DeMaio the Job Killer

On this unofficial opening weekend of summer, many of us are headed to the beach. But it's also less than two weeks until election day, and perhaps a good opportunity to remember that the billion dollar hotelier tax isn't the only plan Carl DeMaio's ever had to boost revenue. Back in 2010, he also had a plan to introduce corporate sponsorship of our beaches.

The plan was for private companies to pay for advertising all over the beaches... signs, benches, garbage cans, even lifeguard towers. It also included corporate information kiosks in tourist-heavy areas like the Gaslamp District.

Of course, this is the crux of DeMaio's entire approach to government. He wants our government to be nothing but a conduit that transforms everyone's work and even our natural assets into corporate gain. If that means papering over our beaches with advertisements, so be it. If it means privatizing our tourism outreach to only highlight the businesses that can afford to pay, so be it. Nevermind if it's the best that San Diegans have to offer visitors, the city and its beaches should just be marketing tools for corporations.

Of course, the more of a leg up you give to the most successful corporations, the harder it becomes for entrepreneurs to crack the market with new startups. It means that San Diego is less about who has the best ideas and more about who has the most money. Less about what provides the most benefit to many, and more about what makes the most profit for a few.

Obviously, that's an option. After all, it's the option that Carl DeMaio has chosen his entire career. He's been in professional politics his entire adult life, and the everywhere he's gone, it's been to eliminate jobs. His work at Reason Foundation was about how to eliminate jobs. His work at the Performance Institute was about how to eliminate jobs. His work on the City Council has focused on how to eliminate jobs. And now his platform for Mayor is centered on eliminating even more jobs, and attacking the ones he can't destroy outright.

You have to at least admire his consistency. The economy is strong? Keep it that way by cutting jobs. The economy is weak? Fix it by eliminating jobs. He's even kicked it up a notch for this campaign, proposing that, once he eliminates jobs, people just do the work for free instead. And hoping that nobody will notice that his jobs plan left out the step where jobs actually get created. So did his Veterans Jobs Plan.

Of course, killing all those jobs has done very well by Carl DeMaio. He collected $2.7 million in government contracts, and that plus his other deals helping private companies profit from the cuts have made DeMaio a millionaire, able to dump nearly $750,000 so far in his attempt to buy the mayor's race.

Maybe it's because Carl has only ever used government to kill jobs that he doesn't have a plan to generate jobs as mayor. But there are plenty of San Diegans besides Carl who need a job right now. Why turn to the guy who's entire career has been built on destroying jobs?