It is 7 a.m., 48° and headed to 54° with rain all day. Oh why did I decide to go to Berkeley today?
Details for the next 10 days are here. Look this morning for this: Activists will unveil April Fool’s Day “GMuni” and block a Google bus. It will start at 8 a.m. at a yet undisclosed Google bus stop.
Ah the anti-tax folks will hate this report from the California Budget Project that looks at the tax policies followed by Kansas (cut taxes) and California (raised taxes with Prop. 30).
Recent experiences in California and Kansas support this evidence — increasing taxes in California did not curb economic growth, while decreasing taxes in Kansas did not boost economic growth. What is clear, however, is that large tax cuts in Kansas — most of which went to high-income households — have significantly reduced state revenues and resulted in cuts to the state’s schools and other public systems and services, while promises of economic improvement have failed to materialize. Meanwhile, in California, the revenues provided by Proposition 30 have provided the state with the fiscal policy space to boost school funding, pay down debts and liabilities, and begin to reinvest in other public structures and supports as the state’s economy recovers.
Yes, any talk of tax policy can be either a jolt this early in the morning or soporific. In case it was the latter, here is your only-in-SF moment: a Kickstarter campaign to raise $91K for a glossy magazine on the gluten-free world. Or there is always this bit of ridiculousness: $2549 for a studio apartment in Casa Dolores.
Are the tea party infused comments posted by actual SF residents? Or is this just a April Fools joke?
Matt, in your fairy-tale world, the great thing about SF is that it is so diverse, right?
Except when you discover a lot of people in SF aren’t for “tax, borrow and spend” politics and then suddenly diversity is undesirable.
The real April Fools joke is that SF residents like you are supposedly tolerant of differences.
You can find a way to race bait on any subject. Diversity, code word for minorities, is somehow responsible for the manufactured crisis of public sector deficits.
Who’s living in a fairy-tale world of white supremacy to counter the empirical analyses of the linked articles that compared the results of largely successful tax hikes in diverse California and failed tax cuts in almost entirely white Kansas?
Anything renting for under 3K in the Mission is cheap. When you claim it is “ridiculous” are you saying that it has no chance of renting?
I didn’t know that ML had an official position on how high taxes should be? But as a public sector worker, should it surprise us that you advocate a tax policy that makes it less likely that you will lose your gold-plated pension and healthcare benefits?
You know, the ones that the rest of us pay for with our taxes, while we are struggling to pay for our own healthcare and pensions?
If you are struggling, I suggest you get a job.
Or better yet, join with others to push for common sense, tried and true solutions to you healthcare and retirement worries. That is, adequate social healthcare and social pensions like the rest of the developed world enjoys. Not our uniquely American models which serve mainly to enrich the extractive middlemen of insurance and drug companies and Wall Street. That’s who you are struggling to pay.