Blue States, Red States and Dividing the Green

Nothing in the Sunday comics was as funny as the Dec. 5 front-page story, “Proposal Would Hit Blue State Taxpayers.” To tag conservatives with a conspiracy to raise taxes in blue states must have been a “let’s see if the public is really as stupid as we think they are” discussion. Forty-five percent of Californians voted for President Bush precisely because we’re overtaxed in this state.

Why the majority of our state’s voters poll in lock step with some unrealistic promises from liberals is the real story. New York and California would be unfairly tagged under a plan being “considered”? The Times should stop the spin and try to keep your editorials off the front page unless you label them.

Robert Catalano

Stevenson Ranch

*

I would accept the proposal to kill the U.S. tax deduction for state and local taxes under one condition: that all tax funds the U.S. collects from a state be returned to that state dollar-for-dollar in services or refunds.

Doing so would allow such states as California, which pay a greater share into the U.S. Treasury than they now receive in services, potentially to lower or eliminate their own state income taxes because they would receive a more equitable share of federal funds.

Why should more-developed blue states subsidize economically deficient red states? It is absurd and unjust that Californians must subsidize these economic (and political) backwaters to the tune of $58 billion annually. Red states should not get away with imposing low or no state income taxes while reaching into the pocketbooks of blue-state taxpayers by bleeding us of federal tax money.

Chris Ford

Los Angeles

*

Whoa! Hold on! Buried in the Dec. 5 story on the deductibility of state and local taxes from federal taxes was this statement: Californians pay $58 billion a year more in federal taxes than they receive back.

That sum of money would solve our state budget woes several times over. Communities are closing emergency rooms and libraries in California, and we are sending $58 billion to Washington that doesn’t come back? What economy could sustain the loss of $58 billion annually? This damnable federal tax arrangement should be topic No. 1 every day for California senators, House members and newspapers, until it is brought back into rough parity.

Benjamin Mark Cole

Los Angeles