Four days after hundreds of Redevelopment Agencies were shot to death by the state Supreme Court, the affirmative argument —which indeed may be sound — remains besieged in an impenetrable fog.
Between legislators I have talked to and those others have interviewed, the dominant thread has been as amorphous as counting the stars at midnight.
Why, boys, why?
If there is a good reason, tell me. Why sit on it?
Bluster is the Left’s favorite weapon of destruction.
Why should fictionalized “global warming” frighten us into acting? Well, blubber, blubber, because the world is growing hotter. How do I know that? Because we, the Left, say so. That is liberals’ most common answer, from their insulting condescension toward bulldozed, brainwashed blacks who, to this moment, walk in heads-down Democratic lockstep as if they were latter-day Stepin Fetchits, to their screwy End World Poverty campaigns, to their even balmier Close the Gap programs.
Careful, Slippery Digits
If you still don’t think the state legislature is held in the greasy fingers of boys obsessed by job-justifying busywork, swallow this dandy that became law yesterday:
Your child who just turned 6 years old and was eagerly anticipating escaping from his car seat, just was doomed.
Instead of 60 pounds or a sixth birthday being the demarcation line, the new rules require a child to be 4-foot-9 or 8 years old.
Why? Their response ripples with intellectualism: Because we say so, and we know better than you what is best for you.
Isn’t there one black or white or purple race-conscious liberal who can tell me, without blushing, why it was necessary to kill Redevelopment Agencies?
More, More, More
Ditzy Gov. (Lawdy, How I Love Spending Your Money) Brown’s explanation is that the state needed the funds diverted to agencies to be redirected into Sacramento’s typically starving coffers into half-baked programs of left-wing lobbyists. (Okay, he didn’t say “half-baked.”)
Comes now the conservative Orange County Register, no friend of government, which was downright giddy over the Supreme Court ruling.
Beneath the headline “Court kills sacred cow of crony capitalism,” the Register’s lead editorial on the day after opened:
In a monumental victory over crony capitalism that for too long has diverted billions of dollars for more legitimate uses, the California Supreme Court overwhelmingly ruled Thursday that the Legislature is within its constitutional rights to eliminate local redevelopment agencies.
Hardly a hidden agenda here. If misguided diversion of property tax funds is a compellingly, inherently logical reason, ‘splain me where, how? Can’t think of anything persuasive?
The Register relies on a Republican member of the Assembly from Fullerton, Chris Norby, to defend its shaky position.
Mr. Norby, one of Orange County’s noisiest critics of agencies, used faulty upside down logic:
“Clearly, if these agencies really had been successful in eliminating blight, we would no longer need them.”
I just ate yesterday. Why do I need consume more food today?
Finally, Mr. Norby arrived at his main point, that agencies are a “cash cow” for favored developers.
The Register is more persuasive when it contends:
The decision appears to strengthen the state’s ability to take property taxes received by redevelopment agencies to meet some of Sacramento’s budgetary challenges. The state estimates about $1 billion a year diverted to redevelopment agencies will be available for future budgets, which we hope undermines the expected campaign next year for higher taxes. Most of the billions raised by redevelopment agencies must go to pay off billions owed on bonded debts, but, eventually, those debts will be retired, and the taxes should be available for schools and other local uses.
Lovely sentiments, except the Register editorialist forgot that the decision-makers are liberal government boys, fiscal drunks, the worst of all species.
It is laughable that Gov, Flat Tire should drop his hourly demand for new taxes just because he added, by hatchet, a new source of income. Further, the supposed new funding will not enhance schools or any other worthy charity. For every new dollar that arrives, an old dollar will be subtracted.
Fast-talking carnies have operated this way for decades, and now ennobled legislators are copying them.
Clever, but not smart.
