I appreciate Bob’s sentiment that the time is now to fight the Governor and the Yacht Party and bring some sanity into the fiscal process, but my fear is that the time for that was three years ago, when the successful fight against the special election should have been built upon, and at this point, we’re already swirling in the bowl.

Let’s just get you up to date.  All infrastructure projects are currently shut down.  Unemployment nudged up to 8.4% in November, the state lost 41,700 jobs last month, and up to 200,000 more jobs are on the chopping block from the public works freeze if it continues.  Meanwhile the Governor is ordering up layoffs and furloughs for state workers, so just add those on top of the pile.  You’re likely to see a 10% cut in state employees, and a 10% reduction in the salaries of those who remain.  More job loss means less income tax and probably less sales tax, as well as more need for public assistance.

And that’s before a budget which could have further reductions to state employee paychecks, elimination of overtime and meal breaks, etc., is signed.  Not to mention the billions more in cuts that the Democrats included in their work-around plan which the Governor threatened to veto.  Schools, which were slated for $4 billion in cuts in that budget, have already gotten the jump on the state by cutting back their local budgets.  After-school sports, libraries, and new teachers are probably all going to go.

This is a nightmare beyond the ability of many, even myself, to comprehend.  It’s so big that it’ll affect everything, and the idea that a ragtag band of liberals have the power to stop the freight train from coming down the track is precious, but I think wrong.  This is the accumulation of 30 years of bad policy and worse government structure, and that’s not going to be turned around in the time it needs to be to avoid catastrophe.  Even George Skelton, poohbah of all poohbahs, admits that the Yacht Party is so nakedly ideological that they have made the state dysfunctional.  This work-around budget is good for the time being, but Schwarzenegger is clearly committed to hijacking that process.  It’s a large game of chicken that none of us can afford.  And as I’ve noted, even balancing the budget – which the work-around does not do – will not necessarily restart infrastructure spending, and even federal help might not be able to do that.  

Changing the constitution with a convention is a nice idea, but not so easy in practice, as we all know.

Talk of calling a constitutional convention has been banging around California for at least the last few decades – maybe since 1851, for all I know – and it’s gotten a lot louder recently. Here, however, is the rule for calling a convention:

The Legislature by rollcall vote entered in the journal, two-thirds of the membership of each house concurring, may submit at a general election the question whether to call a convention to revise the Constitution. If the majority vote yes on that question, within 6 months the Legislature shall provide for the convention. Delegates to a constitutional convention shall be voters elected from districts as nearly equal in population as may be practicable.

In plain English: you need a two-thirds vote of the legislature to put an initiative on the ballot and then you have to get it approved by the voters. The problem is that no matter how sweetly liberals might croon about what a convention could do, conservatives all know the truth: the whole point of the thing would be to get rid of our insane two-thirds requirements for passing budgets and raising taxes. Unfortunately, our whole problem is that Republicans control (slightly more than) one-third of the legislature. And if we can’t get them to vote for a tax increase in the first place, what are the odds we could get them to vote for a constitutional convention called for the express purpose of making it easier to increase taxes? About zero.

OK, but how about a simple initiative? We could get rid of the two-thirds rule just by collecting signatures and getting a majority vote, right?

Right. And we tried that just a few years ago. Prop 56 was supported by all the usual good government groups and would have reduced the majority needed to pass budget and tax measure from two-thirds to 55%. A bunch of other fluff was added to make it more popular (“rainy day” funds, no pay for legislators if they don’t pass a budget, etc.), and in the end…..

….it got whomped 66%-34%. No one was fooled for a second. Everyone knew the whole point was to make it easier to raise taxes, and so it lost in a landslide.

I think a similar proposition to 56 wouldn’t crash so hard today, but it would certainly go in as an underdog, because the majority of the state still doesn’t understand the consequences of all this failure.  It’s a “dysfunctional electorate,” as K-Drum puts it, as well as a dysfunctional government.

Do we need to fight?  Yes.  But we need some arms shipments from Washington (metaphorically speaking) before we can do that.  A rescue package for the state is desperately needed, and it got a whole lot more so yesterday when the Governor vetoed the work-around.

Dave Johnson, Speak Out California

Following the 2000 census the California Assembly, Senate and Governorship were all controlled by Democrats.  In line with tradition they used their majority power to create new electoral districts designed to maximize the Democratic majority.  They did this by drawing district lines that bunched Democrats and Republicans together in some very oddly shaped districts.

Look at district 15, drawn here in brown.  It sends branches up toward Sacramento, an arm toward the East Bay, a stump to the south, etc.  This is what a safe district looks like.  Neighboring district 10 has an equally odd arrangement of offshoots to the east and south and a little hook over there on its left.

In 1990 this drawing of districts to create safe seats backfired.  With safe districts turnover of legislators became rare and lawmakers became less responsive to voters, which made voters angry enough to pass term limits to try to solve the problem.

