Low-Income Energy Programs In California: Fill & Download for Free

I am pretty sure I have already said this, but let’s explain something first: The myth of the Low Texas taxes.In California, we tend to see taxes as an investment in our future. In Texas, they tend to see Taxes as a burden.Texas has no income tax. But it has very high fees and city-level taxes, making the Effective Tax Burden difference is only about a percentage point, except Texans lose in service quality a lot due to effort duplication and the inherent inefficiencies of doing this at the local vs at the whole state level.Trying to make a Texan understand the financial mechanics of this this is very hard. They revert to insulting California for our culture or the homeless or anything at all, as if anecdotal evidence made up for an argument, and comparatively fewer of them can argue the specifics. BTW expect this to happen on the comments to this. A lot.Now what do you get in California? Better mass transit in large cities, a social cushion (assisted living help, food resources, school breakfast program, low income home energy assistance program, aid for low income people who have children in the home, disabled legal noncitizen cash assistance because the feds make them ineligible for Social security which they often for years paid into, Medi-Cal which extends MediCare eligibility and long-term care, a State disability insurance that will cover my salary if I get hurt, higher average salaries for the people (median in TX $60,629 vs CA $63,783, mean TX $59,206 vs CA $91,149, though of course in CA things are more expensive), and a whole bunch of other things. Ah, and our own early covid response; we didn’t need to wait for the Feds to do their non-actions and non-guidance because the CA health services employs its own epidemiology response team. It was good enough that most Western states followed and coordinated with us last year.In California, people are on average both better educated, and have lower college debt burdens. I’m still trying to figure out how we managed those two at the same time, but it could be that the income that is freed thanks to CA’s higher level of public services for the poor is used by students who are poor to pay back some college debt as well as to survive all the years of college without having to drop out because they ran out of money.Note that, for all the noise Texas makes about “everyone moving to Texas from California”, and their continuous attempts to say that San Franciscans are leaving the state that so often make national news these days, the fact is that, although Texas is indeed the most common state for Californians who exit the state to go (mostly because of weather and because it is the only large Southwestern state with enough infrastructure to make it worth our while, and if you’ve been raised near quality Mexican food you won’t want to leave it - hah) and I do enjoy spending time in Texas myself donde también puedo hablar Español, San Francisco people who move out by and large do not go outside California, but to the surrounding counties within the Bay Area.People are leaving S.F., but not for Austin or Miami. USPS data shows where they wentNew data from the Postal Service shows more people left S.F. in 2020 than the year...https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/People-are-leaving-S-F-but-not-for-Austin-or-15955527.php#:~:text=Instead%2C%20the%20majority%20of%20those,San%20Diego%2C%20Napa%20and%20Riverside.This means they may find living in SF expensive or inconvenient for their stage in life (raising a family, for example), but they don’t want to leave it altogether, and the “SF Drain” the national media loves to portray is anything but.And given the January Texas has had with the government behavior during the freeze and their Covid issues (Texas is lifting restrictions even though their positivity rate is six times higher than California overall and within California the Bay Area is the large urban area with some of the lowest numbers and San Francisco has the lowest Covid death rate of any large US city), it’s understandable.How California's COVID numbers compare to Texas, which is lifting mask mandate and '100%' of restrictionsFinally, Californians are well predisposed enough towards Texas, but Texas seems tremendously preoccupied with California in a hostile way that Californians are just…. not. Maybe this will change when they inevitably turn blue (whether by attracting Californians or by their own efforts - Go Beto!). Maybe it won’t.Really makes little difference to us. We’re the two Southwestern model states, and as such we actually have a lot more in common than either of us would care to admit once you take the rest of the country’s obsessions over politics and different approaches away.

