Your eyes on California Government

John Seiler:

Gov. Jerry Brown remains unfazed by California’s accelerating economic decline. He seems to think that the whole state is like Silicon Valley, producing jobs by the thousand and billionaires by the dozen.

He signed a Republican bill that increases fees — that is, taxes — “on the sale of olive trees to raise funds to help certify the trees through a government program.” In his signing message, Brown chided its author, state Sen. Anthony Canella of Ceres, who “vouches for this fee by stressing the need to ensure that olives are ‘healthy and viable for California farmers.’ ”

“I agree. Perhaps the author and his colleagues might apply the same solicitude — and revenue — to ensure the health and vitality of our schools?”

In reality, this was a tax — a “fee” — that wasn’t needed. Private olive farmers could have worked things out for themselves. They’ve thrived for more than a century without the tax, and will continue to do so no mater what happened.

But amusing Republican hypocrisy aside, Brown shows that he doesn’t work for the people of California — the jobless scrambling for work, standing in unemployment lines, or leaving Taxifornia for a better jobs climate. Instead, he works for the government unions, specifically the California Teachers Association that bailed out his campaign a year ago by leading a special $30 million government-union ad blitz.

He doesn’t care that he could cut out the immense waste in the government. Or that pension reform is needed — beyond the paltry effort he advanced earlier this year — to prevent future budget blowouts.

And he also doesn’t care that, even if taxes rates were raised, tax revenues would not go up. That’s because new taxes would hammer the state economy so hard the tax base would be smashed down.

His tax obsession isn’t his only attack on jobs. As Katy Grimes reported yesterday, he has been getting carpal-tunnel syndrome signing so many anti-business bills. There just isn’t any relief.

A new Field Poll found that, for the fourth straight year, half of Californians reported that their economic situation had declined. How does Brown expect to squeeze more money out of people who have less of it? Will he start waterboarding us?

I’m working on a story for tomorrow, Wednesday, about how the state’s economic condition is even worse than we have been led to believe. Yet Brown doesn’t care.

His 2010 campaign site still boasts, right at the top, “Let’s get California working again,” with the emphasis in the original. I’ll post the banner, below.

That’s what he campaigned on, and won.

Then he betrayed California workers.

Sept. 27, 2011

Tags: California Teachers Association, economy, Field Poll, Jerry Brown, Katy Grimes, tax increases, unemployment