How California Democrats can preempt the car tax issue

[bluestateguy]

To repeal this tax would cost the state 4.5 billion dollars, money that the state cannot spare without cuts in programs (many of which have already been cut to the bone) or tax increases. The Democrats should propose a repeal of the car tax increase that went into effect this year and call for new taxes on large corporations (not small businesses)to replace the revenue. This way the issue can be framed as giving working people hundreds of their dollars back verses making corporations pay a little bit more.

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[charlie]

2. Naw, you needn't worry about getting bounced

Not unless you turn into a conservative ideologue who's here just to berate us for existing.

Consider extending a measure of your outrage beyond Davis, to the cynical asses in the White House. Your state was hit hard by the so-called energy crisis. Huge increases in energy costs whacked consumers, a situation no different than an onerous tax. Businesses that were dependent on slim profit margins were destroyed, ending their contributions to tax revenues. Recall that it was largely caused by the gaming of the market by predatory friends of Bush. Remember Cheney's response to Davis' pleas for federal intervention or bailouts -- tough toenails, you guys made your bed, lie in it? It was after a year of denial that Cali's woes were caused by anything other than resistance to deregulation nirvana that it came to light that suppliers had intentionally choked the spigots. Ken Lay roams free and rich, in fact, he's a special business acquaintance of your new governor.

Also, note that the car tax scheme was a Pete Wilson era iniative. Revenues go down, car taxes rise. Who's Schwarzenegger's current political advisor?

IMHO you guys would be better off with a "take your medicine and like it" conservative like McClintock or a "look at what the crooks are doing to us now" populist firebrand like Huffington. Not a clueless musclehead who says he can cure your ills by his mere star power.

[nannygoat]

8. And as of yesterday * has come out

and offered help to Arnold and the state of California, something he wouldn't do for Davis. * is evil!

[ReadTomPaine]

3. Or... Maybe not.

Considering the deficit situation that exists in California, raising taxes is pretty much going to be necessary any way you look at the issue. Unless monies like the CalPERS pensions funds are raided (a real possibility discussed elsewhere on DU today) the money has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the taxpayer.

The first thing you should consider is that the recall was manipulated and misused for purely political aims. This makes all that has come from it poisoned and suspect. The law was expressly designed to combat criminal actions and gross negligence perpetrated by a governor, not to overturn an unpopular man or appease the political aims of the White House.

You complain about taxes, but no patriotic American should. I have no problems paying high taxes, and paying more proportionally than those less well off than myself, as I reap the benefits of living in a first world, technologically advanced society. A car or a half gallon of milk cost the same whether I make 10K or 100K. Once you crest a certain income level, the money that you make above that amount is essentially “gravy” i.e. it is no longer required to make ends meet, and becomes disposable luxury income. Since the wealthy draw more benefits in our society due to their status, there should be no problem or complaint with taxing them more to reflect this. Greed is not a virtue.

The car tax everyone is so concerned with was one of the measures required to bridge a budget emergency, one created by the Wilson administration’s disastrous energy deregulation policies as I’m sure that you’re aware. The notion that it goes to pay for ‘Fat Cat’s SUV’s’ is pretty laughable in the face of a 38 billion dollar deficit. You are swallowing the GOP’s snake oil. It’s going to funds that would have kept colleges open, fireman and police on the streets and hospices for the elderly from cutting services. It’s been mentioned time and again that it is designed as a stop gap measure, and if I’m not mistaken, it was written in into law during the Wilson’s tenure to be implemented in just such an emergency.

This emergency is a direct result of the CA budget surplus (and more) from the late 90’s being transferred to Texas companies like Enron via little more than a brute force method of intimidation. Pay us whatever we ask, or we will turn the lights off. To prove their point, that’s exactly what they started to do, all over the state.

The FERC, expressly designed to prevent such a thing from happening, was ordered to stand down and allow it to occur via direct instruction from the Bush administration. This is part of what those highly secretive energy policy meetings Dick Cheney held early on were all about. The fact that Enron was a key contributor to the Bush campaign and that Ken Lay (who recently met with Schwarzenegger) is close friends with Bush are well know. It’s easy to see what happened from there. Now that Arnold has won the governorship, it’s widely expected that he will interfere in a pending lawsuit against Enron that stands to net 9 billion dollars in damages for California due to these practices. Agreements have already been made in Washington to settle for pennies on the dollar.

Regarding sexual allegations, keep in mind that the only true ‘scandals’ the GOP have been able to prove against Democrats have been legal consensual relationships. Conservatives have had proven *crimes* on the books against them for years.

Remember Bob Packwood? In case you have forgotten, he was guilty of pushing a woman against the wall of an elevator and while she struggled, lifting her dress and pressing his tongue into her mouth and ears. And that was just one incident of many.

