Letter to the Editor; Mayor Rotkin

The following is my article printed in the Santa Cruz Sentential, May 11, 2010

There was nothing I didn’t expect in Michael Rotkin’s piece in Sunday’s paper. Apparently the problem with Santa Cruz and California is taxes are too low. What else would one expect from a die-hard socialist. Rotkin goes on to say that corporate loopholes leave California 48th in funding; what ever that means. Lets look at some numbers from the Tax Foundation (statemaster.com); California is in the top ten in business taxes and individual taxes, but #7 in Wealth and Prosperity. Since Rotkin entered politics in the City of Santa Cruz, he used the city for his Masters Thesis on how college students could take over a small town and drive the politics to the left. Well, you can’t fault him on that one, his planned worked flawlessly. Rotkin, along with his fellow “keep Santa Cruz weird” city council members have gutted the economic engine from the city. In his short tenure in Santa Cruz, he has overseen the departure of Wrigley’s, Lipton, Texas Instruments and SCO to name a few; Santa Cruz and California has finally run out of other people’s money. Finally, a word about public safety. In the US we are supposed to be a country of laws, not of men. When a city council decides to arbitrarily create a protected class, tells the police which law enforcement agencies it’s allowed to contact and what laws it should not enforce, it has unintended consequences; namely a disrespect for the rule of law and eventually violence. For the sake of the citizens of Santa Cruz, hopefully we can turns the city around; but after a generation of viewing the police as a necessary evil, it’s going to be difficult putting the smoke back in the box.