On March 10, Che Ahn, a Republican candidate for Governor of California, filed a lawsuit in state court alleging that the law requiring gubernatorial candidates to submit copies of their tax returns for the last five years is unconstitutional. He argues that the California Constitution does not have such a requirement, and that the legislature is not free to add to the qualifications listed in the State Constitution.
The law requiring both presidential and gubernatorial candidates to file their tax returns was passed in 2019. The motivation for the law was to block President Donald Trump from the 2020 California presidential primary ballot, because he famously had refused to voluntarily disclose his tax returns. Governor was added to the bill as an afterthought. The State Supreme Court invalidated the law as to presidential candidates in Patterson v Padilla,, 8 Cal.5th 220. The reason was that the California Constitution said that the Secretary of State should put all candidates on the presidential primary ballot automatically if they were discussed in the news media. Also a U.S. District Court independently enjoined the requirement on the grounds that states cannot add to the constitutional qualifications. The state appeaed the federal decision to the Ninth Circuit, but the Ninth Circuit said the matter was moot because of the State Supreme Court decision.
The case has a hearing Monday, March 23, in Sacramento Superior Court. Ahn v Weber, 26WM000058. Ahn is a Los Angeles pastor of Korean descent.
Requiring too much disclosure from candidates discourages good people from running, and encourages creative, novelistic report filing from others.
Does he support our Lord and Savior?
Most pastors don’t acknowledge that Donald Trump is our Lord who has returned, so they are apostate heretics.
How is the Calipornia regime supposed to determine what is or isn’t media in the age of online self-publication?
The problem there is printed ballots, which introduces the question of limiting the number of candidates. Governments should stop printing ballots or trying to define who is or isn’t a candidate, just as they should stop defining what is or isn’t media.
A more logical system would define candidate as someone who shows up to the election and is willing to serve.
The real qualification question is in who is qualified to show up to vote, which is currently far too many people. The vast majority of current voters should be disqualified from voting (including me. I am divorced and too old for active front line military or law enforcement duty).
Once voter eligibility is properly defined, any voter is automatically a qualified candidate.
What a pathetic defense offered by Bonta/Weber. They state what the qualification to be governor under the Constitution is, then state BUT the election code says you have to disclose your tax returns to be place on the ballot.
That’s a typical bureaucrat’s view of the law, where codes and administrative rules are the supreme law of the land and constitutions are inspirational suggestions or creative poetic fiction, not actual limits to their power.
I was replying to CCC, but Walter Ziobro is also correct. A properly run government wouldn’t even have tax returns at all, or candidates per se.
Governments should be limited to law enforcement of mala in se laws and national defense (including migration and customs control). It’s possible that enough funding could be generated through volunteers (elected law enforcement officers who are either part time, or well off enough to not need a government salary) and voluntary contributions so taxes wouldn’t even be needed at all.
To whatever extent taxes might still be needed, if any, they could be collected through poll taxes, import and export duties, and/or poll taxes. None of which would require filing an income tax return.
Income taxes, sales taxes, wage taxes, corporate taxes, and property taxes could easily all be done away with to find this level of government. The only reason we have all those taxes is to fund way more government than what we really need.
Which in turn is self-perpetuated because it creates more problems in roundabout ways while failing to solve the old ones, in a vicious cycle that destroys freedom and prosperity and gets people used to acting like serfs over a period of time, in addition to a population replacement agenda that speeds that process up further.
Califoernia? Winger can’t even spell his own state!
The proper spelling is now Kalipornia. The original name is Spanish for hot furnace. The new spelling would pay homage to Kali, the Hindu godess of death and destruction, and pornography, i.e. getting screwed for profit as hard and as publicly as possible.
Thanks, helpful guy. That does sound like an accurate description of modern California.
The horrible people they keep voting into leadership have turned a naturally beautiful state into an undeveloping third world country in the making.
The physically harsher areas of California further from the coast have a much more sensible population, but can’t do anything about it – they would need permission from California’s coastal elites and welfare and crime dependent underclass and their hirelings in Sacramento, as well as their equivalent in DC, to be permitted to secede and form their own state or states.
Are you saying there’s something better than being quasi-forced into starring in horror porn and getting roughly gang banged and degraded repeatedly for the pleasure and profit of others due to your economic situation, need to be close to friends and family, etc?
No way!
People love it!
They elected me twice. Doesn’t that tell you everything you need to know?
“To whatever extent taxes might still be needed, if any, they could be collected through poll taxes, import and export duties, and/or poll taxes. None of which would require filing an income tax return”
Correction, the second time I said poll taxes I meant head taxes. The difference is that poll taxes would only be paid by voters, of whom there would be relatively few – I roughly estimate maybe one in a thousand people should qualify to vote under a sufficiently comprehensive set of disqualification criteria.
So, for example, California might have about 40,000 voters with its current population of about 40 million. That’s way too big for an ideal nation state. Even its larger population counties ate way too big for that.
But that aside, poll taxes could be quite high, given that we would be talking about an elite class of civic and business leaders as the only ones allowed to vote.
If that still proves insufficient to fund a much reduced and simplified level of government, head taxes could be levied on the non-voting class on a simple head tax basis using a census. Anyone unwilling or unable to pay could just be put into some type of workhouse / debtors prison / labor camp, if it comes to that. How they would come up with the money would be their business; for example, organ sales would be legal, prostitution is not a mala in se crime, there’s no real reason to outlaw child labor, and so on.
“Even its larger population counties ate way too big for that.”
Even more errata: I meant are, not ate.
@Stanley,
A poll tax was conventionally imposed on all adult male citizens. There might be certain exemptions, such as for the elderly or veterans. The only penalty for non-payment was disenfranchisement.
I would impose a different type of poll tax, to be collected on election night at the entry to voting. That is, if government volunteers, voluntary contributions to government, and import and export duties proved insufficient. It may not be necessary at all. But if it’s necessary and still insufficient, there could be a head tax, which would be similar to your traditional poll tax.
The poll taxes I’m familiar with is what we had here in the South when I was younger, where the only penalty for not paying was to lose the right to vote. It was mostly used to keep negroes from voting. Since I would allow far fewer people to vote than we did then, much less now, my poll tax would not apply to the vast majority of people, making it distinct from a head tax if both become necessary.
It’s true that historically the two terms were often interchangeable as you point out, but they would be two very different kinds of possible taxes under my proposals.
However, if a head tax were to be needed, since the whole point would be to tax those who would not be eligible to vote regardless, there would be some other penalty.
Given that the point of such a tax would be to raise revenue, and the offense would be not having the funds to pay, the logical alternative would be some type of conscripted community service. Corporal or capital punishment or confinement that doesn’t turn a profit would only cost more tax money, so those would be counterproductive. Public shaming could induce payment, perhaps. Then again, perhaps corporal punishment would as well.
Really, I should think enough funds could be generated without even the poll tax, much less the separate head tax.