No on 1A!

For those of you who are unaware, a special election is planned for next month, and the ballot will include several measures. All well-informed citizens will vote “no” on all those measures, particularly 1A. Now, I am fully anticipating a degree of confusion amongst the electorate. The radio commercials for 1A that I have heard make it sound like 1A does nothing but good for California. And even the “No on 1A” argument on the voters’ guides sounds rather tepid. Both leave out the ugly truth: a vote for 1A is a vote for higher taxes.

Lest any of you have forgotten, we’re in a pretty bad recession right now, and the federal government is going to essentially raise taxes by letting the Bush tax cuts expire. Already several people with whom my family is acquainted, who earn less than $250,000 a year, have seen their withholdings on their paychecks double, and, for one individual, triple, all in spite of Obama’s campaign promise that such families would not see their taxes go up “one cent.” Now, that’s something the whole nation has to deal with, but in California, we’ve got it especially bad. We were already the most-heavily taxed citizens in the nation. California has the highest income tax, and, what is more, its top income bracket kicks in at a ridiculously low level of income. If you make $40,346 a year or more, you have to pay 9.3 cents on every dollar you earn. In America, $40,000 a year is not “rich” by any means, especially when one considers the high cost of living in California. It is little wonder that so many productive individuals and businesses are leaving the state!

So, we’re in a recession, we’re already the most heavily-taxed state as far as income, car, gas, business, sales, etc., and Obama is raising taxes and spending like a drunken sailor. What does the legislature in Sacramento do? They hit us with the biggest tax increase in the history of any state in the union! And they do so because they’re unable to cut any programs, in spite of the state government having doubled in size over the last decade and its growth of 40 percent over the last five years. Some states make do without sales taxes or income, but California, with both of those and an economy that would still be one of the world’s top twenty if it were a sovereign nation, is billions in the hole! Why? Because our state is beholden to unions and illegal immigrants, and not to the electorate.

Illegal immigrants play a large part of the budget problem in California, but for many in Sacramento, the issue is verboten. Gov. Schwarzenegger, speaking at a LA Times forum, dismissed the costs of illegal immigrants, and said that any one blaming them for the financial crisis is “prejudiced.” Well Arnie, you got me. I am prejudiced. More than that, I’m mad. I’m mad that foreign-born individuals, who come here in willful violation of our laws, cost the state government of California $14 billion a year (Federation for American Immigration Reform statistics). I’m mad they’re smuggling drugs, that they’re bringing in gangs, and that, when the people turn to their elected officials seeking redress, they’re dismissed as racists!

The Public Service Unions are another cog in our tax-dollar-eating machine. Don’t get me wrong: unions serve a purpose. But between the greed of the unions and the greed of big corporations, America doesn’t make anything anymore. China does. Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Mexico, and Pakistan make all our goods. That’s partly the fault of greedy corporate fat cats who care about nothing but lowering production costs, but it’s also partly the fault of greedy unions who expect fabulous pay and pensions for blue-collar jobs. So, if it’s not outsourced for Third-World children or political prisoners to make for nickels a day, it’s done here but by illegal immigrants. And meanwhile, while everything else is going to hell, the unions tell the rest of the country “screw you!” The United Auto Workers don’t care that American car manufacturing is dying; they just want their pensions and health coverage. Likewise, the California teachers unions scream bloody murder if you even suggest that their contracts be renegotiated during the biggest economic crisis in living memory, and they don’t care that they’re the highest-paid teachers in the country and have terrible test scores and high dropout rates. So offensive to them and other public-sector unions was the very idea of a spending cap, even the emasculated one in the budget the Republicans sold out for (more on that later), that they had to be placated with what amounts to a bribe (proposition 1B). And that, in case you wondered, is why the teachers unions chipped in so much to the Yes on 1A and 1B campaigns.

Now, you may have heard that Proposition 1A has a “budget cap” in it, and that it was the big part of the deal that the Republicans in the state legislature insisted on in exchange for selling out their constituents and violating their no new tax pledges by voting for the biggest state tax increase in American history. First of all, the spending cap can be removed with a simple two-thirds majority in the legislature. So, all the Democrats need to do is peel off enough Republicans with bribes and threats, like they did with the budget, and bam! Spending cap lifted! Even if the spending cap was immovable, it is based on the tax revenues from the last ten years. Those were years of record growth, and we are now in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. So, in a time of recession tax revenues will be a lot lower than normal, so the cap does nothing to prevent the morons in Sacramento from spending more than they have. And, to top it all off, the cap is “flexible,” meaning that they can spend more if they can spend more if they tax more! If you’re still for Prop 1A after reading all that, please leave the state, and, please, for the sake of humanity, don’t reproduce.

California is dying. Our ongoing drought is matched with a dearth of funds and hefty debts, all the fruits of excessive government spending, and the failure of the government to protect our borders. The first step to setting our state on the right path is voting “no” on Propositions 1A to 1E. Let another resounding defeat be Arnold’s legacy as governor, and a sign to the rats in the legislature that we, their employers, their masters, are not content with the way they are governing the state.