The man who killed someone in my old town, the one that was publicized as stoning someone to death because he was gay? The victim wasn’t gay, and the murderer was a schizophrenic who’d been institutionalized several times.
Month: April 2011
78%
Dear California’s rich people: Taxes — or pitchforks?
Think the budget negotiations are dead? Get ready for something that could contribute to a Plan B: Tax the rich.
We just got our hands on a new poll due out Friday that shows blow-the-roof-off support for something that has only been mumbled about in the most progressive corners of the Dome: Increasing taxes one percent on Californians making more than $500,000. It would raise $2.5 billion towards the state’s $26.6 billion deficit.
We explored this issue weeks ago, but few would talk it up then. But now, they might.
How high is the support? Try a whopping 78 percent. Even 60 percent of Republicans and 79 percent of independent and other voters backed it, too.
“Those are the highest numbers I’ve ever seen. On a tax scale — that’s pretty much a perfect score,” said Lenny Goldberg, executive director of the California Tax Reform Association.
The poll, conducted by Democratic pollster Ben Tulchin and sponsored by the California Federation of Teachers, is opening eyes as part of a potential Plan B for solving the budget deficit with its bi-partisan support.
The survey found that 53 percent of the 800 likely California voters surveyed strongly support the tax. Overall support cut across racial, age and geographic boundaries.
“There is a populist anger out there that cuts across all lines,” Tulchin told us. Many voters felt it was unfair that the wealthiest Americans got their Bush-era tax cuts extended last year.
“The see that these (state) service cuts would affect middle-class and lower-class people and they want rich people to pay their fair share,” Tulchin said.
Do as I say, not as I do
It’s sort of the same mind filter through which New Gingrich attacked Bill Clinton for being an immoral adulterer, and Sen. Larry Craig worked to preserve the sanctity of marriage. Are we seeing a pattern yet?
WASHINGTON — Democrats pounced on the man Republicans chose today to be their spokesman for fiscal restraint: a freshman Arkansas congressman who once filed bankruptcy over unpaid credit card bills.
Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) was the lead signer of a letter endorsed by a pack of GOP freshmen demanding Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) pass a budget-cutting spending measure to fund the government for the rest of this fiscal year.”Mr. Reid, your record on spending in the Senate is one of failure,” wrote the 30 lawmakers, who alsovowed to rally on the Capitol steps until the Senate passed a budget. “You have failed to pass a budget, failed to restrain spending, and failed to put our country on sound fiscal footing,” they said.
But Crawford seemed an odd choice to expound on sound fiscal footing.”Really?” said Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Jesse Ferguson.
“Of all the people for House Republican freshmen to pick as their front man for a stunt about fiscal responsibility, they picked Representative Rick Crawford who couldn’t even pay his own credit card bills and went bankrupt because of it,” Ferguson said in a statement.
According to press accounts during Crawford’s campaign, he declared bankruptcy in 1994 over $12,611.67 in debt – mostly for credit cards.