Just supporting libertarian causes, nothing to see here:
A conservative taxpayers group backed by major GOP donors has launched a new radio spot targeting two Republican senators who have been involved in ongoing negotiations to put Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax proposal on a June ballot.
The ad, aired by the California chapter of Americans for Prosperity, urges listeners to tell GOP Sens. Tom Berryhill, of Modesto, and Anthony Cannella, of Ceres, to oppose any vote for an election on maintaining higher tax rates.
“Unemployment in California is 12% but in the Central Valley the numbers are much, much higher. The last thing we can afford are more job killing tax increase,” AFP state chairman Peter Foy says in the 60-second ad.
The nonprofit group, which was founded by billionaire businessman and conservative donor David Koch, was a major force in the 2010 election. The two national branches of the organization, which are not required to disclose their donors, spent millions on ads supporting conservative candidates.
I’m sure this is all part of their masterplan to legalize marijuana and bring about gay rights. Just you see- that’s next on Scott Walker’s agenda, right after crushing unions and cutting taxes for the rich!
Brachiator
So, the Koch Boys are bringing the Conservative Crazy to California.
Background on this: The California GOP, running scared, refused to vote on anything that even smelled like a tax increase. Governor Brown originally wanted to put the tax increase measure on the ballot for the June election, but the GOP cowardice has led him to try for November instead.
The conservative fear is that backing from the unions will hypnotize voters into backing tax increases. So, the Koch play is an attempt to negate the supposed baleful influence of union money with the baleful influence of oligarch money.
By the way, the state may have a short term money crisis between June and November, depending on what the gang in Sacramento get up to next.
Barb (formerly Gex)
As far as I can tell, libertarians are like any non-alpha member of a dog pack. Very, very dedicated to the alpha no matter what the cost to them.
JGabriel
John Cole:
Those Dope Smokin’ Morons.
.
beltane
How is it a non-profit group if they are working to increase David Koch’s profits? The only solution I see for the Koch disease is for people to be made aware that all these ads are designed for the sole purpose of extracting money from their paychecks.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@JGabriel: Nice. Love the Mats
Failure, Inc.
Can’t be overstated; if we don’t get those tax extensions, we will be broken as a state.
This isn’t even a Dem/Rep issue at this point; it’s a question of the state’s survival. I can only assume that the Kochs don’t have substantial business holdings here, because they’ll lose money along with everyone else if we don’t get the extensions and the state, in essence, shuts down.
joe from Lowell
Ron Bailey went on a Jack Abramoff-sponsored junket to the Northern Mariannas, that land of sweatshops and human trafficking, and then came back and wrote a puff piece about its awesome deregulatory awesomeness.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Failure, Inc.: I’m not one of the “let it all burn so people can see how bad the Republicans are” types, but if they insist on *making* it happen, I will engage in the schadenfreude.
That’s fair, right?
Stooleo
OT. Palin the gift that still keeps giving.
JGabriel
@Brachiator:
It’s more a homecoming than a bringing. Orange County is a long time center of far-right GOP crazy, going back at least to the 50’s, and probably earlier.
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JGabriel
@Barb (formerly Gex): Thanks! Me, too.
beltane
@Failure, Inc.: There always comes a time when the parasite kills the host. Who knows if this is the time.
Jay C
I don’t know that much about the political dynamics of CA’s Central Valley, but I do have to wonder just HOW vulnerable a couple of CA GOP State Senators – from the middle of the State’s Farm Belt, no less – are going to be to an astroturf radio campaign like this? I know it’s probably presumptuous to assume that CA Republicans are prone to be reflexively anti-tax wingnuts in the first place, but Fresno?
JGabriel
joe from Lowell:
Perv.
Oh. Nevermind.
Dammit, I was right the first time around. Perv.
.
Prometheus Shrugged
And speaking of public sector shutdowns, the $500 million already cut from the University of California’s budget would double if the tax extensions are not passed. Major, long standing arms of the university system would have to be axed permanently so as to not offend the sensibilities of the Koch brothers. Unbelievable that we’ve reached these kinds of depths.
