A lot of folks are declaring Obama -- who wasn't on the ballot -- the loser of the night based on two state elections, but the defeat of three anti-tax initiatives that were on the ballot in Washington State and Maine should emphasize that Grover Norquist and the anti-tax movement were big losers of the night -- and this just continues a multi-year roll of defeats.

In both states, voters rejected so-called TABOR ("Taxpayer Bill of Rights") initiatives that would have created rigid tax raising formulas that would have crippled those states' capacity to provide services like education, health care, emergency services, and public safety. Voters in Maine also rejected a proposal to slash the excise tax on new and hybrid cars, which would have undermined local revenue around the state.

Across the country, over thirty state legislatures raised taxes to deal with deficits this year and a number have specifically targeted tax increases on the wealthy - a bugaboo of the rightwing. And at the ballot, the anti-tax right has just lost and lost.

Back in the early 90s, the rightwing managed to pass a TABOR system in Colorado at the ballot box, which led to  terrible results, including large declines in K-12 funding, higher education tuition rates, and hindering the state's ability to address the lack of medical insurance coverage for many children and adults (see a PSN Dispatch on "TABOR's Disastrous Record in Colorado").  Voters partially repudiated TABOR at the ballot in 2005; when the rightwing tried to enact TABOR-like initiatives in states across the country in 2006, progressives highlighted fraud in signature collecting in multiple states and issue was thrown off the ballot in Michigan, Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma and Missouri. On Election Day, voters in Maine, Nebraska and Oregon finished the job in voting down the remaining TABOR initiatives.  And in 2008, anti-government tax measures were defeated overwhelmingly in Massachusetts, North Dakota and Oregon.

Here's the dirty little secret.  The anti-tax movement is a paper tiger.  They force progressives to waste a lot of money and time fighting their initiatives, but when voters are informed of the details, they walk away, preferring needed public services to the rigid anti-tax nostrums of Norquist and his allies.

While Corzine may have lost the election last night, the New Jersey state legislature which has voted for multiple tax increases in recent years was hardly touched by voter action last night.  In fact, after the New Jersey legislature voted to raise taxes on the wealthy back in 2004, they expanded their legislative majority in 2005 to its present hefty margins.  There's almost zero evidence of elected officials being punished for tax increases alone in recent elections.

Facts on Taxes, Jobs and Economic Growth:  The public just recognizes that rightwing attacks tax increases as undermining economic growth are just rhetoric unsupported by facts. 

Earlier this year, Economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote state leaders in New York in support of proposed tax increases on wealthier New Yorkers, highlighting the short-term economic gains from shifting that money towards state spending for low- and moderate-income families.  But he also emphasized that such spending was crucial to long-term economic growth as well:

"Raising taxes and maintaining public expenditures (including investments) also helps America in meeting its long run needs.  America today faces two major problems -- inadequate investments, especially in infrastructure, and growing inequalty...Investments in infrastructure also increase the productivity of private investment -- another important spillover."

in 2004 economist Robert Lynch with the Economic Policy Institute published Rethinking Growth Strategies: How State and Local Taxes and Services Affect Economic Development, one of the most extensive analyses of the relation of state tax policies to economic growth.  The bottom-line conclusion of his study was that tax policies themselves have little effect on overall economic growth; what mattered was that states raise enough revenue to invest in the "public services such as education and infrastructure [that] spur economic growth and influence business location decisions."

Because higher-tax states invest more in their communities, they generally generate higher-wage jobs compared to lower-tax states.  For example, states that enacted large tax increases between 2002 and 2004 - increasing state revenues by at least 5% - subsequently experienced stronger average growth in personal income than states that did not increase taxes at all.  This builds on other analyses that states which collect the highest percentage of personal income in taxes actually sustain higher income growth.

The Wealthy Don't Leave High-Income Tax States:  And despite rightwingers inevitably predicting economic doom, tax increases on the wealthy do not lead to wealthier residents leaving the state:

• From 2004 to 2006, following California's implementation of a new national top rate of 10.3% on income over $1,000,000, there was a 38% increase in the number of millionaires in the State.
• The number of half-millionaires in New Jersey grew by 70% since the state increased their highest rate from 6.37% to 8.97% in 2002, from 26,000 in 2002 to 44,000 in 2006.
• New York experienced a comparable increase in high-income tax returns
  after temporarily raising income tax rates earlier in the decade, from
  250,000 in 2003 to over 325,000 in 2005, representing a 30% growth.

Lessons from the Anti-Tax Movement's Failures:   Hopefully, our national progressive leaders can take a lesson from states, where anti-tax forces have shown both their political threats and economic arguments are hollow.    If there are worries about long-term deficits and paying for programs like health care reform, the answer are new taxes assessed largely on the wealthy, who did so well financially in the last few decades.   The public supports such taxes and they make both political and economic sense.

If only those national leaders will stop taking Grover Norquist and the anti-tax movement seriously.