◼ Ever since California’s voters approved the Prop. 30 sales- and income-tax increase on the November ballot, liberal commentators have been gloating about the resurgence of the Golden State after many years of predicted doom and gloom. Their evidence: Higher taxes seem to have cleared up the state’s budget deficits. - Steven Greenhut/Human Events
As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote recently, “California isn’t a state in which liberals have run wild; it’s a state where a liberal majority has been effectively hamstrung by a fanatical conservative minority that, thanks to supermajority rules, has been able to block effective policy-making.”
Krugman blames the “radical right-wing” for California’s problems, claims that the school system – which captures 40 percent of the state’s general fund plus local bond initiatives – is insufficiently funded (thanks to those evil right-wingers again) and believes that all is well now that “Mr. Brown [is] free to push an agenda of tax hikes and infrastructure spending … .”
It’s odd to blame Republicans in a state where they have had only miniscule power for at least a decade and even weirder to suggest that California’s milquetoast GOP is beholden to the radical right. The real questions: Has California been saved? Are higher taxes, more regulations and massive debt spending on public works the answer for the rest of the country?
