Voters tuning out tax-hike alarmismWhen voters enacted the landmark Proposition 13 in 1978, Jerry Brown was governor, and Democrats controlled the Legislature. Voters passed Prop. 13 to send a message to government:
Stop destroying California with your endless grab for our money to cover up your inability to properly manage an affordable government.
Now, Brown again is governor, Democrats control the Legislature, and the
voters have rejected every statewide tax increase proposed during the past several election cycles including an embarrassing drubbing in 2009 of Prop. 1A ? a tax "extension" proposal involving the very same taxes that Brown, the Democrats and their labor allies are demanding today.
In music, a reprise is a return to a theme. Gov. Brown's budget revision offered a return to several themes used by the tax takers seeking to extract ever more revenue from the taxpayers.
The first was trying to scare voters into thinking that the world will end without tax increases. This tactic is so common that, at the national level, it has been given a name: Washington Monument Syndrome. During budget stalemates in Congress, the establishment threatens ? or actually carries out the threat ? to close down the Washington Monument, one of the most popular tourist attractions in Washington, D.C., and other popular landmarks.
Of course, they never do anything about their own overspending.
In California, it is the same drill. The Brown administration has announced the closure of 70 state parks.
As anyone who uses state parks knows, they sit on some of the best real estate in California. It makes one wonder if, in the hands of a private concessionaire, couldn't these parks actually make money? While we don't expect our park system to turn a profit, if properly managed, shouldn't it at least break even?
With schools, they will continue their threats of layoffs and closures without, of course, talking about the long list of reforms that would actually give us a better educational product for less money. Something as simple as giving local school districts the ability to contract out noneducational functions, like transportation and food service, is anathema to a party completely controlled by public employee unions. And
heaven forbid we should expand school choice with more charter schools or tuition vouchers issued to parents of low-income students stuck in failing schools.The problem for Gov. Brown and Democrats is that voters have heard this all hyperbole before. In 1978, UCLA economists ominously intoned in an opposition TV ad that California would be plunged into a deep recession if Prop. 13 passed.
The opposite happened.
Two years ago, dire consequences were forecast if the tax increases listed in Prop 1A weren't extended. The voters listened very carefully ? and then rejected 1A by a 2-1 margin.
The problem for the Democrats and their union backers is that no one believes them anymore. Even they know it. That is why they want the tax increases without a popular vote, as promised by Brown, because, they too, have seen the polling.
Whether it is 33 years ago, two years ago or today, those who live off tax dollars are playing the same theme music in the background. But those of us who pay the bills ? the taxpayers ? are singing our own song, and the lyrics are simple and straightforward:
Live within your means, don't raise taxes and stop using schoolchildren as human shields.
