Brown attacks those in need

A WASHED-UP Republican movie star is replaced by a Democratic governor who proposes a budget-cutting program at least as harsh as his right-wing predecessor. He gains a reputation as a fiscal conservative and is applauded by the right wing--while those hoping for progressive change are sorely disappointed.

The year was 1975, and the aging movie star was a man named Ronald Reagan, who had just been replaced by a Democrat named Jerry Brown.

Karl Marx's famous quip that history repeats itself "first as tragedy, then as farce" has never seemed more prescient than in California today, as the same Jerry Brown, 36 years later, has replaced Arnold Schwarzenegger in the governor's mansion, and is moving to implement on austerity on an even more catastrophic scale.

In his previous tenure as governor, Brown managed to be more conservative than Ronald Reagan when judged on spending levels. Whereas Reagan actually boosted spending an average of 12.2 percent a year, Brown cut the increase to 4.6 percent in his first year--less than the rate of inflation, thus effectively imposing cuts on California.

Although Brown was initially opposed to Proposition 13--the 1978 measure that capped property taxes and required a two-thirds vote to raise taxes or adopt a state budget--after it passed, he spearheaded its implementation, declared himself a "born-again tax cutter" and won the praise and votes of the Republicans who sponsored the act.

Polls showed that by the end of his term, most Californians actually believed Brown had supported Prop 13. This fervent commitment to cutting taxes paid off for him in his re-election when he managed to carry Orange County, the state's bastion of wealthy Republicanism.

Brown's economic policies have been to the right of even mainstream American politics. During his 1980 presidential campaign, he called for a constitutional convention to support a balanced budget amendment.

Later, during his 1992 presidential campaign, he went so far as to call for and support the institution of a flat income tax and flat sales tax--one which forces poor people barely getting by to pay the same percentage of their income as billionaires, an idea which is considered beyond the pale by even most of today's Republicans.

Brown's more recent reign as mayor of Oakland is well described by a glowing review he received from American Conservative magazine:

As mayor, Brown allied himself with cops and developers. He shooed away citizens who fretted that a new condo would disturb some ducks, aggravated labor activists by courting investment from The Gap, allowed the Marines to conduct urban-warfare training maneuvers in the city, and pushed through public funding for the Oakland Military Institute, a prep school for members of the California Cadet Corps.

Finally, as attorney general, he buried one of his few redeeming features, opposition to the death penalty, and pushed for the resumption of executions in California. Ending the death penalty in California, a solution conspicuously absent from budget discussions in Sacramento, could easily save the state as much as $1 billion over five years.

It should be clear from this that working-class Californians don't have a friend in the governor, and that Jerry Brown's résumé as an "ally of cops and developers" places him front and center as an opponent of California's working class--a reputation that has reinforced by spearheading the latest round of austerity measures.

WHILE BUDGET cuts have been an aspect of life for all Californians who suffered through Schwarzenegger's tenure, the new assault by Brown will mean nothing less than devastation for working-class people and cut off lifelines for the most vulnerable. The proposal includes:

-- $1.4 billion in cuts from higher education, including $500 million each from the University of California and California State University systems and $400 million from the community college system. The result will be slashed services, slashed wages for workers and the acceleration of the privatization of education.

$1.7 billion from Medi-Cal, including vastly increased co-pays that will drive poor Californians to put off medical care to the last minute or not seek medical care at all.

$1.5 billion from California's welfare-to-work program, a massive attack on one of the few programs to provide work and help to the unemployed. As the real level of unemployment in California reaches over 20 percent, this will be a devastating blow to the state's poor.

$750 million in cuts to child care, eliminating services for 11- and 12-year-olds and decreasing eligibility from 75 percent to 60 percent of median income. In a state where the median family income of $56,000 is already considered less than what's needed to get by, the costs of the crisis will be pushed on to families already struggling to raise their children.

$580 million from state operations and employee compensation, and a new round of pay cuts for workers who already suffered through furloughs and cuts the last few years. Expect continued assaults on state workers' pension funds.

$200 million in cuts to the court system. People arrested who don't have the money to make bail should expect to spend months, if not years, awaiting trial.

Although K-12 education is being left as is in the current proposal, Brown's budget will take $1 billion in funds from Prop 10, which helps fund children's programs and prepares younger kids to be able to go to school.

Slashing almost all state funding for libraries.

An end to housing aid for those transitioning out of foster care.

Many of the most devastating cuts however are going to be directed toward the mentally and physically disabled--in other words, those less able to fight back against an unprecedented assault on services that are already insufficient. These include:

-- Supplemental Security Income, which provides benefits for those affected by disabilities or mental illness, will be cut to the bare minimum of $830 a month.

An 8.4 percent reduction in the hours that in-home supportive services workers care for elderly and disabled residents.

$750 million in cuts to regional centers overseeing care to the developmentally disabled.

$861 million will be "borrowed," which is to say stolen, from funding set aside by voters for mental health services.

THE ONLY taxes Jerry Brown is considering putting through are regressive taxes on the working class. Brown is pushing for an extension of increases in the sales tax and vehicle registration fees, both of which will disproportionately affect poor and working-class Californians.

These tax hikes were the same ones presented by Schwarzenegger as ballot measures in 2009 and rejected as the regressive taxes they were. Interestingly enough, and quite revealing about California politics, one of the biggest donors behind the 2009 initiative were California oil corporations hoping to avoid any of the taxes they'd face to in every other state, including and especially Alaska.

California is currently the third-largest oil producer in the U.S., yet it is the only major oil-producing state to give companies like Chevron a free ride. A mere 6 percent tax on oil extraction could raise $1 billion; if the tax were the same as Alaska's, 25 percent, that would be more than $4 billion.

Since all oil companies are doing is essentially pumping money out of California and into their profit margins, it wouldn't be unreasonable to demand a much higher rate of 50 percent or even full control of California's own oil resources--something which would more than cover the cost of the cuts being proposed this year.

Yet even the subject of taxing oil in California leaves out the most obvious solution to the problem and the one that any working-class citizen should demand--taxing the rich.

According to the California Labor Federation, the state gives away more than $50 billion in tax waivers and loopholes for the rich and corporations. The four richest Californians alone have a net worth of $69 billion, more than three times the budget deficit.

In fact, the combined wealth of only those billionaires wealthy enough to make the Forbes 400 list in 2010 is $250.9 billion, 10 percent of which would provide enough to close the deficit and even expand services without a single budget cut or tax on the working class.

And it's not like the wealthy have been hurting over the past year. Not long ago, Merrill Lynch unveiled its World Wealth Report, which charts the finances of the world's super-rich. This year, the wealth of those with over $1 million in liquid assets grew by 18 percent, with the numbers even higher among those in wealthier brackets.

This is all wealth that has overwhelmingly come from stock market speculation and the dividends that the super-wealthy received from the bank bailouts financed by the country's poor and working class.

Yet taking back even a slice of this wealth won't be on the table under California's Democratic Gov. Brown and the overwhelmingly Democratic legislature. Instead, workers, students, the unemployed, families and the mentally disabled have become the target of some of the most vicious budget-cutting in California history.

The necessity of building mass resistance independent of the Democratic Party is about to become not only an urgent political need, but for Californians about to be thrown off aid, cut off from services and left stranded without help, it will become a prerequisite to survival.