San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Against California Oil Severance Tax is Wrong on Economics and Hypocritical

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Frank D. Russo

As someone who grew up in San Diego and in my tender years as a youth in the 60’s had to endure news stories that would have led one to believe Barry Goldwater was winning presidential election of 1964, I am used to a lot of baloney from what in those days were two incredibly right wing papers—The San Diego Union (the morning paper) and the San Diego Evening Tribune (published in the afternoon). But today’s vitriolic editorial Populist ploy: Oil tax hike amounts to Nunez payoff to CTA against a proposed oil severance tax being voted on today in the California Assembly takes the cake.

California is the only state in the US that produces any significant amount of oil that does not have an extraction tax. Good God, it produces millions in states like Texas, Alaska, and Oklahoma. We have a massive state budget deficit. A fiscal emergency has been declared by Governor Schwarzenegger and pursuant to Prop 58, he has called the legislature into special session. Massive cuts have already been made to the state’s education budget. Pink slips are going out to one in ten teachers in San Diego (see the separate news story in today’s San Diego Union). The Governor has proposed more cuts to the K-12 education budget that will place drop us from 46th to 48th out of the 50 states in per pupil spending (adjusted for the cost of living). Across the state, including Republican parts of San Diego, parents and school kids are horrified by these cuts are and are taking action and packing local school board meetings. All this, in the Governor’s vaunted “Year of Education.”

And yet the headline of this editorial—without any facts—accuses the Speaker of the State Assembly of a crime—a payoff, presumably for campaign contributions. This amounts to an ad hominem attack on not only the Speaker, but by extension the Democrats who will today speak for and vote for this bill today. It is demeaning. By its innuendo, it accuses the Speaker—and Democrats-- of not caring about the serious issue of education—not caring about the school kids, class sizes, and not being motivated by responding to the concerns being voiced around the state by constituents. Belittling the bedrock principles of California Democrats—and I might add a number of rank and file Republicans--who would like to see more spending on education and support taxes to do this and smearing them is not an intellectually defensible argument.