I was eating my (late) breakfast as I was listening to Gavin Newsom on KQED’s Forum this morning, and at first it was just the usual lofty rhetoric about education … and then Michael Krasny asked the lieutenant governor about the Occupy movement, and I almost threw up my whole wheat bagel and peanut butter.
Cuz Gav — the mayor who would never even consider asking the city’s wealthiest to pay more taxes, who ran for governor and then lite gov on a platform that he’d balanced the city budget without raising taxes, the guy who was a great friend of the city’s 1 percent, had the nerve to sing the praises of Occupy and complain about economic injustice.
Seriously: Gav ranted on for about five minutes about how low the taxes are on rich people. He announced that his company just set up a new winery and hired a bunch of people — and taxes were never an issue. He acted like someone who reads my shit.
One of the messages of Occupy — and one of the reasons that the movement exists not just in Washington and Manhattan but in cities all over the country — is that economic injustice needs to be addressed everywhere. It’s not just about the Bush tax cuts or even Jerry Brown’s tax-hike initiative; it’s also about local government trying to address the wealth and income gap and the impacts of 1 percent domination — at home.
Gavin had seven years to do that. He didn’t even try. Worse, when the progressives on the board tried, he’d veto anything that remotely smacked of a tax hike on the rich or a way to force the 1 percent to share the wealth with the 99 percent. (Does anyone think he would have allowed Occupy to stay at Justin Herman Plaza as long as Ed Lee did? Not a chance.) Now he wants to take advantage of the popularity of the movement for his own advancement.
Fucking sick.