Over the weekend word of a truly stunning statement from Mike Genest, Arnold’s right-wing ideologue Finance Director, circulated around the internets. We’ll quote the report from our friends at Calbuzz:

Calbuzz sat in on a conference call with state Finance Director Mike Genest on Friday, in which he detailed the latest $3 billion of cuts Governor Arnold is proposing to close the Deficit That Ate Sacramento…

The most salient, big picture point, however, came in Genest’s clear and direct response to a great question by Judy Lin of the AP, who asked why it was that all the pain of budget cuts seems to fall on the poor. Said Genest:

“If you look at what the government does, the government doesn’t provide services to rich people. We don’t provide many services even to the middle class…”

This is one of the biggest lies that has ever been told in American politics. The notion that government services only go to the poor is complete bullshit, as is the implicit notion that the rich derive no benefits, direct or indirect, from state fiscal policy. Genest is arguing against the very concept of a safety net – to him, a recession is a time to take away supports for the jobless, a time to instead force them to fend for themselves by spending more money they don’t have.

Let us count the ways Mike Genest is a liar:

The Middle Class receives:

• Unemployment insurance

• Public education – including subsidized higher ed and Cal Grants (I wouldn’t have gone to UC Berkeley without it!)

• State-provided health care assistance (yeah, many middle-class folks are themselves on, or have family members who depend upon, things like dialysis, AIDS drugs, IHSS, etc)

• Food stamps and Cal-WORKS (yeah, the recession is so severe that many formerly middle-class households are using these services to get by)

• Cal Fire, the Highway Patrol, etc

• California State Parks – not just for recreation, but for income. Many middle-class families derive income from tourists visiting nearby parks, as many employees and small business owners in my Monterey neighborhood can attest

• Freeways, commuter trains, buses (although the state isn’t supporting them any more!), which subsidize a middle-class suburban lifestyle

I’m sure there are others. But let’s move on to the highest incomes.

The wealthy receive:

• All of the above

• Income based on the economic activity enabled by the above (without the safety net, folks won’t spend, and the incomes of the rich will plummet)

• Over $12 billion in tax giveaways since 1993

• The benefits of Prop 13, ensuring that their property taxes are artificially low, especially if they own or derive income from commercial property.

That’s just a very brief listing; we could spend hours tallying the ways the middle- and upper-classes derive major benefits from state programs. It’s stunning that we even have to explain that obvious point to Genest or to Calitics readers. But then it’s par for the course from a right-wing that is convinced Hoover was right, and that the New Deal was both unnecessary and harmful to the country, all evidence to the contrary be damned.

Combined with Susan Kennedy’s explicit call for a regressive tax system, Genest’s misleading interpretation of the role of the state in economic growth and prosperity is part of a rather surprisingly explicit move to use the budget crisis as a shock doctrine moment to destroy the middle-class, further immiserate the poor, and turn California into a paradise for the rich that would make Ayn Rand envious.

It’s worth briefly reminding ourselves of how Naomi Klein defined the shock doctrine:

The shock doctrine, like all doctrines, is a philosophy of power. It’s a philosophy about how to achieve your political and economic goals. And this is a philosophy that holds that the best way, the best time, to push through radical free-market ideas is in the aftermath of a major shock. Now, that shock could be an economic meltdown. It could be a natural disaster.

And we are seeing that emerge here in California. Arnold has created a budget crisis that gives him the opportunity to demand implementation of a right-wing economic agenda. He makes it seem as if there is no alternative – “well of course we have to cut social services!” and has the opposition party on board as Democratic leaders still refuse to propose tax increases on the wealthy to preserve these vital programs.

The Schwarzenegger Administration is planning to use this crisis to destroy the middle class and the poor and further enrich the wealthy. The California Dream, the archetype of the postwar American economic model, is about to become a California Nightmare, as those who are not lucky enough to possess wealth will find they have no ability to achieve economic security, educational advancement, or enjoy the kind of safety net that for nearly 80 years Americans have known is necessary to the functioning of a modern economy.

It is time for California’s Democratic legislators to loudly and consistently reject this. They must vow to oppose Arnold’s plans, and refuse to be shock doctrined into carrying out an insane right-wing agenda that will destroy our state.