For a couple of years the fact that California is ungovernable has been plain to see to anybody who really pays attention.  That is why you get calls for a constitutional convention from business groups like the Bay Area Council and from progressive groups like the Courage Campaign.  We need fundamental change in our constitution. We need to fix the initiative system and the restore the underlying balance of power that should exist in a modern representative democracy.

Today we get a slew of articles in the mainstream media, saying, that well, perhaps California is ungovernable. Follow me over the flip.

But California government is arguably more dysfunctional now than it was when Davis, a Democrat, got the boot. The budget deficit has grown so huge that a shutdown of government services looms. Partisan gridlock grips the Legislature, and lawmakers bicker as the state plunges into crisis.

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The state’s latest collision course with insolvency has renewed the question in the Capitol: Has California become ungovernable? (LAT 12/15/08)

When Arnold used the recall system to bulldoze his way into power, he promised to “blow up the boxes.” Not only has not blown them up, he’s discovered that they contain some nice goodies inside.  His cynical use of the vehicle license fee created the massive deficit and he has totally lost the legislature.  While many can dispute Davis’ effectiveness, it becomes increasingly clear that even he did a better job that Arnold.

So was the recall worth it?  Well, it seems there are a few people who got over it:

“I was thinking that we needed to do something before the ship totally sank,” the 35-year-old postal carrier said last week as she ended her shift at Yuba City’s downtown post office. A Republican, Shaffer voted to recall Democrat Davis and replace him with actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. For a time, she was pleased with the new GOP governor, who made vague but vivid promises to transform Sacramento and the way it operated.

“Now it just seems either the system got to him or he just gave up and has gone with it,” Shaffer said as evening fell on the northern Sacramento Valley. As for the recall, she said, “I don’t think that it made a difference, because we’re still in the same boat we were in then, only worse.”(LAT 12/15/08)

To say the least. Back then we had a somewhat trivial budget deficit in comparison, and we were able to quickly eliminate it by repealing the “good times” VLF cut. Now, well, I think we all know there is no easy solution.  Arnold’s “car tax” rhetoric pretty much ended any chance for that.

As Dave pointed out, there is a semblance of momentum for some serious change in Sacramento.  With leaders like Steinberg and Bass willing to push reforms that actually aim to fix the government, it might be time to seriously look at how we can do to create some long-term good government solutions.

Open Left’s Paul Rosenberg summarized our site over the past week by musing that California is a failed state.  It’s hard to argue with that.  We have a political system governed in exactly the opposite direction of the will of the people.  Despite 63% majorities in the Assembly and the Senate, in Sacramento the Yacht Party rules.

California is bleeding Republican red as the state’s minority party tries to squeeze a spending cap and pro-business policies from fiscal chaos.

Badly outnumbered and often ignored by the Democratic-dominated Legislature, the GOP is not getting sand kicked in its face these days.

California is hurtling toward a financial abyss, projecting a $40 billion shortfall by July 2010, and no deal can be struck without at least three Republican votes in both the Assembly and Senate.

GOP officials clutch that trump card with relish as the state braces to pull the plug on $5 billion in public works projects and warns it won’t be able to pay all its bills by February or March.

Kind of amusing that the Treasurer thought he was making a threat to Yacht Party regulars when he vowed to shut down infrastructure projects without a budget deal.  To the GOP, that’s a GOAL.  All the posturing and tut-tutting at the lack of compromise, along with the horror stories spun out as a consequence of doing nothing, simply bolster the Yacht Party argument.  If you haven’t been paying attention, they want to do nothing.  They want to end government.  In a way they are the ultimate anarchists.

There’s supposed to be some kind of “cuts only” package released by Republican leaders today, by the way:

The GOP is scheduled to unveil its own proposal Monday, with no tax hike. The plan is expected to identify about $11 billion in budget cuts and, among other things, propose asking voters to redirect money designated for mental health programs and preschool programs and services.

State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, a Democrat, characterized the high-stakes showdown between legislative Democrats and Republicans as political “chicken,” with each party expecting the other to blink.

