Wake Up & Smell the Coffee
Corporate Tax Loopholes Need to be Closed!
WOW! Nearly 40 members of Community Resources for Independent Living, Parent Voices, and other community people took their California Family Recovery Budget message out to the Pleasanton Tea Party event at the Alameda County Fairgrounds today (April 15). Television cameras were VERY interested in us, especially after the Tea Party organizers arrived to escort us to the “Free Speech Area.” They had made a corral for us – something like a cowpen – back down near the main intersection. Media outlets who talked to us include: KTVU/Fox, NBC 4, Channel 5, Univision, and the East Bay Express. 
Anyway, leaders from CRIL and PV explained to interested reporters that:
Corporate tax breaks take $14 billion a year out of the revenues that are supposed to pay for care for our seniors, education for our kids, and health care for people with disabilities.
The state should audit the $14 billion it gives away on corporate tax breaks every year, to see which of them really help create jobs. We should end corporate tax breaks that don’t create jobs.
Corporate incomes went up an average of 154% from 2000-2007. Yet corporate tax rates have gone down steadily since 1981, which means we lose billions of dollars in revenue – money that should be used for vital services. While people with disabilities are losing In-Home Supportive Services and being forced into expensive nursing homes, while parents are losing the child care that enables them to work, while people on Medi-Cal are losing dental care and optometry, can we afford billions of dollars in tax breaks?
Amidst lively chanting and a lot of curious looks (and quite a few flipped fingers) activists stuck to our message: We need a California Recovery Budget that includes Closing Corporate Tax Loopholes. Wake up and smell the coffee!
