Arnold Schwarzenegger, our Dear Leader, has made the “no new taxes” pledge. 

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared Thursday he will not raise taxes if re-elected as governor, establishing a fundamental contrast in his November race against Democrat Phil Angelides, who wants to boost taxes on the state’s highest earners and corporations to balance the budget.

In an hourlong interview with The Bee editorial board, Schwarzenegger did not promise to balance the budget but said he would “chip away” at the state’s structural spending gap by controlling costs and expanding California’s economy.

He said new taxes are not an option.

“I totally rule it out,” Schwarzenegger said. “I will not raise taxes.”(SacBee 7/7/06)

We all know that worked really, really well for George H.W. Bush.  That pledge, which is now heavily pushed by Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, is eating into the American Dream.  It debilitates our governance and soils our nation’s honor.  It allows us to spend, but not pay for it.  It has brought our federal government to the brink of financial ruin.

Fortunately, California has a balanced budget requirement, which we have gotten around by using bonds in the past.  Thus, we now have this structural budget deficit without the long-term capability to a) increase services as the people of California desire or b) pay off that structural deficit.  Arnold plans to “chip away” at it, but how does he plan to fund health care for all children, better schools, more access to preschools, better after school programs (his own Prop 49).

The answer of course, is that Grover and his ilk don’t care.  They would love to see a state go bankrupt, in a similar fashion to Orange County.  Grover has said as much, that he would like a state to slide into bankruptcy to be a bad example for other states.  If any state would make a powerful exempary case, surely California would.

Arnold claims to be a moderate, but surely a moderate could see both sides of an issue and wouldn’t make broad blanket statements that bind his hands like: “I totally rule it out…I will not raise taxes.”  He is no moderate.  Moderates understand that sometimes painful decisions must be made for the betterment of the state.  Arnold does not, and that is why we need a new governor.

(Buck never met an educational loan lobbyist he didn’t love – promoted by SFBrianCL)

This week student loan interest rates increased from 5.3% to 6.8% for students and from 6.1% to up to 8.5% for parents borrowing for their children. This will put student loan rates far above prevailing market interest rates. The rate hike will mean a nearly $13,000 increase in the total cost of college for each student in the district. Buck voted for the interest rate hike, and helped pass it as chairman of the education committee. You would expect that Buck would find a $13,000 tax increase on the cost of a college education important enough to explain to his constituents. Right?

      Buck’s Office on the Day of the Rate Increase

As it turns out, Buck didn’t think his rate increase was important enough to warrant returning home to his district. On the day the rate hike went into effect, Buck was nowhere to be found. No one in Buck’s office could tell us where he was. Why wasn’t Buck at home to explain how the rate hikes would benefit the people of the 25th district? Probably because the only people to benefit from the rate hike were student loan bankers handing out student loans. But why would Buck support student loan bankers instead of the students of his district? USNews and World Report says there are at least 262,000 reasons why.

While Buck was back in Washington D.C., Robert was busy gathering a group of us to canvass local colleges to urge students to consolidate their loans in advance of the rate hikes. The local media noticed the contrast.

We concluded the week’s events by joining a group of student supporters to protest the rate increases. Three local high school students gave fantastic speeches at Hart High School in Santa Clarita, calling on Congress to do more to make college affordable for all Americans. In a speech to the assembled supporters, Robert said that in today’s America access to an affordable education is the gateway to opportunity. He called on Buck to represent the people of the district, instead of big money.

After the speeches, the whole group of supporters went to Buck’s office to deliver him a bill in the amount that his rate increase would mean for the district. The total cost to the 2006 high school graduating class across the 25th district will exceed $40,000,000. Buck’s secretary graciously accepted the bill from us, in Buck’s absence. Students and parents of the district are still waiting on payment.

Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait another day to find out exactly where the Buck stops.

I’ve been on a real tirade over the prisons lately, mostly because that’s where the really interest analysis has been recently.  (This will be my 4th diary on sentencing reform, the others can be found here in the prisons subject) The SF Chronicle had an editorial today that I somehow missed, so thanks to Tom Hilton.  It’s great:

California’s prison system is a mess: overcrowded and poorly managed, with staffing shortages, abysmal health care, grossly inadequate rehabilitation, job training and drug treatment — and insufficient supervision of parolees. The result, not surprisingly, is a nation-high recidivism rate of 70 percent.

This failed system is a burden on taxpayers, a threat to public safety and an affront to the notion that a civilized society should be doing more than warehousing people in primitive conditions. Those problems do deserve to be treated with the sense of urgency being expressed by Schwarzenegger and Angelides.

However, a state that is struggling to cope with 175,000 inmates needs leaders with the courage to ask a most fundamental question: Do all of those inmates really need to be there at an annual cost of $30,000 each?

One out of four inmates is serving an extended stay under the voter-approved “three strikes” law of 1994, which brings a 25-years-to-life sentence when an ex-convict with two prior convictions of serious or violent felonies commits a third felony of any type.
***
Angelides and Schwarzenegger are right about the need to address the immediate crises within our prisons. But the long-term solution must include a restoration of sanity to our sentencing laws by requiring that 25-to-life “third strikes” be serious or violent offenses.

California cannot build its way out of this prisons crisis. Sentencing reform must be part of the equation. It will take bold and informed leadership to make it happen. (SF Chronicle 7/7/06)

The prisons are overcrowded because we have too many prisons.  The Big Taboo of Sentencing refrom must not be taboo for much longer.  It’s an idea that not only should get traction.  It MUST get traction. 

Now, as I’ve said it’s not the only issue: the relationship between the union and management must be resolved. (But note that I don’t think it’s the only or central issue as others do.  Bill Bradley doesn’t think 3 strikes is much of a problem at all, as displayed by his sophomoric and trollish comments on my 3 strikes diary.)

We’ve ceded the moral authority to the right on these issues for too long, and it’s now obvious that they have no more clue what to do about it than we do.  In fact, their ideas are actually harming the state.  We have more prisons now, we spend more money now, yet does it result in lesser crime than say rehabilitation programs?  The answer is an emphatic now.  As I’ve said before, it costs over $16,000 to prevent a violent crime using 3 strikes, but less than $4,000 to prevent a violent crime with prevention and rehabiliation programs.  So, we get the same result for less than a quarter of the price.  Or, if  you want to spend lots of money on it, which isn’t necessarily a bad idea, we get a far greater reduction of crime using preventive programs.  And as a bonus, we get a boost to our economy from additional productive citizens.  Wouldn’t it be better to have these people working towards a better economy alongside us rather than locking them all up and giving them no chance for the future?

We need to get over this lock them up first mentality.  It will not make us safer and it will cost us billions of dollars (beyond the billions it already cost us).  The Big Taboo needs to be honestly discussed, and sooner is better than later.