BuzzMachine

The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.

Arnold can run backwards, too

5 comments on Arnold can run backwards, too

Arnold can run backwards, too
: The only thing on Arnold’s soon-to-be campaign web site is a statement repudiating his advisor Warren Buffett’s criticism of Prop. 13, the Jarvis/Gann [no relation] initiative that limited California property taxes. Buffett is right: It was a mistake. It changed the state forever. It reduced the quality of education in California, which was once California’s greatest asset. It turned California into a state ruled by the voting mob rather than by representative democracy. It led to today’s recall anarchy.

But Arnold wants nothing to do with that.

5 responses to “Arnold can run backwards, too”

  1. Dann Avatar
    Dann

    Any government that is not constitutionally limited eventually becomes mob rule regardless of artificial tax limitations. The problem with California is those folks think they can vote gravity out of existence. Their thoughts on economics aren’t any better.
    Capping property taxes is good because it forces people to make choices.

  2. weimdog Avatar
    weimdog

    The problem isn’t Prop 13, the proplem is the spending of the drunken sailors in Sacramento.
    Over the last four years, even while the recession was suppressing tax receipts and the car tax was being trimmed, state revenues have still increased a healthy 25 percent while inflation and population combined have grown only 21 percent. This is not a revenue problem. The problem is that spending in the same period has ballooned 40 percent.
    And that

  3. Lileks Avatar
    Lileks

    Here in Minneapolis, on the hottest day of the year, the beaches shut down for the season. Cutbacks = no lifeguards.
    You could blame our property tax restrictions as well – taxes can only go up 8 percent per year. Eight percent increases. Annually.
    And that’s still not enough. It’s never enough.

  4. Dann Avatar
    Dann

    Precisely. We are never able to properly fund government whenever we start to believe that we can vote ourselves riches from the treasury at no net cost to ourselves.
    Whether it be farm subsidies, welfare, lifeguards, overseas advertising for large corporations, it is nothing more than an attempt to make one group wealthy at the expense of another.

  5. DK Avatar
    DK

    The one thing I can point to that devestated public education in this state IMHO, was the decision by Gov Moonbeam (30yrs ago) to allow collective bargaining for teachers – without the requirement that they forego tunure. With that one change in the law, the inmates were given the keys to the asylum. It was hard enough to fire incompetant teachers before when they had the protection of tenure, add in the union too and it became impossible. And, in the interim, we’ve flushed a generation of students down the crapper that the janitors refuse to keep clean or working. Is it any wonder that CA is experiencing a net out-migration? The tax-payers are bailing and leaving the state to the tax-takers. You wonder who eventually will be around to pay the bill?

  6. IBM service adventure | ARTS & FARCES internet

    […] “mushy.” Last week it started dropping mouseclicks intermittently. After following the amazing adventure Jeff Jarvis had with Dell, I was somewhat apprehensive about dancing with IBM, especially post Lenovo […]

  7. GNC-2005-07-01 #78 – Geek News Central

    […] Subscribed to Podcast! Apple iTunes RSS Podcasters Not Happy! 4th of July Deep Impact on Video Go ahead piss a Blogger off with poor Customer Service VC Money coming to RSS Scoble’s Secret! MovableType 3.2 Coming Soon Higher Speed Broadband […]