Letter to a Conservative Regulation/Tax Cutter

I read your diatribe against state tax laws and regulations in today's Sacramento Bee. What is distressing is that you would print such ignorant and biased political ilk while sitting on the State Board of Equalization. According to your theory, state regulations and high taxes are what is chasing off business.  You even side with Amazon, in refusing to collect state sales tax, which has given an unfair advantage to Amazon, resulting in at least the "Borders Bookstore" closure, along with hundreds of other retailers in California.   How can you write such biased and one-sided propaganda and still serve on the Board of Equalization.  Your JOB sir, is to advise tax code equally and fairly in the state.  You also, of course, are sitting in a position that is a plumb patronage position, thanks to the Guvenator. What if you are wrong?  What if de-regulating and cutting taxes so weakens the necessary infrastructure that educated entrepreneurs flee?    What if history proves you wrong, which it has and is!   I live in Redding, California, a hotbed of the Tea Party and wacko conservatives.  The county and city leadership have been taken over by the far right, resulting in policies that build mall after mall, retail business multiplies, and we all are starving to death.  Government, that once was one of our largest employers, has been cut to the bone, and the recession just drives us deeper and deeper.    The hole just gets deeper while we enforce your doctrine.  SIR, IT DOESN'T WORK!!!!   "Doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result is madness"...California has indulged in over a quarter century of tax cuts and government services reduction, cut our colleges while growing our prisons, passing your child protection laws, with no positive effect.  When have you been called to account for this: Never, you were appointed to the Board of Equalization...good pay....short hours...   California, as you know, is not one of the leading states in taxation level.  In fact, we rank about 7 as I recall.  This is startling, since we are the most populous state. Meanwhile, thanks to your passage of laws worrying more about child molesters than the state of our once great state college and university system, we spend more on incarceration than on matriculation, starving education to death and further weakening the economy.  Our highways are falling apart.  We rank way down on public transportation, our water reclamation projects are over a half century old, our plumbing systems, electricity grid, are all 1930s vintage.   Worse, our citizenry are losing their educational edge everyday to their global competitors.   And you answer, cut regulations, poison the environment, put more people in jail, cut regulations; let private enterprise do anything they want to do.....bring on B.P. let's flood Monterey Harbor with crude!!! Try this on for size!   It's a global, flat world economy.  To encourage state competition between all 50 states,  to cut taxes, cut regulations, turn us into Mexico, provides no competition whatsoever for the nationally economy policy competitors (China, India, Brazil).  Fifty disjointed, feuding and begging states pose no threat to China's monolith, who are using national teamwork to destroy us.  Read this last sentence real slow to yourself.....to destroy us! This is where the fiscal conservatives are killing us, by refusing to even consider a national policy of economic growth, but rather screaming for all 50 states to compete with one another mindlessly.  This "how to herd cats" approach might work in some conservative think tank, but in the world economy it makes it easy for China, for example, to continually clean our clock! The real jobs, the real strength, our manufacturing base, is not in Oregon (as you so so cleverly wrote), but in Vietnam, China, Brazil; etc.   And, the corporations you so much want to court with "sell the farm" tax cuts and no regulations, are MULTI-NATIONAL countries.  They don't give a damn about the citizens of California, just like they don't give a damn about the citizens of Brazil, who work in sweat shops for pennies an hour. So, your  approach is to make us a third world nation, which for the middle class in this country means a precipitous drop in the standard of living?  What does the middle class do when the tax cuts mean U.C. tuition is the same as Stanford's?  They don't get to go to college is the answer.   Every global study of economics I have EVER SEEN, states that education is the key to competing in the global economy.  Cutting public education, while boosting charter schools (check out how many of those have been victimized by opportunistic crooks), means less educational infrastructure, which means we lose! It's a global economy.  We need a NATIONAL policy on energy, education AND economic growth to compete.  Oh yes, put in Health Care as well, which you desperately want to repeal. If we listen to your conservative nonsense we will win alright, we will win and become the banana republics that your right wing friends like to make fun of, and close our borders to. In 1939 Hitler invaded Poland and WWII began. Conservatives like yourself, were so forward looking, they voted against the draft, which passed by ONE vote in the Congress. People of good will, like yourself according to your webpage biography, were dead wrong; nearly costing us defeat in the war. What won the war was teamwork, and a unified national policy. What defeated the Axis Powers, was the United Nations, who fought as one for liberty and freedom. Today, we are faced with economic disaster by countries who are emerging into global status. Luckily it is not war, that we need to unite around; it is economic vitality and survival. By looking back, and not realizing it is a new world, we project a disjointed picture to the global economy, that right now is resulting in disaster. You are wrong, and your views do not become a man who sits on such a prestigious board. Sent from Our iPad