KG
@JGabriel: don’t forget John & Ken on KFI.
What’s really funny is that this isn’t even a tax increase, it’s keeping taxes the same as they currently are. It’s sort of the opposite of the Bush Cuts, there are taxes that were put in place a couple years ago and were set to expire. Brown wants to keep those taxes in place… and is being accused of raising taxes, by, apparently, keeping them the same as they currently are.
Wait… funny wasn’t the right word.
Also, I take exception to the Orange County being a home of far-right crazy.
Social outcast
Low taxes have really been helping out that jobless rate. Douches.
zed
I grew up in the central valley, so two points.
One, the entire area is ridiculously reactionary. This sort of campaign is geared to this region and will poll well. I have no doubt about that whatsoever. (Prop 8 was a big hit in the central valley.)
Two, the unemployment is largely in the construction sector, which is largely immigrant or poor second generation immigrant populations, groups that are effectively invisible to state Republicans.
Tax Analyst
You know, out here in the So Cal area we also have these morning radio-nitwits, Ken & John, who exploit the anti-tax mania for ratings and their own juvenile sense of amusement. They push their ditto-head type listeners to deluge non-line-toeing Republican legislators to conform to the “No taxes ever” meme.
According to a recent SF Chronicle article, if a politician pisses them off, the radio duo figuratively puts the offender’s “head on a stick,” an on-air stunt complete with the juicy sounds of a spear penetrating human flesh and then, underscoring the appropriateness of the act, enthusiastic cheers from a crowd.
There was also a front page L.A. Times article featuring the antics of these nitwits about a couple weeks ago.
Warren Terra
@Brachiator:
More background on this: Brown was proposing a package that’s half budget cuts, half tax increases. Because of Prop 13 (tax increases require a 2/3 vote of the legislature, or 50% +1 of a referendum vote; I’m not sure how many votes are needed in the legislature to create such a referendum) and because Lower Taxes is the one true religion of the California Republican, Brown knew he could never get his 2/3 vote for a tax increase, but hoped and believed he might get the Republican votes he needed to put the tax increase on the ballot – and there’s no good reason the people would vote for it, either.
It’s also worth noting that one of Brown’s first actions in office was to kill a plan cooked up under his Republican predecessor to sell important public buildings and lease them back for thirty years – in effect, a long-term loan at essentially usurious rates. Because that made more sense to the Republicans than taxes.
@Jay C:
I don’t know how the electorate feels, but it’s pretty easy to tell how the landowners feel. Drive up I-5 between LA and Oregon and you’ll pass at least a couple dozen large signs on the neighboring farms saying that Congress caused the dust bowl, that Pelosi is the antichrist (well, not literally; I can’t remember just how they abused her), etcetera.
Dennis SGMM
It’s telling that the conservatives don’t want this to come to a vote of the people. As Failure, Inc. mentioned above, without a continuation of current tax rates California is finished as a governed state. Even with the continuation we’re in very deep shit.
The idiot conservatives are on a suicide run and they don’t seem to mind that they’ll take out a lot of their drooling base on the way out. I’m so tired of their antics that I’m coming to the point of fuck it: let it burn. I’ll roast me some nice, fat Republicans over the coals.
JGabriel
@KG:
Wikipedia disagrees:
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KG
@JGabriel: it only with 50-47 to McCain. And just because it has historically been center-right, it does not follow that it has been crazy. Having grown up here, it’s actually a pretty decent place to live.
ruemara
Just gonna post this.
I can predict that this is the new normal in CA if these tax extensions don’t pass.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/us/25layoffs.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=pink%20slips&st=cse
Barb (formerly Gex)
@KG: And you are a poor brown gay immigrant? Because people don’t act the same way to people like that as they do towards others.
Brachiator
@JGabriel: RE: So, the Koch Boys are bringing the Conservative Crazy to California.
But the GOP had become marginalized, able to pout and obstruct, but the Koch is bringing big crazy money statewide specifically to try to thwart the unions. Big difference.
