Taxes are the Lead Character in a Familiar Tale
How much different is the Brown budget of yesterday from the Schwarzenegger budget in 2009, which raised temporary taxes and made big cuts? Yes, there is a plan for realignment. Yes, there is a move to undo redevelopment agencies. That’s Good. And, a proposal to do away with enterprise zones? Not so good.
But the two budgets are really not much different. Both contain deep spending cuts and so-called temporary taxes, but the big structural reforms on spending, taxes and pensions are missing.
The central issue of the Brown budget, like the Schwarzenegger budget, is taxes. Despite the $12.5 billion in cuts announced by Governor Brown, taxes were the key to the governor’s budget presentation. Questions about taxes dominated the governor’s briefing. Taxes appeared in nearly every early headline above news reports on the budget. While many Californians are directly affected by the budget cuts, every Californian is directly affected by the tax increases.
Hey, Jerry: What Gain Do We Get For All This Pain?
In his budget unveiling Monday, Gov. Jerry Brown was very much like the doctor I hope will sit with me at my bedside when the illness is terminal: gentle, funny and honest about the fact that I only have a short-time left.
Here’s the problem: Brown’s demeanor, not to mention his budget proposal, didn’t fit California – a young place with a long future ahead of it.
He talked convincingly about all the pain ahead of us – the cuts to every program, the tax increases needed to prevent things from being worse. And he then stopped right there – and never convincingly connected the budget cuts of today to a better future.
Jerry, California stands ready to take the pain. But how will the pain get us to a better place eventually?
Voters Not Anti-Tax, just Anti-Sacramento
In sizing up the prospects for voter approval of governor Jerry Brown’s proposal to extend a number of “temporary” tax increases, it is important to understand that California’s electorate is not unalterably opposed to raising taxes, but is dead set against feeding the dysfunction in the State Capitol.
Those who predict that voters will reject tax extensions because they rejected several measures on the 2009 special Election Ballot that would have allowed those taxes to continue. What happened two years ago was not a tax revolt, but voter revulsion at the Gang Who couldn’t Shoot Straight in Sacramento. Sure the hard-core anti-tax crowd voted No, but so did a lot of bleeding heart liberals who just wanted to send Arnold a message. This was just a case of too many people seeing the sausage being made and losing their appetites. Besides, there was no coherent campaign in support of the measures or, more importantly, the reasons the tax extensions were needed. Voters sent a message to Sacramento, but it wasn’t about tax increases.
That leaves the question of whether or not Jerry Brown and the powers that be can make a persuasive case that the blue smoke has been dissipated , the mirrors broken and State government is finally facing up to straightening out its fiscal house. This will require straight talk, an absence of gimmicks and specificity about what those tax cuts will buy.
Tragedy in Arizona
The horrific multiple murders of
this past weekend are echoing all over the landscape this week. So many questions are everywhere you look in
our supercharged 24/7 Media right now.
These include: 1) how Congressmen and -women, Judges, and indeed all
elected officials, can continue to go out among the citizenry (as they must)
without risk of their lives; 2) how to detect (and weed out for immediate
treatment) precisely which dangerously unstable members of our 300+ million
population are ticking time-bombs, capable of such hair-trigger and senseless
destruction of human life, and; 3) last but never least, what changes need to
be made to avoid more senseless deaths in this frenzied time in which we live.
Arizona has the most liberal gun
laws in the nation. This article is not
about gun control. Deranged people who
are bent on killing, will kill whether or not more statutes are enacted to
‘control’ gun ownership. It is like
throwing rocks at airplanes.