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Angelides, the Republican attack machine, and taxes: the real story

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You may have seen the Schwarzenegger commercials attacking his gubernatorial rival, Phil Angelides, for his plan to raise taxes.  Or seen the news stories reporting Schwarzenegger’s charge that Angelides “wants to raise your taxes by at least $18 billion.  He wants to tax virtually everyone, everywhere” (L.A. Times, August 24, 2006).

These attacks are the feverish product of Schwarzenegger’s consultants, the most senior of whom have been borrowed from Karl Rove to aid Schwarzenegger’s reelection campaign.  Like the infamous “Swift Boat” lies during the 2004 presidential campaign, they have virtually no basis in fact.  But like those well-financed myths, these much-repeated falsehoods have had their intended effect. 

As a result, many people believe Phil Angelides wants to tax them.  But unless the “them” is a corporation hiding money in tax loopholes, or the top 1 per cent of income earners—individuals who make $250,000 per year, or couples that make $500,000 per year—it isn’t true.  Those are the only tax increases Angelides has proposed (the same temporary increases that Republican Pete Wilson implemented in the early 1990s), and he has done so, responsibly, to support his proposals to expand public education and other necessary social services.  His progressive tax proposals would raise $5 billion, not $18 billion, and they wouldn’t affect you and me—unless you are richer than 99 per cent of the population. 

Recent studies show that the gap between the richest Americans and the rest of us has grown over the past decade to the biggest difference in more than 75 years.  The wealthiest one per cent of the population now holds nearly 35 per cent of the country’s assets. At the same time, Bush’s tax cuts for the rich have tilted the burden for supporting public services to you and me.

In other words, the superrich can well afford to help out with a little tax fairness.  In California alone, the top one percent of income earners has received more than $17 billion in tax breaks from the federal government in the last several years, thanks to G. W. Bush’s regressive tax policies. Angelides’ proposal would ask California’s richest to pony back just $3 billion of that windfall per year. 

Angelides has actually proposed a modest tax reduction for middle class and working families, as well as helping out with roll-backs of Schwarzenegger’s increased college fees—which, despite the governor’s pledge not to raise any taxes at all, are in fact disguised taxes on working people.  Angelides would also create a commission to make recommendations on how to close corporate tax loopholes such as the ones that allow 46 businesses with income over one billion dollars to hide profits in offshore accounts and pay no state taxes.

When you add up the numbers, between Angelides’ proposals to increase taxes on the rich and corporations ($5.1 billion) and his middle and working class tax cut proposals ($1.4 billion) the helping programs of the state—education, health care, and public safety—come up $3.7 billion ahead, without any harm to you and me.  So how has Schwarzenegger gotten away with his campaign of lies?

Most people simply don’t pay much attention to political news until shortly before election day.  But that doesn’t mean they remain unaffected by news cycles.

Well funded political campaigns can afford to repeat an idea over and over in the mass media until, like an advertising jingle, people are unconsciously humming it in their sleep.  The process works especially well when it takes an idea already resonant (“I don’t like taxes”) and wraps it with plausible sounding assertions (“he wants to tax you”) around a kernel of truth (Angelides is proposing taxes).  Never mind that a key piece of information (the tax proposals are only for the rich and corporations) is left out of the picture.  If you’re not paying close attention, details don’t matter.

Ernest Hemingway famously replied to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s observation that “The rich are different from you and me” with “Yes, they have more money.”  At this historical moment, we might add, “Way more—and it’s past time to share.”  Unlike our current governor, Phil Angelides will ask the very rich to do some fair sharing, so that educators (and health care providers, and police and firefighters) can do their jobs properly.  These ideas deserve our full attention.  And Angelides deserves our full support.

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