California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been one of many loudest Democratic politicians in denouncing former President Donald Trump as a menace to democracy.
Whereas endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris’ marketing campaign for the presidency this month, Newsom declared, “With our democracy at stake and our future on the line, no one is better to prosecute the case against Donald Trump’s dark vision…”
Trump is “lighting democracy on fire,” Newsom informed ABC Information.
Fears {that a} second Trump presidency might be an authoritarian nightmare are properly justified, given his many declarations of what he would do if elected. Nonetheless, if one wants an instance of how unchecked political energy undermines democracy, Newsom’s California is obtainable.
Newsom himself has displayed a penchant for governing by decree, particularly evident in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the meantime, together with his Democratic Social gathering holding complete management of state authorities, its officeholders really feel entitled to behave as they please, ignoring those that may disagree.
The ruling get together’s autocratic streak was demonstrated final month, when Newsom and the Legislature handed a state finances and dozens of “trailer bills” to implement its provisions. Each the finances and the trailer payments might be enacted with easy majority votes, due to a 2010 poll measure, Proposition 25, that decreased the voting margin from two-thirds.
Prop. 25 was aimed toward eradicating any Republican position within the finances, and it succeeded. Nonetheless, it additionally created a means for governors and legislators to make adjustments in legal guidelines having little or nothing to do with the finances by trailer payments that might not be challenged by the referendum course of.
This 12 months’s batch of trailer payments comprise two pithy examples of the syndrome.
Meeting Invoice 174 accommodates a slew of things principally having to do with governmental operations, however one passage exempts the Legislature’s Capitol annex challenge from the California Environmental High quality Act. It goals to close down efforts by two teams important of the large development challenge to require adjustments.
The self-serving CEQA exemption not solely was inserted into the invoice in semi-secrecy, but it surely continues the quite shameful follow of granting such exemptions on a case-by-case foundation quite than enterprise a complete reform of the usually misused legislation.
The second instance, Senate Invoice 167, is much more outrageous. It units a really harmful precedent of rewriting state tax legal guidelines retroactively.
The state Franchise Tax Board lately misplaced an enchantment of a company tax case involving Microsoft and a years-long dispute over the tax therapy of overseas earnings. The state Workplace of Tax Appeals dominated for Microsoft, thus requiring the state to refund $1.3 billion instantly, with a whole lot of tens of millions in different refunds sooner or later.
Relatively than swallow its loss, the Franchise Tax Board persuaded Newsom’s Division of Finance to incorporate language in SB 167 that voids the appellate ruling and probably permits tax collectors to return years and impose extra taxes on firms.
The implications are scary. Californians may absolutely pay their taxes after which years later be hit with new tax payments as a result of the Legislature has modified tax legislation retroactively and even perhaps secretly.
The California Taxpayers Affiliation is elevating alarms in regards to the legislation’s potential results, and its president, Robert Gutierrez, says a authorized problem is being thought-about.
“This legislation shreds well-reasoned, unanimous decisions of California’s Office of Tax Appeals and serves as a not-so-hidden tax increase,” Gutierrez stated. “This is a cash grab that undermines the tax system and threatens the integrity of the tax appeals process in California, and it must be stopped.”
What might be extra authoritarian than arbitrary and retroactive will increase in taxes?
