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So why is the le "what I hope is the first nail in the coffin of libertarianism"
How Jerry Brown Scared California Straight
http://www.businessweek.com/printer/...ornia-straightA lot of people are saying that, now that he’s done what was long assumed impossible: balance the California budget. This is California, the Greece of America, the liberal state that wants to spend on everything and the libertarian state that won’t pay for anything. Californians are so committed to their faulty economic theory that they built laws to enshrine it: The legislature has to pass tax hikes by a two-thirds vote, and citizens can put new laws on the ballot as propositions. When Brown took office two years ago, the state had a $27 billion deficit. Standard & Poor’s (MHP) rated California’s credit the worst of the 50 states, and 24/7 Wall St. ranked it as the worst-run state in its 2011 and 2012 surveys.
This year, California will have an $850 million budget surplus in the coming fiscal year. Unemployment, which peaked at 12.4 percent just before Brown took office, is 9.4 percent. S&P has upgraded its outlook on the state. Confidence remains fragile, according to a survey of 1,142 large and small business leaders conducted by the California Business Roundtable: More than six out of 10 say it’s still harder to do business in California than in other states. But 24 percent of businesses say they plan to add jobs this year, compared with 16 percent that intend to cut them.
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Brown needed money. He couldn’t borrow much more due to the Standard & Poor’s credit rating. Worse, the Supreme Court decided in May 2011 that California’s overcrowded prisons provided such bad health care that it was cruel and unusual punishment. Unable to spend to improve care, Brown used the ruling as an excuse to save cash. He pushed “realignment,” in which non-violent criminals who would have served time in prison were moved to local jails, which has reduced the inmate population by 29,700. An additional 64,000 have been realigned straight to probation. Republicans freaked out. Brown saved $1.5 billion.
Then he did some real cutting. “We cut child care—I’m sorry to say—old age pensions, the disabled, the elderly, and the blind. You can’t get any more sympathetic than that,” he says. The only cuts left to make, Brown claimed, were to public schools and, most significantly, the state’s universities and community colleges, which Californians—especially California’s many immigrants—consider a key part of the American meritocratic system.
The only way to save them was a tax increase. To get it, Brown used what he had learned from Howard Jarvis. In the Great Recession, the fervor isn’t an ax, but anti-rich. If President Barack Obama could have put the Buffett Rule to a public ballot, he probably would have gotten it approved. So Brown just wrote a proposition and gathered enough signatures from the public to get it on the ballot.
In June 2011 he tried to call a special election to ask voters to decide on a tax hike, but failed to gather support in time. He was lucky it didn’t work out: The special election would have had low turnout, which favors Republicans. By waiting for last November, Brown got the advantage of a new law that allowed online registration, which created 1 million young, liberal voters, who turned out in huge numbers. He also got lucky that a group of Orange County Republicans put an anti-union proposition on the November ballot, mobilizing union voters.
Brown had originally proposed a car tax, a 1 percent hike in the sales tax, and removing the tax credit for having children. In the end, Proposition 30 raised taxes only on incomes higher than $250,000 a year, after deductions, and increased the sales tax by 0.25 percentage point. “It’s more like a tip,” Brown says. “When you take polls, the only people you can tax are the very wealthy. Liberals say, ‘Tax the oil companies.’ You can’t tax them. They’ll spend $50 million to stop it. Look what happened when they tried to pass those soda taxes.”
Photograph by Mark Peckmezian
To get tax-hating Californians to vote to raise their own taxes, Brown became Governor Gloom. If the tax-cutters’ theory was to cut taxes so much we’d have to shrink government, he was going to shrink government so much that people would raise taxes. In addition to schools and community colleges, he would cut medical programs, aid to the disabled, and child health care. “Our breakthrough came because of the breakdown,” he says. “There were more layoffs, more pink slips, more agitation. Cutting was very conducive to the success of Prop 30.” In short: Jerry Brown scared the crap out of people.
It worked. The proposition passed by more than 10 percent. After taxes went up, so did approval ratings for Brown and the state legislature: Brown to 57 percent, the legislature to 36. Even the opposition is digging him. “When Governor Brown released his proposal for this year’s state budget, I couldn’t believe my ears,” says Assembly Republican Leader Connie Conway. “It truly sounded as though the governor channeled his inner Republican.” He’s also won over much of the business community, though he raised their personal taxes. “He comes at things differently than Arnold Schwarzenegger,” says Allan Zaremberg, chief executive officer of the California Chamber of Commerce, who worked with Brown on his first, abandoned tax hike. “You better be damn well prepared when you talk to him.” Zaremberg is pleased with Brown’s work to lower health-care costs to businesses and reform the state’s environmental quality act, which he says can be burdensome.
To be sure, liberals in california deserve blame for making the state's regulatory environment ed up and anti-thetical to business. This is pointed out if you read the whole article. I think one should have a balance, and California is moving closer to that. Texas is at the other end of the scale, and it will cost us in the long run.
