«»n June 6th, the people of California rose up andsmashed the oppressive system of propertytaxes in that state. It was a glorious victory.<strong>The</strong>y let government officials know that theywere no longer listening to the politicians andbureaucrats. <strong>The</strong>y fired a shot heard 'round the world, theopening salvo in the revolt of the taxpayers, and passedProposition 13-a constitutional amendment which cutsproperty taxes by two-thirds and puts tight reins on thelegal authority of the state and local governments to raisenew taxes. If ever there was a "sense-of-life" issue, this wasit. Voters swarmed to the polls in stunning, nearly unprecedentednumbers, swelling with anger and outrage, defyingweeks of apocalyptic forecasts, veiled threats, andnaked blackmail attempts by criminal elements in the government,and gave Proposition 13-the Jarvis-Gann initiative-astunning two-to-one victory. Optimists who hadconfidence in the basic good sense of the voters knew itwas going to happen, but the exhilirated gasps and rousingcheers resounded throughout the state. Victory partieswere everywhere-in the offices of <strong>Libertarian</strong> <strong>Review</strong>hundreds turned out to celebrate-and the people ofCalifornia swelled with justifiable pride at their16courageous thrashing of the opponents of Proposition 13:every tax-grabbing, parasitic, state-employed and statesupportedgroup in the state, a veritable laundry list ofspecial interests from the Bank of America to the CaliforniaState Employees Union.<strong>The</strong> valiant leader of the "Yes on 13" forces, the elderstatesman of the tax revolt, Howard Jarvis, said it best:"We the taxpayers have spoken," he thundered. "To ignoreus is political suicide." And indeed he was right. <strong>The</strong>headline writers throughout the state and the nation knewwhat had happened. <strong>The</strong>re was no confusion, nothingcomplex, nothing mysterious. Here was emotional fuel foran exhausted, nation, beaten down by taxation and bygovernment oppression. Here was the greatest libertarianvictory since the end of the draft and the collapse of thewar in Vietnam. But the headlines said it in a nutshell:"PROP 13 WINS BIG"-San Francisco Chronicle, in abold, black banner head."IRATE VOTERS OK PROP. 13; Taxpayers Revolt aReality"-Oakland Tribune.And that was just the beginning. <strong>The</strong> famous shockwaves of Proposition 13-which ignoble court intellec-<strong>Libertarian</strong> <strong>Review</strong>
tuals like Walter Heller kept warning about in his televisionpleas-began to hit, and they were felt across thenation by a grateful populace. NBC, ABC, and CBS allfeatured the tax revolt in lead stories. David Brinkley, inCalifornia for the vote and obviously enjoying the antigovernmentsentiment which reigns there these days,reported on the jubilation, and for once focused a newsstory on who would be helped by drastically slashed taxes.For once, the crocodile tears about the poor, the underprivileged,and the disadvantaged were gone, replaced bysmiling taxpayers. For weeks the California media hasbeen filled with little else but projections of the effects ofthis noble triumph.<strong>The</strong> people of California had been told-by more than400 economists, by a host of state employees using everydirty trick in the book by their political "leaders," by themedia, by the "new class"-that Proposition 13 wouldloose "anarchy" and "chaos" upon California, that itwould end police and fire protection, close libraries andmuseums and parks, and further cripple a public schoolsystem already regarded by most as doing a poor job. <strong>The</strong>people of California didn't believe it, or they didn't care.<strong>The</strong> opponents of tax cuts waged a vicious, well-financed,professional, manipulative campaign on every level. <strong>The</strong>more they talked, the more the people flocked to the bannerof Yes ort 13. More than a week before the vote, themorale of No on 13 forces had visibly collapsed; they knewthey were only going through the motions, that their dayswere numbered, that they would lose big. And they did.Bleeding heart liberal Mary McGrory followed GovernorJerry Brown around on his anti-13 campaign, andreported that "Brown was constantly meeting policemenand firemen who told him squarely that they would ratherlose their jobs than their homes. <strong>The</strong> very people whosejobs we were told were at stake voted Yes on 13." Whenthe Los Angeles Times and KNXT-TV News in L.A. conducteda survey immediately after the election to learnwhy voters had voted as they had, the results indicatedthat nearly 25 percent of the voting public believed"government provides many unnecessary services." Andthose voters had all paid visits to city hall, to the countyhall of administration, to the Department of MotorVehicles, to the Post Office. That is why all the bilge about"essential services" being cut was just so much rot. <strong>The</strong>yknew that what few worthwhile "services" were being providedby government were provided only at enormous costand never with the excellence they could expect at least occasionallyfrom private business.