Posted on 06/28/2009 5:46:40 AM PDT by Zakeet
For Time Magazine, Kevin O'Leary has decided that he's figured out why California is in such a budget mess. Is it because the state indulges over generous social programs, or always has some of the highest taxes in the nation, or because the denizens of its capitol in Sacramento are paragons of waste, fraud and theft? Nope. It's because California has Proposition 13, a measure that prevents state government from too easily raising taxes. Yep, O'Leary thinks California is in a mess because it doesn't have high enough taxes. And it's all Reagan's fault.
With some of the highest taxes in America, California is a hard place to make a living. According to the Tax Foundation, on average it takes a citizen 110 working days to earn enough money to pay his yearly tax bill. That is the fourth worst in the country. California consistently ranks in or near the top 10 worst states for its tax burdens from property taxes, to corporate taxes, to individual taxes and fees of all sorts. So, how can O'Leary imagine that taxes aren't high enough in California?
It's an undeniable fact that taxes are higher in California than most other states. A recent report notes, "California has the highest sales tax (8.25percent, plus local add-ons), gas tax (35.3 cents a gallon) and vehicle license fees ($318 on a $20,000 gas-powered car), along with the second-highest top-bracket income tax (10.55 percent; Hawaii is No. 1 at 11 percent)."
It's so bad that in 2008 144,000 people moved out of California, the highest loss of residents of any U.S. state. The Golden State just ain't so golden anymore.
But as far as O'Leary is concerned taxes are too low in one of our highest taxed states and it's all because of Prop. 13 for which he blames the "Reagan revolution." Apparently O'Leary hasn't updated his syndromes. He's still wallowing in Reagan Derangement Syndrome and hasn't been alerted that he's supposed to have Bush Derangement Syndrome these days.
What has brought California to such a perilous state? How did its government become so wildly dysfunctional? One obvious cause is the deep recession that has caused tax revenues to plunge for all states. But California's woes have a set of deeper reasons: direct democracy run amok, timid governors, partisan gridlock and a flawed constitution all contribute to budget chaos and people in pain. And at the root of California's misery lies Proposition 13, the antitax measure that ignited the Reagan Revolution and the conservative era. In Washington, the Reagan-Bush era is over. But in California, the conservative legacy lives on.
Of course, it wasn't Reagan that created Proposition 13. But, whatever.
Regardless, O'Leary moans that it was oh, so grand in the old days. He wistfully informs us that then, back before that nasty, evil, brutish Reagan, "in the 1950s and '60s, California was a liberal showcase." Why it was a nirvana of socialist societal engineering in those golden years. And then came that darned old Prop 13 that "shot the tires out of" the "liberal state."
Amusingly, O'Leary's tax-mongering propaganda casts liberal lawmakers as heros for trying so hard to "live with" the law, even as it supposedly precluded them from being able to supply the state with services.
Beholden to a tax-averse electorate, the state's liberals and moderates have attempted to live with Proposition 13 while continuing to provide the state services Californians expect - freeways, higher education, locking up felons, assisting needy families and, very importantly, essential funding to local government and school districts that vanished after the antitax measure passed.
What tosh. Other states have not had nearly as many problems as California while also having to deliver the same services. So, why is California one of the most bankrupted states in the union?
With such a stark statement as laying the blame for the state's fiscal crisis squarely on Prop 13, one might think that O'Leary might have taken the time to offer some proof or statistics to substantiate his thesis. One would be wrong. After making the claim, O'Leary spends several dense paragraphs offering anecdotal stories about Californians that have been helped by the state's welfare programs, but offers no stats, no comparisons to other states, no investigation of the state's expenditures or anything else to actually prove his claim that Prop 13 is what did in the state's budget. He merely states it as a fact and moves forward with the assumption taken on faith.
It's amazing that Kevin O'Leary's piece was even published it is so empty of veracity. It's so bad that even his very first paragraph contains a factual disparity. (My bold)
The financial crisis in California grew worse this week as State Controller John Chiang warned that if legislators and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger fail to come up with a budget-balancing package, he would begin paying California's bills with IOUs on July 2. The last time the state did this was during the Great Depression.
As excerpted by CNN, Rhodes Cook/Congressional Quarterly proves O'Leary wrong. (Again my bold)
Times changed and Wilson had to be a "bad times" governor. Defense downsizing has sent the state economy into a spiral at the same time that California has kept growing with immigrants, both legal and illegal. Faced with a series of budget crises, Wilson at one point was forced to issue IOUs instead of state paychecks.
