Thursday, November 22, 2012

Ted Lieu Loses Focus Anew

State Senator Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) has his sight fixed on more monumental issues which are apparently hurting the people of the South Bay without respite.

His first target: the subtle lack of transparency regarding record medical expenses in our hospitals. Instead of demanding open pricing from the state's medical facilities, Lieu needs to investigate the reason why medical costs are so wildly arbitrary throughout the state of California. Instead of burdening the hospitals with fact-finding missions relating to finance, the South Bay state senator ought to draft legislation which will permit patients to purchase medical insurance across state lines and tailor their policies more individually.

Tort reform will protect hospitals from having to pay crippling and unnecessary punitive damages, which help lawyers but do great damage to patients and health care providers. How about issuing an amicus brief to the United States Supreme Court so that they repeal ObamaCare? The national medical insurance mandate while will mangle insurance markets and has already driven up premiums and driven insurance companies out of business.

Why are so many Californians going to the hospital, anyway? It must be the sushi they are eating, because Senator Lieu also wants to crack down on seafood restaurants which are not openly informing patrons of the type of fish that they are consuming. Instead of micromanaging what we eat, our representatives out to stop trying to eat the rich while the unemployed working class and underwhelmed business sector in this state start eating their hats and eating themselves out of profit and prosperity because of high taxes and unnecessary regulations.

One thing is for sure: I may need to make an extended stay in the hospital pretty soon, because I am getting sick and tired of legislators like State Senator Ted Lieu who are losing every opportunity to enact budget reform, fiscal recovery, and limited government in Sacramento, all of which will do far more for the voters in this state than transparency about meandering medical costs and raw fish.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Lieu Loses the Car Tax Idea

http://sandiegofreepress.org/2012/11/ted-lieu-the-vlf-and-the-supermajority/

Even with a supermajority, one can breathe a little easier knowing that state senate Ted Lieu has rescinded the proposal to raise our car registration fee to 2% of the vehicle's value.

Lawmakers, voters, and even the senator's wife apparently stepped in to drive him away from pushing so steep a tax increase so soon.

The San Diego Free Press claims that representative democracy has not improved in California. Granted, anyone would understandably feel cynical about the California political and economic climate now that the tax-and-spend mentality of the Democratic Party has free reign to raise taxes, increase regulations, and expand the reach of government into the private sector to expand the public sector.

Still, the Democrats in Sacramento were not going to pass a tax increase on their own. First, they would test the waters by offering to the voter another proposition, a plebiscite, if you will.

That's good news for those of us who worried that two-thirds of Dems would be bad news for the taxpayers in the state. Even if most of us do not own a home, or have not found another job, we can rest easy in our cars knowing that Senator Lieu would not risk his chances of reelection by pushing an unpopular tax which would hurt more than the monied "1%".

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Will Ted Lieu Drive me to work?

The Democrats have achieved their supermajority in Sacramento, and now they are getting comfortable with being in the driver’s seat. They should be careful what they wish for before they get into gear and clutch more of our tax dollars for their spending sprees. I doubt that they will repeal Prop 13, lest they drive every able-bodied and working voter out of the state, but they have failed time and again to drive home any other message but more taxes, spending, and regulatory burdens, putting more workers out on the street.
On another note about driving and voters, Senator Lieu seems driven not only to micromanage our lives with microchipping pets, or protecting shark fins, or keeping teenagers out of tanning salons. Now Senator Lieu wants to triple our car registration fees.

Why doesn't Senator Lieu quadruple or quintuple the tax? With a supermajority driving the state over the fiscal cliff, perhaps it’s all power forward that Lieu raises the car tax and gets more people off the road. Governor Brown just signed into law legislation that would permit self-driving cars on California roads, and that bullet train is still going nowhere fast. Perhaps Senator Lieu is planning on driving me and the rest of his constituents wherever we want to go. More specifically, perhaps he would like to drive the voters in his senate district to work. Then again, with all of these tax hikes and regulatory burdens, driving to work is a moot point for most people, since there are fewer jobs to drive to.
I hope you get what I’m driving at, Senator Lieu. Stop driving California into bankruptcy. Stop driving voters to distraction with legislation that is veering this state off the road of fiscal recovery. No more tax hikes.