By Mark Landsbaum

On Nov. 6, Californians voted to raise taxes, but weren’t told the whole story. They repeatedly were told their state government was frugal to the point of pain, yet still in dire need of more tax money.

They were not told nearly as often that California state government spending has swollen like an infected boil, even as those doing the spending plead poverty.

If voters had been more aware of the full scope of the state’s spending spree, would the tax increases have had a chance? Or did they give the government the benefit of the doubt and swallow the line about trusted public servants with barely enough cash to scrape by?

The $6 billion a year tax from Gov. Jerry Brown’s Proposition 30 will increase income taxes substantially for people earning more than $250,000 a year, and increase the nation’s highest state sales tax by another quarter cent.

The entire justification for tax increases was that the state government has in good faith made deep spending cuts, reducing general fund expenditures from a high of $102 billion in fiscal 2007-08 to a mere $91.3 billion in 2012-13. Frugality, the reasoning goes, deserves to be rewarded by giving Sacramento more money to spend.

But how frugal is state government, really? And how aware of that is the public?

The $91.3 billion spent in the general fund is only part of the story. There is another $39.4 billion spent on “special funds,” ostensibly for dedicated purposes such as harbors and watercraft and beverage container recycling. Special fund spending has more than doubled in 10 years. It increased 116 percent during that period, while general fund spending increased 18 percent. That is hardly a picture of frugality. How much did voters hear about that before casting ballots?

Special funds receive far less scrutiny than the general fund, so much so that nearly $54 million in two Department of Parks and Recreation special funds was discovered after having “been deliberately hidden from the governor’s budget office,” AP reported. On top of that, the state controller’s office and the Department of Finance separately tallied the special funds and came up with totals $2.3 billion apart. Who is watching the store?

Had the press devoted as many column inches and televised minutes to Sacramento’s profligate spending and untrustworthy accounting, would voters have been as willing to increase their taxes? How different might it have been if campaign advertising had stressed the imprudence of turning over more money to a state government that purposely hides millions in secret accounts, and apparently can’t even accurately add up billions in special funds in a way that balances the books?

We are assured, of course, that the state has top people sorting all this out and the 570 special funds that are set apart from the general fund will be more accountable and transparent in the future. But the balloting is over and the higher taxes are approved.

No system

“The Department of Finance presently has no system in place to track how approximately $3.7 billion in special funds are spent by various state departments and agencies,” the California Budget
Fact Check reported over the summer.  The California Legislative Analyst also complained that Legislators “must be able to rely on the accuracy” of budget documents, the implication being they could not.

Former Republican state Sen. Ray Haynes described the special funds as “basically slush funds for the bureaucracy to play with. “Elected and appointed politicians are too lazy, too stupid, or too busy to look into these funds, and the permanent bureaucracy counts on this to avoid scrutiny of how they spend the money in these funds. State government doesn’t need more money, it needs political leaders who will do their job of controlling the bureaucracy, rather than being an apologist for it.”

Spending problem

This is an echo of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s laudable proclamation that California doesn’t have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem. That was before Schwarzenegger flip-flopped on that concept and dipped into special funds to “borrow” $350 million to create a one-time spending benefit for the general fund in 2009. He took cash from five special funds supposedly restricted to dedicated purposes, which demonstrated how fungible cash is once it’s deposited in any government account.

The Sacramento Bee shed light on how deceptive it can be to limit the state’s budget discussion to the general fund. “The best example of why the general fund total can be misleading,” the Bee reported earlier this year, “is Brown’s ‘realignment’ of nearly $6 billion in former state general fund programs to local governments. To shift those responsibilities, the state last year created new special fund accounts.”

In short, general fund spending was disguised as special fund spending, and the governor claimed to have cut general fund expenditures. This shell game wasn’t explained in the  ballot language for Prop. 30.

The Bee noted, “[B]udget writers also have relied on creative revenue streams and accounting maneuvers to move programs off the general fund books rather than cut them.” If voters have difficulty following the fiscal shell game, they are in good company. “Frankly, it’s so complex that it defies easy description,” commented a deputy at the LAO.

Prop. 30 proponents pleaded for higher taxes to restore spending that had been cut from education. But it’s worth noting that, under the convoluted formula used to calculate how much schools receive, the shifting of general fund responsibilities to special funds effectively “reduced the amount the state owed K-12 schools and community colleges by $2.1 billion,” the Bee reported.

Perspective

Now for some perspective, also largely absent in November’s tax campaign. Combined general fund and special fund spending increased from $95.7 billion in 2002-03 to $130.7 billion in 2012-13. That’s a 36 percent increase in overall spending.

But that’s not all. After adding in spending for bonds and money channeled to Sacramento from Washington D.C., total state spending soared from $161.5 billion 10 years ago, to $225.3 billion in the current fiscal year. That’s a 39.5 percent jump.

