Posted on 09/04/2012 10:59:27 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Wake up California. You are perilously close to ratifying Proposition 31, a sweepingly redistributionist and profoundly undemocratic transformation of your way of life, and you don’t even know what’s at stake. Suburbanites of California, you are the special targets of Prop. 31. Act now, or be turned into second-class citizens in your own state.
Wake up America. Look toward the regionalist revolution on California’s horizon. In an era of looming municipal bankruptcies, this could be your fate: robbing the suburbs to pay for the cities. The regionalist transformation now being quietly pressed on California is exactly the sort of change President Obama has in mind for America should he win a second term. In California and America both, the 2012 election could open the door for a regionalist movement in hot pursuit of a redistributionist remaking of American life.
California’s Proposition 31 is the project of a collection of “good government” groups, in particular, California Forward. California Forward says its goal is “fundamental change.” They’re right about that. The change they have in mind, unfortunately, is creating a collection of de facto regional super-governments designed to undercut the political and economic independence of California’s suburbs. The goal is to redistribute suburban tax money to California’s failing cities. Instead of taking on the mismanagement that is breaking California’s cities, Prop. 31 lets failing cities bail themselves out by raiding the pocketbooks of California’s suburbanites. In the process, Prop. 31 will kill off the system of local government at the root of American liberty.
How does Prop. 31 work? It allows local governments to join together to form “Strategic Action Plans.” Supposedly, this pooling of local municipal services into a kind of de facto collective regional super-government would be voluntary. In fact, Prop. 31 deploys powerful incentives to effectively force the creation of these regional super-governments. To begin with, municipalities that join regional collectives–and only those municipalities–can effectively waive onerous state laws and regulations by creating their own more lax versions of those rules. Next, Prop. 31 channels a portion of state sales tax revenue to municipalities that join regional governing collectives–and only those municipalities. Finally, Prop. 31 authorizes local governments participating in the regional collectives to pool their property-tax receipts.
The result will be the effective redistribution of suburban tax money to the cities, and second-class citizenship for Californians who live in municipalities that refuse to pool their tax money by joining regional collectives.
If you understand the goals and tactics of the regionalist movement that created Prop. 31, it’s easy enough to see what California Forward hopes to achieve. In the beginning, California’s cities will join together with a few only-moderately-well-off nearby suburbs to form a de facto regional government with pooled tax receipts. Although some of the suburbs that join up will experience a net tax loss, this will be offset by the additional sales tax revenue preferentially funneled to regional governing consortia by the state. Relief from onerous state regulations will be another compensatory advantage of tax-sharing.
Meanwhile, the bulk of California’s more prosperous suburbs will decline to pool their tax money with the cities, and so will retain their independence by standing outside of the collectives. Yet that won’t be the end of it. For one thing, just by staying out of the regional governing collectives, the preferential funneling of state sales tax revenue to the regional consortia will effectively redistribute money from the suburbs to the cities.
Also, the ability of the regional governing collectives to effectively waive onerous state laws and regulations will disadvantage the suburbs. A legislator from a city in one of the regional consortia could vote for unpopular regulatory bills, knowing that his own constituents could exempt themselves from the harshest effects of those laws. Increasingly, cities will rule the suburbs, imposing laws and penalties from which they themselves would be exempt.
The only way out for the suburbs would be to join the nearest tax-pooling regional governing consortium, effectively redistributing a huge share of their tax money to the cities. Any way you look at it, the suburbs lose. Under Prop. 31, some combination of redistribution and second-class citizenship will be their fate.
Proposition 31 is an offense against America’s most fundamental concepts of liberty and self-government. Yet the outrages don’t end there. The revolutionary regionalism that is the boldest and most significant change contained in Prop. 31 has played almost no role in the public debate over this ballot initiative. Instead, when Prop. 31 is debated, the focus has largely been on its far less consequential “good government” provision mandating that bills in the California legislature be published at least three days prior to passage.
The irony here is that a proposition supposedly designed to further government transparency now threatens to impose a regionalist revolution on California’s citizens with barely any debate. Prop. 31 proponents are vastly outspending opponents. Their campaign, moreover, greatly underplays the regionalist revolution hidden in the text. Nor has the press come close to grasping what the regionalist provisions of Prop. 31 would actually do. Never has so great a governmental change come so close to success, with so little debate.
The state of California owes a debt of gratitude to Wayne Lusvardi. So far as I know, Lusvardi is the first analyst to uncover and publicize the regionalist implications of Proposition 31. Lusvardi also persuasively shows that the public debate over Prop. 31 has entirely missed the point.
If you want to understand the political and policy roots of Proposition 31, the best place to turn is the California Speakers Commission on Regionalism. (You can read a condensed version of the Commission’s 2002 report here.) This report was prepared for then-Speaker of the California Assembly, Robert Hertzberg. Hertzberg now serves as co-chair of California Forward, the key sponsor of Proposition 31.
The report of the California Speakers Commission on Regionalism is a pure product of the regionalist movement, the goals of which I describe in my book, Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities. Obama, too, is a product of the regionalist movement, and the regionalist provisions of Prop. 31 are prototypes of policies the president hopes to press on the country should he secure re-election. Sad to say, Obama is being every bit as open about all this as the proponents of Prop. 31 have been about their ballot initiative’s real goals, which is to say, not very open at all.
I’ll have more to say about Proposition 31 in the coming days.
Not surprised, as states like California loose more and more tax revenue they will be looking at more and more ways to separate hard working people from their money and at the same time ensure that the voice of those being robbed is effectively silenced.
They are doing this here in NY State too.
There are activists claiming that there is too much “duplication” in our town Governments - schools, police, fire, soc. services could all be managed much more effectively if the local Gov’ts dissolved themselves into county or regional size Gov’t, thus creating super-size school districts, etc..