But that didn’t stop the games.  The 2000 census created a new batch of safe districts, and I think this backfired again, only worse.  First, no one foresaw 2008’s electoral sweep.  This redistricting created safe Republican districts as well as Democratic districts because they increased the number of Democratic seats by bunching Republicans together into a few districts.  The 2008 sweep could have taken out several more Republicans than it did because of the concentration of Republicans in these districts.  In SD-19 Hannah-Beth Jackson lost her Senate race by less than 900 votes in that “safe” Republican district.  A fair redistricting would have turned Santa Barbara’s Senate district over to the Democrats because enough voters there were fed up with the increasingly extremist Republicans running for office.

But the very worst consequence of the 2001 redistricting was that it guaranteed just enough safe Republican seats to enable the remaining extremist minority to block budgets while avoiding the political consequences.  The way their districts are drawn they are going to get reelected no matter what, so they refuse to approve any budget that does not yield to all of the most absolutely extreme right-wing demands.

This November voters passed Proposition 11, which tries to set up a neutral process for drawing legislative districts.  I hope that this process works as intended, creating districts that fairly represent their constituents’ interests.  I also hope that this opens up the possibility of truly contested elections in which responsive politicians are asked to stay in office — and politicians who do not represent their constituents can be replaced.

I want to point out that if Proposition 11’s fair redistricting is successful this removes the justification for term limits.  Voters should be allowed to keep representatives as well as remove them.

Click through to Speak Out California

Arnold got to talking about vetoing the Legislature’s budget plan, and it immediately becomes clear what is going on here: The Shock Doctrine.  The Republicans, including Governor Schwarzenegger, are using the budget disaster to destroy labor and environmental gains. At this point they don’t even try to hide it: they are going after CEQA, going after labor contracts, and going after the generations old experience of public investment in infrastructure.  

First, from the Governor:

Well, read through it. You see, that it is one thing, when you say economic recovery package. But then read through it. It actually doesn’t do anything and it makes it more difficult, actually, to do certain projects. And we will give you a briefing on the details — Will Kempton can take you through the infrastructure package and all of those kind of things. They have not at all addressed the CEQA. They have not at all addressed the public-private partnerships. They have not addressed at all that we can go and — as a matter of fact, they made it tough, that we can lay off people. They even said that we have to ask labor if we can have the furloughs that we recommended.

This is why I called it yesterday “Legislating Under Duress“, the Governor and the Republicans have a gun to the Democrats’ head in the budget disaster.  The thing is that not only does the GOP think that the Democrats will eventually blink, but going over the brink wouldn’t be that big of a deal. They get to slash and burn through labor and forget about the government.  It is good to be the Green Governor isn’t it?

Speaker Bass calls this what it is, Russian roulette with our future.  After all the gun isn’t really on the politicians of California. Sure, they’ll get some political blowback, but the gun is pointing squarely at the people of California.  The Governor claims to negotiate, then takes his marbles home with him. From the Speaker:

I am frankly surprised how willing Governor Schwarzenegger is to push California over a cliff when he clearly is not fully aware of what the bills we passed today do.  The governor said we didn’t do economic stimulus.  We did $3 billion worth of bond acceleration to get job-creating infrastructure projects moving for transportation, drought relief, park restoration and green technologies. He said we didn’t address CEQA– we expedited CEQA for transportation projects and surplus property and we eased restrictions for hospital construction.  All these actions will also help create jobs. He said we didn’t address public private partnerships.  We expanded public private partnerships – despite opposition from labor.

This is a stick-up, an attempt to drive us back into the third world of economic inequity, class warfare, and a grim future. Say goodbye to Pat Brown’s California, say hello to Kurt Russell’s.  

• I’ll be on the Bay Area’s Green 960 tonight with Angie Coiro to talk about the budget mess. I should be on around 7:15. You can stream live here.

• There’s a nice back and forth between Mike Genest, Schwarzenegger’s Finance Director, and the WSJ Ed Board. Genest is a decent enough guy (and fellow GSPP Alum), but we don’t necessarily see eye to eye on a world of revenue issues.  However, he did a fair job of responding to a ridiculous piece of garbage that emanated from the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, which they called Arnold’s Ishtar.

Beyond the bald-face lies (“Democrats refuse even to trim the budget.”) that riddle this junk, the notion that Villines is anything other than an ideologue leading other ideologues is an anathema to the truth. You have to love when national papers delve into the weeds of state politics, especially when they don’t even bother to do any damn research.

Genest responds back that we have both a spending and revenue problem. Not the greatest framing ever, but a start. And as for Arnold’s Ishtar, hardly. He always has End of Days.

• Interesting story here about one of CARB’s scientist possibly lying about a PhD. Nonetheless, the science is sound, and the ruling on trucks should stand.

• CalPers losses could be another major hit for the town of Pacific Grove.  Pacific Grove is on a Vallejo-esque run the last few months, and it wouldn’t shock me to see several more municipalities flirt with bankruptcy.

• SDG&E gets its nearly $2B power line from the desert into San Diego. Many had opposed it, saying that it won’t be able to deliver the requisite power to make it cost effective. Plus there’s the whole uglying up the mountain thing.

• More people are moving out of California than are moving into the state.