There are a few very interesting points below headlines today claiming California residents strongly support extending the state’s once temporary tax increases via special election.
Survey finds Californians back tax extensions
Californians would overwhelmingly back extending temporary tax increases to help balance the state’s budget if asked to in a special election, according to survey results released on Wednesday.
The survey found that, by a 58 percent to 39 percent margin, voters said they would vote in favor of a ballot measure asking them to extend temporary tax increases.
If that’s truly the case, then why did voters flatly reject the same thing as recently as 2009.
His strategy is risky. Voters already overwhelmingly rejected extending the temporary vehicle, sales, and income taxes in May 2009, months after lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger enacted them.
Enter the Labor Unions. Got that?
The same unions that elected Brown are going to pull out all the stops to campaign for tax increases, including ones that will hit their own members, rather than risk reducing government spending, forcing Brown to make tough choices that might hurt him with Democrat special interest groups. And in the process, business and taxpayers would get the shaft, as many of boths are fleeing the state already. That isn’t a solution. It’s a suicide pact for California, which will eventually want to come to the federal government for a bail-out at our expense. Just imagine how hard they are going to fight for Obama in 2012. The whole California system is corrupt.
Labor unions — which spent millions to elect Brown in 2010 — are readying for a ballot battle.
“We’re at the governor’s service, if you will,” said Art Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation. Pulaski said he did not yet know of the governor-elect’s plans but said that seeking taxes was critical, the most important public vote in a decade.
“Failure is not an option,” he said.
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