Posted on 01/09/2011 7:30:38 AM PST by Kaslin
“It’s a matter of ideology trumping reality…”
That assessment came from Syndicated Columnist Tony Blankley. It was Christmas Eve morning, December 24th, and we were each guest hosting local shows at Washington, DC’s 630 WMAL talk radio.
I was in to cover for vacationing host (and former Congressman) Fred Grandy in the early morning “drive time” hours, while Blankley was filling-in for DC favorite Chris Plante during the late morning (9a-12n Eastern) show.
I had asked Blankley to join me in-studio for a segment on my program, and to talk about a place we have both known and loved, California. While I was born and raised there, Blankley, a native of the U.K., spent some of his youth and young adult years in the Golden State. And we were both marveling – in a “troubled” sort of way – at the amazing ability of California leadership to ignore its very serious problems.
As if the $6 billion budget shortfall that he presided over didn’t really exist – a deficit that is expected to expand to a whopping $24.5 billion over the next eighteen months - outgoing Governor Arnold Governor Schwarzenegger had just called the legislature in to a “special session,” but then had called a press conference to announce his “really big plan.” For a second and final time before leaving office, he was going to try and legislate a state-wide ban on plastic grocery bags. This, he explained, would help save the planet, but would also help create so-called “green jobs.”
Indeed, this was a matter of “ideology trumping reality.” And never mind that Rome is burning -California will “be green.”
But that was last month. Now, a guy who was Governor for eight of my elementary, junior high and high school years is Governor yet again. A perennial government employee, Jerry Brown is back in Sacramento, and it looks like his third term is going to be as ideological as ever.
To be fair, I must admit my tremendous respect and admiration for our “new” Governor. At age 72, Brown is (amazingly) just as articulate and energetic and erudite as he ever was. In many ways he seems like he’s more at the “top of his game” now than when I was a kid. But his energy and mental sharpness aside, Jerry Brown is a big-government liberal – and right now, California desperately needs to move in the direction of New Jersey (especially given current Governor Chris Christie’s success at cutting government spending), and not in the direction of Greece.
But ideology still trumps reality in California, even in this new, “post Arnold” era. And so it was that, less than twenty-four hours after his inauguration, Governor Jerry Brown began laying the groundwork for raising taxes in California, rather than cutting government spending.
The problem with the state budget, so the Governor reasoned, was not that politicians had spent too much or that government agencies are wasteful. No, no, Californians aren’t taxed enough – they’ve been given an “unfair” break on their property taxes via the state’s famous, 32-year-old “Proposition 13,” and if that could be undone, then the state budget would be fixed.
Proposition 13, in case you’ve forgotten, was a landmark ballot proposition that drew a record number of voters to the precincts in 1978. The law passed in a landslide, and imposed a statewide limit on the rate at which local counties and cities could levy property taxes.
I remember the fight over Proposition 13 quite well. I recall the night my father and I attended a special “informational meeting” at my elementary school, presented by my school’s Principal. “If Proposition 13 passes,” the Principal reasoned, “we won’t have enough money to afford textbooks and classroom supplies…some schools in our district might even have to close down..”
“Ma’am, with all due respect, you don’t have enough text books now,” my father replied, “and property taxes have been escalating in our county for twenty-five years. The problem is not a lack of funds, it’s a mismanagement of funds…”
My late father, whether he knew it or not, was creating a “teachable moment,” and it was an economics lesson that I never forgot. My school’s Principal, of course, was doing what government employees typically do, and arguing for higher taxes and more government spending. And she was using the same “talking points” that Governor Brown had been using at the time, as he traveled up and down the state begging for a “no” vote on Proposition 13.
Yet after the proposition’s landslide victory on June 6 of 1978, Brown changed his tune, agreed to realign California government in such a way as to comply with the property tax limitations, and thus won re-election handily in November of that year.
Today, Governor Brown oversees a state debt that is more than twice the size of California’s annual operating budget back in the late 70’s. And it seems that the “early 1978” version of Jerry Brown is about to re-emerge.
Tax itself to prosperity?That would be a first,for anywhere in the world.
Tax to obscurity is more likely.
Like Cuba and the Soviet Union.
Exactly
~Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Experience is the key.
Socialism always fails, always.
Too big to fail.
California must have a death wish to elect an old fart socialist like Brown.
He’s the poison that will kill the state.
The people of a state try to relive the past, when the dynamics and demographics were not even close to comparable.
Brown was briefly successful during a time when California was growing and there were countless business opportunities. Laws and taxes were also much different during a time when Conservatism still had an influence in the state.
For Brown to use the same methods and tactics he used during a past and gone era is a guaranteed failure. California in the final stages of decline. Too many business have left and the technology industry that made California a great place to do business from, has ended.
The entire state is nothing but a staging area for Illegal Aliens to congregate and gain a foothold. The state's Welfare/Medicaid system is so corrupt and hopeless, that not even a miracle will end this disaster.
He, and Californians generally, are depending on the rest of us, forced by President Obama, to bail them out.
There is a nonsensical idea floating about that Californians deserve to be bailed out because they pay more in federal taxes than the federal government spends in or gives to California. This makes not sense. Federal spending is not based on insuring that each State receive in Federal expenditures how much money its citizens pay in Federal taxes.
If Californians, on retirement, leave their heavily taxed state and move to another, thus taking Federal Socialist Insecurity and Medicare funds with them, this does not mean that we need to bail out California!
They’ll have to pass a law limiting how much someone can take when they leave.
Hey, that would make a nice tag line.
I’m not willing to help pay for California’s overpriced orgy.I doubt if anyone else is either.
Since the uber wealthy sabotaged the initiative against the global warming hoax it has been noted that these plutocrats have it in their heads to turn California into a rich person’s eco-paradise.
No, sadly, when California is well and truly bankrupt, they’ll whine to the federal government for us to bail them out, and like the dutiful sheep they are, they’ll bail California out and stick the rest of us with the bill. When that day comes, the Republic will be well and truly dead.
Excuse me, but California "bails out" the rest of the United States to the tune of $30 billion a year, to this day. The higher incomes here mean that people pay higher income taxes to the Feds. California's share of Federal expenditures is $0.78 on the dollar it sends to Washington.
THANK GOD ..... that Pelosi is not speaker when this state goes belly up.
California needs to lead the way on how to go bankrupt on its own dime.
I didn’t get to smoke dope and ride the surf board for the last 20 years. They did.
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