Mark Wyland our local California State Senator is the assistant Senate Republican leader for policy development. Wyland was one of three senators selected by Senate Minority leader, Republican Dennis Hollingsworth's leadership team. Because Wyland has such an important leadership position with State Senate Republicans, he must take a great deal of blame for the dysfunction in the State Senate. The Republicans have refused to pass any bills unless, the taxpayers of California are punished on behalf of a major Republican donor, Intuit makers of TurboTax.
Our Republican Senate 'friends' want all taxpayers to buy TurboTax to make more money for their corporate masters, Intuit. Even the arch conservative LATimes whose new editorial board reflects the extreme conservative tilt of the Chicago Times which now owns the LATIMES, even that editorial board CONDEMNS Wyland and his bought and paid for Republican allies. Read more below:
latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-readyreturn11-2009oct11,0,7180432.story
latimes.com
Editorial
GOP shill game
A ploy to kill the ReadyReturn program to boost a private firm shames Republican legislators.
October 11, 2009
California's Republican state senators claim they act the way they do -- blocking budget votes, demanding health and education cuts, opening tax loopholes for downtrodden classes such as yacht owners -- because they want to protect their constituents from overbearing and ineffective government. They're becoming progressively less believable, especially after GOP senators last month held more than 20 mostly worthy bills hostage in order to try killing a program that old-school Republicans would have championed.
The senators refused to vote on Democrats' bills in an effort to eliminate ReadyReturn, a service of the Franchise Tax Board. Instead of just combing tax returns for mistakes, the board came up with the program to actually help some taxpayers, Tax officials complete returns for simple filers -- those whose income is mostly from wages -- allowing them to just sign it and send it in (with a check). Filers, if they prefer, can still figure their taxes themselves.
So let's get this straight: ReadyReturn saves taxpayers time and headaches. The board has shown that it pays for itself with increased compliance. It reduces errors. It lowers the state's costs for processing returns. Republicans oppose all that?
Yes, they do -- because in this case efficient and responsive government means fewer sales of TurboTax, software that helps filers prepare their tax returns and that, presumably, more Californians would buy if the Franchise Tax Board were as inefficient and messed up as so many other state programs. Intuit is the company that makes TurboTax, and perhaps you can guess what else it does: It gives lots of money to GOP lawmakers.
This new breed of elected California Republican has become almost unrecognizable. Think through the philosophy these senators are supposedly espousing and here's what you get: Government shouldn't try to do its job better because that would deny some entrepreneurs the chance to make money by correcting government's flubs. It shouldn't reduce regulatory burdens because that would devastate the market for fixers, expediters, lawyers and lobbyists. It should roll back improvements to the Department of Motor Vehicles because Internet license renewals and shorter waits in line could lead fewer people to join the Auto Club to cut through the morass.
Republicans, of course, deny that they're trying to help Intuit; they say they're merely protecting taxpayers. But that makes no sense. They ought to be ashamed of themselves. And for Intuit, whose product doesn't do much for the mostly low-income taxpayers who get their taxes done for free with ReadyReturn, shame doesn't even begin to describe it.
Here is an earlier article from George Skelton who covers Sacramento as his beat and who is NO friend of liberals, progressives or Democrats. See Skelton's article below:
latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cap17-2009sep17,0,1524376.column
latimes.com
CAPITOL JOURNAL
GOP's 'leverage' is tantamount to extortion
Senate Republicans are abusing the two-thirds vote requirement for passage of many bills to try to get Democrats to cave in on unrelated demands.
George Skelton Capitol Journal September 17, 2009 From Sacramento
In his former life, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in the action-thriller "Collateral Damage." Last week, he had only a bit role in the collateral damage inflicted by fellow Republicans in the state Senate.
In the flick, victims included his wife and son. In the Senate, they include millions of battered wives, children, home-buyers, taxpayers. . . .
On screen, Schwarzenegger played "Gordon Brewer," a Los Angeles firefighter who saw his family blown up by terrorists and was out for revenge.
In Sacramento, the closest thing to a Gordy Brewer is Democratic state Treasurer Bill Lockyer, who witnessed a favorite bill being snuffed by Senate Republicans.
