The latest poll numbers for the Governor and the legislature are pitiful, although clearly the electorate has hit Schwarzenegger more over the recent budget crisis.

Overall, just 33% of California adults give Schwarzenegger a positive job rating, barely above the record low of 32% that he hit in 2005 after pushing a package of failed ballot measures in a special election. As recently as January, Schwarzenegger’s favorable job rating was at 40%.

Faring worse is the state Legislature: Its 21% approval rating matches the record low it set in several previous polls.

There are a number of other questions in the poll regarding the right to choose and birth control, which you can see here (Short version: Californians still support the right to choose, though parental notification gets narrow support.  I would imagine that how the question is asked accounts for that, although this will probably give hope to the forces that have lost parental notification on the ballot three times in a row to try yet again).

What I want to focus on for the moment is those appalling numbers for our political leaders.  Given that, as well as the public tendency to vote down ballot initiatives, you’d think the last thing they’d want to do is put the public faces of lawmakers on the budget items in the May 19 special election.  You’d be wrong.

Gov. Arnold Schwarznegger, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and ex-Senate leader Dave Cogdill will join hands today for the first campaign event before the upcoming budget special election.

The trio — alongside other advocates for the package — will host a press conference this afternoon at a Sacramento-area child development center.

Now, maybe Darrell Steinberg has some grand design where the limits in the spending cap part of the package can be overcome.  Or maybe he’s perfectly content with ratcheting down spending and making it impossible to revive it no matter what the economic situation.  Whatever the reason, it seems like terrible strategy as well as bad policy.

On the flip side, SEIU editorializes against the spending cap in Capitol Weekly:

One of the most troubling aspects of the budget deal to us is the budget cap, which promises to make the cuts permanent by making it virtually impossible to restore them in better times. For SEIU members that translates into year after year of higher caseloads for social workers who help children endangered by neglect or abuse; ongoing cuts to healthcare for families struggling with unemployment or low-wage work; a future of shrinking support for families who have children with autism or cerebral palsy; ongoing cuts to hundreds of state services from parks to oversight of hospitals and nursing homes, and ongoing cuts to home care, higher education, K-12 schools, and other vital public services.

We know that we are not alone in our concerns. In fact, Californians do not support the inevitable result of a budget cap – each of these cuts is deeply unpopular; yet legislators have already voted for the cap without a single hearing on the cap’s effects, without explaining its effects to their constituents, and without asking for detailed analysis from the Controller, the Treasurer, or independent outside experts.

This is not the way such a serious measure should have been considered or passed. It reflects poorly on the Legislature as a deliberative and transparent body.

With the Governor trying to get in on the Constitutional convention, and offering a vision of reform that trades majority vote for the spending cap, essentially one horrible outcome for another, it’s beyond clear that, if the spending cap passes, it will be locked in for a very long time no matter what other reforms are undertaken, and with a baseline spending level “established during one of the, if not the, worst budget crisis in the state’s history,” as the author writes.  This would cripple the state in a fundamental way.

Up in Bellingham, Washington, a town just a few miles from the Canadian border, Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted a “raid” on an engine plant, arresting 28 workers. The raid stirred outrage among many progressives who had hoped that the secret police tactics of the Bush-era ICE (and I’m sorry, but that’s really the best way to describe it) would end with the new administration.

These “raids”, several of which have hit California communities, making temporary orphans of children whose parents go to work and are thrown into prison camps with no warning or provision made for care of the children (or in cases in Texas, the children themselves are thrown into the camps), have been a prime target of immigrant rights and human rights groups.

These groups point out that immigration law can be enforced without destroying communities or violating basic rights. They also note that the raids rarely catch criminals. A New York Spanish-language paper, El Diario La Prensa, called the raids “a runaway program that has ruthlessly persecuted undocumented families” and demanded Obama and Napolitano stop them.

The outrage at these raids reached DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, who claimed she did not know about the raids and would investigate them:

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told lawmakers during a Wednesday hearing in Washington, D.C., that she did not know about the raid before it happened.

She has asked ICE for answers.

“In my view,” she said, “we have to do workplace enforcement, and it needs to be focused on employers who intentionally and knowingly exploit the illegal labor market. I want to get to the bottom of this as well.”

