California to Suspend Welfare Checks and Tax Refunds

California controller to suspend tax refunds, welfare checks, student grants

Reporting from Sacramento -- The state will suspend tax refunds, welfare checks, student grants and other payments owed to Californians starting Feb. 1, Controller John Chiang announced Friday.

Chiang said he had no choice but to stop making some $3.7 billion in payments in the absence of action by the governor and lawmakers to close the state's nearly $42-billion budget deficit. More than half of those payments are tax refunds.


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-budget17-2009jan17%2C0%2C4472460.story

A neglected revenue source for California - marijuana

The marijuana crop is valued at $13.8 billion annually - nearly double the value of our vegetable and grape crops combined. Our state is the nation's top marijuana producer. Indeed, the average annual value of our marijuana crop is more than the combined value of wheat and cotton produced in the entire United States.

According to government surveys, 14.5 million Americans use marijuana at least monthly but both the producers and consumers of this crop escape paying any taxes whatsoever on it. While precise figures are impossible given the illicit nature of the market, it is reasonable to suggest that California could easily collect at least $1.5 billion and maybe as much as $4 billion annually in additional tax revenue, if we took marijuana out of the criminal underground and taxed and regulated it, similar to how handle beer, wine and tobacco.

Marijuana prohibition costs us in other ways as well.

Last year, the state's Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) eradicated 2.9 million marijuana plants. CAMP and similar efforts have never made the slightest dent in the availability of marijuana, but they do involve many thousands of person-hours of effort and the use of helicopters and other expensive equipment - all at taxpayers' expense.


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/12/EDA4157U1Q.DTL