CA: Núñez cautious on tax increases, spending cuts

Sac Bee ^ | 2/12/04 | Alexa H. Bluth

[NormsRevenge]

In a departure from legislative Democrats' longtime insistence that the state must raise taxes to ease its budget woes, the Assembly's new Democratic leader said Thursday that his agenda does not include tax hikes.

The message from voters in the fall recall election, he said, has prompted him and others to rethink their rigidity on the issue.

[NormsRevenge]

The "Núñez" Tone

[NormsRevenge]

..the Assembly's new Democratic leader said Thursday that his agenda does not include tax hikes.

Oh, Yeahhh , Baby!!!

It's all about Prop 56... then the real agenda will re-emerge.. muoy pronto!

[John Jorsett]

It's a trap!

[philetus]

.If [Bert] Corona is a founding father of Latino activism, then its radical son is Fabian Nuñez, who until mid-June was the political director of the powerful Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. Nuñez left the federation when the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest in the nation, appointed him head of government relations.

"We don't have economic power because we don't own the means of production," Nuñez told a rally in January 1995, where he urged the crowd to "bring Washington to its knees." A year earlier, in October of 1994, Nuñez and his militant colleague Juan Jose Gutierrez of the group One Stop Immigration, coordinated a rally of 70,000 immigrants against Proposition 187. Protestors waved Mexican flags and displayed an American flag with only 13 stars. They called Governor Pete Wilson a pig, compared Prop. 187 to Hitler's laws against Jews and told "Anglos" to go back to Europe. Gutierrez is now Senior Political and Community Organizer for the SEIU.

Nuñez is a fevered partisan of Aztlan. Unlike old leftists like Corona, who rejects the idea that Mexicans are a "mystical race" or a "special people," Nuñez sees class struggle on ethnic lines, not economic divisions. For Latino radicals today, the proletariat is entirely Latino and "raza" (race), while the ruling class is "anglo," "gringo" and "redneck." Their dedication to the irredentist cause raises the specter of the organized labor movement marshaled in the service of Chicano radicalism. With blood-and-soil rhetoric, Latino activists cultivate a menagerie of resentments that go back to the Spanish Armada, the 1846 war between Mexico and the United States, and 1930's-style "Mediterraneanism." Fueled by a general resentment of the United States, the raza ist Latino left explains the economic disparity between the U.S. and Mexico by charging that Mexico's wealth and land were "stolen" by gringos....

[heleny]

"People need to see the cuts, they need to see cuts that are real. They need to feel the pain before you can move forward with any other types of alternatives that bring in new revenues," Núñez said.

So, this simply means that he wants to make cuts to vital services (and not fix any problems), so we "feel the pain." Then, he can raise taxes after claiming he had no other choice.

[DumpsterDiver]

"The new Democratic agenda is one that doesn't necessarily call for raising taxes."

I dub thee Sir Weasel Words.

"People need to see the cuts, they need to see cuts that are real. They need to feel the pain before you can move forward with any other types of alternatives that bring in new revenues," Núñez said.

Oh Fabian, make me feel the pain! Oh yeah, baby, make me feel it.

Sorry. I got carried away.

[philetus]

California's New Speakerista
by K. Lloyd Billingsley

SACRAMENTO, CA – The California Assembly will soon have a new Speaker, Fabian Nunez, billed as a conciliatory liberal. He is actually a left-wing militant with a record of shrill rhetoric and pitting Californians against each other based on ethnicity.

Nunez is from San Diego and studied education and political science at upscale Pitzer College in Claremont. After graduating, he told the Los Angeles Times, “I was ready to join the Sandinistas,” a curious aspiration.

By 1988 the Sandinista dictatorship had made Nicaragua one of the most repressive regimes in the Americas, denounced by human rights organizations and shunned by prominent American liberals and leftists alike. However, instead of helping the Sandinista comandantes build socialism, Mr. Nunez became an activist with One Stop Immigration in Los Angeles.

This was the group that in October of 1994 staged a huge rally against Proposition 187, complete with speakers denouncing “AmeriKKKa” and “the United Snakes of America.” That month, Mr. Nunez spearheaded a student walkout at Ganesha High School in Pomona. The school board had already passed a resolution against Prop 187 but Mr. Nunez charged that they had not done enough. The demonstration included anti-gay rhetoric but Mr. Nunez told reporters that Latinos were not capable of discrimination. That would surprise residents of Cuba.

Mr. Nunez was also a backer of the Coordinadora '96 that staged the “Dia de la Raza” march in Washington, a blast of anti-American rhetoric. As the LA Weekly noted last year, Fabian Nunez was mentored by Bert Corona, a Marxist firebrand whose left-wing labor activism began before the Nazi-Soviet Pact. None of this emerged from the recent Sacramento Bee profile touting Mr. Nunez as the new speaker.

Mr. Nunez duly became political director for the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and government affairs director for the Los Angeles Unified School District. “I have no interest in running for office,” Mr. Nunez told reporters in 1994. But last year he won an Assembly seat in the 46th District in Los Angeles, the only elected office he has ever held. He backed the measure to give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.

In the class-struggle mindset of the immigration militants, Californians are not one people but divided into oppressed Latino workers – in 1994, Nunez told the Los Angeles Times that “Latino workers are the modern-day slaves of Southern California” – and a bourgeoisie of malevolent “anglos,” a designation that includes people with names such as O'Reilly, Horowitz, and Schwarzenegger. Though advertised as progressive, this brand of politics is rather antiquated and shared neither by most Latinos nor the broader populace. California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 187 and opposition to driver's licenses for illegals helped propel Arnold Schwarzenegger into office.

Latino voters in Santa Ana last year voted overwhelmingly to recall school-board member Nativo Lopez, whose profile and rhetoric is similar to that of Fabian Nunez. The voters wanted neither bilingual education nor divisive anti-American rhetoric. Many made it clear they resented activists who claimed to speak for them.

Since Fabian Nunez is one of those, Californians should not be surprised if the atmosphere of cooperation that has existed since the election quickly disappears. But perhaps some reporter will ask Speaker Nunez if the Sandinistas ever did anything with which he disagreed.

K. Lloyd Billingsley is editorial director at the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco. He can be reached via email at lbillingsley@pacificresearch.org.

[NormsRevenge]

Thanks for the post.

"Latino workers are modern-day slaves" ...

Well, no chains are around their ankles.. so.. to borrow from J. Effin Kerry

"Don't let the door hit ya in the rear as ya go back to Mehico..."

This fella is just what we needed to bring this whole stinking mess to a head in this state. He worked for the most lavishly spending school district in the state (lavish when it came to their offices for the bigwigs in the district, that is, not the classrooms), the LAUSD, and he is telling us he knows what is best for us.

[goldstategop]

I don't trust him as my arm is wide and the day is long. The Democrats in Sacramento have resisted cutting spending and reducing taxes for decades. Something doesn't wash here with their new Assembly Speaker.