{"id":8998,"date":"2009-05-28T23:40:53","date_gmt":"2009-05-28T23:40:53","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-05-28T23:40:53","modified_gmt":"2009-05-28T23:40:53","slug":"california-election-results-what-the-public-wants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2009\/05\/28\/california-election-results-what-the-public-wants\/","title":{"rendered":"California Election Results &#8212; What The Public Wants"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Dave Johnson, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.speakoutca.org\/weblog\/\">Speak Out California<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Did the results of the special election on the budget propositions really show that the public is against taxes and government, as the Republicans claim?&nbsp; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.docstoc.com\/docs\/6220193\/Reasons-Prop-1A-Failed-memo\">Recent polling<\/a> looked at the reasons the propositions failed.&nbsp; Polls are a useful way to understand what people really thing because they take a scientific sample, actually asking the voters what they think, instead of just repeating something that Republicans just say.&nbsp; Let&#8217;s see what the voters give as their reasons for opposing the propositions.&nbsp; From the polling:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>74% of voters polled thought the election was just a gimmick, not an actual fix for California&#8217;s budget problems.<\/li>\n<li>70% of the voters polled said the legislature is a captive of special interests (possibly because people are learning that the &#8220;budget deal&#8221; that they came up with in the middle of this emergency included a huge tax cut for large, multi-state corporations.)<\/li>\n<li>In a budget battle dominated by Republican demands for spending cuts instead of asking the rich and corporations to pay their fair share only 19% of voters polled said that Californians are being asked to share the pain equally.&nbsp; <\/li>\n<li>And to drive that point home, <b>only 29% of voters polled said that the budget should be balanced only with spending cuts<\/b>.&nbsp; According to the polling &#8220;even among &#8216;No&#8217; voters, less than half (46%) say the government should rely entirely on spending cuts with no tax increases.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In summary, voters resented that the legislature is held captive by the 2\/3 rule, and want them to address that instead of coming up with short-term gimmicks to get through another year while making things even worse later.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, and completely contrary to anti-tax and anti-government claims, the polling showed &#8220;broad support for new revenue streams.&#8221;&nbsp; According to the polling report, the public supports: <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>Increasing taxes on alcoholic beverages (75% support)<\/li>\n<li>Increasing taxes on tobacco (74% support)<\/li>\n<li>Imposing an oil extraction tax on oil companies just like every other oil producing state (73% support)<\/li>\n<li>Closing the loophole that allows corporations to avoid reassessment of the value of new property they purchase (63% support)<\/li>\n<li>Increasing the top bracket of the state income tax from nine point three percent to 10 percent for families with taxable income over $272,000 a year and to eleven percent for families with taxable incomes over $544,000 a year (63% support)<\/li>\n<li>Prohibiting corporations from using tax credits to offset more than fifty percent of the taxes they owe (59% support)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The corporate right has to spin last week&#8217;s special election as an anti-tax vote.&nbsp; What else can they do?&nbsp; But, as usual, their spin goes completely the other way from the facts. <\/p>\n<p><b>Let&#8217;s put them to the test.<\/b>&nbsp; The corporate right claims that this election showed that the public is solidly against government and taxes.&nbsp; <b>If they really believe that, how about reinstating majority rule in California, instead of requiring a 2\/3 vote to pass budgets and taxes?<\/b>&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>Since they claim that the public is solidly against taxes, will they also support a straight up-or-down vote on taxes?&nbsp; Of course not.&nbsp; <font size=\"2\" face=\"Arial\">The public is not &nbsp;with them and they know it. This is just a ruse to continue destroying our great &nbsp;state and our democratic process<\/font>.<\/p>\n<p><em>Click Through to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.speakoutca.org\/weblog\/\">Speak Out California<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><em>Dave Johnson, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.speakoutca.org\/weblog\/\">Speak Out California<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Did the results of the special election on the budget propositions really show that the public is against taxes and government, as the Republicans claim?&nbsp; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.docstoc.com\/docs\/6220193\/Reasons-Prop-1A-Failed-memo\">Recent polling<\/a> looked at the reasons the propositions failed.&nbsp; Polls are a useful way to understand what people really thing because they take a scientific sample, actually asking the voters what they think, instead of just repeating something that Republicans just say.&nbsp; Let&#8217;s see what the voters give as their reasons for opposing the propositions.&nbsp; From the polling:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":171,"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":[514,60],"class_list":["post-8998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-117","tag-514","tag-60"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2l8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8998","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\/171"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}