Capitol Ideas/California Calamity

...Macaulay added: "The effects of a change from good government to bad government are not fully felt for some time after the change has taken place...

...In conformity with the dishonest budget-reporting practices that are now standard journalistic practice nationwide, the spending increases that accompany Wilson's tax increases have been referred to as spending cuts...

...With the new tax increases, said McClintock, "Pete Wilson is forcing the average California family to cut its budget by $1,000 so that he can increase the state's general fund budget by eleven percent...

...strict rent-control ("vacancy control") has also been enacted in San Francisco, although a petition drive may overturn it...

...Further evidence of bad governmentcould take pages to list: Wilson has created an environmental protection agency...

...Socialism may have collapsed in Eastern Europe, but its animating emotions are alive and well in California...

...It is an attitude that has persisted for twenty-five years or more in the U.S...

...Wilson not only recruited a better known moderate Republican," Willis wrote, "but he delivered a well-financed and thoroughly professional campaign management team" to the candidate—who was once chief of staff to Democratic governor Jerry Brown...

...no doubt also for California...

...See box for a list of the renegade Republicans.] One state assemblyman who did not go along with Wilson was 34-year-old Tom McClintock from Thousand Oaks, an outspoken critic of pusillanimous Republicanism—one of the few remaining in the state, apparently...

...Navy announced it was leaving Hunters Point shipyard, Art Agnos, the left-wing mayor of San Francisco, announced: "Whoever tries to buy it is going to have a hell of a time with the permit process, if it ain't me" (meaning the city...

...Assemblyman Richard Floyd, D-Hawthorne, drew guffaws on the floor when he said: 'They're going to take all those yachts from Newport Harbor and move them to Tonopah, Nevada.'" (Laffer now predicts an "unpleasant surprise" for California...

...Total state spending today is $55 billion (it was about $5 billion when Ronald Reagan was governor...

...Pete Wilson completely misrepresented his intentions and himself to the people of California in 1990," McClintock told me...

...San Francisco enacted a "domestic partners" law which is intended to saddle city government with the costs of some homosexual disease...

...Surprised foe—and this was Cannon-baloney...

...Wilson held out for changes in the workers' compensation law, which permits malingerers to recover "psychic damages" caused by "stress...

...But Wilson, who represents the constituency of government (the redistributing classes), aligned himself with the Democrats in the legislature, all of whom except one were willing to raise taxes...

...Formerly the mayor of San Diego and junior senator from California, Wilson was elected governor in 1990, narrowly defeating Dianne Feinstein, the former mayor of San Francisco...

...Since George Deukmejian took of-lice, the California budget has doubled (the population increased by about 5million in the same period, to 30 million today...

...Several weeks later, in his column, Cannon himself was one delighted liberal who praised Wilson for his "courage" in raising 10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1991 taxes "to provide constituents with the basic services to which they are entitled...

...There hasbeen no news media howling about budget cutbacks hurting the poor, and, when that dog doesn't bark, nothing much has changed...

...This is the lot that has fallen to the Republican party, which for decades has been totally inadequate to the role...

...But they are not...

...gives tremendous encouragement to the parasite hordes, who are awarded voting rights, entitlements, victim status, accusation privileges, state-subsidized lawyers, cash transfers, health benefits, and, perhaps most important of all, unofficial "representation" by a news media ready to set up a concerted howl of indignation should any of these benefits be reduced in the slightest degree...

...Similar ads have been taken out by chambers of commerce in Utah and Idaho...

...It had been a "mean feat" for the governor to persuade nine Republicans to vote for massive tax increases, he noted, adding: "I think the reputation of the governor has been enhanced...

...In general, political reporting in California is every bit as tendentious as these quotes suggest...

...The district is so solidly Republican that no Democrat entered the race...

...There was an interesting colloquy in June...

...Kershner failed to explain why something that annoys "everybody" should be construed as a political victory, and he failed to note that Republicans had been arm-twisted, not Democrats...

...In newsrooms across the state, but especially in the major papers, expansion of state power is regarded as an unqualified good...

...As a result, politics as currently practiced in the U.S...

...In May he contributed a Style section profile of Wilson which was a notable addition to the "Friend and Foe Alike" genre...

...Now they tell us...

...The overarching problem, to which Pete Wilson is a mere footnote, is that we live at a time when the idle and unproductive are regarded as morally superior to the productive, and as having the right to live at the expense of the productive...

...People are discovering the best THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1991 11...

...San Francisco's freeways have not been repaired since the 1989 earthquake, and when the U.S...

...Stories in the genre dishonestly pretend that both sides are equally surprised, but fail to note that conservatives get the unpleasant surprise...

...In the 'Tahoe area you only have to move a few blocks to escape Wilson's levies, and I'm told that ex-California business is already booming in Nevada...

...he is expected to sign a law adding homosexuals to the list of protected minorities...

...Pete Wilson, the state has definitely entered the era of bad government...

...papers and magazines for the first time, will encourage timid publishers to knock on the doors of their editorial ivory sowers and ask what the hell is goingplace to do business in California," proclaims the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada: "Western Nevada...

...If you're thinking of moving west, keep Nevada in mind...

...Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, San Francisco Democrat and clothes-horse, has been suitably appreciative of Pete Wilson...

...The Laffer Curve was mentioned in the Assembly, and Republicans were said to be resisting an income tax increase on the grounds that it might drive businesses out of the state...