<strong>The</strong> voters in California were fed up when they went tothe polls on June 6th-fed up with politicians and with theaccellerating price of keeping them in the style to whichthey had unaccountably grown accustomed. "With thepassage of Jarvis," <strong>The</strong> Berkeley Barb editorialized, "<strong>The</strong>whole idea that government provided valuable services tothe people has been called into question, and the publicnow seems to view the civil servant with the same distasteit holds for the tax collector." <strong>The</strong> vote for Jarvis-Gann,wrote Peter Shrag in the Sacramento Bee of June 11, was a"fundamental declaration of no confidence in public officials,public institutions and, in some respects, in the con-<strong>July</strong> <strong>1978</strong>ventional democratic process itself."And within days of the electorate's decision, its lack ofconfidence was fully vindicated. First the Brown administrationbegan talking about its budget surplus, whichmight be used to aid the financially striken cities andcounties-a surplus of $5.3 billion. But wait a minute, objectedthe Los Angeles Times: Why had the same officialsestimated the same surplus at only $3.4 billion the weekbefore the election?<strong>The</strong>re was the stench of rotten fish inSacramento.<strong>The</strong>n came the admissions of guilt: State Finance DirectorRoy A. Bell admitted to the Times that Howard Jarvishadn't been far off when he accused the opponents of hisproposition of using scare tactics. For example, Bell said,the Widely publicized UCLA economic forecast-whichhad warned just before the election that nearly half amillion Californians would lose their jobs if Proposition 13passed-wasn't accurate. It had failed-somehow-to takeinto account any state budget surplus at all, even the $3.4billion everyone "knew" was there. And three days afterBell admitted in public that officials had, ahem, "softpeddled"the amount of state aid local governments couldexpect if Jarvis passed, a new UCLA study predicted thatthe economy would grow faster in the next year than itwould have if 13 had not passed. <strong>The</strong> politicians knew thatlower taxes would mean more economic growth, but toldthe public the exact opposite. But the people of California,at least, had learned not to rely any longer on the honestyof politicians.<strong>The</strong> tax revolt spreads<strong>The</strong> tidal wave had hit; the California public's disillusionmentand distrust was spreading, and with it the spiritof tax revolt. Time reported (June 26) that a recent NewYork Daily News Poll on the question, "How do you feelabout taxes?", touched off the largest response the paperhas ever seen to any such poll. And the majority of the117,000 replies favored sharp cuts in all taxes: property,sales, and income. A similar poll in the Boston HeraldAmerican found that nearly 80 percent of those respondingfavored a legal ceiling on property taxes. <strong>The</strong> CharlestonDaily Mail asked its readers if they would approve of majorstate tax cuts accompanied by curtailment of manypublic services; 93 percent of those who responded saidyes.Voters in Cleveland turned out to turn down a taxincrease to benefit Ohio's largest school district. A petitioncampaign is underway in Oregon to put a Jarvis-Gann typemeasure on the November ballot. Another is underway inColorado, an third in Tennessee. And the June 8 ChristianScience Monitor reported the first steps toward similar actionin Utah, Washington, Maine, South Dakota, Illinois,Hawaii, Texas, Ge<strong>org</strong>ia, and Florida. Truly, as Californiajournalist Arthur Zich put it in the June 12 issue of NewTimes, "whatever else <strong>1978</strong> has in store, it will go down asthe year of the Great American Tax Rebellion-the beginningof a new, nationwide Boston Tea Party."In California and throughout the nation, governmentemployees and politicians are beginning to react in differentways, neatly dividing into two opposing camps.17
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