If any of you out there want to continue the loon tune conservative approach, look at California.
Thirty years ago we got conned into Proposition 13. Housing values had shot up, and people were worried about property taxes wrecking them.
Unfortunately, the legislature misjudged the anger and did not vote for relief, so a lunatic fringe element (in those days) succeeded in passing Prop 13.
Prop 13 benefited a special interest (large apartment owners) and purportedly gave tax relief to homeowners. A part of it was a 2/3 requirement, that many thought unconstitutional at the time, to raise taxes. There was not such requirement to cut taxes however.
California led the "tax revolt" that propelled Ronald Reagan into the White House.
This was all based on a reaction to "big government spending" , welfare, and generally a revulsion to the aging New Deal.
Underlying it all was a healthy dose of racism, white males were still angry for the 1964 Voting Rights Act and even more angry about the Civil Rights Act. The Republican Party inherited the solid conservative Democratic South, and with Nixon's Southern Strategy, the Republicans have controlled the White House more than not over the past thirty years.
Unfortunately, the economic myths that this conservative movement was based on were not based on any facts. The idea that redistributing wealth from the small elite who always seem to do better to the rest of us, to build a strong middle class of consumers was attacked as somehow socialist.
In fact, of course, the large middle class that developed out of World War II and because of the New Deal, was at the core of the longest period of prosperity in American's history.
Back to California...Proposition 13 ushered in countless propositions and laws cutting state and local revenue for practically everything. Meanwhile, a host of propositions were based for a series of bonds, that build schools, libraries, roads, dams and the like. Of course, bonds are a convenient way of pushing paying for things onto the next generation of taxpayers.
Then, in 1999, Governor Davis, thinking that the dot com surge was solid, made the bad mistake of cutting taxes while obligating the state to new spending, especially in augmentations to public employee pensions. One area of stress in pensions was finally giving a break to public safety employees, who many times were so injured and damaged by a lifetime in dangerous work, that they failed to live to see their pensions, or if they did, had such high medical bills they could not survive economically.
So, cut taxes and raise spending was tried. And, remember, to raise taxes took a 2/3 vote (virtually unattainable) while cutting taxes took a simple majority.
And, both parties used the ruse it was okay to cut revenue while spending at least at a level rate from year to year, because "the growth in the economy" would make up for it (the infamous Laffer Curve).
Of course this might work (except it didn't) if the economy grows at a double digit rate. Of course, it didn't.
In 2007-2008 it all came crashing down. California had already been running a chronic budget deficit for the 1990s, but then a new body-building movie star Governor effectively recalled Governor Davis, with a promise to again CUT taxes by attacking the Vehicle License Fee.
This fee did two things: one, it dissuaded multiple car ownership as oil prices went up and supply is now obviously going down, which was an attempt to develop some kind of conservation in a state which had pioneered the automobile culture and two, it made up about 8 to 10 billion dollars of state and local government revenue.
But Arnold cut it, as promised, and right away the nagging state deficit became a annual crisis. That was until 2007-2008 when it became a calamity.
Now, the entire welfare program (welfare to work) program is offered up by Arnold and the cons to be cut. That is right, the entire thing! This benefits mostly children.
And, incredibly, the entire state metal health program is seriously being offered for elimination, which means thousands of mental health patients untreated and running loose on California streets! Meanwhile, the state university and college system has been decimated and public education has taken a twenty percent cut the last two years with more to come.
In short, California is a disaster.
And, guess what, the cons want more! What began as a "tax revolt" has not started to look like fascist anarchy.
It gets "better". The latest is a gem of a proposition offered by PG&E, a private power company, that if passed will require a 2/3 vote (sound familiar) of unincorporated areas and the parent city, if a city wants to annex PG&E areas into what is almost always cheaper city power areas.
PG&E is of course, oil and natural gas based, while cities and municipal energy companies are beginning to go green. PG&E is spending millions to basically kill green energy!
And, another proposition seeks to kill the state's global warming law by requiring it be suspended until unemployment falls below 5.5 percent (that has not happened in over twenty years. The sponsor of this? Oil companies of course.
This is the same oil industry that has kept California from passing an oil severance tax that virtually all the major oil producing states have already, even in such "liberal bastions" as Texas for example!
This, remember, is happening in a state that is flat broke, and is literally talking about closing prisons and selling them to get revenue. Anyone seen San Quentin?
So, if any of you out there care, witness California for how it shouldn't be done.
California has sacrificed its economy on the throne of tax cutters and far right conservatives who are basically in the hip pocket of big oil and incredibly rich people.
Where else would the two Republicans who are running for governor are both multi-billionaires, who are spending millions of dollars to become governor of a state that still will have a Democratic majority in the legislature?
And the reward will be to be governor of a state that most political scientists say is ungovernable!
Witness California!
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