Barking up the wrong tree for Prop. 30

Oct. 26, 2012

Katy Grimes:

As Gov. Jerry Brown and his little dog Sutter criss-cross California campaigning at public schools for passage of his tax increases, students should quiz Brown on his math.

University professors and instructors have made the news recently for campaigning from their classrooms for Proposition 30, violating state education code.

Instead, Brown took to the streets and has been visiting schools all over the state to tell students that if they don’t vote for his tax increase measure, school funding will be cut, and their tuition will soar.

Brown should have just brought a couple of beer kegs with him to every stop on the college campaign tour. Free beer would be much more effective with college students.

The math doesn’t add up

Despite California’s devastated economy, Brown and the Democrat-controlled Legislature increased spending by more than 6 percent this year. Because they spent more, they need more tax income.

Brown keeps threatening college students with trigger cuts to education if his tax increase measure is not passed, as if these cuts are inevitable or written into the Constitution. But trigger cuts are something Brown and the Democrats dreamed up. Trigger cuts are not inevitable or mandatory; they don’t have to take place, and probably won’t anyway.

Since support for Prop. 30 is declining in the polls,  if and when the measure is killed by voters, Democrats will be faced with making legitimate cuts to spending instead of terrorizing students and parents.

School visits

Brown and his little dog have visited colleges and schools in Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Bakersfield, Los Angeles, Walnut Grove, and Salinas, San Diego.

“So the politicians are taking the gangster approach of intimidation and coercion to get the money they want from taxpayers,” Jon Coupal from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association recently wrote. “Senator Steinberg is an old hand at this technique. While campaigning for Proposition 1A, Sacramento’s major tax increase on the 2009 Special Election ballot, he suggested withholding basic state services to those areas whose representatives opposed the tax increase. Darrell ‘The Enforcer’ Steinberg, along with the governor and the speaker, is again using thuggish threats — this time holding schools hostage — to get what he wants: More money so the Sacramento politicians can carry on with their irresponsible spending.”

During a recent interview with talk radio host Andy Caldwell on AM 1440 on the Central Coast, I asked what kind of governor would hold school kids and parents hostage with drastic cuts to school funding, as well as cutting 15 days off of the school year. Making threats to voters is not governing.

While Brown likes to promote the California lifestyle, he’s barking up the wrong tree. Life in California is doomed under his irresponsible and reckless spending, liberal policies, high taxes, and business killing policies. Prop. 30 would only allow this to continue.

But his dog is cute.