The Corporate Tax Cut Must Go First

Corporate Cuts (0.00 / 0)

I think many of these cuts were made by reason of some nice lobbying and payoffs done by the corporations over the democrat led legislature.  The legislators will need this money going into reapportionment in 2010, so a revision of corporate tax breaks bought and paid for is unlikely.  

---

by: moderation @ Thu Jun 11, 2009 at 19:11:42 PM UTC

Actually (5.00 / 1)

Not that you seem to be all that interested in what actually happened, but I'll lay it out there.  This tax cut was part of the GOP demands for their 3 votes in each house. As the deal ultimately fell apart, this cut should go too.

I think?

---

by: Brian Leubitz @ Thu Jun 11, 2009 at 20:26:46 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

LIke I said (0.00 / 0)

The tax cuts were bought and paid for.  The democrats got a very regressive increase in the sales tax and passed some corporate welfare.  The working poor and middle class got the shiv.  Not sure what is the reason - or even the hypothesis that the corporate tax cuts should or will go, the corporations paid good money for them.  And with a gerrymandered legislature, you get what you pay for.  

---

by: moderation @ Thu Jun 11, 2009 at 20:33:35 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Jeez, it's like you are being purposely obnoxious (5.00 / 1)

Gerrymandered? Honestly, this is what you are coming with? The districts really have nothing to do with it.

http://www.calitics.com/showDi...

The problem is that the majority is unable to govern without being held ransom by a small minority.  

I think?

---

by: Brian Leubitz @ Thu Jun 11, 2009 at 20:58:01 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

This was their negotiating position? (0.00 / 0)

This policy is so bad, it's 30-Sec-Ad-Bad.

One framing technique our side is not very good at (and the GOP tends to be great at) is finding a weakness and consistently hammering on it for a couple of weeks, until the other side concedes the point out of confusion and fear.

We are very right on this point, and they are very wrong. And this point, when described simply, baldly, and accurately, is very hard for the troglodytes to defend.  And if we're able to be more consistent in our messaging on this, we can move the damn goalposts here.

At a minimum, we need to figure out a way to make this point come up in any GOP district where we have the potential to flip the bastards.

---

by: mbayrob @ Thu Jun 11, 2009 at 22:07:14 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Ditto with having only one tax rate (5.00 / 1)

between $47,500 and $999,999.  I would really like to see any legislator, of either party, explain to a hometown audience how that is fair, and why they have permitted it to continue during their term in office.

---

by: DavidT @ Fri Jun 12, 2009 at 01:23:56 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Income above $47.5K taxed like $900K? (0.00 / 0)

I did not know that.  I'll bet I'm not the only one who didn't, and doesn't.

How about a 2% increase of the tax rate for income above $250K?  Sounds like a no-brainer.

Anybody have access to an appropriate economic model so we can estimate what this would pull in?  Or how many people this would affect?

---

by: mbayrob @ Fri Jun 12, 2009 at 02:32:37 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

That's correct, for single filers. (0.00 / 0)

The California income tax brackets are astonishingly regressive.  To live a reasonably comfortable middle-class lifestyle in most of urbanized California, you really need to be making at least roughly $50,000 (assuming an individual paying back college loans, etc.), and for a single filer, the top bracket (short of the mental health 1% millionaire assessment) begins at $47,000; married filing jointly is much further north, at $94,000.

From the LA Times:

The budget deal the Legislature reached today will keep California's top personal income tax rate and sales tax rate the highest in the Union.

The agreement will raise personal income tax rates by 0.25 of a percentage point across the board, beginning with the current tax year. The highest rate, on taxable income of more than $1 million, will rise to 10.55% from 10.3%.

The next-highest tax rate, on taxable income of more than $94,110 for a married couple filing jointly, will rise to 9.55% from 9.3%. For singles, the threshold for the new 9.55% tax rate is $47,055.

Of course, buried 5 paragraphs further down, is this:

Nearly all states are facing huge budget deficits this year that are likely to result in higher taxes. So California's new rates may not stick out as much, by comparison, as other states act. And Californians, of course, face much lower property tax burdens than residents of many other states, relative to home values.

By one measure, at least, California isn't No. 1 in taxes overall: A Tax Foundation study last year that looked at the combined state and local tax burdens shouldered by Americans ranked the Golden State No. 6, after New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Maryland and Hawaii.

That just goes to show how the media is part of the framing problem - yes, we have a high numerical income tax, but only because our other revenue sources are useless.  I'd love to compare property tax realization with another urbanized high-property-value state like Massachusetts, New York, or Florida.

---

by: auron renouille @ Fri Jun 12, 2009 at 05:59:12 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Thanks (0.00 / 0)

Thank  you for this posting.  I wasnt' aware of this part of the February budget deal and it is clearly not the kind of thing that will make our tax system more fair or that might stimulate the economy.  It needs to disappear.

---

by: smoker1 @ Thu Jun 11, 2009 at 21:57:54 PM UTC

gerry mandering has everything to do with it (0.00 / 0)

the dems and repubs in the legislature passed a budget which was a joke and left it up to the voters to cover.  the voters rejected it.  

if there was real competition in the districts, the dems and repubs would never have passed it, but the special interests got in and said here is a way to keep your jobs for the next cycle and pass a budget.  

