The Sacramento Syndrome

dan walters (0.00 / 0)

dan walters makes pete wilson look like a progressive.
the man has not changed his views in 25 years. he is predictable as a clock and correct as often as a stopped one.

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by: peterboy @ Mon Jun 01, 2009 at 21:26:39 PM UTC

But Dan is the Dean of Sacramento Journalists (0.00 / 0)

Dean Broder, that is.

OC Progressive is Gus Ayer, former Fountain Valley Council member.  

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by: OC Progressive @ Mon Jun 01, 2009 at 22:03:22 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Not a good idea to drink to Yellow Waters (0.00 / 0)

The Dean, eh?

Yeah, Dan Waters is our local David Broder.  The kind of Waters from which you can get a real bad case of the runs.

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by: mbayrob @ Tue Jun 02, 2009 at 05:48:58 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Maybe the Legislature should read Bee's Editorial today. (0.00 / 0)

The editorial in today's Bee calls for reform of Prop 13.  It links to another OpEd by Harold Meyerson that appeared in the Bee as well as the Washington Post.

What I expect from Bass and Sternberg is a staunch defense of the status quo. What we need is for someone to correct the imbalance between commercial interests and home owners in the tax system.  It was not there prior to Prop 13.  

Changing CA, one open mind at a time.  

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by: wes @ Mon Jun 01, 2009 at 22:38:22 PM UTC

Increasing Taxes on the Ballot -- Let's Look at the History (0.00 / 0)

Polls are one thing, election results are another.

Even a tobacco tax has trouble at the polls.

Perhaps you can show me a tax increase that has won strong support at the ballot box in California in recent memory, particularly in an off-year election?

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by: sacguy @ Mon Jun 01, 2009 at 23:44:50 PM UTC

I can give you about a thousand of them (0.00 / 0)

Let's set aside Prop. 10 and Prop. 63, which you might remember because you worked hard to raid those funds last month.  I can give you hundreds and hundreds of tax increases that passed - in local elections, including one in Palmdale (a TOT) just on May 19.  Many of them overcame supermajority barriers to do it.  And I would argue that those passed because leaders at the local level are simply more trusted than the folks in Sacramento right now.  Maybe it's because those local leaders explained rationally and succinctly why the additional taxes were needed and what they would fund, and weren't afraid of saying it.  In other words, the leaders led.

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by: David Dayen @ Tue Jun 02, 2009 at 00:28:34 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Really? (0.00 / 0)

We can look at November 2008 alone and see that three sales taxes were approved in the state's largest counties - LA County, Santa Clara County, and Marin/Sonoma Counties.

Off-year elections? Prop 10 in 1998 hiked the cigarette tax.

A more comprehensive list from 1998 to the present of all tax-related proposals on the statewide ballot:

1998: Prop 10 - APPROVED (tobacco taxes)
1999: No Elections

2000: Prop 28 - REJECTED (would have repealed Prop 10)
Prop 37 - REJECTED (would have extended 2/3 rule to all fees)
Prop 39 - APPROVED (lowered to 55% vote for school bonds)

2001: No elections
2002: No tax-related propositions
2003: No tax-related propositions

2004: Prop 56 - REJECTED (lowering 2/3 rule to 55%)
Prop 63 - APPROVED (millionaire's tax for mental health)
Prop 67 - REJECTED (would have added to existing phone bill surcharge)

2005: Prop 76 - REJECTED (spending cap)

2006: Prop 82 - REJECTED (high incomes tax for preschools)
Prop 86 - REJECTED (increase of tobacco tax)

2007: No elections
2008: No tax-related propositions
2009: Prop 1A - REJECTED (spending cap and extension of existing taxes - we've repeatedly explained why this outcome cannot be seen as an anti-tax outcome)

So what stands out to me are two things:

1. Voters are not actually asked to increase taxes very often

2. The last three statewide votes to increase a tax did not pass, but between 1998 and 2004 all proposed tax increases were approved. Prop 82 was on the June 2006 primary ballot. So only Props 67 and 86 strike me as any basis for an argument that voters won't approve taxes, but they are outliers of a 10-year trend. And of course, there were mitigating circumstances on each of those. Prop 56's failure has been dissected before - on a WAY low turnout, Republican-friendly March primary ballot at a moment when the budget bonds made it seem the crisis had passed).

So your knee-jerk assumption that CA voters will never increase taxes doesn't seem to be supported by the evidence. It's not a slam dunk, but the Binder poll made clear that the public WILL back certain taxes, especially if the benefits are made explicit.

But then if you assume that voters will never vote for reasonable taxes to save AIDS patients or schools or parks, and therefore never ask voters to do so, then that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, doesn't it?!

You can check out any time you like but you can never leave

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by: Robert Cruickshank @ Tue Jun 02, 2009 at 00:35:04 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

THANK YOU for making my point (0.00 / 0)

Only only tax increase that has won voter approval is a tax on millionaires for mental health, and you have to go back 11 years to find a tobacco tax increase.

I rest my case.

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by: sacguy @ Tue Jun 02, 2009 at 16:15:07 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

You deliberately ignore some facts (0.00 / 0)

1. A tax on millionaires proved to be enormously popular. Why on earth hasn't it been tried again?

2. There were no tax proposals on the November 2008 ballot, despite both November 2000 and November 2004 providing favorable outcomes for tax-related measures

3. You are deliberately ignoring the obvious trend from 1998 to 2006 in favor of either tax increases or against Republican efforts to make them more difficult. You take a few props and make a trend out of them, despite the fact that politics changes constantly - otherwise we'd be in month 5 of the McCain Administration.