The boasts of spending cuts and cries of poverty seem hollow when total state government expenditures have grown by 39.5 percent. Does this meet anyone’s standard for frugality?

The state’s dire fiscal woes haven’t prevented elected officials from pushing ahead with an unneeded high-speed rail project that has variously been estimated to cost anywhere from $68 billion to $100 billion-plus, and which will drain the general fund of hundreds of millions a year to pay off its bonds.

Then there is this: the current budget “increased spending by 6 percent this year over last year — a remarkable feat in this sour economy,” as the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association’s Jon Coupal put it. And despite threats to drastically cut education if Prop. 30 had been defeated, Coupal noted the proposition contains no language requiring such cuts, and “the governor and the Legislature can immediately go back in and fully fund education.”

Next time voters are asked to raise taxes, they ought to factor in not just the bullying threats to cut schools funding, but also the deceitful claims of poverty and deceptive manipulation of finances.

That kind of disingenuous behavior also throws a different light on Sacramento’s age-old problem of rosy revenue forecasts that always seem to fall short. At best that’s ineptitude. At worst…?

How much should voters trust politicians who repeatedly approve budgets based on inflated revenue estimates that don’t materialize? Shouldn’t Sacramento err on the conservative side, rather than imprudently expect money that year after year doesn’t show up?

Brown had difficulty branding Prop. 30, which alternately was advanced to balance the budget, to restore education cuts, to create jobs (government jobs, of course) and even to boost businesses (after all, school children grow up to be adult employees).

Was all of this incompetence? Or something worse? Is there anything about this scenario that should have persuaded voters to tax themselves more to send Sacramento more money to shuffle among its myriad funds? Will voters get the full story next time?

Mark Landsbaum is an editorial writer at the Orange County Register.

By Mark Landsbaum

If you wanted to destroy an economy, what would be a good way to go about it?

You might take money from those who earn it. Can there be a more perverse disincentive than to take money from people on a progressive scale, such as California’s stair-stepped income tax rates? The more one earns, not only more is taken, but proportionately more. At some point, the earner will say, “Enough is enough” and conclude it’s not worth the effort to earn more.

Next, you might divert money from those who earned it to enrich others. The harder one works, the more one enriches someone else.

Welcome to California, where perverse disincentives abound, and where private-sector workers labor to enrich public-sector employees.

On the November ballot, Propositions 30 and 38 urge Californians to double down on this economy-killing formula by increasing their taxes, which already are among the nation’s highest and most progressive, in order to further enrich public sector workers.

If you wanted to concoct an excuse for such redistribution of wealth, from people who produce it to people who desire it, you might argue that it’s for a good cause. You might say that it’s “for the children.”

On the November ballot, Californians are told that, if they just inflict more of this economy-killing pain on themselves, they can improve public schools. Sure, turning over more of your hard-earned money is painful, but after all, it’s “for the children.” Buck up, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer. Your sacrifice will be for a good cause.

Money is fungible

If you wanted to bamboozle voters and taxpayers into buying this swindle, you definitely wouldn’t mention that money is fungible. Pouring more taxes into the pot is no guarantee it will benefit “the children,” despite disingenuous ballot arguments to the contrary. What is certain is that the benefit will go to California public-school teachers, who already are among the highest paid in the nation. And, of course, it will benefit their top-heavy school administrations, which teach nothing.

While bamboozling voters and taxpayers, you wouldn’t want to mention that no amount of money, short of paying for individual tutors for each of California’s 6 million public school children, will substantially improve what emerges at public high school graduations. Los Angeles public schools spent $25,208 per year per public school student, according to an analysis of all school spending conducted by Cato Center for Educational Freedom in 2010, even though the district reported spending only $10,053. Washington, D.C.’s public schools spent $28,170 per student.

(The fact that public schools grossly under-report how much of your tax money they spend per pupil ought to be a red flag to signal something’s amiss. As Cato author Adam Schaeffer explained in his study, school officials “believe certain expenditure categories should not count,” even though things like health and retirement benefits and debt service “are expenses borne by the taxpayer that are used to support the K-12 education system.”)

D.C. schools

If there exists a correlation between how much money is spent and educational outcome, District of Columbia kids ought to be far more accomplished than California kids. Instead, as economist Walter Williams points out, despite spending more money per student than any state, the District of Columbia “comes in dead last in terms of student achievement.”

While persuading voters and taxpayers to act against their own economic well being, you wouldn’t want to mention that the surest guarantee of a quality education is for a kid to come from a home where Mom and Dad read, and encourage junior and sis to do the same. You wouldn’t want to remind taxpayers and voters that no amount of tax increases will change home life for kids whose parents can’t speak English, or where parents don’t bother to instill a work ethic in their children because Mom and Dad didn’t develop one of their own.

