Vertigo

Texas v. California

Why Texas isn’t like California.

I recently read a Truthout article on the ideological divide in California. They had a special election May 19th. There were six budget propositions on the ballot. If they didn’t all pass, it was claimed, Armageddon would ensue.

Pencil Armageddon into your day planner, California.

Five measures involving nominal tax increases (it could be argued they were more money shuffling than net increase) failed to pass.

The measure capping compensation for legislators during budgetary challenging years was enthusiastically approved by the electorate that showed up that day. It was the lowest election turnout in history.

Apathy, anger, atrophied...Armageddon.

The California budget deficit is now 21 to 24 billion (U.S. dollars), depending on who’s counting, now that the compromise, as outlined in the 6 ballot measures, has failed.

It’s a lot of hard work by the Legislators down the drain; into the San Francisco Bay as it were. This is the same bay Alfred Hitchcock’s Kim Novak throws herself into in the movie Vertigo.

Back to legislating.

There is a philosophical divide in this giant petri dish called Cali-for-ni-ahhhhhh; a word recognized in many languages worldwide.

Texas; let us behold in horror so that we do not become what we fear. We have been provided an example of what not to become. And how to not be it?

Lets channel Kim Novak; she’s two different people.

They have machismo in their gobernador, Arnold Schwarzenegger. This is the body-builder turned actor; un gran actor, el señor Schwarzenegger.

Lets look at the resumé that has prepared this Schwarzenegger to lead the world’s 8th largest economy. Is this Spain before the Armada? The ships that sailed, they didn’t come back.

I hope this will serve as a cautionary tale for those who dismiss complaints regarding Sarah Palin’s slender qualifications as mud-slinging from fringe Obama supporters.

It is more than just prop 13; that grand property tax scheme where you pay many times more in property tax than your next door neighbor whose property is worth exactly the same as yours but he had the good sense to move in 2 decades ago while you were stupid enough to buy your house last year.

You are dumb.

It is more than high sales tax rates which are regressive because the incomes of poor people largely go to buy necessities such as diapers for their babies, etc. The rich don’t go to Target, thank you very much.

Or should I say Targé?

It is a budgetary process that is tied in knots due to micro-managing by a plebiscite; the villagers who show up with pitchforks and flaming torches to scare Mary Schelly’s Frankenstein back into the castle.

How does one govern a state not quite as large as Texas?

How not to do it.

Hamstring the ability to collect property tax in a fair, impartial, systematic, and predictable way.

Á la Prop 13.

Then hard-wire (mandate) diminishing funds for pet projects.

Add a dash of extreme gerrymandering so that only the fringe of each party shows up to the primaries to place ideologically immovable and uncompromising legislators in power.

And there you have it. The state Texas does not want to become. This is a negative example to be sure, but still, we can learn from it.

James