I don’t actually support Eric Bradley for a second term as CDP Controller.  I think Hillary Crosby would be a fresh face and give the large Progressive Caucus coalition a grassroots voice in the leadership.  But I have to applaud Bradley, an occasional commenter here, supporting a majority vote to restore democracy to the state.

I look forward to working with all of you in building a stronger California Democratic Party-one that is ready for the challenges ahead, filled with energy and enthusiasm to elect a Democrat as Governor in 2010, to pass an initiative that reduces the threshold for the state budget to a simple majority, to defeat the destructive Louisiana Style Open Primary initiative proposed by Arnold Schwarzenegger and to maintain our majorities in the State Legislature.

This is a Party Controller candidate.  If he can advocate for majority vote, anybody can.  That’s why it’s truly disappointing to see Jerry Brown mute on this issue, letting everyone else in the state lead while the issue is in the forefront while he calibrates his position.  It’s a cowardly stance, and nobody running for Governor should be silent on the only issue that will allow them to actually govern.  Some have said that it is better to say nothing than to be counter-productive in calling for something arbitrary like a 55% standard.  There’s a slogan for you: “Brown ’10 – Not Being Counter-Productive.”  Inspiring!

One thing that Bradley and many other Democrats leave aside is an explanation that we have not one 2/3 requirement, but two.  There is the 2/3 vote needed to pass a budget, and the 2/3 vote needed to raise taxes.  Bill Cavala, who ably represents warmed-over consultocracy CW in Sacramento, argues that Democrats should only attempt to change the budget requirement due to political expediency:

Here’s the good news: voters do agree that a budget should be passed by majority vote. They would, albeit somewhat narrowly, support such a ballot measure.

Now here’s the bad news: they will not support changing the requirement that demands a two-thirds vote to raise taxes. Combine the two measures, and both would be defeated.

Convinced by media coverage of government that yearly exposes a few million dollars in obvious waste or egregious prerequisites for politicians, voters believe in most circumstances new taxes are not needed. Cut the ‘waste’ instead. But even voters got the word that lopping the pay raises of the 20% of the Legislature’s staff that received them wouldn’t cover a $42,000,000,000 revenue shortfall […]

While it would be nice to exclude Republicans from tax decisions, we are unlikely to be able to do so anytime soon. By combining the 2/3 tax hike requirement with the 2/3 budget requirement we risk losing both – as labor found out when they put this package on the ballot a few years ago, spent millions, and lost big.

By taking the half a loaf we can get – the reduction of votes needed to pass a budget to a majority – we still gain a great deal. Republican lawmakers are certainly now aware that Democrats will pay a high price to keep the State solvent. The sidebar deals needed to raise taxes get some progressive praise now – but what sidebars will be demanded to pass a spending plan (without new taxes) in the future? And what makes anyone think the Democrats in the Legislature wouldn’t pony up?

This is the stupidest argument I’ve ever heard.  Changing the budget but not taxes is TOM MCCLINTOCK’S view of things.  It makes Democrats own a budget that can only be modified with expenditure cuts.  In the event of a deficit, Democrats would have to either cave and cut services or hold out with the exact same dynamic that we saw this year.  And it will not allow the legislature to tackle the structural revenue gap that comes from a tax system too closely tied to boom-and-bust budget cycles.  This is perverse consultant-class thinking that is dangerously outdated, constantly compromising, and believes in political reality as static rather than lifting a finger to change that reality.  Thinking that March 2004 and June 2010 are the same is just ridiculous, and thinking that no argument can be made to the public, after the longest and most self-evidently absurd budget process in decades, that the system is fundamentally broken and has to be changed to allow the majority to do their job, is in many ways why we’re in this position to begin with.

So not only do we have to watch Democratic leaders to see whether or not they support repealing 2/3 with a majority vote rather than some arbitrary number, we have to watch them to see if they want to split the baby or not, either repealing both 2/3 requirements, or just dealing with the budget without taxes, which would actually put Democrats in a demonstrably worse situation.

