Ahnold’s Screwy Financial Scheme

Posted on March 2, 2004 in California Watch

It’s politics Tuesday! Vote no on Proposition 57!

This is why I am voting “No” on Proposition 57: The state is in debt. Heavy debt. The reason for this is that back in the 70s we passed this disaster called Proposition 13. (I voted against it.) Proposition 13 allows people to squat on land that they bought while those of us who bought homes since then bear the property tax load. At the same time, we’ve crippled our state legislature’s ability to fix that by requiring a 2/3rds vote on tax increases. Given the clout of corporate lobbyists, when an increase is passed, it falls on the back of YOU, the wage-earner.

What Ahnold wants you to do is fix the debt crisis by going into more debt. He wants you to distribute notes to banks and others wealthy enough to own the bonds. You get to pay off the interest and the full weight of the debt. The interest from the last debt we took on doesn’t go away: it’s included in the bond issue. Heaven help that a bond-holder should not get his interest!

This is the same kind of banking strategy that has gotten the Third World into major trouble. Think of this: in fifty years, the average man, woman, or child in the Third World will owe the banks $3.5 million in back interest payments, money that wasn’t used to upgrade their cost of living.

Ahnold wants to make California into a Third World debtor nation.

If you’re a heartless single or heartlessly childless, I guess you see no problem with this. But if you have half a conscience or simply want to leave the world better than you found it for your children, you must vote Proposition 57 down.

I’m voting “no” on , I am rejecting, I am terminating the madness implicit in Proposition 57, Schwartzenegger’s “refinancing bond”. This will do nothing to eliminate our debt. We will be in deficit all over again, though it won’t appear like that on paper for a few years. I may vote for Proposition 58, but I will not vote to put a mortgage on future residents of this state.

I am voting for Proposition 56. It is time that we paid for what we use here in the state. This means higher taxes, preferably on the higher income brackets and the people who have been squatting on real estate appraised at 1970 values and making the rest of us suffer for the stupidity of Proposition 13.

If you don’t think this debt belongs on your shoulders, then you should press for change in our financial institutions. You should vote for Reform, not for the Libertine Republicans who are turning our state into a Third World debtor nation.

If Ahnold wants to face the deficit crisis realistically, he has one of two choices: first, pay off the debt by raising taxes on those who can afford them. Second, ask his rich banking buddies who are pressing him to take on this paper to forgive the loan.

Go ahead, Ahnold. Terminate the Debt. Don’t stretch it out into one sequel after another.