Arnold: never saw a tax break for the wealthy he didn't like!

OK, as Michael pointed out, California is partly in a crisis of its own making. We loves our low property taxesses, don'ts we, my preciousss? So that's off the table. Then there's all those ballot initiatives which locked up money for this project and that requirement. And we keep having more. We could raise state income taxes, but our job market is already crummy and that might make things worse. So there are very few options left.

However, there are options and there are options.

Which ones do you think Arnold likes?

1. Cut caretakers' payments from $10 to $6.75 an hour
2. Eliminate "enterprize zone" tax breaks for hotels in downtown areas
3. Remove the tax credit for elderly renters who earn more than $13,000 a year
   
4. Get rid of the tax credit for million-dollar vacation homes

If you guessed numbers 1 and 3, you're right! Never mind that the vacation home tax credit costs the state far more than the renters credit.

Kevin Drum points out:

...What strikes me as perverse is that all these stories about the GCBD (which are legion in California papers) overlook the biggest elephant in the room: the fact that Schwarzenegger actively created a huge part of the budget crisis himself. Just as George Bush seems to hope that tax cuts will create an artificial crisis atmosphere that allows him pursue pet projects like Social Security privatization, Schwarzenegger campaigned on a pledge to cut the auto license fee. This slashed $3-4 billion in revenue, an amount that would go a very long way toward eliminating California's problem. Like Bush, Schwarzenegger seems to actively like the idea of cutting taxes in order to create an ongoing crisis that provides him with a pretext to pursue his real agenda.

I guess he's making his own real-life disaster movie. Watch California self-destruct in slow motion! Wheeee!

And Jello Biafra thought Jerry Brown was a problem?