America's finest blog  Wouldn't it be, yunno, honest to just say
“increasing taxes”? Of course it would. But The Associated
Press, The Sacramento Bee and The San Francisco Chronicle are
among the news outlets where the benign-sounding “revenue”
euphemism has turned up in budget stories describing what are in
fact tax-hike proposals.  What's going on here? My best guess is
that this reflects the California media establishment's
impatience with what it sees as childish and stupid public
opposition to tax hikes.  What makes this odd, though, is that
many of these same journos do fantastic work exposing the
state's dysfunction. Halper's April scoop on the massive fraud
in the In-Home Supportive Services program is a perfect example.
But even though stories like this are legion, many journos still
somehow buy the public employee union myth that the state beast
must be fed with ever-higher taxes. They repeat uncritically the
canard that the problem with California is the obstacles to
higher taxes — not the fact th