Lockyer: 'We're coming after you!'

John Seiler:

In person, state Treasurer Bill Lockyer is a mild-mannered fellow, whom I’ve enjoyed meeting with several times. But his class-warfare rhetoric makes him sound like a California Pol Pot. Here’s what he just said at this weekend’s California Democratic Convention in Sacramento in attacking rural-area Republicans who refuse to raise taxes:

It’s time you did your job and help the poorest in your own communities.

And if your district is 60 percent Latino and you represent white business elites and tea party activists, we’re coming after you!

That’s similar to what he threatened 16 years ago, in 1995, before the Orange County Forum when he was Senate President Pro-Tem:

I don’t understand the new sort of greed, [the] I’m-gonna-take- care-of-myself-and-to-hell-with-everybody-else-in-the-world attitude that I increasingly hear from people that you [Orange County] send to Sacramento, and people I bump into in this county. It is shortsighted, self-destructive and let me tell you, eventually those people [poor people from other areas] are going to come down and burn down your gated communities.

Get that? “...come down and burn down your gated communities.”

Lockyer himself for almost four decades has fattened on hefty state salaries in the numerous jobs he has held. And if he ever retires from government, he’ll enjoy a massive pension. All courtesy of the taxpayers, of course.

He’s also wrong about the rural Republicans who oppose Gov. Jerry Brown’s record, back-breaking $12 billion tax increases. It’s Latinos everywhere, but especially in poor rural areas, who are hit hardest by tax increases.

Jose’s muffler shop and Maria’s taco stand might not survive another massive tax increase. Meanwhile, billionaire Democratic fat-cat donors in Silicon Valley and Hollywood hardly would feel any tax increase.

“Burn down your gated communities” and “We’re coming after you!” — that’s Democrats’ Pol Potian rhetoric about productive citizens in this state. No wonder so many are exiting like Boat People.

May 1, 2011