Democratic Assembly candidate Melissa Fox wants to raise your taxes!

Democratic Assembly candidate Melissa Fox is sending out a campaign mailer that insinuates that the problem with schools in her district, which is largely made up of the City of Irvine, is spending.

Well, let’s see.  I looked up the Irvine Unified School District’s budget for 2009.  It comes to a whopping $214 million dollars.  They have over 26,000 students, according to their website.

Contrast that with the Santa Ana Unified School District’s 2009 budget, which comes to $474.3 million.  The SAUSD has 54,084 students.

So the SAUSD has twice the students that the IUSD has, and they spend more per capita than IUSD does.  But which district has better results?  So is it the money, really?  I don’t think so.

The fact is, the State of California is broke.  Democrats say we need to raise our taxes to compensate.  I say no.  Liberarians have the right ideas when it comes to fixing our budget crisis.  The answer isn’t to tax us more, instead, we need to:

  • Solve our public employee pension crisis.  If you ask me, public employees should not be able to unionize in the first place.  But if they are going to unionize, they have no business retiring at fifty.  Nor should we the taxpayers have to fill up their pension accounts when their pension boards blow the money on stupid investments and outright graft.
  • Reform Three Strikes.  Only violent felonies should count as strikes.
  • Get rid of the Death Penalty.  No one dies anyway and we waste millions in court over this.  Just put them in jail for life and be done with it.
  • Go to a part time State Legislature.
  • Get rid of half the Legislative staff, at least.
  • No more car allowances for Legislators or their staff.
  • Cut Legislators’ salaries to no more than twice what the state average per capita income comes to.
  • Decriminalize all illegal drugs.
  • Legalize all forms of gambling.
  • Dump all high speed rail projects.
  • Get rid of public redevelopment agencies and take away their funds.
  • Cancel all state funding for DUI checkpoints.

That ought to free up some money.  Then we need to lower taxes and impose a spending limit on our Legislature. 

This June, tell Fox and her fellow tax-raisers to take a hike.  If you are a Democrat in the 70th Assembly District, vote for Mike Glover, a Veteran who previously served in the Kansas State Legislature.  Unlike Fox, he is a Democrat who leans Libertarian.  He is a true progressive while she is nothing more than an Agran clone.

The problem isn’t a lack of money.  It is brain dead politicians and public administrators who don’t know how to spend our tax money wisely.


About Art Pedroza