Friday, October 23, 2009

Joseph A. Palermo: Who Wants to Be Governor of the Failed State of California?


Joseph A. Palermo: Who Wants to Be Governor of the Failed State of California?:

"One Republican candidate who wants to be California's next governor is Steve Poizner, whose economic prescriptions for healing the state's fiscal maladies are like a quack doctor who 'bleeds' his patient by attaching leeches. Poizner's PR people came up with a catchy '10-10-10' slogan. He throws up three arbitrary numbers to brand his economic 'plan' that only someone who has either fallen off a turnip truck or has been in a coma for the past thirty years could believe has any chance of 'success.'

Poizner claims he can cut taxes, reduce the state budget across the board by 10 percent (an idea that even Governor Ronald Reagan abandoned forty-two years ago), squeeze out $3.85 billion over two years by cracking down on government 'waste' (as if that hasn't been tried already), while at the same time putting away $10 billion for a 'rainy-day fund.' How he'll manage this feat is by taking another swat at failed 'supply-side' economics. Poizner claims, as Arthur Laffer and Jude Wanniski et al. did in the early 1980s, that tax cuts for the richest, most undeserving people in California will create more revenue for the state's coffers instead of exacerbating an already devastating structural budget deficit. It's magic!"