I'm in California. Any Californians reading this, know what's coming next.I first must add a disclaimer: I do not object to welfare programs in general. I do see a need for some. I am not too good to say that one day I, myself, may be standing in line. Anything can happen, and no one is really safe.I personally know about 10 people who get some sort of government aid. 3 of those people get multiple types and depend on it fully. Many people may not realize just how deep this goes. For the sake of this answer, I'll isolate a family friend, as she gets every sort of aid imaginable, by cheating the system that helps her.First, there is regular cash aid. For an adult with 3 children, you're looking at roughly $900 a month, and it just goes up from there. The more babies you produce, the higher the award. Our friend has 3 kids and collects almost a thousand dollars every month, plus extra at back to school time.Then there is HUD, which pays the largest part of your rent, no matter where you live. These are not the sad little apartments of the 70's here. Recipients now can rent out large houses, and the amount that HUD will pay depends on your family size. Our friend has 2 boys and a girl, so the state says they must pay enough for her to get an apartment or house with at least 3 bedrooms. HUD pays $1100 of her $1350 rent, leaving her with a whopping $250 bill for a 3 bed, 2 bath home with a pool.Then there are the food stamps. Actually, they aren't stamps anymore. She has a debit card, similar to my bank card. Each month, like clockwork, her caseworker loads over $600 onto it and she goes shopping. Sometimes, she sells them, and she's not the only one. Another friend I have sells hers too. Apparently, the going rate is 50¢ on the dollar. We were once offered that deal, and politely declined.It gets more interesting when you learn that because she qualifies for food stamps, all 3 of her children eat for free at school, both breakfast and lunch. They even feed them in the summer, too. Feeding children is not evil, I'm just explaining who is doing the feeding here.And then the WIC. Each time she has a baby, for the first 5 years of it's life, she gets extra groceries. They do not reduce the amount of any other aid she gets during this time, either.Then there are the utility charities. She does not pay an energy bill. She also gets a huge discount on her water/garbage bill and pays only $14 for the same service I have to pay $110 for. Nice.Then there is the healthcare. She and her kids are enrolled in Medi-Cal, California's version of Medicaid. They can go to an emergency room for a cold if they want to, no copays, no deductibles. Whatever the hospital cannot recover from the program, it has to write off because sending a bill to a recipient is a no-no.Now, let's talk about child care. To remain on all these programs, she must work. Since she has 3 kids and 1 is under 5, she only has to work 12 hours a week. So, that's what she does. And the state pays her daycare for all 3 kids for her for when they are not in school.And because she qualifies for all this stuff, she also gets free cell phone service. She does not pay for school fees for trips and supplies. She does not pay for a damned thing.Another person I know could easily work. She has been telling welfare that she cannot find work for about 20 years. So, they make her volunteer, which is just fine with her. She works 20 hours as a volunteer, where she can work whatever hours she chooses and is treated like Mother Theresa because, you know, she's volunteering! Her position is she'd rather do that then a real job, where they will expect her to work full time, and work hard. I get it, I guess.Another person I know has actively had new babies when her other 2 kids were getting ready to age out. "Age out" is a term used to describe a kid that is 18 or nearing 18, and will no longer be able to pull in all these benefits. She ended up having an older set of kids and then started all over again with 2 new kids. I can't make this stuff up.A few of these people have significant others. But they don't marry, because then the state would consider that person's income, and they would lose benefits. Some of them live with partners.If this isn't the finest example of cheating the system, I don't know what is. They need to fix us out here in California. It's unreal.Side note:I have a close friend in a neighboring state. She went through a rough time and I would send her money. Once, I asked her why she doesn't go down and get welfare for her 2 kids. Her answer? Julianna, here they would give me about $200 a month and $60 in food stamps. I asked her why it was so low. She told me that in her state, these programs are just meant to keep you alive until you find work. She was working full time in 3 weeks.I would say sorry to anyone I offended, but if you're offended, you're probably cheating the system also. Even people who are on these programs because they actually do need the help hate hearing about the ones who don't.

