Legislator discusses taxes, state funding and solutions
I appreciate the thoughtful Sept. 20 editorial regarding the deep harm budget cuts and fee increases have caused to students individually and to the UC system collectively.
As California continues to struggle through the recession, reduced state revenues remain a threat to our higher education system. One of my priorities in the Assembly has been to identify new revenue sources so we are not faced with more education cuts.
On Friday, Sept. 23, Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB 155 into law, legislation I jointly authored that will enable California to collect sales tax on items sold by out-of-state online retailers. AB 155 not only saves jobs and protects retail stores here in California, but also generates up to $500 million each year in new revenue.
An additional bill I have pending would restore a 1 percent increase in the tax rate paid by California’s super rich so the millionaires and billionaires among us pay their fair share. That bill, AB 1130, puts back into place a tax rate that existed under Republican governors Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson.
Unfortunately, California has a two-thirds vote requirement to raise taxes, so even with 52 Democrats in the Assembly, we still need two Republican votes to pass AB 1130.
This hurdle is why Gov. Brown was not able to get the tax votes he has sought since the start of his term. I look forward to meeting in the coming weeks with members of the Cal community to identify other new revenues and strategize on how to get them approved.
One answer may be focusing on the 2012 elections, where students, their families and friends can make sure it’s not just their voices being heard, but their votes being counted.
— Nancy Skinner, Assemblymember (D-Berkeley)
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People’s Park cartoon was insensitive to the issue
The “Zoo Attractions Around the World” editorial cartoon is an ignorant and dehumanizing cartoon that perpetuates the negative stereotypes of People’s Park.
Your staff should think twice before printing such insensitive cartoons overlooking the real issue of the criminalization of poverty that exists within the park’s policy and outside of the park in the city of Berkeley.
People are arrested if they stay in the park after curfew, and having no home address they are often held in jail for an extended time. Having a record of arrests is a factor that prevents people from getting a job and is part of a vicious cycle of poverty.
This cartoon furthers the idea that people in poverty are less than human, and there’s nothing funny about that.
— Elliot Goldstein, ASUC senator
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Previous Telegraph lot ideas turned down by the council
Your Oct. 4 article on the issue neglects to mention that the vacant lot at Haste and Telegraph was previously a single room occupancy hotel that provided both retail space and 77 units of low-income housing. The building was the victim of deliberate arson, as the previous residents know, only receiving a warning the night before it was set ablaze.
It would be unfair to not mention that Ken Sarachan submitted a proposal for a combination retail and housing complex, which was turned down by an earlier city council.
A history-free story runs the risk of greasing the wheels for a proposal that may not replace crucial units of low income housing Berkeley sorely needs. The lot may be characterized as contributing little to the avenue, but a development there that precludes the replacement housing once proposed is a theft of potential housing, which is irreplaceable.
— Carol Denney, Berkeley resident
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“Unfortunately, California has a two-thirds vote requirement to raise taxes”
Why is this unfortunate? Do you think the state should seize people’s assets when half the populace opposes doing it? The two-thirds requirement means that tax proposals must be clearly beneficial and broadly based. If you don’t go along with that, work to get your candidates elected in two districts out of three.
Regarding this ongoing blather about how a college education is such an important investment: the Politically Correct party line is that college is a “wise investment”, with critics and dissenters cowed into submission for fear of being attacked en masse by those who have substantial economic and emotional investments in defending the status quo. However, is college really a “wise investment for everyone”?
In my case, getting a 4-year engineering degree @ Cal before getting out into the workforce WAS the right decision. However, is it the right decision for someone who lacks a sufficient combination of intellectual horsepower and dedication/motivation to make it through to graduation? Is it the right decision for someone who was woefully unprepared in HS (or lacked a strong performance in a CC for transfer students)? Is it the right decision for someone whose future income prospects are so meager that they will barely make enough to pay their own bills, much less pay back college loans, because they are majoring in some fluff course of study has offers little or nothing in the way of marketable skills in the real world? How about those who simply aren’t interested in education or career opportunities, and merely attending as a way of stalling adulthood and real world responsibilities?
We keep hearing this mantra that college should be free, and that everyone has a
“right” to attend college. Have we ever considered that maybe the reason our colleges face their current problems (rising tuition, bloated bureaucracies, dumbed-down major/degree progams) is precisely BECAUSE we haven’t been willing to question those sacred assumptions? What type of “investment” counts on students, parents, or taxpayers assuming a debt load that can not be paid back?
“everyone has a “right” to attend college”
Presumably this assertion has to be tolerated because everyone must pay taxes to support the state universities. Higher education must seem to be a universal entitlement even though seven out of eight families pay for UC and their children can’t go there.
[Your staff should think twice before printing such insensitive cartoons
overlooking the real issue of the criminalization of poverty that exists
within the park’s policy and outside of the park in the city of
Berkeley.]
You should think twice before suggesting that the motley collection of druggies, alkies, professional activists, and unemployable misfits who individually and collectively use Peoples Park (the land itself as well as the political issue) for their own agenda are somehow synonymous with the average low-income person, who in most cases is too busy working and trying to make ends meet to have time to participate in this ongoing theatrical charade…