Tax Fiction Sells In Hollywood

Rewriting History: Did Proposition 13 ruin California? Yes, says a now-popular myth, which explains the state's budget crisis as punishment for keeping taxes too low. But statistics are stubborn things.

There are only two ways to get into a fiscal mess on the scale seen in California right now: You either spend too much or tax too little.

The state's Democrats want a tax increase, and they're being egged on by cheerleaders such as Time magazine, which recently opined that California is paying the price for tax-cutting fever.

At the "root of California's misery," says Time, "lies Proposition 13, the anti-tax 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."

This sort of argument is emerging now, we'd guess, to help soften voter resistance to higher taxes not just in California but, sooner or later, at the federal level to pay for the spending frenzy of Congress and the Obama administration. Prop. 13, passed in 1978, is being trotted out as Exhibit A in the case against limited-government conservatism.

The environmentalists should be upset about all the trees that were killed in order to print up that commie rag known as TIME magazine.

I lived in California when Proposition 13 was passed. Prior to its passage, people were losing their homes because they couldn’t afford to pay their sky-high property taxes.

What really wrecked California is liberalism in all its forms. Driving high paying aerospace jobs out of the state because of high taxes and wacko environmental legislation.....driving other manufacturing jobs out of state because of the same reasons......illegal immigration and the countless billions of dollars it costs to educate the children of illegals, to incarcerate those illegals who commit crimes, to pay the medical bills of illegals, the welfare benefits they receive, etc......the over-all anti-business attitude and policies of the left-wing politicians at the state and local level; the size of state government and the high wages and benefits given to the endless amount of state employees, etc.

Didn’t have a damn thing to do with Proposition 13.

Idiots at the helm ran this ship deep into the weeds and mud.

Blame Prop 13 all they want, they are still idiots and their prints are all over the ship’s wheel.

“The Legislature quickly hiked state employee pensions “to a point where some employees could retire after 30 years, at as young as 50 or 55, and continue to earn 90% of their highest salary plus cost-of-living increases for the rest of their lives.”
And now they are whining and wanting the rest of the U.S. taxpayers to foot the bill. Aren’t unions wonderful.

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