"This is the pro-business, the fiscally responsible party -- or at least that's what they keep telling us," Lockyer says. "And it's getting annoying. It's irresponsible and it's ridiculous."
The bill advocated by Lockyer was little-noticed and noncontroversial, but vital. It would have given the treasurer more wiggle room to renegotiate so-called letters of credit that are about to expire with banks. Without the legislation, he says, the state could end up paying banks an extra $850 million over the next two years.
"It got all botched up with a temper tantrum," Lockyer says. "What's pretty clear now is this: Senate Republicans will abandon domestic violence victims, cops, firefighters and taxpayers to do the bidding of corporate interests."
Republicans say it's more about an internal spat with Democrats.
"In order for us to achieve bipartisan agreements . . . we have to establish and maintain a level of trust that a deal is a deal," Senate Republican leader Dennis Hollingsworth of Murrieta said in a written statement. "It's not one, two or three items that we're negotiating over. It's one big item: trust."
Hollingsworth contended that "the Democratic leadership did not uphold their previous budget agreements."
But the minority leader wasn't available to discuss exactly which agreements he thought had been broken, and his staff said it didn't know.
Whatever the beef, there could be wide, unintended damage to noncombatants. The Republican weapon was blatant abuse of the two-thirds majority vote requirement for passage of many bills.
The two-thirds rule is not used merely to protect taxpayers from politicians trying to reach deeper into their pockets. It's used by special interests -- mainly big business -- to game the system; a tool handy for legislative leverage, or extortion. If you don't give us what we want, we'll withhold the votes needed for the two-thirds.
It's about buying and selling. Last Friday, at the all-night windup of this year's regular legislative session, Democrats weren't in a buying mood.
This is what happened, according to Democrats, and Republicans aren't exactly denying it: The Senate GOP blocked more than 20 bills requiring a two-thirds vote because Democrats wouldn't cave on three unrelated demands.
One demand was the elimination of a program, called ReadyReturn, that allows low-income earners to have the state do their tax returns free. Intuit wants these people to buy its software product, TurboTax. Since 2005, the company has donated to the political coffers of three-fourths of the Senate, The Times reported Tuesday.
Another GOP insistence was that a big corporate tax break enacted as part of the February budget deal be tweaked to help more businesses, especially Chevron.
The third demand was that Republican Sen. Roy Ashburn of Bakersfield be made the lead author of a bill to provide $10,000 tax credits for people buying newly constructed homes. In February, after he agreed to vote for a tax increase, Democrats gave Ashburn a bill setting aside $100 million for such credits. But because of state accounting rules, only $70 million has been claimed. The new bill would allow the other $30 million to be used for tax credits.
Here, I suspect, we get into pure partisanship as well as pride. The author of the new housing credit bill is Democratic Assemblywoman Anna Caballero of Salinas, who intends next year to run for an open Senate seat now held by a Republican. The GOP would rather that she not be the successful sponsor of a popular bill.
The housing credit bill was one of the Republican victims.
Other casualties included bills to keep dozens of domestic-violence shelters from closing, to help cities and counties borrow while the state raids their treasuries, to distribute federal money to counties for swine flu treatment, and to implement a new hospital fee that would qualify the state for $2 billion in federal money.
No problem, Hollingsworth asserted. Assuming that the governor soon calls a special session on water, "that will be the time to take up all these measures and fulfill the commitments made earlier in the year."
Ashburn candidly defends blocking the legislation: "This was an opportunity for Republicans to have some leverage." Concerning the merits of measures buried in the fallout: "The subject matter of bills at that point was secondary to what the [GOP] caucus had decided to do with them."
"I was embarrassed," says Sen. Abel Maldonado of Santa Maria, the only Republican to cross party lines and vote for the bills. "I said, 'I'm here to govern.' They wanted all three things or nothing.
"The two-thirds vote is a good tool when put in the hands of people who are reasonable, pragmatic and open-minded. But partisans use the two-thirds as a tool to hold up the Legislature."
Schwarzenegger's bit role was vowing to veto all bills until the Legislature passes water, prison and energy measures he likes. Republicans may have taken a cue from that.
In the movie, Schwarzenegger threw a firefighter's ax at the terrorist leader, and that solved the problem. Governing is trickier.
george.skelton@latimes.com
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
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