Pro-Tax Villines Slams Taxes

John Seiler:

I just got a mailer from from JobsPAC, a 527 organization, touting Republican Mike Villines, who’s running for insurance commissioner. The group reportedly is funded with insurance-industry money, from companies that don’t like Democratic opponent Dave Jones.

It pillories his opponent as: “Dave Jones — Just Another Tax and Spend Politician….A Career Politician Who Spends and Taxes Too Much…Largest Tax Hike in State History…Dave Jones voted to raise your taxes by $37 billion during the worst recession in a generation and with unemployment above 10%. Since Jones’s tax hike, California’s unemployment rate rose to 13%. Source: ABX3 3, 2009.”

But it was Villines who provided the key, Republican vote for that tax increase! As Assembly Republican leader, according to Wikipedia, “Villines’ leadership was key to the February 2009 Budget Deal…. He was recognized by members of both political parties for his willingness to pursue a bipartisan solution to rapidly expanding crisis despite the risk to his political career.”

His treachery to California taxpayers even won him the big-government John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, which is falsely named because JFK actually cut taxes.

In his sycophantic acceptance speech, Villines said of his sellout on taxes:

Most of us will reach a defining moment, where we gain a new level of understanding and learn a lot about ourselves….

For me, there was nothing more fiscally or socially irresponsible than inaction…especially when we knew the facts.

I was determined not to let California fail and to the best I could to solve the problem

And so I worked with Dave, Karen, Darrell and  Governor Schwarzenneger to craft a budget compromise.

It wasn’t easy.  Our budget was one that we all disliked.

But in the end, we believed it was practical, fair, and the only way to get California on the road to recovery.

It was not until I faced this moment that I learned a great deal about politics and myself.

I learned there can be a big difference between practical truth and ideological truth.

I gained a new understanding of what it means to make choices that are not black and white.

I learned that courage is taking the hard road even when there is an easy way out.

And I gained a real understanding of what politics should be – putting the interests of the people ahead of what’s easy or best for my career.

Of course, here we are 20 months after his tax-increase sellout, and there’s no “recovery” in sight. Unemployment still is more than 2 percentage points higher than the national average. And it has risen from 10.5 percent in February 2009, when the tax increase was passed because of Villines’ sellout, to 12.4 percent today.

And as to “courage” and “putting the interests of the people ahead of what’s easy or best for my career,” he’s now trying to lie his way into another government job.

Jones also is terrible. But he never advertised himself as something other than what he is: a tax-increasing socialist Democrat.

Villines’ sellout was so big that it almost cost him his GOP primary election against no-name Brian FitzGerald, who lost by just 16,436 votes.

Treachery needs to be punished. Let’s hope Villines loses on Nov. 2.

OCT. 21