It’s painful to admit that the greatest determiner of how kids do in school is their home life. At least it’s painful for public school employees to admit. But isn’t that what every grownup knows in his heart from personal experience and from the experience of public schools?

Californians could double or triple their tax burden and effectively grind the state’s economy to a halt, and pour every dime of it into public schools, and what would the outcome be? Kids still would resemble their parents.

It is no secret that the best public schools are located in the best neighborhoods. Sure, someone will object to this generalization by pointing out an exception here and there. But the fact that the exceptions are exceptions makes the point best of all.

Prop.s 30 and 38

What Props. 30 and 38 on the November ballot will do, if voters buy the spiel, is enrich public workers, most of them public school teachers and administrators. What the propositions won’t materially change is what emerges at high school graduation.

Indeed, these tax increases are extremely unlikely to measurably change the lives of children on path to drop out of school because they are acting out values they learn at home. Parents, and most tragically the lack of parents, particularly the lack of a father in the home, are the greatest determiners of kids’ educational success or failure. Not tax money.

Public school teachers will resist admitting this out loud, even though they are the first to protest that they shouldn’t be held accountable for kids who come to school unprepared to learn. Nevertheless, in the same breath they will insist they can do what the obscenely funded Washington, D.C., schools fail to do year in and year out — if only they can have more taxpayers’ money to do it with.

Don’t believe them.

Voters and taxpayers can take another step in November to dismantle California’s economy by voting to divert yet more of the private sector’s money to feed public schools’ insatiable appetite. Or they can reject the fatuous argument that it’s “for the children,” and say, “Enough is enough.”

Providing more money to a system that consistently fails to do what it is paid to do is unwise. Well-off communities don’t need more money for their well-off children to do well. And economically disadvantaged communities’ children won’t do well simply by pouring more money into their public schools.

Can public schools be improved? Not with more money. But perhaps kids’ education can be improved by letting parents use that money to shop for a better, private school. When vouchers are offered anywhere in the nation, the list of applicants far outstrips the available cash. If the product public schools sell must compete against private schools that can and do provide more for less, the competition will improve both.

The fact that so many parents intuitively recognize that they can improve their children’s lot by escaping the grip of public education speaks volumes. The fact that so many public schools refuse to free the children from their grip speaks volumes about what public schools really are all about.  And it’s not “for the children.”

Commentary

MARCH 7, 2012

By JOHN SEILER

Supposing somebody insisted that the moon is made of green cheese. This is not a self-evident fact. Camembert, maybe, but not green cheese.

We would demand strong proof. Even if the proof was provided, we could provide counter-arguments.

It’s called science. Except for a few self-evident axioms, such as 2+2=4, nothing is totally “proven.” Certainly not something so complex and controversial as “climate change.” For one thing, it’s only been a couple of years since the politically correct nomenclature was changed from “global warming” to “climate change.” You can almost date it. Just six years ago, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law AB 32, “the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.”

Some graduate student should get a government grant and locate pricesly when the change in lingo began. I think it was around 2007.

And the phrase “climate change” itself is loaded. Of course, the climate changes. The earth and the sun keep changing all the time. They sun’s energy fluctuates, as do the temperature of the earth’s core, the earth’s rotation around its own axis and the earth’s obit around the sun. What the “climate change” crowd really means is, “harmful climate change caused by humans.” Yet everyone lets them get away with their disingenuous use of the shortened phrase.

Anyway, the point is that climate change — or global warming — isn’t self-evident, like 2+2=4 or the Pythagorean theorem. It’s a complex argument that just can’t be asserted.

Sociologists’ Survey

Yet now we have a new “survey” attacking the modern boogeyman known as the “conservative white male” for commiting the thoughtcrime of “denial of climate change.” The study actually is called, “Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States.” It’s by two sociologists.

One is Aaron M. McCright of the Lyman Briggs College, Department of Sociology, Environmental Science and Policy Program, Michigan State University. Which helps explain why Michigan has been such an economic basket case in recent decades: They waste tax money on stuff like this.

The other is Riley E. Dunlap of the Department of Sociology, Oklahoma State University.

Even their own summary is jargon-laden:

“We examine whether conservative white males are more likely than are other adults in the U.S. general public to endorse climate change denial. We draw theoretical and analytical guidance from the identity- protective cognition thesis explaining the white male effect and from recent political psychology scholarship documenting the heightened system-justification tendencies of political conservatives.”

System-justification tendencies? I guess I would be in the conservative-white-guys-denialist camp. Even though the word “conservative” nowadays is meaningless it’s been twisted so much. But the last thing I want to do is “justify” the “system.” I want to rip it down.

