Go John and Ken!

by CalWatchdog Staff | March 1, 2011 1:07 am

[1]John Seiler:

Especially when there’s a hot California politics topic in the air, I try to listen to KFI AM 640’s broadcast of John and Ken weekday afternoons. If you’re not in the Los Angeles area, you can listen to them here[2].

They were in rare form Feb. 28, ridiculing five California politics columnists for attacking John and Ken themselves. The topic, of course, was Gov. Brown’s $60 billion tax increase proposal ($12 billion a year for five years). Over five years, that’s about $5,000 for every family in the state.

Except for the Chron’s John Diaz[3], I didn’t catch the names of the other columnists because I was bobbing in and out of traffic. But it doesn’t matter.

As John and Ken pointed out, it was pretty strange that all five of these columnists came out swinging at them at the same time. John and Ken have led the fight against the tax increases voters defeated in 2009 and 2010. And they also have a “Heads on the Stick” campaign against any Republican sellouts who back tax increases, such as Unable Able “Can’t Believe I’m Lieutenant Governor” Maldonado, who last November was wiped out in his re-election bid.

Their current “Heads on a Stick” campaign [4]includes 10 GOP legislators who haven’t taken the “No New Taxes” pledge against putting Gov. Brown’s tax-increase scam on a special June ballot, complete with phone numbers to call the legislators. Let’s name them, as of Feb. 28, 2011: Assemblyman Katcho Achadjian, Sen. Tom Harmon (always a “moderate,” in my experience here in Orange County), Assemblyman Paul Cook, Sen. Bob Huff, Sen. Sam Blakeslee, Sen. Anthony Cannella, Sen. Tom Berryhill, Sen. Bill Emmerson,  Assemblyman Bill Berryhill and Assemblywoman Kristin Olsen.

The columnists are saying that all they want is “democracy,” so let’s let people “vote” in Jerry’s Special Election. As we’ve commented on here at CalWatchDog.com, that always has been a joke. For one thing, if they really believed in “democracy,” how about putting a new Gann Limit[5] on the ballot? Not just this time, but last year and next year and the year after?

The Gann Limit, if restored (voters passed it 30 years ago, but it was effectively repealed later), would limit increases in state spending to increases in population plus inflation.

I guess, for these columnists — and Gov. Brown and the Democratic Legislature and all those tax obsessives — some democracy is OK, and some isn’t. It’s like in Orwell’s “Animal Farm[6]“: Four legs good, two legs bad. Until the pigs start walking on two legs. (See the full video, for free, below.)

And speaking of pigs, what’s democratic about governments as wasteful as ours? It’s worth pointing again to Sunday’s L.A. Times story on the massive waste in L.A. Community Colleges’ $5.7 billion bond[7].

And if we’re going to have “democracy,” how about if the public-employee unions pledge that, if there’s a vote on taxes, they won’t use their vast warchests to support it?

As things stand, here’s how “democracy” works: Taxpayers are taxed to death. The money goes to the government employees. The union siphons off tens of millions in dues form the employees. The tens of millions in dues then go to run ad campaigns backing tax increases on the ballot, or bought-and-paid-for politicians who vote for tax increases.

Rinse and repeat.

Year after year.

After year after year after year after year after year.

It’s not democracy. It’s racket.

March 1, 2011

Source URL: https://calwatchdog.com/2011/03/01/go-john-and-ken/

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