When I read “The California Comeback” on the cover page of the latest edition of Random Lengths News, I didn’t know whether to laugh or plan a summer vacation in Hell, because Hell must be freezing over for anyone to claim that California is coming back under the current “progressive” policies.
Proposition 30 raised taxes, and it also razed businesses. Nineteen companies have pulled up stakes and left the state on account of the tax burden, not made more burdensome, because of Prop 30. In El Segundo, for example, Raytheon is moving its headquarters to Texas. Toyota’s automotive plant in Gardena has moved to Michigan, where “right-to-work” laws will allow businesses to thrive, and workers to survive without being forced to join a union or pays automatic deductions which automatically benefit tax-and-spend Democratic union supporters.
Frankly, Governor Jerry Brown should receive (light) applause for his “progressive timidity”, which in reality should be termed “fiscal accountability” compared to his liberal, irresponsible colleagues in the statehouse. At least newly-installed mayor of Los Angeles Eric Garcetti admitted that California, specifically Los Angeles, has a hostile business climate: “It should not be easier to meet with the governor of Texas than the mayor of Los Angeles”, Garcetti announced in his augural speech.
And this notion of “taxing the rich” and “pay your fair share” is rich in its unfairness, to poor as well as rich. Where does anyone get the idea that taxing those who make money will help everyone else make it? Without capital to invest, businesses cannot expand, and people cannot get jobs. Capitalism has always been lost on Progressives; one wonders why they call themselves that name in the first place. Look at Rhode Island if you want to see the effects of “progressive taxation”, where everyone who has a job is employed by the government, where 17% of residents depend on foodstamps, where unions control the statehouse, and where the state cannot keep its own house in order.
By the way, for the real record on Progressives, look not to Governor Jerry Brown or father Pat, but Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, an anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant bigot who purged the White House of African-Americans, who dreamed of a nation run by bureaucratic elites and intellects (since racism qualified as intelligence!), who pushed the United States into war not to make the world “safe for Democracy”, but to advance an anti-liberty, statist agenda.