Tax day for Tea Parties

As tea party rallies spontaneously spring up around the state to protest tax day, the New York Times provides details about who supports the movement:

Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, and are no more or less afraid of falling into a lower socioeconomic class, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. ...

Tea Party supporters’ fierce animosity toward Washington, and the president in particular, is rooted in deep pessimism about the direction of the country and the conviction that the policies of the Obama administration are disproportionately directed at helping the poor rather than the middle class or the rich.

In addition, they're generally more angry than the average Republican, they support Medicare and Social Security even though they want to shrink the federal government, and a plurality think Sarah Palin is unqualified to be president.

The full story is here.

ABC News pollster Gary Langer has more on the Tea Party movement and why polls differ in gauging their support for the still fuzzy goals of the movement.

In related news, Politico's Ken Vogel found a link between Sacramento-based Russo Marsh + Rogers, a Republican political consultancy firm, and the Tea Party Express. The story confirms that some GOP operatives see the tea parties as a cash cow.

They can't recall

Organizers of a recall attempt against Rep. Anthony Adams, R-Claremont, learned today that they failed to gather enough valid signatures to call an election. Adams was targeted because he supported a budget bill that included tax increases. Recall backers needed 35,825 valid signatures but collected only 24,579, according to the secretary of state.

From Capitol Weekly:

Backers of the recall effort, which reportedly raised more than $100,000, included Michael Schroeder, an Orange County attorney and former state Republican Party leader, and talk-show hosts John Kobylt and Ken Champou of the "John and Ken Show," a political chat radio program in Southern California. Other recall backers included the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

The failure to even get the signatures to put the recall on the ballot could give spine to some moderate Republicans who might want to compromise on budget issues next year, when the state Legislature will be faced with another massive budget deficit, but who in the past feared retribution from the right-wing of the party.

Noteworthy: New American Foundation fellow Joe Mathews predicted back in August that the recall attempt would fail.

Howard Jarvis turns on Assemblyman Adams

The latest adjustments to the California budget look like something out of a slasher movie - blood spilling everywhere. But that hasn't slowed anti-tax advocates from pursuing their mission of punishment for the handful of Republican legislators who dared endorse tax increases in the last round of budgeting. Now, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association has "formally" endorsed the recall effort of Assemblyman Anthony Adams, R-Claremont, for "brazenly [violating] his pledge to his constituents not to raise their taxes."

From the Jarvis Political Action Committee's press release:

HJTA-PAC President Jon Coupal said the PAC's action is based both on principle and on the practical. "Voters have every right to toss out politicians who lie in order to gain office and who demonstrate they have no intention of defending the interests of those who elected them," said Coupal. "Blocking further damaging tax increases requires we have lawmakers the taxpayers can trust, and Adams has proven he cannot be trusted."

Calling all cars, be on the lookout for easy money

The California Legislature has tacked a few new fees onto the cost of a traffic ticket to pay for a variety of special projects. The San Francisco Chronicle breaks down what the $490 fine to run a red light pays for.

The Legislature also raised the price of a fix-it ticket on Jan. 1 to pay for courthouse construction.

A researcher at St. Louis Federal Reserve recently did a study showing how governments turn to traffic tickets as a way to boost revenues in hard times.

(h/t LA Observed)

A tax on the White House

A new revelation of tax troubles could trip up the already wobbly nomination of Rep. Hilda Solis, D-El Monte, to be Secretary of Labor. USA Today discovered that on Wednesday Solis' husband paid about $6,400 in back taxes to settle a lien on his auto repair business. On Thursday, a vote on her nomination was put on hold. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Solis remains the president's choice for the job.

Were Solis to withdraw her name, a whole host of California politicians would be stuck doing the jobs they were recently elected to do.

The new taxes

California law prohibits law enforcement agencies from setting quotas for how many traffic tickets they write, but weak budgets further weakened by not-so-clever borrowing schemes will, I predict, turn many California cities into speed traps in 2009. It should also be a lucrative year for privately run parking enforcement companies, which promise to "maximize revenues" for cash-strapped cities.

Don't think cities would do anything so egregious as boost ticket writing to offset falling revenues? Ask a scientist (emphasis mine):

Thomas A. Garrett, an assistant vice president at the St. Louis Federal Reserve, knew he deserved to be ticketed while on vacation in Pennsylvania a few years ago. But, he wondered, are traffic tickets purely about public safety? Or are other factors at play? Many motorists probably have wondered the same thing sitting on a highway shoulder waiting for a citation. But Garrett turned it into a scholarly pursuit. He decided to conduct a study.

What Garrett and a co-author discovered provides yet another reason to hate a recession.

Traffic tickets go up significantly when local government revenue falls, they found. Their study showed for the first time evidence of how "local governments behave, in part, as though traffic tickets are a revenue tool to help offset periods of fiscal distress."

I once uncovered a memo written by the then-police chief in Claremont that said patrol officers needed to write a minimum number of citations each month as part of their performance evaluation. That was a no-no. Most city police departments avoid stating a number, but make citation writing a part of a broader performance evaluation.