The "Wilson" in the report above would be Governor Pete Wilson. Obviously, Wilson had to pay state bills with IOUs. That was the 1990s. From my calculations the 1990s was a bit after the Great Depression.
Finally, one is struck by the fact that missing in O'Leary's piece is any hint that lawmakers just might be wasteful and that the profligate spending by Sacramento is a bad thing. No, it seems that as far as O'Leary is concerned, any and all government spending is the right move and any law that gets in the way of high taxes and a spendthrift government is a bad thing.
Time files this piece in its "U.S. News" section, but it simply does not stand up to scrutiny and without any pertinent facts to prove his claim, it's hardly "news.".
Does anybody with an I.Q. higher than a carrot read these idiots any more?
And they wonder why they’re losing money?!
LOL. What morons. If they did even the most cursory of fact checking, they would have found that as Governor, Reagan did indeed raise taxes in California. He was even supposedly pro-abortion at the time too.
This tax data deserves a highlight:
http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxfreedomday/
According to this, I only work 103 days for the State * Feds to pay my taxes. What a relief!
I guess I’m actually supposed to BELIEVE that after April 12th they’ve let me KEEP what was left? Hardly! A goodly portion is absorbed by all the OTHER ‘invisible’ taxes we pay each day. *Rolleyes*
Anyway, back to the topic at hand...
Lefties are convinced there is not a single problem in this country that couldn’t be solved if only I would pay more taxes.
Maybe concerned liberals should run telethons to raise donations for the state government. I'm sure the legislature could come up with some way to make that okay.
There is a big push by the state run media to get Prop 13 repealed.
As a reminder, one of the reason Prop 13 was passed was because older retired people on fixed incomes were being forced out of their homes as property taxes kept going up.
If they repeal Prop 13 that will happen again, and many retired people, such as myself, will sell and move out of the state.
I wish I could tell you to come here to Wisconsin, but our current Governor is another spend and waste governor who has no sense on how to run a business or a state.
Tax people and business seems to be the model these idiots subscribe to at this point. We are losing jobs and businesses everyday but our pied piper in Wisconsin keeps heading toward the cliff.
Someone at Time magazine (which I haven’t read in probably 15 years) has to know this is a huge load of BS, YET THEY PRINT IT ANYWAY. How stupid do they thing their few, remaining readers are? Do they just print stuff like this for the publicity value? Or are they just talking only to themselves and other liberal journists, in a sealed chamber?
I wonder if Doyle and the Terminator went to the same school of business.
I was one of them. Unfortunately I went from the pan into the fire. I landed in NJ where there is no Prop 13. The property taxes are around triple CA. How does anybody retire here? Someone's social security check would go entirely to paying property taxes.
“I wonder if Doyle and the Terminator went to the same school of business”.
...they sure did! The Karl Marx School of Amerikan History and Economics!
“Is it because the state indulges over generous social programs, or always has some of the highest taxes in the nation, or because the denizens of its capitol in Sacramento are paragons of waste, fraud and theft?”
Or perhaps the drain of MILLIONS of illegal aliens on every facet of the government? I wonder how much duplicating every document in two languages has cost over the years alone...
The one thing I think is clear, is that at every level, public and private, an old saying was forgotten: “Save for a rainy day.” If you don’t build up cash reserves in good times, well we see what happens in bad times.
As a native Californian who’s now a permanent resident elsewhere, it’s been sad watching the train wreck over the years, and a bleak future lies ahead for the Golden State I’m afraid.
And Reagan was not even governor when this passed as a people’s referendum, not a law. I believe that honor went to moonbeam.
BTW, California has the highest state income and one of the highest sales tax rates, gasoline tax rate, and vehicle registration fees in the nation SO while they may not be getting all they can from homeowners, they surely get it from somewhere such they are the sixth highest taxing state in the country. Furthermore, home assessments are based on the most recent sales price so if someone is dumb enough to buy a home there, the house is immediately reassessed to the sales price. Perhaps an argument can be made many homes are over assessed now especially if they were bought in the two year period before home prices cratered.
Vince
Why would anyone get a subscription to Time? I can understand dental offices and medical clinics...but it’s a total waste to spend an hour reading.
Still the people of CA are ultimately responsbile, for they are supposed to be the ones “in charge”. They have been asleep at the liberal switch for more than a decade now, and their slumber seems to be unending.
Lucky for the illegals California is one of the lowest cost of living states in which they can live.
Yes, WI people are not the ones needed to give economic lessons to Californians.
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