It is being reported over at the Los Angeles Times website that the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce is going to endorse Governor Jerry Brown’s proposed budget, including his call for the largest tax increase in the history of this (or any state) — hammering voters for the next five years with higher income, sales and car taxes, and a reduction in the child tax credit.
The response from the greater political community to this "stunning" (I say sarcastically) move by the LA Chamber should be a collective yawn — it’s just not significant.
In 2009 when these very same "temporary taxes" on income, sales and cars were included as part of that year’s terrible budget deal, this very same Chamber of Commerce (and the State 
Chamber of Commerce as well) weighed in — supporting these broad, regressive taxes on the people of the state. Guess how much political impact the support of the Los Angeles Area Chamber had on the vote? By a nearly 2-1 margin, Californians who voted in the special election voted to defeat Proposition 1A and the two-year extension of these same taxes that Brown is proposing again.
It is unfortunate that in a time with high unemployment and businesses (large and small) struggling to make a go of it that a Chamber of Commerce that purports to be about helping businesses to start and to grow would embrace punitive taxes on the people of this state, rather than insist that state government live within its means.
One does wonder if the Los Angeles Chamber would be as gung-ho to embrace higher taxes if instead of pushing for taxes in income, sales, and cars — the taxes were industry specific and hit some of the businesses that make up the core of the leadership of the Chamber? I’m thinking probably not.
I would not look to this "event" down in Los Angeles to change the political dynamics in the State Capitol one bit. Republicans have heard the people vote (seven times in a row now) against higher taxes, and there is no interest in contorting the state through another special election so that the voters can make the same point, again. Democrats in the Capitol (and their public employee union bosses) should spend less time pushing for higher taxes and instead prepare to use their new found majority-vote budget authority to implement a no-new-taxes budget.
If I am an angry taxpayer in Los Angeles County, I am looking at the businesses represented on the Board of the LA Chamber, and figuring out whose products to boycott.