California continues to have an exodus of companies and people. The state has long had a strong tax base from non manufacturing businesses like entertainment (although that’s gone out of state too), and now from tech to support a very expensive state government and social programs. But other tech hubs are growing out of state.California has 25% of all the illegal immigrants in the United States. Cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco benefit in their hotels and restaurants and farmers in the Central Valley benefit from the influx of low wage low skilled labor. But public health hospitals and clinics and public schools services are burdened with the extra influx. Almost no parent if given the choice will send their child to an L.A. City public school aside from one of the limited magnet schools. LA Unveils Nations Costliest School On Site Of RFK AssassinationCalifornia also has the highest percentage of people living in poverty. This is despite record spending on social programs.Guess which state has the highest poverty rate in the country? Not Mississippi, New Mexico, or West Virginia, but California, where nearly one out of five residents is poor. That's according to the Census Bureau's Supplemental Poverty Measure, which factors in the cost of housing, food, utilities and clothing, and which includes noncash government assistance as a form of income.Given robust job growth and the prosperity generated by several industries, it's worth asking why California has fallen behind, especially when the state's per-capita GDP increased approximately twice as much as the U.S. average over the five years ending in 2016 (12.5%, compared with 6.27%).It's not as though California policymakers have neglected to wage war on poverty. Sacramento and local governments have spent massive amounts in the cause. Several state and municipal benefit programs overlap with one another; in some cases, individuals with incomes 200% above the poverty line receive benefits. California state and local governments spent nearly $958 billion from 1992 through 2015 on public welfare programs, including cash-assistance payments, vendor payments and "other public welfare," according to the Census Bureau. California, with 12% of the American population, is home today to about one in three of the nation's welfare recipients.California Democrats have long been free to indulge blue-state ideology while paying little or no political price.The generous spending, then, has not only failed to decrease poverty; it actually seems to have made it worse.Why is liberal California the poverty capital of America?So working people, many who tend to vote Republican having been leaving the state.Since Gov. Brown was sworn in, becoming the oldest governor in state history, 243,099 people have fled California on net for other states, taking $7.794 billion with them to states that don’t have such high taxes and onerous regulations that make housing unaffordable for middle class households. The top recipients of Golden State refugees last year were Texas and Nevada, two states that have zero income tax. California, meanwhile, levies the highest top marginal income tax rate in the nation. Policy, like elections, has consequences.The personal and corporate income tax hikes championed by Gov. Brown in 2012 have likely helped exacerbate the exodus of Californians. In a move that will further drive up the cost of living in one of the hardest states in which to get by, Gov. Brown approved an extension of the state cap & trade program earlier this year. This will hurt low and middle income households the hardest, who will face what is effectively a regressive tax hike in the form of higher gas prices and utility bills.Cap & trade makes Gov. Brown, Democratic lawmakers who run the state legislature with such large majorities they don’t even feel the need to discipline sexual offenders in their caucus, and their supporters feel good about themselves. But the program doesn’t improve the environment. In fact, California, even with its cap & trade program and renewable energy mandate, is home to 8 of the 10 cities with the nation’s worst air pollution.Mass Exodus From States Run By Top Democratic Governors ContinuesIt’s pretty tough due to regulation upon regulation to manufacture anything in California. Even Tesla is building their car batteries in Nevada. Nissan and Toyota have exited and Honda’s building manufacturing in Ohio and is likely to leave in the near future.Not that long ago, California politicians were touting their attempt to lure a substantial Boeing manufacturing job to their closing plant in Long Beach. But among other things, the plane parts after manufacturing would have had to be shipped to Arizona for materials treatment and painting and then shipped back again for final assembly. Not too cost efficient and of course they didn’t get the bid.A long list of companies have left the state.Using publicly available records, mostly media and government reports, Vranich searched for what he calls “California divestment events” — business decisions to shun the state.These come in three types: companies that left the state entirely; companies that expanded in other states rather than in California; and a few companies that had planned to grow in the Golden State but changed their minds.Vranich found records of 1,510 divestment events occurring in California between 2008 and 2014.Yet, according to a report in the National Review, that number is an incomplete accounting of the situation.“Experts in site selection generally agree that at least five events fail to become public knowledge for every one that does,” Vranich wrote in his study, concluding that the real total is probably more than 9,000 divestment events for this period.Even that estimate may not tell the full story, according to the National Review.Small businesses are less likely to get media coverage when they relocate, but they are the biggest category of divestment events.The cost and compliance burdens of California’s taxes and regulations fall disproportionately on smaller companies, which are less able to afford the teams of attorneys and accountants that mega-corporations can employ.As Carly Fiorina ably pointed out during the GOP debates, big government tends to benefit big business.To no one’s surprise, Texas was the main beneficiary of California divestment events during each year of the study.Following Texas, the top destinations for “escaping” California businesses were Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, and Virginia.California’s elected officials do not appear to care too much about businesses leaving the state. Yet the problem is real.Vranich has been conducting similar studies and publicly sharing his findings about thousands of ex-California companies since 2010. Yet despite all the evidence, Governor Jerry Brown has made several public statements denying a “mass exodus” of California businesses.Brown reportedly has a long history of making excuses when businesses reject his state.When Toyota announced it was uprooting three California plants and consolidating its headquarters in Plano, Texas, the Wall Street Journal quoted Brown as saying, “We’ve got a few problems. We have lots of little burdens and regulations and taxes.“But smart people figure out how to make it.”The Journal’s reply: “California’s problem is that smart people have figured out they can make it better elsewhere.” WHY $15B CORP FLEES CALIFORNIA …