@Jay C:
The GOP are a minority in California, but a two thirds vote from the state legislature is required in order to pass tax increases. So, the pressure on the GOP to maintain ranks is tremendous, and “a couple of GOP state senators from the farm belt” become very important.
And it’s not just about being “anti-tax.” California has a huge debt, and a tax increase is not an automatic solution to the state’s problems.
Roger Moore
@Warren Terra:
It’s difficult for outsiders to understand just how crazy the CA Republican party is. Gov. Brown isn’t asking them to vote for a tax increase; he’s asking them to put the tax increase on the ballot so voters can decide on it. Somehow, though, their anti-tax sentiments are stronger than their populist sentiments, so they refuse to even put the thing on the ballot. I guess the public can’t be trusted to make up their own minds on the issue, and the Republicans have to protect us from ourselves. The current alternative to getting Republican help is to qualify the taxes as a regular ballot issue, which would probably mean it couldn’t make the ballot before November.
IMO, the Democrats should try turning up the heat on the Republicans by trying to qualify a less Republican friendly tax proposal than the one they’re asking the Legislature to approve. I’d love to see a proposal that includes a surcharge on very high incomes, an end to some tax breaks for the rich (like the ridiculous yacht buyer’s tax break the Republicans went to the mat to defend), and maybe a hydrocarbon severance tax like every other state. I guess exempting businesses and second houses from Prop 13 limits on property taxes would be too much to ask.
Martin
They really have no choice. The Dems are only a handful of votes shy of a supermajority in both chambers. It takes very few defectors from the GOP. There are currently 5 Republicans that are negotiating with Dems on budget matters. One is in a Dem district, and two are term limited, so there’s not much the GOP can do with them.
@KG:
OC is the natural home of the Norquist anti-taxers. Go ask any of our PIMCO bond trader billionaires. We don’t do the religious and social shit here, nor much of the neocon stuff, but don’t be touching anyones money. FWIW, Keating’s Lincoln S&L that was front and center of the 80s bank blowups and the subprime lenders in the most recent one, are all Orange County inventions. When it comes to economically fucking the country, we can rival Wall Street itself.
Ozymandias, King of Ants
Well, I actually live in Berryhill’s district and this is the one thing he’s ever done that can remotely be called “positive” or “constructive.”
He might be termed out . . . in my experience, Republicans in Sacramento never do anything good until they’re facing the term limits.
Ozymandias, King of Ants
@zed:
Funny, but my memory of growing up in the Central Valley in the late 70s and 80s is different. All the farmers I knew were Democrats (albeit rather conservative) and had been since at least FDR. And I most of my family were farmers and most of the Portuguese community in town were farmers.
It wasn’t until the late-80s/early-90s that they started turning batshit crazy, one by one.
Martin
@Roger Moore:
Even that is too generous. Brown is asking voters to defer a corporate tax decrease that is set to go into effect until the budget is balanced. That’s it.
And in return the GOP is demanding a hard spending limit with excess to go into a state reserve. We had a state reserve – the Browns were the kings of the rainy-day funds. And the existence of the reserves, like the Federal budget surplus in 2001, was evidence that taxes needed to be cut. And for those that don’t understand how damaging a hard spending cap is – the caps have never (we had one before and voters punched a bunch of holes in it) taken into account voter initiative commitments. So if voters approve bonds for earthquake retrofitting, the bond service on that counts as part of the hard cap, so something needs to get cut in order to pay for that bond. That’s why per-pupil spending in CA is lowest in the nation save Utah, and we’re probably going to pass Utah next year.
0% tax rate would be too high for these pigfuckers.
beltane
@Ozymandias, King of Ants: I blame the influence of Limbaugh, the fat siren who insanitized a generation of white males.
Omnes Omnibus
Another OT from WI: Koch-fiend Scott Walker is now seeking $150M in Federal subsidies to upgrade Chicago-Milwaukee rail service. This is only a couple of months after he tanked $810M in HSR funds that would have done all that he is seeking to do now and more. Link.
