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Sunday, May 31, 2009

Ruinous Anti-Government Movement Republicans in California Finally Getting Exposed to More National Scrutiny

NYT
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger did not get the election results he sought. Now he seems determined to show California voters the consequences…. The cuts Mr. Schwarzenegger has proposed to make up the difference, if enacted by the Legislature, would turn California into a place that in some ways would be unrecognizable in modern America: poor children would have no health insurance, prisoners would be released by the thousands and state parks would be closed.

It is vital that Democrats actually defend progressive taxation to fund a government that works for everybody and public investment for California's children, and it is vital that Republicans (and the Villagers of California's corporate media) not get away with framing this debate in their terms, when it is their rhetoric and their ideology -- and that arcane 2/3rds provision in the State Constitution -- that has brought California to this pathetic perfectly avoidable catastrophe.

Republicans want to pretend that the failure of Arnie's special election was a repudiation of "tax and spend" (which is the only lesson they claim to read in literally anything that happens ever, because ithat is all they are willing to see). But there is quite a difference between a blanket hostility to taxes and a specific hostility to increased taxes on the majority and the most vulnerable in order to salvage disasters of the unworthy rich who want to eat civilization and have it too. There is quite a difference between a blanket hostility to spending and a specific hostility to welfare for the rich (corporate loopholes, negligible property taxes for the richest Californians) preferred over the provision of vital public services for all the people.

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