Bill Clinton’s sexual escapades (the real ones, not the disproven fiction Ken Starr intimidated people into saying) read like something out of a corny romance novel, with a young infatuated woman chasing after him. Things don’t get ugly until conservatives get involved (so much for Government staying out of our sex lives - remember Rick Santorum’s comments recently?). Bob Packwood’s incidents read like something out of a real-crime book dealing with a rapist.

If a person can’t see the difference in those scenarios, they are not looking at things clearly or they have a problem with women. It’s Packwood style predation that Arnold Schwarzenegger has admitted to. And note that his admission and apology makes them more then allegations. They have been a reality for decades, an open Hollywood secret now verified.

You also speak of Arnold running and winning as a Democrat, but that’s also a non issue. Half the reason he ran was due to the suggestions of his GOP associates. Strings were pulled all over the state for him, even to the point where the recall’s funding source tearfully got out of his way. He knew it wasn’t possible to win in a general election (which is why he didn’t run during the regular election although he’s been thinking about it for years), but the special recall rules make winning a plurality unnecessary.

Furthermore, the television media circus that carried him over the top with virtually constant coverage wouldn’t have existed if he were a Democrat. Do you think Fox News would have been so forgiving if he were Democratic? Or MSNBC? The coverage was so uniformly biased and the election was called in his favor so early that it’s become something of a case study for the reintroduction of the Fairness Doctrine. The fact that people voted for him based on shallow perceptions is no accident, and it *is* highly political.

Now that he’s been elected, his first acts have been to appoint noted ultra conservative Dave Drier as head of his transition team. You’ll forgive progressive Democrats if we don’t believe a word of his ‘moderate Republican’ rhetoric in light of events of this nature and the bill of good sold to voters regarding compassionate conservatism from the Bush Administration post 2000. Frankly, we expect the worse.

In the end, I’d be much happier to have these mythical “far left punitive high tax and spend socialist policies of never-ending entitlement programs with no accountability” that you speak of than to have tax cuts expressly designed by people like Grover Norquist to “shrink the Government until it can be drowned in the bathtub”. These people have clearly stated they intend to create just such crises as faced in California today and much worse so as to force the sacrifice of the all of the advances that have given our country the identity it has today.

I don’t believe the poor should live at the mercy of the rich, the old pushed aside for the benefit of the young, or the weak subjected to the will of the strong. If, as conservatives are so fond of saying, the government’s primary responsibilities are too ensure the security of its citizens at all costs, those costs should include keeping their people healthy, fed, employed and housed first. Without those, and the freedoms on which our country was founded, security is a meaningless concept.

Do you deserve recompense for your labor? Of course you do. But the government gets their dime *first* and they should. Why? Because the good of your community outweighs your right to spent your money as you chose. Without the US to back them, your dollars are worthless. Entitlement programs are half the reason a government exists. They create a society where the strong helps the weak, the young support the old and anarchy is kept at by the force of law.

Sometimes I get the feeling that folks on the right think that if they succeed with their aim of creating a ‘zero government’ society, they will be able to control and handle what comes next. The truth is they will be the first to go.

If there’s anything that history has taught us, it’s that the first victims of anarchy and class war are the upper and middle classes. When the door gets kicked in by the angry food-mobs the private police forces in their gated communities won’t be able to save them. As a friend is fond of saying to me, “When these people look in the mirror they think they see G. Gordon Liddy, but the fact is that it’s Ichabod Crane, tops.”

[Karenina]

5. Excellent post.

Thank you, ReadTomPaine. :bounce:

[newyawker99]

4. Hi SDK33!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[nannygoat]

7. One thing you need to keep in mind is that

usually repukes wind up having to raise taxes anyway (even though they promised not to during the campaign) and people who believe that they won't are very NAIVE!

Another thing that happens is that if the repukes have been in charge cutting tax after tax after tax and people are fed up with them and a Dem wins, usually that Dem HAS to raise taxes to revive social programs that were gutted during the repukes' reign. This always makes the Dems out to be the bad guys.

[gasperc]

6. I was thinking re-do the car tax all together, just yesterday

get it off the table for AS to use as a popularity toy. There's always been the "car tax", the vehicle registration, so the state isn't going to lose $4.5 billion. But Davis and the legislature should hack out something quick that'll steal momentum from AS, and leaving him with an extra $2billion to cut elsewhere. A reasonable registration fee increase will be alot harder to overturn. AS will just ram something crazy through the initiative process, he doesn't give a shit about balancing the budget, he's just going to do shit that's popular. Don't be surprised if he doesn't push for changing the balanced budget law or making it easier to sell tons and tons of bonds

[ReadTomPaine]

9. Kick

for some more discussion...