Posted by
Playful Walrus on Tuesday, May 13, 2008 6:38:42 PM
With a bunch of socialists and reconquistadors in control of the California legislature, and a not-so-Republican Governor who wants to get along with them, it is no surprise that California finds itself spending more than it is taking in.
When my family does this, we cut back. When politicians do this, they think of ways to confiscate more money from the governed.
Evan Halper, Los Angeles Times staff writer, reports.
They predict the public won't stand for painful cuts to schools and healthcare to close a shortfall the governor now pegs as high as $20 billion, and say anti-tax forces will ultimately have to accept that more revenue is needed to bring the state into the black.
The unions would certainly raise a stink, and of course, the Democrats are absolutely beholden to them.
Some of the proposals would be used to help balance the budget; others would fund specific new programs.
NEW programs – so they can raise taxes again later when the behavior of the residents changes in response to these new taxes and, of course, the politicians don’t want to stop the programs. The best is when they add a tax to cigarettes, arguing that it will help reduce smoking, then take that money and spend it in some new program; cigarette purchases (at least ones subject to the tax) drop, and so funding for the new program drops, so the general fund is tapped to keep funding the program originally created with the cigarette tax!
The legislators say their various causes -- as broad as averting further cuts to the general fund, which is tapped by all government programs, and as narrow as improving local trash cleanup -- are too important to let slide just because the state is broke.
The state is supposed to be the people. If they people have to cut back, so should the state.
"If we don't do some of these things, we are going to have to cut nearly $5 billion out of schools," said Assemblyman Charles Calderon (D-Montebello), chairman of the Revenue and Taxation Committee.
You can probably meet most of that billing Mexico for educating Mexican citizens and dropping the “let’s make gay kids feel good about being attracted to each other” programs.
He has proposed some of the Legislature's more unconventional measures, including taxes on digital downloads and adult entertainment.
Calderon said he was moved to push for levies on downloads such as iTunes because state sales tax laws do not reflect the high volume of purchasing that Californians do online. Consumers can download music from the Internet through Apple's iTunes and other services tax-free, Calderon noted, while they pay sales tax for buying the same music on a compact disc at a store.
So drop the tax on the music at the store.
His proposal would empower state authorities to collect sales tax on the downloads, increasing the cost of a typical 99-cent song to roughly $1.07. Calderon projects that the bill (AB 1956), which could also apply to pornography downloads, cellphone ring-tones, online books and feature films distributed on the Internet, would raise about $500 million for the state budget.
I’d like to see him define the difference between a pornographic download and other downloads.
Calderon said the resistance to his bill did not surprise him. But he is perplexed that he hasn't been able to get more traction for another proposal: a 25% tax on sex toys, strip shows, pornographic magazines and videos and anything else sold in an "adult entertainment venue."
Okay, so what if they are sold in a venue that is not primarily “adult entertainment”?
"This is a major industry that is putting a disproportionate burden on state services," he said. "Drugs are heavily used. The actors have a short life span. Some leave the industry drug-addicted with no skills. They wind up availing themselves of Medi-Cal and other state programs."
Much of the same things could be said about illegal aliens or homosexual people. Not all people in those categories are burdens on the state. Many are. But then, if someone has a short life span, I would say they are less of a burden on state services. Why can't the state simply allow the private sector to handle some of these things - such as health care and education? It never fails - first, they get people to count on publicly funded health care, then they want to use that as an excuse to control our lives.
A coalition of porn stars, strippers and others in adult entertainment roamed the halls of the Capitol recently to lobby against the Calderon bill (AB 2914).
That must have been a fun day to be there.
California. You have to love it. I focused on the "adult" stuff in this entry, but if you follow the link, you can read about some of the other schemes they've come up with.