Budget Madness

I couldn’t help commenting on a recent blurb in the Sacramento Bee, 11/19/2010: “BUDGET WATCH--Californians favor spending cuts to close the state's $25.4 billion budget hole, but they are not enthusiastic about slicing specific services, according to a new Los Angeles Times-USC poll. Two-thirds think the deficit should be resolved mostly or entirely by spending cuts. But only one in four would cut schools, and just over one-third would cut state universities.”

This is a consistent polled result locally and nationally. The cons have been so successful instilling the “anti-tax” reactions of the general public, but not so successful in what to cut.

The tragedy of this is that in California taxpayers have been presented with a menu of tax cutting propositions for over thirty years that mostly pass. The proposition system has no hearings, not much in the way of divulging cost and future impacts to the budget. This is in stark contrast to the legislature, where committees investigate a potential tax cut, its impacts and ramifications.

So, we in California have gleefully passed tax cut or restriction one after another. The most recent gaffe, was passing a 2/3 requirement for most fees. We also turned down an increase in the temporary tax to help balance a budget that is projected to be 25 billion dollars out of wack in 2011.

And the cuts continue. The pubic education system, including charter schools by the way, are under incredible cutting pressure. Thousands of teachers, many young talented and dedicated, are chopped. Sacramento is running a unemployment rate over 10%, with furloughs, cuts of salary; etc.

The impact on this to the private economy is remarkable. Even though there have been some signs of recovery, the relentless cuts in government, from the local fire station to the University of California have depressed any chance of recovery.

Meanwhile the cons, and their corporate allies, have shrunk back into the background, taking absolutely no lead in the cuts. They take credit for cutting taxes but are absolute cowards when it comes to laying off teachers. This is left to those citizens who really have civic responsibility.

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association for example, is consistently coming out for more tax cuts, but when pressed for ideas for cuts, points to waste and then disappears.

There is waste of course. But it only makes up a tiny fraction of local and state budgets. One man’s waste is another’s reading program. For example, many school districts have cut remediation progams and combined them into “independent study” programs (that are much cheaper to run), with disasterous results for at-risk students. And, the result is a drop out rate over 30% and climbing, as the poor and the disadvantaged have their educational programs reduced to little more than warehousing projects.

School segregation, for example, in California has reached 1960s levels, as affluent whites escape into Charter Schools leaving once proud suburban schools systems to rot. Everyone is running from everyone in California.

And, the cons continue the con going, with Meg Whitless’s recent proposal to eliminate all capital gains taxes in some kind of effort to spur economic growth. This would have put the deficit ay bankrupcy levels.

So, California doesn’t have the money to fix its freeways, fix its schools, build mass transit, lure businesses; do anything to progressively move the state in building a future.

Of course there is no place to go. We stand facing the Pacific Ocean, wanting to go further west to escape the disaster we have wrought, and face China whose economy is killing ours. So what do we do, we put the gun of tax cuts to our heads and pull the trigger?!

I live in Redding California, a conservative hotbed for the past forty years. We have a very conservative congressional representative, Wally Herger, who has done absolutely nothing to build any kind of economy in the area. The longer this area has remained red, the poorer it has become, with poverty rates running well over 30%. Economic “leaders” have developed an industrial park that is empty, that is over ten miles from the railroad tracks. That may not seem like a big deal, but forecasts of peak oil, point to railroads re-emerging as the freight movers of the future. And our totally empty industrial park stands empty many miles from the rails that could serve it!

Redding gets as much sunshine as Phoenix, but the city has decided to base its energy source on natual gas, with no investment in solar panels. You cannot get a rebate or other incentive, because Redding’s natural gas run electricity is right now cheaper than P.G. and E’s. So, we import more “cheap” natural gas, while ignoring a resource that is free and plentiful. Why don’t we try it? Because the cons are owned by the fossil fuel lobby.

The city council is pushing, led by the conservative mayor who was treated to an all expense trip by the mall developer (he said he paid it back) to Washington D.C., to seek funds to build yet another shopping mall in the northern outskirts of the city. We have the highest retail space vacancy rate in northern California, but we still need to build the mall. A couple years ago, the same band of fools, almost committeed the city to a new auto mall, again on the outskirts of the city, sprawling the city center dozens of miles in diameter. Luckily the citizens in the targeted area sued and stopped the madness. A few months later the economy tanked, G.M. and Chrysler went bankrupt, and thousands of dealerships, some in Redding, closed. We almost built an auto mall at considerable public investment with nobody to occupy it. When challenged on this, the cons response is to shrug their stupid shoulders and go on the the next “project”.

The stupidity continues. The cons have convinced everyone, that staying poor is good, that having no medical insurance is good, that closing schools is “cleansing”. Of course, of late they are claiming that unemploymet insurance and payments somehow increase unemployment, and are voting against extensions of benefits, arguing that this will force people to go back to work. The idiocy of this is beyond belief.

So cry for us California. We are showing the nation what mindless tax cuts can do. We are a laboratory of what is so wrong with tax cuts as stimulus; it doesn’t work! Our children are suffering, our economy is in tatters, and we persist doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. And the answer to how much longer we continue this lies in the lead in to this piece; forever!

Finally a story that is on point: When Proposition 13 was being “sold” to California, I was a young government teacher and coach in Shasta High School. I spoke out forcefully about the potential disaster this would be to public education, as did most educators in California. Property taxes provided a consistent, though at that time limited, source of revenue for local school districts, supplemented by about 20% in state and federal aid. The cuts that Prop 13 would bring would have devastated education.

A older, white conservative(is there any other kind?) , who was pushing Prop 13 told me at the end of a public hearing on the issue, that I should not worry, because if Prop 13 passed, “We will be here to help the schools find other forms of funding”. Prop 13 passed, and I never saw the guy again! Of course, the state did step in, flipping the formula for school support upside down, switching majority funding from property taxes to volatile income taxes: hence the present crisis in funding.

As usual, the con cut the taxes then disappeared, leaving real citizens to try to clean up their mess.

Finally, have you ever wondered where our prosperity went? Have you ever wished we could go back, when only one family member had to work, when we could all afford to enjoy the American Dream? Those days are gone, and started to disappear in 1976 when Prop 13 was passed, and in 1980 when Reagan became President; as he so famously stated, “Are you better off now than then?” The 50s, 60s and 70s don’t look that bad when we compare them to the hell hole we live in today…