Shock Doctrine Comes to California

Robert Cruickshank, in yet another indispensable Calitics post earlier today:

[M]embers of the Schwarzenegger Administration are signaling their long-term plan to radically remake California as a Randian paradise for the rich and a desperate hellhole for the poor and the middle-class. Arnold's budget plans are all designed with one purpose in mind -- to make [the] rich pay less and everyone else pay more.

We've been over his... budget cuts proposals, which are all focused on taking away the safety net for the poor and the middle class and making them spend more money on vital services. Now, in an interview with Carla Marinucci, Susan Kennedy reveals the other half of the "screw the poor" strategy -- an overt call for an even more regressive tax structure:

"If [we]'re bold and fearless [we] could tackle one of the most significant issues we face… the volatility of our revenue stream,'' she said... Asked what she'd like to see from the tax commission, Kennedy didn't hesitate. "Flatness,'' she said. "Our revenue stream is way too progressive.'' But no matter how you slice it, she said, changes that come out of it may be seen as "a tax increase to the middle of the structure.''

There you have it -- Arnold's plan is to cut the services the middle-class needs while raising their taxes in order to give the wealthy [an] even bigger tax break…

[This is just an] effort to use "[revenue] volatility"… to suggest that wealth taxes, a proven and effective method of taxation, are bad -- and that we need to sock it to the poor and the middle class, even though numerous examples from history prove that when you shift the tax burden onto those least able to pay, social collapse follows…