Dave Johnson Speak Out California

dday, writing in Giving Away The Tax Argument at Digby’s Hullabaloo blog, asks why so many California newspapers have “tax increase calculators” but no calculators that show people how much the budget cuts affect them.

In my life, I have never seen a “spending cut calculator,” where someone could plug in, say, how many school-age children they have, or how many roads they take to work, or how many police officers and firefighters serve their community, or what social services they or their families rely on, and discover how much they stand to lose in THAT equation. Tax calculators show bias toward the gated community screamers on the right who see their money being “taken away” for nothing. A spending cut calculator would actually show the impact to a much larger cross-section of society, putting far more people at risk than a below 1% hit to their bottom line.

[. . . The media already highlights the tax side of the equation over spending, dramatically portraying tax increases while relegating spending cuts to paragraph 27. It feeds the tax revolt and distorts the debate. And it’s completely irresponsible.

In Why Are Public Assets Being Cut Right When We Need Them Most?  Jay Walljasper, of OnTheCommons.org wonders why public transit, libraries and other things the government does for us are all being cut at exactly the time people need them?  As the economy turns downward more people need to take the train or bus, or use the library.  Jay makes the connection,

Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, one of the leading contenders for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, proposes closing the state’s budget gap by reducing corporate taxes and slashing state aid to local governments. This will mean painful cuts in public assets, such as transit and libraries.

. . . This loss of our public assets is an alarming threat to our society. The things we all own in common and depend upon–libraries, transit, parks, water systems, schools, public safety, infrastructure, cultural programs, social services–are being gradually but steadily undermined.

For many years I have been blogging at Seeing the Forest, often coming back to a question, “Who is our economy for?”  For some time now regular incomes have stagnated, while incomes at the very top just go up and up.  The GDP keeps rising, productivity keeps going up, but regular people see less and less of the benefit of this increase.  In fact, if you look at charts and data, the stagnation of incomes started almost exactly at the same time as President Reagan took office and started implementing the corporate agenda of anti-tax and anti-government policies.  So is this a coincidence?

Throughout human history we have seen one scheme after another wherein a few people seize power and devise a system to hold it and use it to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.  This is human nature and through history we have seen it happen over and over.

America formed in reaction to the British monarchy’s exploitation of its people.  We, the People formed our government to band together and protect each other from attempts by the powerful few to exploit us.  Our Constitution was supposed to be include a system of checks and balances to account for the nature of power.

It is time for the people to take back that power and use it to again benefit each other.  And it is time for California’s newspapers to do something for We, the People and include a “budget cuts calculator” as well as tax increase calculator.  It is just as important, maybe more so, that we all understand how we’re injuring and jeopardizing our future with the budget cuts the Republicans required in this year’s budget negotiations.

Click through to Speak Out California

(From the diaries. Disclosure: I’m doing blog outreach for Eric’s re-election campaign – Todd – promoted by Todd Beeton)

(cross-posted from my campaign blog)

Last week, President Obama laid out his administration’s Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan to deal with the foreclosure crisis. I wanted to weigh in on it since, as President of the Los Angeles City Council, it’s been an issue my office has been working extremely hard on for months at the local level.

Obama’s plan would devote $75 billion from the TARP funds as well as $200 billion in additional funding commitments to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to help between 7-9 million families avoid foreclosure and stay in their homes. This is particularly important here in California where, according to RealtyTrac, in 2008 alone California saw more than 520,000 of its homes receive foreclosure filings, a jump of 110% over 2007.

I was heartened by this plan because, while it’s not perfect, it does several things that I think are very important. 1. It provides incentives to servicers who lower interest rates and to borrowers for keeping current on their loans; 2. It helps restructure loans and reduce monthly payments for responsible homeowners who wish to stay in their homes; the plan does not reward speculators, house flippers or dishonest lenders; and 3. The plan reflects the reality that I’ve been dealing with on the ground here in Los Angeles for months now: that solving this crisis is not just about saving homeowners’ homes, this is about saving entire communities.