“I think they’re going to run off a cliff,” Lockyer said.

Incidentally, Bass and Steinberg are willing to come together on good government reforms, which we shouldn’t oppose in a knee-jerk fashion.  Liberals support reforming government and making it effective because they believe in it.  Republicans, under the guise of “reform,” mean to destroy government.  I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a performance review that looks at duplication or ineffective programs and seeks to mend them.  That’s what oversight is all about, and it’s a core function of the legislature.  What I do take issue with is the idea that reform is a “magic bullet” that will end all budgetary worries without anyone having to feel the pain.  That’s irrational and ridiculous, especially in this moment of crisis.

Conservatives have for decades cultivated a politics of victimhood – presenting themselves as victims of some group, usually liberal and often an oppressed minority, in order to gain sympathy for their insane beliefs and to delegitimize progressive ideas and actions. We’re witnessing it on Proposition 8 as well, and now the media is playing along. The result is a massive distortion of the true effects of Prop 8, and the normalization of support for discriminatory policy.

The specific case is that of Margie Christofferson, who quit her job as a manager at LA’s El Coyote Restaurant under pressure from activists and customers angry at her donation of $100 to the Yes on 8 campaign. Her journey from oppressor to victim has been aided by Steve Lopez of the LA Times, who wrote a deeply flawed column on Sunday casting Christofferson as a sympathetic figure:

Margie Christoffersen didn’t make it very far into our conversation before she cracked. Chest heaving, tears streaming, she reached for her husband Wayne’s hand and then mine, squeezing as if she’d never let go.

“I’ve almost had a nervous breakdown. It’s been the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” she sobbed as curious patrons at a Farmers Market coffee shop looked on, wondering what calamity had visited this poor woman who’s an honest 6 feet tall, with hair as blond as the sun.

That sets the tone for a column that blames the victims of Prop 8 for making this poor woman cry, and Lopez isn’t above repeating disputed claims that riot police showed up at El Coyote during a recent rally. But perhaps the most troubling part of the column was Lopez’ normalization of her support for discrimination:

But I didn’t like what I was hearing about the vilification of Margie Christoffersen and others in California being targeted for the crime of voting their conscience.

“Voting our conscience” has been one of the key methods by which Prop 8 supporters have escaped responsibility for their actions or even acknowledging what Prop 8 was – an attack on the legal equality of thousands of Californians merely for their sexual orientation. When framed this way the Yes on 8 position becomes almost unassailable, immune to criticism. “They’re just voting their conscience,” we’re supposed to think, and not be allowed to ask them to face the realities of what they have done, not be allowed to criticize them for voting to take away equal rights and destroy existing marriages, and not be allowed to act with our own conscience by denying those who backed Prop 8 our patronage. Each of those acts is cast as an aggressive and hurtful act, where the oppressed are cast as oppressors.

Lopez mentions almost in passing that “thousands [of gay people] feel as though their civil rights have been violated” but their concerns and views don’t get the sob story treatment Margie Christofferson got – even though she knew full well what she was giving money for, and continues to believe that her vote for Prop 8 was the right move. As Lisa Derrick notes she has never apologized to her once-loyal customers for what she did. Obviously she feels no need to offer any such apology.

Lopez’ column writes the real victims of Prop 8 out of the story and replaces them with their victimizers. Once again GLBT Californians and their fundamental rights are treated as either deviant or invisible. The only people whose opinions matter are those who oppose gay rights, and if someone dares call it out then they become  the oppressors. Standing up for gay rights, for marriage equality, becomes itself an act of hate.

Margie Christofferson is not a sympathetic figure. She is someone in deep denial of reality, who is unwilling to reconcile her relationships with her own intolerance. It’s not the rest of Los Angeles’s job to play along with it, to enable it, to pretend as if it doesn’t exist. Doing so merely continues the decades of injustice that comes when good people do nothing and discrimination is treated as normal.

