Posted by
Katy Grimes on Wednesday, May 20, 2009 10:13:00 AM
I'd love to write something quippy and clever about California's election yesterday, but instead I'll let several experts do it: (Newsbusters)
A Tuesday story on ABC's World News, which ignored soaring state spending, reflected frustration with California voters for the anticipated rejection of ballot initiatives to raise taxes as reporter Laura Marquezblamed the Golden State's budget deficit on an “unwillingness to raise taxes” stretching all the way back to 1978's Proposition 13. In fact, though personal income tax collections “dropped 14% last year,” a Tuesday Wall Street Journal article noted they “soared 70% from 2002 to 2007.”
Columnist George Will, a regular on ABC's own This Week, pointed out in a May 3 column what Marquez omitted -- that the state government has hardly been starving for money: “If, since 1990, state spending increases had been held to the inflation rate plus population growth, the state would have a $15 billion surplus instead of a $42 billion budget deficit.” In addition, in Arnold “Schwarzenegger's less than six years as Governor, per capita government spending, adjusted for inflation, has increased nearly 20 percent.”