The big thing I got out of this that he raised taxes on the rich... and the economy got better.
This guy actually did in Cali, what we as a nation need to do. Cut, tax, and invest in infrastructure.
(un)Shockingly enough, it seems to be working.
The big thing here is that, even with the increases that make creepy s like Norquist squirm (fecking awesome), businessness were coaxed into investing by having a bit more predictable and favorable environment.
So why is the le "what I hope is the first nail in the coffin of libertarianism"
"liberals in california deserve blame for making the state's regulatory environment ed up and anti-thetical to business."
very progressive California has always led the country forward with mileage requirements, pollution rules, etc, etc, and business and innovations are booming.
Brown's tax hike on $250K+ didn't start a mass exodus as fear-mongered by the Repugs and 1%.
The housing prices are sky high because people WANT to live there. Some people are leaving but that always happen on the low-end in states or in cities. The well-off live in the best places, housing/living prices rise, and the less well off move out. Happens everywhere, ain't specific to CA. And it's right-wing fringe OC that spent $Ms with the very progressive brown water recycling plant. I figure CA will do a Melbourne AU and build the first massive sea water desalination plants.
If they can figure out how not to up the Monetery area and can find the shale gas, there will be another "There Will Be (Money)" carbon boom. Monterey shale estimates are several times Bakken's.
Because, when the good governor finally spelled out all the cuts he would have to make to actually meet your libertarian ideal of a government, people realized how full of and immoral the whole ideology is in practice.
Shocking, eh?
Yes, the final nail.
it says first
My bad
I lived in SoCal in the late 80's. it's a great place to live, if you can afford it.
for better and for worse, not only are disputes not settled rationalistically, if they ever were, others would be forced to swiftly abandon their own opinions.
as it is, definitive and factual outcomes have little effect if any on opinion. people do not remember them, not even when they are pointed out repeatedly.
Cali sucks,
Speak for yourself.
Not for the en lement mentality of a society that California has.
More California Fun Facts
According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, California's unfunded pension liability is estimated to be somewhere between $120 billion and $500 billion.
The number of people unemployed in the state of California is approximately equivalent to the populations of Nevada, New Hampshire and Vermont combined.
Over 20 percent of California homeowners are now underwater on their mortgages.
Large tent cities have been springing up all over the state of California
The "lawsuit climate" in California is ranked number 46 out of all 50 states.
Earlier this year, it was reported that in the area around Sacramento, California there was one closed business for every six that were still open.
California's overstretched health care system is also on the verge of collapse. Dozens of California hospitals and emergency rooms have shut down over the last decade because they could not afford to stay open after being endlessly swamped by illegal immigrants and poor Californians who were simply not able to pay for the services they were receiving. As a result, the remainder of the health care system in the state of California is now beyond overloaded. This had led to brutally long waits, diverted ambulances and even unnecessary patient deaths.
Budget cuts are making life very difficult in many California cities. For example, Oakland, California Police Chief Anthony Batts says that due to severe budget cuts there are a number of crimes that his department will simply not be able to respond to any longer. The crimes that the Oakland police will no longer be responding to include grand theft, burglary, car wrecks, iden y theft and vandalism.
Things have gotten so bad in Stockton, California that the police union put up a billboard with the following message: "Welcome to the 2nd most dangerous city in California. Stop laying off cops."
20 percent of the residents of Los Angeles County are now receiving public aid.
the GOP "CA sucks" meme lacks voracity now that Brown has balanced the budget and demonstrated fiscal responsibility. they raised taxes and the state didn't fall into economic collapse despite the precipice of doom that sportscamper outlined for us.
100 billion dollar high speed rail in the middle of central California disagrees with you.
And yet the budget is balanced now but what happened to economic armageddon?
Wine with the pulse of the American people. Go have another drink.
explain to me how that 100 billion dollar abortion was Brown demonstrating fiscal responsibility.
What do balance budget mean?
And I have no idea of the accounting of the project but let's just say I don't take your 'accounting' at face value.
Fuzzy the article is too simplistic…Cali has just kicked the can down the road…The State legislature needs to change the pension system & re negotiate exorbitant salaries for state workers…California's unfunded pension liability of hundreds of billions does not make for a balanced budget…
Of course you have no idea of the accounting aspects of the project and are talking out your ass per par.
'pensions' are going to be an inherent issue in this country for the next 20+ years no matter what we do if by no other reason than demographics. fiscally, the next decade is going to suck everywhere and you are going to continue seeing us having to make up for 4 decades of self voted free rides and the largest generation in american history sailing off into the en lement sunset.
it sucks that we have to put our pensions' funing on hold because the outgoing generation defunded theirs for 40 years.
how is saying that I don't know 'talking out of my ass?' I see that as frank and honest.
My point is that I think you lack critical thinking and basic reading skills and do not trust your account of the rail projects accounts. I already know what manner of sources you rely on.
You are the one proposing the rail as a counter argument. Validate it. If you cannot then stop talking out of you ass, as you are wont to put it.
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