Last month in the Napa Valley, I had a chance to meet a lot of interesting people while participating as a panelist at a California Chamber of Commerce post-primary retreat. One of those people was Democrat operative Darry Sragow. I found him to be quite interesting. A bit more subdued than I thought he would be – at least as he came across at this event. Then again, given that his audience was mostly Republicans…
I bring up Sragow because he is apparently gifted with the ability to understate the obvious. Today in the Sacramento Bee is a story entitled, "Campaign 2006: For Angelides, the path ahead is mostly uphill," in which Sragow is quoted:
No kidding.
Phil Angelides couldn’t get elected to head up his own family right now at a reunion — he’s probably got a plan to tax travel to family reunions. That’s a little tongue-and-cheek but it goes to the unenviable position in which Mr. Angelides finds himself. He is not just liberal, he is ultra-liberal. He is not just ultra-liberal, he is very unabashed and forthright with his ultra-liberal agenda.
And what is this agenda? Simply put, Phil Angelides has declared a full-scale war on liberty and freedom. America is a country like no other. No other country on the planet places the kind of value that we do on the individual liberties and freedoms of our citizens. In the public policy arena, the enemy of liberty and freedom is based on how much of your paycheck do YOU get to keep to take care of your needs and those of your family, versus how much is sent to the government in taxes. Phil Angelides believes that Californian’s enjoy too much freedom, that they have more liberty than they should.
The sad reality is that if you look back over a few decades, we can see where more and more of a family’s income is going to the government. It is virtually impossible these days to have single-income families, with a parent able to stay home full time with young children. I know that this made a difference for me – my mom being able to spend time with me during some key growing-up years. Anyways, Phil Angelides wants to make it even harder. Whether it is his direct proposals to increase the income tax, or the myriad of other tax-increase proposals that ultimately will be paid by working families as the costs of these taxes ultimately are passed along to consumers.
Governor Schwarzenegger has made it clear that he opposes ANY new taxes or fees on Californians. This is a strong contrast to Angelides, and alone makes him worthy of your vote over the Democrat tax-o-holic. Of course, we are hopeful that the Governor will actually propose tax CUTS. But I don’t think the liberal Democrats who control the legislature are about to suddenly decide that Californians know how to spend their money better than the government.
Of course, as I told a friend of mine the other day, Angelides has been so aggressive in proposing tax-increase after tax-increase that he has made is easy for the Schwarzenegger for Governor campaign to point out the clear contrast between the two candidates. I don’t think that there is any public-policy area in which Angelides hasn’t talked about increasing taxes on somebody to do something.
I jokingly told my friend — when Phil Angelides next comes out of a restroom, Matt David from Californian’s for Schwarzenegger will be outside waiting for him. Not only will he have a list of ten tax increases proposed by Angelides with a nexus to having to use the bathroom (along with a bunch of quotes going back 20 years where Angelides spoke out against various aspects of businesses that make everything from sinks and urinals to hand-air-dryers and soap) but he’ll probably have a representative on hand from the toilet paper industry to talk to the press about how Angelides wants to drive thousands of jobs out of the state.
I poke fun at Angelides and his tax increase proposals, but in all seriousness, this is the nominee of the political party in the state with the plurality of voters in California. Not only is the nomination of Angelides the best thing that could have happenned in terms of re-electing Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he will cause hundreds of thousands of Democrats to reevaluate whether the Democrat Party, as a tax-tax-tax Party, is right for them.
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There are lot of other choice articles and columns featured on the main page today, so check out all of the day’s news in California politics here. My favorite is LA Times’ columnist George Skelton’s piece on a piece of legislation co-sponsored by freaky-liberal Assemblyman Mark Leno of San Francisco (yes, this is the guy who as a Supervisor helped to put San Francisco in the business of paying for the sex-change operations of city employees) and Assemblyman Chuck DeVore of Orange County (who is somewhere to the right of Attila The Hun) — the legislation being to decriminalize the growing of hemp in California! It’s an interesting read!
Have a great day!
Jon
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