...At present, malingerers and their lawyers can strike gold by claiming that 10 percent of such "stress" is job-related...

...a five-year suspension was all they gave him...

...In 1991, it is still accepted without argument that the educated classes should act as the selfless Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent and a fellow at the Hoover Institution advocates of the unproductive...

...Jerry Roberts and Robert Gunnison of the San Francisco Chronicle echoed the Friend-and-Foe theme when they wrote that the budget "represents a chance for Wilson to establish himself politically as an effective and independent chief executive who stood up to both parties in a crisis...

...George Skelton of the Los Angeles Times Sacramento bureau noted the "irony" that in June the Republican governor was finding it difficult to get Republicans to vote for a tax increase, when he might more logically have noted the irony that the governor was trying to get the Republicans to adopt the Democrats' position, rather than vice versa...

...But the leading Republican candidate was an anti-abortion activist who had also supported a resolution, passed this year by a conservative Republican group, urging Wilson to re-register as a Democrat...

...Ilvo months later, Vlae Kershner of the Chronicle Sacramento bureau wrote that Wilson had scored a "major political victory" when he "arm-twisted a reluctant Assembly into passing a budget that almost every person in the state is going to dislike...

...As a result, the Republican leadership has long been unable to stand up to the well-organized envy and greed (desiring the property of others) of the unproductive, and their political representatives...

...Wilson, incidentally, is pro-abortion and doesn't even pretend to agonize about it, Cuomo-style...

...As governor, however, Wilson has pursued a strategy of undisguised collaboration with Democrats, forming a coalition with them against his own party...

...I am indebted to Steve Hayward of the Claremont Institute for pointing out the ads that were beginning to appear in California magazines even before Wilson's massive tax increase became law...

...It will be interesting to see if the change in the law that not only raises the state sales tax but makes the whole tax applicable to news...

...But he was plainly so eager to raise taxes that the Democrats knew all they had to do was sit tight and Wilson would meet them nine-tenths of the way...

...and it shows no signs of abating...

...Such stories note with mock amazement that their subject has done something truly surprising—he has "surprised friend and foe alike...

...Democrats dispute that contention, sometimes sarcastically," Kershner wrote in the Chronicle...

...One Assembly seat was vacated this year when the incumbent was elected to the state senate...

...Workers'-comp lawyers funnel some of their winnings back into Sacramento fundraisers, so that the state legislature is "corrupted" by the system, as Wilson put it...

...One might assume that a Republican governor in such a situation would cut spending and that Democrats (deferring to their vocal constituents within the recipient classes) would raise taxes...

...liquor and vehicle taxes were increased, and the top income tax rate was increased to 11 percent (from 9.3 percent...

...It costs California businesses $10 billion a year...

...In his campaign, McClintock said, Wilson boasted that he was the only politician in the state who had balanced budgets without raising taxes, and he said of Dianne Feinstein: "She's a taxer-andspender, and I'm not...

...Wilson then exerted pressure on a sufficient number of Republicans to pass the largest tax increase in the state's history, with the two-thirds majority that the state constitution requires for budget matters...

...Lou Cannon, whose slanted reporting for the Washington Post was a feature of the Reagan years, is ecstatic about Wilson...

...Representing the interests of the productive appears to carry with it a disabling stigma in our time...

...It's the same old THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1991 9 business of trimming back a planned massive increase and calling it a cut...

...Wilson enjoyed reluctant conservative support, mainly because it was feared that (as in 1980) victorious Democrats would gerrymander redistricting, once again giving them many additional congressional seats...

...The "cuts," Daniel Weintraub of the Los Angeles Times belatedly recognized, "are reductions from projected spending [increases...

...Jim Florio...

...In California, the change cannot be pinpointed, but with the election of Gov...

...He noted that Wilson "can and will use reapportionment as a stronger weapon against conservatives than anything Democrats would attempt...

...FT he tax increases are comparable in 1 size to those enacted in New Jersey last year by Gov...

...Wilson tried to get this increased to 50 percent, but failed...

...We are now seeing the real Wilson, who is further to the left than most mainstream Democrats...

...California's decline, when it becomes conspicuous, will be attributable to the same cause...

...Cannon misleadingly claimed that Wilson had "proved iconoclastic" on taxes (surprised friend), but was "not delighting liberals, either...

...Wilson wanted an elimination of cost-of-living adjustments on many programs...

...In his second term, Deukmejian seemed to abandon resistance to the expansionist tendency of state government...

...This has also been the opinion of most local journalists, who have been touting Wilson as a presidential candidate in 1996...

...All this might not matter too much if the productive were themselves effectively represented in the political arena...

...Liberals who betray their friends are vilified as sellouts, not praised as friend-and-foe surprisers...

...He did get a 4.4 percent reduction in some welfare payments (instead of the 8.8 percent he sought), but the welfare rolls in the state have been exploding, and no doubt the reduction will not make any difference...

...By this spring it had become clear that the budget deficit was mounting to $12 billion or more...

...This begged the question of why a governor is expected to stand up to his own party, and how Wilson was standing up to the Democrats...

...A nominal Republican, Wilson has turned out to be a disaster—certainly a disaster for conservatives...

...Wilson has proved to be far more liberal—or at least more accommodating of liberals—than all but his most adamant conservative detractors had imagined," wrote Doug Willis, who has covered California politics for the Associated Press for more than two decades...

...Sales taxes were raised by 1.25 cents by Tom Bethell (now 8.25 percent in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego counties...