By Harold Meyerson
Washington Post : May. 29, 2009 - | Page 15A
To understand why the woes of California's economy threaten the
nation's economy, we must understand the state's road to insolvency.
The Age of Reagan did not commence with the Great Communicator's
inauguration in 1981. For its real beginning, we need to go back to
June 1978, when Californians went to the polls and enacted Proposition
13.
By passing Howard Jarvis' malign initiative,California voters reduced
the Golden State to baser metal. Under Republican Gov. Earl Warren and
Democratic Gov. Pat Brown,California epitomized the postwar American
dream. Its public schools, from kindergarten through Berkeley and
UCLA, were the nation's finest; its roads and aqueducts the most
efficient at moving cars and water the state's lifeblood to their
destinations. All this was funded by some of the nation's highest
taxes, which fell in good measure on the state's flourishing banks and
corporations.
Amid the inflation of the late 1970s, however, the California model
began to crumple. As incomes and property values rose, Sacramento's
tax revenue soared but the parsimonious Democraticgovernor, Jerry
Brown, neither spent those funds nor rebated them. With the state
sitting on a $5 billion surplus, frustrated Californians grumped to
the polls and passed Proposition 13, which rolled back and limited
property taxes effectively destroying the funding base of local
governments and school districts, which thereafter depended largely on
Sacramento for their revenue. Ranked fifth among the states in
per-pupil spending during the 1950s and '60s,California sank to
Mississippi-like levels the mid-40s in rank by the 1990s.
Since 1978, state and local government in California has been funded
more by taxes on personal income and sales. Bank and corporation taxes
have been steadily reduced. In the current recession, with state
unemployment at 11 percent, tax revenue has fallen off a cliff.
But the problem with Proposition 13 wasn't merely that it reduced
revenue. It also made it very difficult to increase revenue.
Raising taxes now requires a two-thirds vote of the Legislature,
though in 47 other states, a simple majority suffices. California has
become overwhelmingly Democratic in the past two decades, but
Republicans have managed to retain footholds representing just over
one-third of the districts in both houses of the Legislature.
The conservative backlash of 1978 also swept into the Legislature a
proto-Reaganistic generation of Republicans, later dubbed "the
Cavemen." Compared with today's GOP state legislators, though, the
Cavemen look like Diderot's Encyclopedists. The current Republican
crop has refused in good times as well as bad to raise business or
other taxes. (Increasing the tobacco tax, for instance, has failed
each of the past 14 times it has come up for a vote.)
Abetted by little local Limbaughs who inflame Republican brains, they
protest that the state already has the nation's highest taxes. In
fact, California ranks 18th among the states in percentage of personal
income paid to state government, and its presumably beleaguered
wealthiest 1 percent, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, pay just
7.4 percent of their income to the state while the poorest pay 10.2
percent.
But the myth of soak-the-rich high taxation persists among Republicans
so much so that the GOP front-runner to succeed Arnold
Schwarzenegger in next year's gubernatorial election, former eBay CEO
Meg Whitman, is calling for cuts in business tax rates, even though
the state is staring at a $24.3 billion deficit that it somehow has to
close. In short order, unless the federal government steps in with a
bridge loan, the state will throw 940,000 poor children off its
health-care rolls and lay off tens of thousands of teachers.
Because California is so much larger than any other state, and its
unemployment rate is among the nation's highest, the collapse of its
capacity to spend will counteract some of the effect of the federal
stimulus and retard the nation's recovery much as its aerospace
slump retarded the recovery of the mid-1990s. The Obama administration
ignores California's plight at its own and the nation's peril.
The nation's banks are stuck with so much bad paper from California
mortgages gone awry that a huge contraction in state spending would
make their assets even more toxic. In the short term, the only way to
avoid a further downturn may be a federal loan to the state.
A more permanent, homegrown solution to California's woes (and it may
take a state constitutional convention to get it) would require the
state to eliminate the two-thirds threshold for enacting taxes, to
repeal Proposition 13's freeze on the value of commercial properties
(some of which are still assessed at their 1978 levels) and to end the
process of ballot-box budgeting through the initiative process, which
is now more dominated by monied interests than the Legislature ever
was.
In Washington, the Age of Reagan may have shuddered to an inglorious
end, but we also need action from state governments and Sacramento
in particular to move us toward a more sustainable economic future.
Harold Meyerson is editor-at-large of American Prospect and the L.A.