From The Treasury’s executive summary:

The deep contraction in the economy and in the housing market has created devastating consequences for homeowners and communities throughout the country. […]

The plan will help up to 7 to 9 million families restructure or refinance their mortgages to avoid foreclosure. In doing so, the plan not only helps responsible homeowners on the verge of defaulting, but prevents neighborhoods and communities from being pulled over the edge too, as defaults and foreclosures contribute to falling home values, failing local businesses, and lost jobs.

It goes on:

Protecting Neighborhoods: This plan will also help to stabilize home prices for all homeowners in a neighborhood. When a home goes into foreclosure, the entire neighborhood is hurt. The average homeowner could see his or her home value stabilized against declines in price by as much as $6,000 relative to what it would otherwise be absent the Homeowner Stability Initiative.

The impact of a foreclosed home on its neighborhood can be devastating. Not only does each foreclosed home reduce nearby property values by as much as 9 percent, but a boarded up house invites crime and leads to blight, a particular concern in the Los Angeles area.

More…

While Los Angeles County was not among the hardest hit counties in California (in January, 1 out of every 249 housing units went into foreclosure, nothing compared to San Bernadino’s 1 out of every 87), stemming the tide of foreclosures and preventing the eviction of responsible renters have become priorities for my office.  We have already seen more than 20,000 foreclosures in the City of Los Angeles alone (many of them multi-family apartment buildings), and their effect can devastate any street in Los Angeles, where potentially-abandoned homes reduce property values, attract crime, and bring about blight.

To this end, in October I called on Countrywide to cease and desist their illegal eviction practices after they attempted to evict a tenant in my district. Then in December, I authored a new law to stop evictions of tenants in foreclosed properties because we have to protect the innocent victims of the foreclosure crisis.

In addition, my office has worked closely with One-LA, a grassroots coalition of community organizers, religious congregations, and neighborhood groups who have been at the forefront of helping families renegotiate the terms of their loans with banks.

In many ways, President Obama’s plan represents the federal government catching up with what we’ve been doing at the local level for months now. I can’t tell you how nice it is to have a partner in the White House again and a President who really gets it. The thrust of this plan acknowledges that on a very real level, if our neighbor is in foreclosure, so are we and that saving my neighbor’s home saves mine. In other words, it reflects that progressive virtue that drives me in my work every day: that we’re all in this together.

[Ed: Slightly edited from original version – Todd]

The Yacht Party wrapped up their convention in Sacramento yesterday, and while they didn’t censure the members of the caucus who voted for tax hikes, they did deprive them of support in future elections.  There’s a problem with this, of course – only Dave Cogdill and Anthony Adams are running for their seats in the next election, as everyone else is termed out.  In addition, what this really prevents is slate mailers, not really anything else.  It doesn’t prevent mailers that candidates can buy a spot on, or funding from individual members of the party, etc.  This measure is good for the “heads on a stick” crowd but not for much else.  You can already see the Yacht Party trying to run away from the insanity they’ve enabled for 30 years.

Shortly before the voice vote, a banner reading “The Six Losers” was unveiled listing lawmakers who voted for the budget. State Republican chairman Ron Nehring quickly closed curtains to cover the sign, which was displayed behind the table of party executive officers.

Hilarious.

I eagerly await seeing how the suicide cult reacts to a gubernatorial candidate who will try to buy the election.  Meg Whitman is certainly an economic conservative but differs with the base on a few social issues.  Unlike with an Assembly or Senate candidate, the state party delegates will have no chance of holding the purse strings over someone like Meg Whitman.

Ms. Whitman predicted that her campaign could cost $150 million, much of it coming from her own fortune. (Forbes most recently estimated it at $1.4 billion.)

This doesn’t make her unbeatable, even in the primary – Ms. Whitman, say hello to Al Checchi.  But it does mean that the base will have less leverage and less relevance.