Why San Francisco's safety net has crumbled

While we desperately try and find ways on the local level to maintains some semblance of a safety net in San Francisco, the ward boss of the right and head of the Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist, has profoundly changed the climate in our country around taxes. His work on the national and state level has made it absolutely impossible for local governments like ours to function. The loss in revenue just can’t be made up. In San Francisco alone we have lost hundreds of millions of dollars in federal and state revenue. Grover didn’t do it alone. Over the last three decades, conservatives have been creating an infrastructure, moving a pro-active vision that has successfully destroyed the safety net in our country. While we fight over crumbs on the local level, the right has removed the whole loaf of bread, the meat, the potatoes, and the veggies from the table.

People like Rob Stein have begun to document how the right organized over the last three decades, and have revealed that we need to do more than just react to their agenda. We have to create a pro-active, positive vision that moves people. But the Public Pension fight and the Social Security fight is doing a lot to reveal who these people are and the organizations behind the right’s infrastructure. More particularly, how the right has not only destroyed the left on the federal level, but on the state level as well. One of these organizations, the American Legislative Exchange Council, created in 1973, has the financial support of corporations like Enron, Coors, Phillip Morris, Wal-Mart, Chevron, and Mobil Oil. It operates as a clearinghouse of ”information” for over 2400 conservative legislators across the country and provides model legislation and policy briefs to governors like Schwarzenegger. Dick Cheney, John Aschroft, Tommy Thompson, and Tom Ridge are all alumni of ALEC.

The current main goals of ALEC are to 1) phase out Social Security; 2) promote conversion of pension funds to individual retirement accounts; 3) privatization of government services and 4) weaken unions. My favorite report by ALEC is on budget cutting strategies for cash strapped states by a fellow from the Manhattan Institute named William Eggers in which he outlines exactly what Schwarzenegger has been doing. Another report called, “Pension Liberation: A Proactive Solution for the Nation’s Pension Systems” shows another card in Schwarzenegger’s play book.

On the state level alone, we could be generating $17 billion dollars more a year. Lenny Goldberg’s report, “Tax Policy for the 21st Century” shows a vision of how we can make change on the state level. Check out the California Tax Reform Association, a group that is trying to move serious change for our state. $17 billion dollars. What our state could do...