Crazy Arnie: Everything must go! Update: Reason says, “Hasta la vista, baby”

posted at 10:55 am on May 14, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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California voters have an opportunity to tell lawmakers to stop hiking their taxes and start getting serious about budget reductions in the face of a $23 billion deficit in an upcoming special election — and the power elite is getting mighty nervous.  Andrew Malcolm highlights the latest scare tactic to come out of Sacramento: the fire sale of state properties like San Quentin’s prison and the Los Angeles Colisseum as a means to gin up enough money to keep Sacramento spending.  They’re certainly picking one hell of a time to get into real estate speculation:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to sell the Los Angeles Coliseum, San Quentin State Prison, the Orange County Fairgrounds and other state property to raise cash amid the state’s growing fiscal crisis, according to a copy of a proposal reviewed by The Times.

Sale of the properties, to be included in the governor’s revised budget plan on Thursday, would raise between $600 million and $1 billion, although it would not provide relief to state coffers for two to five years, according to the proposal.

Er, what?  A billion dollars, tops?  In five years?  Come on, Governor — throw in some state parks!  How about the Golden Gate Bridge?  I understand some people made a lot of money reselling that over the years, too.

Andrew scoffs at the notion:

Everything must go. Sky also falling. …

But leaked word of the suggestion is priceless political publicity in terms of dramatizing the state’s pathetic financial situation and — gee, do you suspect? — attempting to sway popular opinion to vote in favor of the governor’s upcoming budget proposition.

The governor’s budget proposition is — how shall we put it? — currently also operating in a deficit position in terms of recent polling support among voters who would be imposing the new taxes on themselves. Always an easy sell.

Or perhaps not.  Brian Faughnan pointed out this Rasmussen poll of Californians, who don’t appear to be buying the Golden Gate Bridge or Arnie’s schtick:

Californians will vote next Tuesday on a series of budget-related propositions, and one thing is clear from new Rasmussen Reports telephone polling in the state: Voters aren’t in the mood for tax increases to ease California’s budget woes.

Seventy-three percent (73%) of California voters oppose raising state income taxes to eliminate the budget deficit. Raising the state sales tax is opposed by 69%.

At the same time, 69% favor major cuts in government spending to eliminate the budget deficit. Just 16% oppose the spending cuts.

That’s bold-print, 36-point headline fodder.  The last time 73% of Californians agreed on anything, it was that gold looked pretty good to them.  The last time 73% supported tax cuts, they meant from the Mexican government.  One of the bastions of liberalism just became a supply-sider state, thanks to the absurd spending spree in which Sacramento has indulged itself for the last few decades.

Maybe the only things that have to go are Crazy Arnie and the state legislature.

Update: Reason TV says, “Hasta la vista … baby!”

My friend Nick Gillespie does a great job in narrating this deconstruction of the Governator. Be sure to watch it all the way through, and then visit Reason for intelligent libertarianism.

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