Waste in California Government*
Iowahawk, Big Hollywood: Fans Flock to Mourn California, 1849-2009
Vets On The Watch: If You Cannot Beat Them, Train Them
WorldNetDaily: Californians revolt, slash governor’s pay
San Francisco Chronicle, SFGate: State cuts tax exemptions for kids
Frugal Café Blog Zone: No Santa Claus for Arnie: Californians Weary of Increased Taxes, ‘Governator’ Unhappy with Voters
Blue Crab Boulevard: What The National Media Is Not Telling You
Hot Air: Schwarzenegger Plays Hardball While Democrats Debate Whether Cowtails Should Be Amputated and CA Democrats solution: Spend money they don’t have and Crazy Arnie: Everything must go! Update: Reason says, “Hasta la vista, baby” and California tax revolt: Voters crush Schwarzenegger’s budget proposals at the polls
Michelle Malkin: Time to ration health care for illegal aliens and Caution: Lindsay Grahamnesty at work; Update: Obama says wait until next year and Catching up with Obama’s illegal alien auntie and Obamacare for illegal aliens and Nice “work” if you can get it and The Arnie-Barry lovefest and The paper of labor and What the Sacramento Bee really thinks of voters and California to tax-and-spenders: No, no, no, no, and hell no and California: The poster child for dysfunction and Live from the Cali tax revolt and What George Will missed: The decrepit state of the California GOP and Paying teachers not to teach
American Thinker: It really isn’t that complicated
LA Times: Schwarzenegger says he got voters’ message ‘loud and clear’ and Gov. proposes selling L.A. Coliseum, other properties to raise cash and California elected officials’ pay will be cut 18%
Blue Crab Boulevard: What The National Media Is Not Telling You
Michelle Malkin: The Taxinator loves his open-borders welfare state and The Arnie-Barry lovefest and The paper of labor and What the Sacramento Bee really thinks of voters
California to tax-and-spenders: No, no, no, no, and hell no and California: The poster child for dysfunction and Live from the Cali tax revolt and What George Will missed: The decrepit state of the California GOP
James Hudnall, Big Hollywood: So Goes California, So Goes the Nation
Fire Andrea Mitchell!: Hey, Arnold, we are not your ATM! and 10,000 workers in Mexifornia to be laid off.
GayPatriot: The Fall of the Governator: Will he be back?
Ed Driscoll, Pajamas Media: Airbrush Alert
Around The Sphere: They Don’t Have The Do-Re-Mi
California Chronicle: Garamendi Says the Coast of California is Now Up for Sale to Big Oil
Maggie M. Thornton, Right Pundits: California Voter Revolt: Schwarzenegger Budget Propositions Defeated
The Gaea News: Schwarzenegger says California should examine other nations’ experiences in taxing marijuana
La Shawn Barber’s Corner: SacBee Rants Against Voters, Then Lies About Rant
Washington Times: Schwarzenegger knocks Calif. voters
Reason Magazine, Hit & Run: Gov. Arnold: San Quentin, I’ll Sell Every Inch of You!
Bill Whalen, Wall Street Journal: What If Arnold Had Seized the Moment?
Jonathan Lloyd, NBC Los Angeles: Schwarzenegger: High Time for Marijuana Debate
Olsen Ebright, NBC Los Angeles: Six-Figure Salaries No More for Calif. Officials
GayPatriot: Blaming California Voters When They Should be Confronting Public Employee Unions
American Thinker: It really isn’t that complicated
Frugal Café Blog Zone: Unemployment Hodge-Podge: Government Struggling to Help Families Applying for Aid for First Time
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