North County Taxpayers Association
"An Independent Voice for Good Government and Sound Tax Policy"

Our mission is to protect taxpayers from unnecessary taxes and to promote efficient, quality government services. We serve our communities through research, writing, publishing and advocacy on significant tax and spending issues. NCTA will be strictly nonpartisan. 

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The truth about electric cars

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." - Ronald Reagan


Budgets do not come from the White House. They come from Congress, and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democratic Party. They controlled the budget process for FY 2008 and FY 2009, as well as FY 2010 and FY 2011.  

 In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases.

 For FY 2009 though, Congress bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the FY 2009 budgets. 

 Barack Obama was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete FY 2009.  

If the current administration inherited any deficit, it was the FY 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets.  That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. 

With the new administration and control of Congress the control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets. spending skyrocketed.

When the President says he inherited a deficit that he voted for and then he voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 20th. 


If you want to join or help with this watch-dog association,  fill out this form. CLICK HERE

 U.S. NATIONAL DEBT CLOCK
 

US CENSUS CLOCK

 
ABOUT GOVERNMENT PAY:
"At a time when workers' pay and benefits have stagnated," reported USA Today, "federal employees' average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn." 

Did you get that? More than double. To be exact, federal employees now average $123,049 in pay and benefits, while private-sector employees make $61,051 in total compensation, according to the government's own Bureau of Economic Analysis. 

That's a pay gap of $61,998 -- up --  from $30,415 in 2000. 

And that's not even counting the absurdly generous retirement benefits that allow many federal employees to retire with lifetime pensions and health insurance after little more than two decadwhether it's Republicans or third-partierses on the job.

Time was, government work involved a tradeoff between job security and pay -- you got more of the former and less of the latter than in the private sector. Not anymore. Now, you get the best of everything -- inflated pay, gold-plated benefits, total job security, and a cushy taxpayer-funded retirement starting as early as your mid-40s.

This is beyond scandalous. This is plunder, pure and simple. Washington is siphoning off the wealth of millions of private citizens and businesses to support a vast and growing government leisure class whose only concern, it seems, is to further augment their perks and privileges at taxpayer expense.

What can we do as citizens? Vote the bums out, for starters --  But we can't stop there. We have to demand that whoever takes their place -- don't go back to big-spending politics as usual.

LOCAL PAY
Sadly, there are no current local comprehensive salary studies comparing the public and private sector. 
Nevertheless, there's plenty of evidence of this pay disparity. For instance, in April 2005, Fox 6 TV News did a quick salary survey of two common, comparable job categories -- comparing three area cities with the local private sector. Here were the results:

"Legal Assistant" pay:
City of San Diego: $40,584 to $49,844
Carlsbad: $30,000 to $50,000
Escondido: $48,528 to $58,980
PRIVATE SECTOR: $28,000 to $33,000

From the low to high end, the difference between public sector and private sector pay is $12,000 to $17,000 -- roughly 42 percent to 60 percent higher pay for public legal assistants.

Custodian
City of San Diego: $24,672 to $30,000
Carlsbad: $27,664 to $33,144
Escondido: $26,688 to $32,436
PRIVATE SECTOR: $18,000 to $20,000

From the low to high end, the difference is $6,000 to $13,000 -- roughly 32 percent to 37 percent higher pay for public custodians.

The Fox story concluded with some quick interviews with people on the street, showing them the disparity in pay. They were surprised -- most thought it was the other way around.

Sometimes apologists for high government salaries will point to the relatively low pay of government middle managers and department head positions, claiming that equivalent private sector positions pay more. True at first glance. But the jobs are not the same. Private sector managers are paid to make their companies money. Public sector managers are paid to spend government money.
 

MADNESS:We have a national debt of $13 trillion, and we owe $4 trillion to 10 foreign countries, China and Japan being the biggest. That's bad; but worse, we are paying 5 percent interest on our debts to all those countries, which totals more than $450 billion annually, too.
Then, unbelievably, our leaders think it's OK at the same time to wage two wars costing more billions and, sadly, also more than 4,000 American lives. Regarding our Iraq troops, we still have 35,000 in Japan since 1945, 37,000 in Korea since 1953, and 68,000 in Germany since 1945.

CALIFORNIA DATABASE!!
Now we're talking the "devil in the details." The fine print, the small numbers that become a multi-billion dollar state budget. Reports, stats, links to local and federal data sites. Election districts and more. You gotta be a junkie to play around in here. CALIFORNIA (ETC.) DATABASE

SAN DIEGO ASSOCIATION OF GOVERNMENTS
Not enough that we got like 400 governments, we also have an Association of Governments. Never can have enough gummint, right? Keep tabs on these folks. They funnel a lot of money and have a lot of impact on where you can build a home, whether hiways get built and like that. CLICK HERE TO REACH SANDAG