It would be nice if the traditional media would recognize this. It’s not likely that they will. Martin Luther King, Jr. may be venerated today but he was a controversial figure in his day who received FAR more criticism from the media than credit, who was told that the March on Washington was a dangerous provocation that should not be attempted. The Civil Rights Movement rightly refused to let such concern trolling stop them. We who are part of the marriage equality movement would do well to learn that lesson.

I feel like I’m back at the scene of the crime. Nearly 4 months to the day, we were back where it all started at LA Trade Tech in downtown Los Angeles, where we attended our first Camp Obama and learned how to change the world.

Myself, my co-RFO Mike Bonin, team members Marc Saltzberg, Mary Jack, Warren Bowman, Dave Dayen, Jan Popiden, Julie Priess, Julie Soller and over 400 other Camp Obama graduates, campaign alumni, community organizers, and would-be community organizers have gathered here on a cold, rainy Saturday morning all hoping to have the same question answered.

Now what?

The simple answer is that Change Is Coming To California. And that Change is Us.  

The post-election Obama organization (what we jokingly refer to Obama 2.0), like the Obama administration, is in transition. A lot of very smart people at Obama 2.0 are trying to figure out the best way for us to utilize our talents and to keep our spirit of community activism alive and growing.

They’ve come up with a four important goals:

Organize To Support Legislation:  To turn Obama’s promise of change into reality, we will need to support the administration’s agenda by lobbying our local officials, and by reaching out to our neighbors and educating our communities – just like we did in the election.

Electoral Organizing: Grow the next generation of elected officials. Identify and support progressive candidates running for state and local offices.

Promote Two-Way Communication Between The Administration And The Grassroots: We will become our own lobbyists! Research the issues facing your community on a local, state, and federal level. Know your elected official’s contact information and backgrounds.

Civic Engagement: We will make our communities better places by working with existing community groups and service organizations (or even creating our own!) to bring about change in our states, our cities, our schools and our neighborhood.

Fortunately for us, the Obama organizers in California aren’t waiting for  Obama 2.0 to give us marching orders. They’ve already come up with the organizing tools that will enable us to organize ourselves right now!

WHAT YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW

SIGN UP WITH COMMUNITY ORGANIZE ( http://communityorganize.ning…. ) A  new network of California activists made up of Obama campaign alumni and other community organizers from all over the state, this site it will be an important tool for communication and outreach.

JOIN YOUR CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT GROUP ( http://communityorganize.ning…. )

ORGANIZE A COMMUNITY “DAY OF SERVICE” BETWEEN NOW AND THE INAUGURATION

BECOME A DELEGATE TO THE CALIFORNIA DEMOCRATIC PARTY

With all our work on the national campaign, it was easy to forget the problems we have right here at home. California faces a budget deficit of over 40 Billion dollars, and our state Democratic Party leadership just isn’t responding to our community needs. This will be our first opportunity to achieve our goal of Electoral Organizing. What better way to bring Change to California than from the inside?

How to Run for a Delegate Seat in the California Democratic Party

If you are interested in bringing Change to the California Democratic Party (CDP) see the information below on how to run for a delegate position in your assembly district. Elections will be the weekend of Jan. 10 and 11th.

From www.cadem.org:

“California Democrats who were all integral to our historic 2008 campaign victories are invited to help select delegates for the California Democratic Party’s Convention, which will be held April 24-26, 2009 in Sacramento. The California Democratic Party is convening delegate election meetings in each of the state’s 80 Assembly Districts on January 10 or 11, 2009. These 12 people will represent their Assembly District for both the 2009 and 2010 State Conventions. They will elect one person to represent the AD on the State Party’s Executive Board.

To learn more, go to: http://www.cadem.org/site/c.jr…

To view the time and location for your AD Election Meeting, go to: http://www.cadem.org/site/c.jr…

To file online to run for Assembly District Delegate, go to: http://www.cadem.org/site/c.jr…

If you decide to run as delegate,  please let the folks at Community Organize know! We can help you! Send us an email with your name and your Assembly District to: [email protected]