Washington Post ^ | April 22, 2012 | Jennifer Rubin
In a must-read Wall Street Journal interview with Joel Kotkin, the demographer explains the disastrous economic policies that have caused almost more 4 million people to leave the state than have arrived from other states. He explains:
“The new regime” — his name for progressive apparatchiks who run California’s government — ”wants to destroy the essential reason why people move to California in order to protect their own lifestyles.”
Housing is merely one front of what he calls the “progressive war on the middle class.” Another is the cap-and-trade law AB32, which will raise the cost of energy and drive out manufacturing jobs without making even a dent in global carbon emissions. Then there are the renewable portfolio standards, which mandate that a third of the state’s energy come from renewable sources like wind and the sun by 2020. California’s electricity prices are already 50% higher than the national average.
Oh, and don’t forget the $100 billion bullet train. Mr. Kotkin calls the runaway-cost train “classic California.” “Where [Brown] with the state going bankrupt is even thinking about an expenditure like this is beyond comprehension. When the schools are falling apart, when the roads are falling apart, the bridges are unsafe, the state economy is in free fall. We’re still doing much worse than the rest of the country, we’ve got this growing permanent welfare class, and high-speed rail is going to solve this?”
Sound familiar? This is Obamanomics. Kotkin also points to the hyper-progressive tax code, on top of which the governor wants to add a millionaire’s tax (actually on those making more than $250,000): “It’s really going to hit the small business owners and the young family that’s trying to accumulate enough to raise family, maybe send their kids ... ...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
