{"id":11734,"date":"2010-05-24T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-05-24T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-05-24T18:36:20","modified_gmt":"2010-05-24T18:36:20","slug":"even-arizona-voted-for-a-tax-increase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2010\/05\/24\/even-arizona-voted-for-a-tax-increase\/","title":{"rendered":"Even Arizona Voted For a Tax Increase"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arizona – the same state that held an orgy of anti-Latino racism masquerading as a legislative session – should have made headlines last week for a different reason: voters there approved a sales tax increase<\/a> to avert further crippling state budget cuts:<\/p>\n

The 1-cent-per-dollar sales-tax increase that Arizona voters approved Tuesday affects everyone.<\/p>\n

While even lawmakers who fought the tax increase expected Proposition 100 to pass, almost everyone was surprised at its hefty 64 percent approval rate. It passed in 14 of the 15 counties and drew healthy “yes” margins in some of the state’s more conservative outposts, such as Yavapai and La Paz counties, according to unofficial results.<\/p>\n

The willingness of Arizona voters to tax themselves contrasts starkly with the state Legislature, where tax cuts have been a feature of almost every session since the mid-1990s. Lawmakers fought Gov. Jan Brewer’s call for a tax vote for more than a year, never buying her argument that they should raise the tax on their own, and only reluctantly later referred the matter to the ballot.<\/p>\n

Observers say Prop. 100’s passage is due to the state’s dire budget situation, the threat of further cuts to education, and a lopsided campaign in which the “vote no” message was eclipsed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So let’s get this straight. Arizona – a state McCain carried in 2008 and that is making a name for itself as the vanguard of the new racism, with a very conservative governor and an extremely conservative legislature – saw a whopping 64% of its voters, including those in the most conservative counties, approve a tax increase.<\/p>\n

And people still say tax increases are unpopular?<\/p>\n

The Arizona Republic article excerpted above mentioned the Oregon tax increase approved in January, and said that California voters “rejected” a tax increase in 2009. But that latter statement is misleading. Californians probably would have extended the temporary taxes by approving Prop 1A in May 2009 had that not been linked to an unpopular spending cap. Recent PPIC polls have shown widespread public support for new taxes<\/a>, especially if they are linked to saving our schools.<\/p>\n

Two of California’s neighbors have now shown that their electorates do not want austerity. They instead want good public services, particularly good schools, and are willing to pay for them. The question before us is whether or not Sacramento will heed the lessons of Oregon and Arizona as we head into another budget dealmaking session. Californians will support new taxes. It’s time for Sacramento Democrats to make new revenues their core negotiating demand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arizona – the same state that held an orgy of anti-Latino racism masquerading as a legislative session – should have made headlines last week for a different reason: voters there approved a sales tax increase<\/a> to avert further crippling state budget cuts:<\/p>\n

The 1-cent-per-dollar sales-tax increase that Arizona voters approved Tuesday affects everyone.<\/p>\n

While even lawmakers who fought the tax increase expected Proposition 100 to pass, almost everyone was surprised at its hefty 64 percent approval rate. It passed in 14 of the 15 counties and drew healthy “yes” margins in some of the state’s more conservative outposts, such as Yavapai and La Paz counties, according to unofficial results.<\/p>\n

The willingness of Arizona voters to tax themselves contrasts starkly with the state Legislature, where tax cuts have been a feature of almost every session since the mid-1990s. Lawmakers fought Gov. Jan Brewer’s call for a tax vote for more than a year, never buying her argument that they should raise the tax on their own, and only reluctantly later referred the matter to the ballot.<\/p>\n

Observers say Prop. 100’s passage is due to the state’s dire budget situation, the threat of further cuts to education, and a lopsided campaign in which the “vote no” message was eclipsed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So let’s get this straight. Arizona – a state McCain carried in 2008 and that is making a name for itself as the vanguard of the new racism, with a very conservative governor and an extremely conservative legislature – saw a whopping 64% of its voters, including those in the most conservative counties, approve a tax increase.<\/p>\n

And people still say tax increases are unpopular?<\/p>\n

The Arizona Republic article excerpted above mentioned the Oregon tax increase approved in January, and said that California voters “rejected” a tax increase in 2009. But that latter statement is misleading. Californians probably would have extended the temporary taxes by approving Prop 1A in May 2009 had that not been linked to an unpopular spending cap. Recent PPIC polls have shown widespread public support for new taxes<\/a>, especially if they are linked to saving our schools.<\/p>\n

Two of California’s neighbors have now shown that their electorates do not want austerity. They instead want good public services, particularly good schools, and are willing to pay for them. The question before us is whether or not Sacramento will heed the lessons of Oregon and Arizona as we head into another budget dealmaking session. Californians will support new taxes. It’s time for Sacramento Democrats to make new revenues their core negotiating demand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-117"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-33g","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11734\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}