With national economic news almost all bad, what does the California Retailers Association do? Back Gov. Jerry Brown’s demand for a massive tax increase of $50 billion over five years, which would cost each family about $5,000.  Somebody should put the CRA on a suicide watch.

When Brown got $6 billion in extra revenue, in his May Revise he blew $3 billion of it on wild new spending. That shows how serious he is about closing the budget gap.

The CRA apparently doesn’t see how its customers already have been “taxed” with higher gas and food prices. How their homes have been foreclosed, and their cars repossessed. Or how the national unemployment rate just jumped, unexpectedly, in May to 9.1 percent. California’s rate was 11.9 percent in April, which already is way too high, but could jump even higher when state data is released later this month.

It looks like the Great Recession is returning — with a vengeance.

Brown’s gargantuan tax increase only would make it harder for people to keep their jobs and to buy all that junk the CRA keeps pushing on us. That would mean the CRA’s members would lose sales, and many would go broke.

California remains the American state most to toxic to businesses and jobs creation. The CRA wants to make it even more deadly.

June 7, 2011