Brachiator
@Dennis SGMM:
Yep. This is the key thing. Radio talk show hosts (yes, John and Ken) are hammering home the idea that the evil unions will spend millions of dollars to convince voters that tax increases are necessary. And so the only answer, since the GOP is the minority party, is to have GOP outsiders pour in millions of dollars to prevent the ballot proposition from being approved.
It’s not really a continuation of “current” taxes. It’s a continuation of a hasty package put together by the Governator and approved by the state legislators that was always set to expire. This package was temporary and could never address the structural deficit problem.
The other problem is that with a structural deficit and persistently high unemployment, there is a point at which the proposed higher taxes become a fantasy number because the anticipated revenue will never actually materialize. And even if you taxed the rich at very high levels, the revenues would still not dent the deficit.
Term limits have been useless in California. Politicians just move up the political food chain or get appointed to commissions to maintain their power.
Sly
Semi-OT: Judge Sumi again blocked the Wisconsin Anti-Union bill that she had already blocked previously.
Fucking judicial review, how does it work?
Omnes Omnibus
@Sly: They are really pushing the envelope. They could easily wait until Friday when the hearing continues and concludes, and then proceed based on what happens. But no, they just have to keep charging forward. I don’t get it.
Napoleon
Sly,
Apparently Walker is still indicating he will not abide by the order.
trollhattan
@Jay C:
The Calfornia Republicans are skeert.
http://foxandhoundsdaily.com/blog/allan-hoffenblum/8810-why-the-sky-is-falling-california-republican-party
Their redistricting scheme may blow up in their faces, also, too. They may have to decamp the Central Valley and head into the foothills with the home-schoolers and anti-vaxers.
Ozymandias, King of Ants
@beltane: I think the Catholic church has something to do with it. As a kid, I was dragged to mass every day–not just Sundays–and as far as I remember, there was no mention of politics from the altar.
(Although I do remember frequently seeing the priest from our parish at Democratic events I attended with my parents.)
Fast forward. I hadn’t set foot in a Catholic church for decades until a friend’s funeral about six months ago. The entire fucking homily of that funeral mass was about politics.
???????
Omnes Omnibus
@Napoleon: If that happens, we will have a full blown constitutional crisis here in Madtown. Fucking rule of law, how does it work?
Napoleon
OO,
Not the way they taught us in law school. She needs to hold them in contempt and jail them.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
Home schoolers may tend to be conservative, but the anti-vax crowd is composed of a lot of liberals, and organic Whole Foods Market types.
Omnes Omnibus
@Napoleon: I absolutely agree. As I mentioned in previous threads, I have never appeared before her, but, by reputation, she is not someone I would fuck with (not that any judge is).
beltane
@Ozymandias, King of Ants: I’ve heard that. And I know many older Catholics who stopped going to church because of it My father grew up in Italy and always told me that the RC church was synonymous with the far right; it would appear we now have the same situation in this country.
bemused
@Omnes Omnibus:
Wha? So how does Walker ‘splain to his teabots that now he wants some stinkin’ train federal money?
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
Believe me, I was gobsmacked to discover this is one area where the two worlds wrap completely around the crazy pole and meet. The vax thing fits the survivalist narrative, for some reason.
Also, too, found a cool interactive map with congressional districts.
http://nationalatlas.gov/mapmaker?AppCmd=CUSTOM&LayerList=cdp&visCats=CAT-boundary,CAT-boundary
Ozymandias, King of Ants
@Brachiator:
I can’t imagine that term limits are effective anywhere. There’s so little opportunity to build seniority and seniority equals experience, the memory of how a particular thing was handled last time it came up (which may have been 10 or 20 years ago). A legislature with term limits is a legislature with amnesia: they’re left without institutional memory and
They end up relying on the lobbyists. While it is true that many of the lobbyists are former legislators, it’s of course different when their job is to sell something than it when their job was to legislate.
Ozymandias, King of Ants
@Ozymandias, King of Ants: Something ate my comment.
What I had typed was:
trollhattan
@Ozymandias, King of Ants:
California has term limits for this reason: Willie Brown
Yeah, it’s been a disaster.
