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Long-term Impact of Drop in Calif. Property Values; Lobbyists “Giddy” over “Speaker Boehner”

David Cay Johnston, former N.Y. Times reporter, details ominous signs in decline in property values, and comments on current tax cut food fights; Craig Holman of Public Citizen on GOP leader Boehner’s close ties to lobbyists. Johnston is the author of Free Lunch and in this detailed article at Tax.com he warns of the long-term effect of the decline in California property values, which will be exacerbated by Prop. 13. Homeowners who bought in 2006-07 will get reduced assessments that will stay low for years, and corporations continue to abuse a loophole–most recently in the sale of the Long’s drugstore chain to CVS which should have triggered reassessments. Johnston also comments on the DC food fight over Bush’s expiring tax cuts, and Obama’s cynical political pitch for business tax cuts. Holman is a rare breed–a lobbyist for our interests–serving as Government and Ethics lobbyist at Public Citizen. He amplifies the recent N. Y. Times story about Boehner’s close ties with lobbyists for tobacco, Wall St and other corporate interests, and suggests that if Boehner becomes Speaker we will see a return to the corruption that flourished under Tom DeLay’s “K Street Project”. PBC reports on his involvement in the GreenDog Truth Squad an independent committee designed to combat corporate propaganda in the California Senate race. The second segment starts at about 29:45