Waning Support for Jerry Brown Initiative to Raise Taxes
Gov. Jerry Brown's ingenious and inventive plan for California's budget woes is to raise taxes. He wants your support for an initiative that would increase taxes on the mildly rich and on retail items. 
He's bringing a ballot initiative to you, but the support you've shown for this appears to be waning.
The latest Public Policy Institute of California, issued last night, finds that ...
... only about 52 percent of voters are now down for Brown's tax plan.
That's down from 68 percent just last January. What happened?
It's not clear, but there's still a lot of pessimism about this Great Recession. About 59 percent of California voters think the state is headed in the wrong direction (an ongoing theme since the days of Gray Davis), according to the poll.
84 percent of you say the state is in a recession (the Great Recession has technically been over since 2009, but yeah, you know the real deal), says the PPIC.
And 62 percent of Golden State Debbie Downers say bad economic times will continue in this Year of the Dragon.
Support for Brown's tax initiative is, predictably, split between Democrats (who support it at a rate of 71 percent) and Republications (who want nothing to do with it at a rate of 65 percent), the numbers say.
The guv's plan would actually include budget cuts too, which Republicans eat up. But his deal sounds a little threatening: If you don't pass it, he will trigger automatic budget slashing to public K-12 schools.
Yeah, your kids are being held hostage.
Mark Baldassare PPIC's president, says:
A slim majority support Governor Brown's proposed tax initiative. Of those who plan to vote against it, most also say that their local governments have been affected a lot by recent state budget cuts and they would prefer to deal with the budget gap mainly through spending cuts.
Oh, and that pie-in-the-sky, $100-billion-plus bullet train to San Francisco that Brown supports?
53 percent of you say no.
[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]
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