Omnes Omnibus
@bemused: I believe he says that this is different. Don’t ask me why. I am just plain gobsmacked by this.
danimal
Agree with those that identify John and Ken as huge instigators in Cali. These deceivers spin everything into extreme Republicanism (they claim to be non-partisan, but that’s only because Republicans aren’t always crazy enough for them). They are anti-immigrant bigots who are now giving it their all to demonize teachers. If you want to know what depravity will sweep conservatism, you could do worse than to monitor these jackasses.
I hope to see their heads on a stick some day. I will laugh at them if they are ever physically attacked by a mob. They deserve it, if karma is even remotely real.
Ozymandias, King of Ants
@trollhattan: Yeah, I know.
But I’ve never understood all the hate aimed at him–even by some Democrats.
Unless they just wish that they could dress so well . . .
bemused
@Omnes Omnibus:
Of course, it is always different for them when they completely switch course.
And this will make perfect sense to the teabots.
Napoleon
OO,
I hope she is a judge you don’t screw with.
Omnes Omnibus
@Napoleon:
From Kos.
ETA: Irrecoverable block quote fail.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
I was listening to a Skeptic podcast the other day. Apparently, some anti-vaxxers believe that shots for your puppies will cause doggie autism.
The end result, naturally, is that some pets are needlessly getting ill because they are not getting needed shots.
@Ozymandias, King of Ants:
In California, the remaining open slots are doled out to party loyalists. Newcomers are shut out unless they are independently wealthy, but even here they still tend to be people the party embraces (Meg Whitman). And of course, former politicians become lobbyists.
Silver
Those John and Ken fucktards are afternoons, not mornings.
And yeah, Orange County is nice if you’re white like me.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Ozymandias, King of Ants: I’ve always found it interesting that the Church’s war on gays so neatly coincided with the child abuse scandals. Most effective use of the “look over there!” defensive maneuver.
Tax Analyst
@Silver:
OOPS! I get confused because I work the Late Shift during this part of Tax Season and don’t get up until a bit after 12 noon. So most people’s afternoons are kind of like the morning to me.
Thanks for the correction.
Dennis SGMM
@Brachiator:
Thank you. The phrase “We’re still in deep shit,” doesn’t begin to cover our state’s problems. The ramifications of having the world’s seventh (Or eighth, depending on whom you ask.) economy fail are not just bad for California, they’re bad for the rest of the country as well.
Term limits aren’t a remedy for a state in which both parties have acquiesced to a comfortable gerrymandering of the electorate into safe seats. One of the consequences of this is that our average Republican state legislator would be considered a teabagger in any other Blue state. That would not be so much of a problem save for the fact that passing a budget requires a super majority and there are just enough Republicans to throw sand in the gears in every last budget debate for the past several years. Even when the Democrats are reasonable the Republicans can be counted on to act like lunatics.
Governor Brown’s plan seems like a reasonable way out for us. Lamentably, the conservatives would rather see the state go up in chunks.
Roger Moore
@bemused:
“We just want what’s ours! Teh eeevil Democrat Party was trying to keep our money from us!”
zed
@Ozymandias, King of Ants:
I suppose it may have been, I was a child during those years. And the town I grew up in (Tracy) may be exceptionally right wing (Hell, the neonazis from the documentary The California Reich were from Tracy). I think a great deal of the modern conservatism was the establishment of the commuter exurbs, as well as the growth of the Mormon populations (Tracy was particularly heavy with them).
Then again, Tracy is the home town of Richard Pombo, so, you know, there’s that.
goblue72
Jerry officially threw in the towel: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/29/BAO71ILUQ8.DTL&tsp=1
This thing is going to November. I really figured after Jerry had lined up the major business groups in LA, SF and Silicon Valley, that enough Republicans would see the writing on the wall and make a deal. Now its going to be an all out war at the ballot box. Hopefully, the progressives get it in gear and push to go after commercial property owners taking advantage of Prop 13.
PWL
“Americans for Prosperity,” eh? The Koch boys, right? Seems to me the name of that outfit really ought to be “Prosperity For Me, Not for Thee.”