Weekly. This article originally appeared in the Washington Post.
***
From: Sid Shniad
Genocide in Sri Lanka while Australia looks on
By Brian Senewiratne
Green Left Weekly: May, 2009
I am a Sinhalese from the majority community in Sri Lanka, not from the
brutalised Tamil community. I have campaigned for five decades for the right
of the Tamils to live with equality, dignity and safety in the country of
their birth.
I am releasing this statement as a concerned Australian (here for 32 years),
and as a member of the Socialist Alliance - one of the few non-Tamil
organisations to support the struggle of the Tamils for justice.
Last week the Sinhalese-dominated government of Sri Lanka succeeded in its
immediate aim of ending the armed resistance of the Tamil people, who live
in the north and east of the country.
The Sri Lankan government of president Mahendra Rajapaksa claims it has
triumphed in a "war on terrorism". What it has really been doing is fighting
the Tamil people to force them to accept Sri Lanka as a Sinhala-Buddhist
nation.
It is about the alliance between religious fundamentalists and state
chauvinists who together - with the backing of key Western countries - have
denied the Tamils their rights.
There had been progress on a negotiated settlement between the government
and the Tamil Tigers, and even discussion about a federal structure for Sri
Lanka. But Rajakapsa terminated the talks and resumed the fighting. Now the
world is witness to the dreadful consequences.
UN Conventions define genocide as "an act committed with intent to destroy
in whole, or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group". In Sri
Lanka, this "part" is the Tamils.
Sri Lanka's government is prepared to commit a genocide of the Tamils,
similar to Hitler's "final solution of the Jewish question".
It is a genocide when a war against more than 10% of the population over
three decades culminates in the death of 10,000 people in a few months,
about 100,000 in the past 32 years.
It is genocide when governments try to wipe out a people's political voice
and drive half a population into the diaspora.
Sri Lanka's Tamils are now facing genocide or internment in concentration
camps that masquerade as "refugee camps". The Tamil civilians were
supposedly "liberated" from the Tamil Tigers by the Sri Lankan army.
But if they are liberated people, why keep them behind barbed-wire fences,
and why are international observers, including the media and humanitarian
workers, still prevented from visiting these camps?
There are 154,000 Tamil civilians, some in tents, others under trees, in 24
camps, behind barbed-wire fences. The tents are for five people, but house
between seven and 21.
Living conditions are appalling, including deliberate starvation and the
denial of adequate medical help.
The women and girls are raped by the armed forces, pregnant women are forced
to abort and some are even sterilised. The Sri Lankan government would deny
all this.
Can foreign observers check these allegations? No they may not. It is an
"internal affair". We beg to differ.
Even hospitals have not been spared. The defence secretary, the president's
brother, in an interview with British media, said that bombing of hospitals
is "acceptable".
More than 6000 Tamil civilians have been slaughtered in just the past four
months.
Recently, the only obstetrician in the area was gunned down by the armed
forces. Why? Genocide.
Kfir jets, bombers, multi-barrel rocket launchers and helicopter gunships
have been used by the government. Along with a conventional arsenal, cluster
bombs and white phosphorus bombs have been dropped.
The government will, of course, deny this. But the photographic evidence,
including UN aerial photographs, recently leaked to the outside world, leave
no doubt that these banned weapons are being used.
In May 2008, Sri Lanka was tossed out of the UN Human Rights Council on
account of its outrageous human rights record. However, little or none of
this gets mentioned in the Australian media. Australians have a right to ask
why.
Indeed, in giving "aid" to the Rajapaksa government in the middle of its
killing spree against the Tamils, the Rudd government has been in political
solidarity with Rajapaka's military mission.
This is simply not acceptable, and damages the image of Australia. Australia
has failed to condemn a murderous regime and has failed to put sanctions on
Sri Lanka until the killing stops.
The Australian government and the Australian media have a serious case to
answer for their silence and indifference towards a horrendous genocide.
This must stop.
The Australian government has a duty not only to Tamil Australians, but to
all those with a conscience. They must make every effort to assist the
Tamils now.
This must include:
.Demanding that the Sri Lankan government be tried before the International
Criminal Court for war crimes.
.Pressuring the Rajapaksa government to allow Tamils the right to decide
where they live, including settling in Australia if they wish.
.Ending all aid and support to the Rajapaksa government while it continues
its genocidal policy against Sri Lanka's Tamil people.
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