Prop 63 Cash Grab

California has yet another proposition this year - in this case, Prop 63 is to add a tax to take care of the mentally ill. The kicker is that this tax will only be paid by residents who earn more than $1 million. While this is likely to be popular with those who earn less than $1 million, it sets kind of a bad precident. Given that other propositions have limited how much of the tax revenue can be spent on things like Education, etc so everything else has to fight for the scraps, this is a way of doing an end run around all this. Jeff Nolan thinks that this is bad news but is voting for it anyway!

California is stuck in a time warp where we can continue to tax an increasingly smaller group of taxpayers for the greater bulk of state funding, and spend like a drunken sailor on shore leave. It's a slow train wreck and until the train fully derails and burns, the citizens of the State will not be forced to come to realize the full reality of how fucked up our fiscal structure is. We far outspend our revenues and borrow from the Street to make up for operational funding requirements, rather than cut spending. Every ballot features new bond measures, and now a voter inflicted tax on a group who can't muster opposition strength. It's cynical and disasterous at the same time. So I figure I should just vote for this measure and do what I can to speed up the train wreck.

Awesome!