And most “small-Gov’t” types shout: “yeah! We can cut Gov’t employees and gov’t expenditure!”
They just don’t realize that everything will be combined to the lowest common denominator. Unions will then control not only the city employees of Syracuse, Buffalo, Rochester, but you can be sure they will control the suburban employees too. School districts will be run the same way. Standards and indoctrination will be run for everyone as they are now in the hell-hole urban districts. If there are any cost or tax savings, they will be very short-lived. I guarantee you there will be no tax savings in the long-run.
The future? (Intro passage to RUSH’s Red barchetta)...
“My uncle has a country place that no one knows about
He says it used to be a farm before the Motor Law
And on Sundays, I elude the eyes, hop the turbine freight
To far outside the wire, where my white-haired uncle waits...”
How are the “regions” defined?
Can’t the “rich” suburbs get together and form their own?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Inside
This is a great novel. And prophetic......................
Here in MN , that's determined by unelected bureaucrats from the "Metropolitan Council". (think 'Star Chamber' for cities) They started out being "central planners" of "smart growth" years ago just for the metro, but have expanded outward and are still doing so.
“Wait and see what happens if Prop 31 passes.”
California will just take another step down the road to irrelevancy.
Just bought that book. Thanks for the recommendation.
Prop. 8
Prop. 187
Prop. 198
Prop. 208
Prop. 225
Were all voted by the people..and passed.
And all were overturned by the State and or District Courts.
IOW, We the People don't count for much.
Prop. 13 will fall too...before it's over.
And people in those rural parts of the State will then be victimized by the urban pols pitching their caged rats to vote for bills that rip off the country people.
Your best bet, after North Korean or Chinese "urban renewal", is the residual protection afforded you by living in another State. As people realize what these Communist despots have in mind, they'll find the States to be once again the gristly, resistant backbone of the opposition. The $64,000 question is whether Abraham Lincoln broke too much in 1865.
This is already well underway in WA state, they are using the storm water issue to tie regions together.
I have the book, Spreading the Wealth, right here on my desk, waiting for me. I really need to get busy reading it.
I feel very blessed to live in South Carolina, a largely rural state.
sounds like a third way op.. Thanks for posting.
Do you know (1) who they are (2) where they work and (3) where they live? If not, find out. They are the enemy within, and belong on the WTSHTF target list. And they need to KNOW that they are listed; that may deter them a bit.
If this passes, Nevada, Arizona, and Oregon better watch out, because there will be an exidous from California like never seen before. I’m glad I got out when I did.
Sounds like an excellent idea.
When civilizations collapse it is because cities collapse or have been destroyed by invasion. It is cities which produce civilizations.
Most rural areas would also be destroyed by the destruction of cities. Or they would be nothing more than subsistence agriculture. In other words rural wealth and income would dry up. It is because of the enormous demand of cities that farmers can become wealthy.
When “Dark Ages” have occurred rural areas become dirt poor, illiterate and subject to roaming bands of raiders without the means to protect themselves.
Lincoln’s destruction of the Treasonous Slavers has nothing to do with this issue.
We’ve said it before, the state needs to be broken up. Everyone should not suffer cause LA and the Bay area turn the rest of the state.
If the shite continues I hope a real secession movement comes into being.
You all probably know where I stand on this. California should be divided into five states (the state “names” below are decriptive, but hardly optimal):
1. State of Los Angeles, with all of L.A. County:
10.0 million pop in 2010, 45%-50% Hispanic, 10% black, 12%-15% Asian
16 electoral votes, 29.17% McCain 2008, 35.60% Bush 2004, 32.35% Bush 2000
2. State of San Francisco Bay, with all of Alameda, Contra Costa, Humboldt, Marin, Mendocino, Monterey, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano, Sonoma and Yolo Counties:
8.1 million pop in 2010, 21%-25% Hispanic, 7% black, 17%-20% Asian
13 electoral votes, 24.82% McCain in 2008, 29.95% Bush in 2004, 30.64% Bush in 2000
3. State of Inland Empire, with all of Kern, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties:
6.7 million pop in 2010, 36%-40% Hispanic, 6% black, 4%-5% Asian
11 electoral votes, 46.79% McCain in 2008, 55.54% Bush in 2004, 50.70% Bush in 2000
4. State of Central Valley, with all of Alpine, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, Colusa, Del Norte, El Dorado, Fresno, Glenn, Inyo, Kings, Lake, Lassen, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, Modoc, Mono, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Sacramento, San Benito, San Joaquin, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Stanislaus, Sutter, Tehama, Trinity, Tulare, Tuolumne and Yuba Counties:
6.5 million pop in 2010, 27%-32% Hispanic, 5% black, 7%-8% Asian
11 electoral votes, 48.27% McCain in 2008, 56.92% Bush in 2004, 53.17% Bush in 2000
5. State of San Diego, with all of Imperial, Orange and San Diego Counties:
6.3 million pop in 2010, 30%-35% Hispanic, 4% black, 11%-13% Asian
11 electoral votes, 47.07% McCain in 2008, 55.86% Bush in 2004, 52.57% Bush in 2000
Essentially, comfortably Democrat California would be converted into two ridiculously Democrat states (based in L.A. and San Francisco Bay, respectively) and three GOP-leaning states, and under normal circumstances the 5 states would give the GOP a 6-4 edge in U.S. Senate seats (the Dems have had a 2-0 edge since 1992) and a 33-29 edge in electoral votes (the Dems got all 55 EVs from CA in 2008 and 2004 and all 54 EVs from CA in 2000, 1996 and 1992).
We should also split Texas up into four GOP states of around 11 electoral votes each, which would give us 6 new GOP Senators (and increase GOP electoral votes by 6 as well).
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