Nothing you have offered here challenges the core argument we are making, which is that you and the Democratic leadership  have simply not tried to solve the crisis over the last 6 or 7 years. Darrell Steinberg is something of an exception here as he got Prop 63 passed in 2004, and I would love to see him rediscover that more sensible approach to public policy.

You can check out any time you like but you can never leave

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by: Robert Cruickshank @ Tue Jun 02, 2009 at 16:46:45 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

You represent the people who made a fine mess of things (0.00 / 0)

What makes you credible on this issue?  Your advice has done wonders for the folks in the legislature, it really has.

The May 19th election was a complete clusterfuck.  Which not only you could have known in advance, but if you had listened to the folks around here, you would have known it in advance. You were wrong.  Admit it.  And being strong and proud in being wrong is not a virtue.

You had your shot.  Now, either be constructive and help shepherd things in another direction, or, STFU, please.

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by: mbayrob @ Tue Jun 02, 2009 at 05:54:13 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Well just read the above. (0.00 / 0)

Californians repeatedly and consistently have rejected efforts at the polls to raise taxes, as Bob has clearly outlined above. The last tobacco tax increase was 11 years ago, and the "millionaires tax" isn't exactly a barometer since must folks thought, hey, this isn't me that's getting taxed.

So you keep living in your dreamland.

I'll keep working to elect Democrats in swing areas.

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by: sacguy @ Tue Jun 02, 2009 at 16:20:01 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Did I just see that? (0.00 / 0)

You're dismissing a wealth tax increase? Even though there are billions possible from higher taxes on the wealthy? Even though it polls in the 60%-70% range with the public?

Wow. No fucking wonder Sacramento is broken.

You can check out any time you like but you can never leave

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by: Robert Cruickshank @ Tue Jun 02, 2009 at 17:07:05 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Seriously? (0.00 / 0)

Do have any clue the amount of money that will bring in? It's a drop in the bucket, doesn't come close to solving the problem, and wouldn't be able to be on a ballot for a year. Unless of course, you've figured out what no one else has in the state, and that's get a single Republican vote to pass it.

Someone really ought to pinch you so you can wake up and propose a realistic solution.

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by: sacguy @ Wed Jun 03, 2009 at 05:08:26 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Sure (5.00 / 1)

Proposition 13 scared them crazy all right. But that was so long ago it was before some in the Legislature or on their staffs were born.

Yes, Jarvis was a nasty, bitter, foolish old man. Kind of like Dan Walters, come to think of it. I used to pester him to retire because he keeps repeating the same tired old crap all the time, but I gave up when it became clear he was too bone stupid to see anything beyond the tip of his nose. He who claimed that the Enron (and ilk) bandits did nothing wrong during the bogus "energy crisis." Idiot.

However, he can be a useful idiot. He has been very clear about who is out in front of the California "reform" movement, ie: the Bay Area Council and California Forward.

After all, they've been going around assembling the support of most of the key top-level stakeholders: the money and finance interests, the surviving real estate interests, the energy and agricultural interests, the major players at the Universities, the various high power political interests and their all-important consultants, the top-level nonprofit interests, the main media and on and on. They've been holding their little public meetings around the state and building both an infrastructure and a kind of simulation of a grassroots to force their issues and their constitutional revisions (by re-writing the whole thing) when the time comes.

They are playing this game very professionally, and right now they are so far ahead of any competition, it isn't even funny.

Karen Bass is doing her part, as I assume is Darrell Steinberg, to smooth the way for the major power play that will be taking place shortly -- actually it is under way as we speak. The Governor's Office seems to have no complaints. Why should they?

Power will not be denied. It is the most overtly upper-class "reform" effort I think the nation has ever witnessed, and even Washington DC seems to be intrigued with it. Certainly they are intrigued enough to stay on the sidelines while the old, the halt, the lame, the sick, and the poor are turned out to die in the streets.

A "reform" that starts by causing as much harm to the people of California as Schwarzenegger and the Legislature have in mind -- as punishment for their failure to follow their instructions to pass the Rube Goldberg rattle trap patches to the collapsing budget framework they came up with in February -- is right out of the Post Prop. 13 playbook. Make the people suffer. That'll teach 'em!

And then, solve the suffering by coming up with the brand spanking New California of their fevered imaginations.

A paradise for the rich. A somewhat mitigated Hell on Earth for everyone else. And you watch. Polls will show conclusively that 2/3rds of Californians like the solutions being proposed for them by California Forward and the Bay Area Council. And none of them had any idea there were any alternatives.

Perfect.

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by: Che Pasa @ Mon Jun 01, 2009 at 23:47:44 PM UTC

I was part of that survey. (8.00 / 3)

That survey was conducted as a class project by the students enrolled in Political Science 146 at UCR. It was designed to give said students (including myself) experience at designing and fielding survey research projects, and is useful for little else.

You can tell anyone who cites it that it wasn't designed to provide anything close to conclusive results. We scheduled our call shifts around student schedules, we didn't call back nonresponders, we cut a lot of corners because this study was NOT designed to give conclusive results. Obviously, we also only ran the study for a week or two. Don't let anyone try and cite this for their own purposes, it was an exercise in methodology and nothing more.

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by: plattypus1 @ Tue Jun 02, 2009 at 00:54:07 AM UTC