Davis and Berman's brother reapportioned California to give max advantage to the dems, and left republicans with only a toehold.  It is the deal that killed california - not a single assembly member will ever lose a job under the current system, so they take the most disastrous steps to just get a budget passed.  

I blame the dems more since they are over 60% of the problem.  The republicans hold a special evil place for imposing their values on others.  

---

by: moderation @ Thu Jun 11, 2009 at 23:22:51 PM UTC

Except you are missing the big problem (0.00 / 0)

Highly-partisan districts aren't the result of gerrymandering, but of our own sorting. We choose to live near people who are of like mind:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blo...

Most counties in the United States have grown either more Republican or more Democratic since the 1970s. In 1976, 26.8 percent of the nation's voters lived in a county where either Gerald Ford or Jimmy Carter won by more than 20 percentage points. The number of people living in these "landslide counties" increased to 38 percent in 1992, to 45.3 percent in 2000, to 48.3 percent in 2004.

On Tuesday, 48.1 percent of the vote came from counties where either Obama or McCain won by 20 percentage points or more.

The author of that post, Bill Bishop, also wrote a book on the subject: The Big Sort, with all sorts of demographic data.

I won't argue that the redistricting wasn't meant to grant safe seats, although I will point out that it didn't save several supposedly safe Republican seats this year.  The point is that it is increasingly easy to draw safe districts.  Unless you plan on gerrymandering for "competitive" seats, eg by slicing and dicing San Francisco to include parts of the Central Valley, then you don't actually change anything with map tweaks.

The issue is the 2/3 supermajority requirement, plain and simple.

I think?

---

by: Brian Leubitz @ Thu Jun 11, 2009 at 23:33:23 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

But, but, but (0.00 / 0)

Post hoc ergo prompter hoc!  Correlation is causation!

---

by: jsw @ Thu Jun 11, 2009 at 23:35:58 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

You seem to be deliberately obtuse (0.00 / 0)

Let's just say that the districts are "more competitive".  Where exactly do you think that money comes from for the politicians to run in "more competitive" races?  The money comes from special interests, no matter how you define the term.  "More competitive" districts would actually increase "special interest" influence, not reduce it.  

And you seem to be the only person who thinks that the 2000 reapportionment was to give the maximum advantage to the Democrats.  The general consensus is that the 2000 reapportionment was (at least at the margins) an incumbent protection plan for both parties.  

The Republicans have been losing ground anyway, largely because they cut their own throats with the embrace of pro-anglo xenophobia in a state that's increasingly not anglo.  Unless you're going to indulge in a post hoc ergo prompter hoc fallacy -- well, let's just assume you're going to, since you don't seem to have demonstrated any ability to do otherwise.  Just because Republicans are losing ground now does not mean that therefore, the districts in which they're running were drawn to be hostile to them then.

You're really not adding value here -- it's sad, really.

---

by: jsw @ Thu Jun 11, 2009 at 23:35:03 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Attack, attack and attack (0.00 / 0)

This is generally a good tactic.  The question now is one of execution.

I'd argue that we should take a limited number of the more egregious corporate tax breaks, and pound on them consistently and via as many channels of communication as we can.  

We should also remember good advice from the past.  As Saul Alinsky used to put it:

Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don't try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.

My person favorites for this:

• The corporate sales tax break: "The idiot GOP cut corporate taxes $2.5 a year, in a year like this?"
• Giving the oil companies a tax break they can't even get in Alaska [how much per year here?].  "Stop the GOP bailout for Big Oil"
• Prop 13 ate your child's education: call out individual corporations by name that are getting absurd tax breaks, by comparing their taxes with people who recently bought residential property.

We spend too much on the "cuts hurt the poor" meme, which while true, is vastly over-used, and does not necessary generate the public anger it might have in the past.  Also, this meme lacks a clear "villain".

And remember:

According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is to bait an opponent into reacting. "The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength."

Let's pull aside the curtain these jokers are hiding behind, and goad them into reacting in public.

---

by: mbayrob @ Fri Jun 12, 2009 at 01:00:26 AM UTC

Ya finally got it right. (0.00 / 0)

I should have said "correct" as the right does not often show up here.

As for the Corporate Tax issue.. I have not seen anyone do that strongly since Peter Camejo did in in the Gray Davis Recall debates.  He had the numbers then and no one did anything.

mbayrob is telling the truth.  It is time to raise the ante and take them all on.  Each of these votes should be challenged and everyone who voted for the budgets that contained them should be asked to explain it, no matter which party they say they belong to.

Finally, the yacht party is already on the warpath.  Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform is already sending people to a new Chuck DeVore anti-tax web site and getting to be very specific about what is at stake.  With Norquist writing the script and his ex-aide Ron Nehring running the Calif. Republican Party, you know how they will go.  DeVore's list is very specific about things like not taxing CA Oil. It is also very specific in making AFSCME the villain.  It is time that they got a taste of their own medicine.  

Changing CA, one open mind at a time.  

---

by: wes @ Fri Jun 12, 2009 at 05:15:56 AM UTC