The Consequences of Tax Cutting Madness

What follows is a response I wrote to Dan Walters, conservative columnist for the Sacramento Bee. His diatribe today was how California is overtaxed and get poor government anyway. This bullshit (pardon my language) has gone on for years by the wing nuts, who have blithely destroyed government. Right now, they are about to do it again, with the sequester mess in Washington. If you starve government, there are negative consequences, like losing wars,losing democracy, and depressions!

Where have you been for the past 40 years? Prop 13 has gutted the treasury of every city in the state. We idiotically passed a huge cut in vehicle license fees, cost a governor his job, and elected an idiot who spent more time banging his housekeeper than governing the state.

We drank the poison of tax cutters, who promised that lower taxes would mean a more robust economy, while we ruined the greatest public college institution in the world.

I could go on and on. Now, predictably, after a minuscule tax increase, limited in time, we hear that California is overtaxed and does not spend its money wisely.

Journalists like yourself "investigate" state bureaus who dared to save money in special accounts, so they could continue to provide services amidst the onslaught of tax cutter madness.

Meanwhile, although we produce as much oil as Libya, we have NEVER taxed oil profits, like every every government on the planet, including Texas!

I ran a couple school districts in my career. I heard everyday how we were "wasting money" on cafeterias, on counselors, on administrators, and ultimately on teachers. I designed master schedules, putting 40 into algebra classes, knowing full well the instructor could not possibly teach that many kids. But I knew it was that, or lay off the teacher.

And finally, just last night, while chairing the a Charter School Board, I heard how one of our new teachers was laid off from a local school after 15 years of experience. She is an excellent teacher, but the money ran out, because school budgets are run like a Russian Work Camp, only bread and water allowed; "efficiently"!?

Then I listened as our Director explained that the teacher was now working for $35,000 a year, "what a bargain" the Director explained.

A bargain, just like what you want from California's taxes, a bargain, with lousy results. A "bargain" that cut the teacher's salary by 1/3, so she spend less in our poverty ridden city, reducing demand even more, and spreading the pain.

I a couple weeks, "born again" Tea Partiers, will successfully plunge the country into another recession, by cutting spending with a meat axe (just like Prop 13). Demand will plummet, thousands will lose their job, their health insurance, their lives; and poverty will continue.

All so a bunch of ideological idiots, can run economic "Laffer Curve" forecasts, that have NEVER worked, always result in pain and poverty, and unbelievable riches for the top 1%.

We have "starved the beast" for forty years in this state, ruined the UC system, ruined public education, ruined water projects, ruined prisons, ruined the Highway Patrol, ruined local cities and counties; and you explain, like a true right winger, that California is overtaxed and poorly governed. And as a reward, we got Reagan, who closed the mental health hospitals, leaving the insane to run the streets, with the right wing insane.

What a legacy to leave for conservatives! They ruined democracy, they ruined the American Dream, the "wrecking crew" that they are, have "screwed" us all (both book titles you might try to read).

How does it feel to have helped in that wrecking process?

Sent from my iPad