“We utilize public opinion data from ten Gallup surveys from 2001 to 2010, focusing specifically on five indicators of climate change denial. We find that conservative white males are significantly more likely than are other Americans to endorse denialist views on all five items, and that these differences are even greater for those conservative white males who self-report understanding global warming very well.”

They keep using “denial.” As in my green-cheese moon analogy, why does insisting on real evidence make you a “denialist”?

And why use a word from 10-step programs? It’s obvious this is an attempt to condemn aberrant thoughts, as in Soviet psychiatry.

After all, when Copernicus came around, those who didn’t accept his new system but stuck with Ptolemy were not dubbed “heliocentric denialists.” People who oppose the Big Bang theory in favor of the Steady State theory are not branded “Big Bang denialists.” I googled that phrase, and got just seven results (as of March 7, 3:24 pm PST), showing the phrase is close to nonexistent.  Then I googled “climate change denialist” and got 152,000 results, showing the phrase is popular.

For that matter, those who hold with the Big Bang theory are not branded “Steady State denialists” by the Steady State camp.

Climategate 1.0, 2.0, 3.0…

That’s because astronomy is a real science, whereas global warming science — excuse me, “climate change” science — is mostly bogus. Although there are some serious “climate change” scientists, the field is choked with charlatans. This is shown by:

Climategate 1.0. In 2009, hackers released a trove of emails from “climate change” crowd showing that scientists cooked the books on the global warming numbers and spiked studies that refuted their theories.

Climategate  2.0. Just last November 2011, yet more climate scientist emails were released showing scientific conclusions based on ideology, not real data.

Climategate 3.0, also called Gleickgate. As Wayne Lusvardi described it on CalWatchDog.com, “Climate activist Dr. Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute of water policy in Oakland may face criminal charges that he deceptively obtained data from a conservative think tank, the Heartland Institute, then ‘doctored’ it and disseminated it on the web to libel that organization. Gleick has admitted he is the source of the leaked data but denies he produced the doctored document.

So, “conservative white males” have good cause to “deny” that climate change is taking place.

Then there’s this little problem. The scientist at the heart of the Climategate 1.0 scandal, Phil Jones, recently conceded that there hasn’t been any global warming the past 15 years. Yet that time saw the most intense industrial activity — man-caused changes in the envirnoment — in human history, as China, India, Brazil and Russia greatly increased their industrial economies after dumping socialism.

Reported the Daily Mail on Feb. 14, 2012:

“The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

“Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.

“Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

“The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

“Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

“And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.”

Medieval Warming

And that Medieval Warming reference is an important one. That’s because you don’t have to be a climate scientist with a Ph.D. to know that temperatures in Middle Ages were a lot warmer than today, what’s called the Medieval Warm period. All you have to know is a little history.

For example, Greenland is called that because, when the Vikings settled there, the climate was relatively mild and the scenery was green. Later, the Little Ice age struck, and the Norsemen died or fled. Europe and other areas also suffered crop failures and massive famines. Here’s a map of what happened:

Want more evidence? Check out Mark Landsbaum’s blog at The Orange County Register. He provides regular updates of climate denialism.

The Poor Hit Hardest

What’s ironic about this debate is that the “climate change” laws, such as California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, are going to affect those dreaded conservative white males less than everybody else. It’s poor people of color, especially women, who will be slammed the hardest by the climate alarmism legislation. For example, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 is estimated to be killing 1 million jobs.

Those aren’t the jobs of white guys in Silicon Valley or Orange County offices. They’re industrial jobs that generally have gone to newcomers, such as the Poles who decades ago immigrated to Amercia to work in the Chrysler factory in Hamtramck, Mich. Industrial jobs, even today, pay a lot better than mowing lawns or waiting on tables. They’re what got my immigrant family going in Detroit a century ago.

But that doesn’t matter to a couple of well-paid sociology professors sitting in air-conditioned offices in Lansing and Stillwater.

There’s a better name for “climate denial”: climate reality.

Professorial Unreality

Finally, the sociology professors actually write sentences like this one: “More generally, conservative white males are likely to favor protection of the current industrial capitalist order which has historically served them well.”

As opposed to the alternative, the communist system? How’d that one turn out? How did the people of color of Cambodia like it when the anti-capitalist the Khmer Rouge wiped out a third of their countrymen in the Killing Fields? Any women in Poland you know want to return to communism?

Even the milder forms of socialism were horrendous, especially for people of color and women. Socialist India perpetuated its caste system, including keeping down the dalits, or untouchables. By contrast, the capitalism the professors sniff at has lifted the dalits and other lower-order castes into the upper ranks because it rewards effort and smarts, not caste. Last November, The New York Times, of all places, ran an article on this remarkable development.

As in America, advancing the bogus “climate change” claim is bad science and worse policy. More regulations along the lines of AB 32 will suppress women, the poor and people of color.

By contrast, those folks — and everybody — will be helped by climate reality, limited government and freedom.