This week, readers of the Sacramento Bee are being “treated” to a series of editorials where, on a day by day basis, the editorial board fixes its sights on yet another “interest group” that is playing a role in the politics surrounding the state budget crisis. Their format seems to be similar – brief praise for their target, acknowledging a legitimate role for that group, and then blasting away at the group in question. I would summarize it this way – the members of the Bee editorial board clearly feel that the solution to the overspending crisis is some sort of mega-compromise where some of the increases in spending of the last few years are cut, and (I know you will be shocked) they want taxes to go up on Californians. So they have decided to heap criticism on anyone and everyone, right or left, who opposes this scheme.
Next they turned their sites on the California Teachers Association, criticizing them for doing what unions do, which is prioritize the pay and benefits of their members at all costs. Go figure.
Yesterday they decided to give an expository spanking to the state’s preeminent taxpayer advocacy and protection organization, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, in an editorial they titled: Anti-taxers chart course to disaster.
It was this pile of literary garbage that finally caused me to pen something critical of the Bee’s Editorial Board.
Just from reading the piece you can feel the years of pent up angst and frustration of the editorial board members at the major and effective role that HJTA has been playing in the state. In the piece they blast the accomplishments the organization made in advocating against higher taxes (a core mission of the group) — referring to HJTA as “guns for hire” – and haranguing them for their support of Propositions 90 and 98) , saying that they were supporting “dubious efforts to reform ‘eminent domain’ abuse. Could the Bee be more off base?
The very effectiveness of HJTA in fighting the voracious appetite of the liberals who dominate the state legislature and would raise taxes to unheard of levels is an important achievement, and frankly Jon Coupal and his small but effective group of warriors at HJTA should be proud of all that they do, and take it as a matter of pride that the Bee Editorial Board would single them out for these attacks. Such as the most mean-spirited excerpt of their piece…
Here is the sentence of their editorial that caused the writers to bubble over with glee as they wrote it: “The Jarvis association has morphed from merely an interest group with a narrow perspective into an organization that seems mainly concerned with perpetuating its own existence and employing its staff. The extreme positions it takes and the methods it employs to achieve those objectives have become destructive to the state’s political process.”
Clearly none of the writings of this lame editorial have ever been into the offices of the HJTA near the Capitol. We’re not talking about the Taj Mahal here, but very modest digs with humble furnishings, and staffed with just a handful of dedicated souls. The offices are so non-spacious that you have to go literally through someone else’s office to go into Coupal’s. Nevertheless, from these austere offices a ton of advocacy takes place on behalf of California taxpayers.
When I called Coupal to "congratulate" him on the occasion of HJTA being "honored" by the Bee, he said that, "being dissed by the Bee is a reflection of HJTA’s effectiveness. Of course, they got lots of facts wrong (this is the Bee,
The Bee editorialists are the elitists who think that government should continue to grow, with a small number of people deciding how to take wealth from working, taxpaying Californians and deciding, based on their own priorities, on how this money should be doled out. The Sacramento Bee editorial board embraces a system of extensive redistribution of wealth that should be rejected as being anti-American.
The very idea that an overspending problem could and should be dealt with exclusively with spending cuts draws ridicule from the Bee, who continue to say (as if it were fact) that there is NO WAY to solve our state’s crisis without new taxes. That simply isn’t true. Of course you CAN solve this problem that way. The political reality may be that the public employee union bosses who hold much sway over Capitol Democrats (some even use the word “control”) will never let an all-cuts proposal get through the legislature. But Republicans possess equal resolve to hold the line against new state taxes.
The Bee has totally missed the mark with this editorial slamming HJTA. Maybe this will be the proverbial “straw the breaks the camel’s back” that will cause thousands of Bee subscribers to cancel their subscriptions. It certainly will make it easier, going forward, for Bee readers to discount the editorials from the paper.
We here at the FlashReport are proud join with the HJTA in opposing any efforts to punish California taxpayers for years of chronic overspending and expansion in state government.
PubNote: I will give credit to the Bee Opinion Page folks for striving to get a breadth of guest columnists featured on their page (such as this piece from yours truly). But we shouldn’t let that distract from all of valid criticisms I heap on them above – Flash
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