Some Latino bloggers are not sure they buy the Sgt Schulz defense:

The original Know Nothings were a nativist party in the 1800’s. Call me cynical, pero I have a hard time buying that the new Secretary of of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, didn’t know anything about the ICE raid yesterday that arrested 28 undocumented workers….

As ICE raids continue while the Obama administration keeps telling us via Spanish language media that they care about immigration, is this administration going to be the new Know Nothings?

It’s good for immigrant rights activists to keep up the pressure on the Obama Administration. Whether the problem is Bush-era holdovers or an administration not yet willing to break with a policy that violated the human rights of thousands on a massive scale, these raids must stop.

Also, AG Eric Holder is promising to end the raids on medical marijuana clubs. This is a big victory for California and might signal a shift in Obama’s approach to the failed war on drugs, although it’s worth noting this is a small step forward. Let’s hope that Napolitano and Holder are both serious about ending these raids.

UPDATE: “These raids are not a long-term solution” says the White House. A good start, but I’d cut out the words “long-term” – the raids don’t solve a damn thing.

UPDATE 2: Big rally last night in SF’s Mission District criticizing raids and other punitive and unjust methods of enforcing immigration law.

In January, I wrote in a diary that “a Category 5 fiscal hurricane about to hit California’s public schools.  The state deficit is close to $42 billion over the next 18 months. That exceeds what the state annually allocates from its general fund for K-12 public education.  Governor Schwarzenegger has proposed cutting over $6 billion from education, constituting a more than 15% reduction in state aid to public schools.” See https://calitics.com/showDi…

The hurricane is now hitting our shores.  The billion-dollar budget cuts to education approved by the Governor and Legislature earlier this month are now impacting our public schools. Across California, thousands of teachers, support staff, administrators and other school employees will receive layoff notices.  

In San Leandro, where I live, cuts tentatively approved by the school board this week will substantially alter, for the worse, the educational experience of all students, particularly those in elementary school. Children in Kindergarten through Third Grade will no longer have the benefit of attending small classes as the class size reduction program is set to be eliminated. Art and PE teachers at the elementary schools are also at risk of being laid off. At the high school, the independent study program for students that do not excel in a traditional school setting will be sharply curtailed.

You can read the details at http://www.insidebayarea.com/d…

Too many cuts to our public schools have already occurred this decade. What’s occurring in San Lenadro is happening statewide.  You can’t cut state aid to education by over 10% and keep programs like class size reduction that are a drain on district’s general fund.  Despite funding from the state, class size reduction costs school districts far more to operate than if the K-3rd grade classes were expanded back to the same size (often 32 or 34 to 1) of 4th and 5th grade.

The Governor and Legislature have shortchanged the educational future of our children. California has the dubious honor of “leading” the nation in having the largest class sizes per teacher.  With the latest budget, our state will zoom further ahead of the rest of the nation in this category.

I will be hosting the morning show on KRXA 540 AM from 8 to 10 this morning and will discuss this and other aspects of California politics

One of the most positive aspects of the Constitutional Convention Summit that was held on Tuesday in Sacramento is that those who put it together, and most of those who spoke on stage, were not Sacramento insiders. Whether it was the Bay Area Council or the Courage Campaign or Common Cause, they were groups that have some power and representation, whether it’s the corporate base of the BAC or the mass base of the Courage Campaign. But the “interested outsider” aspect of the Summit was, I believe, one of the things that made it so potent and effective an occasion to speak to our state’s future.

Of course, politicians know a popular idea when they see one, so it should come as no surprise that Arnold Schwarzenegger is now interested in a convention, as George Skelton’s latest column explains. And while Skelton shows his high Broderism in his desire to anoint Arnold as some kind of far-sighted reformer, the truth is much more mundane – he simply wants to destroy the Democratic Party.

Take a look at what Arnold’s proposing:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says he “absolutely” loves the idea of holding a constitutional convention to overhaul state government…

The Republican governor would like the convention to consider, among other things, eliminating some statewide offices — like treasurer, controller, superintendent of public instruction and, especially, lieutenant governor, all currently held by Democrats.

“It makes no sense that the governor is surrounded by constitutional officers who are trying to derail him,” Schwarzenegger says. “Look at the way the nation runs: The president appoints those Cabinet positions.”

Translation: “It makes no sense that I, a Republican, am surrounded by Democrats the people chose to balance out my power.” The governor of California is not the president of the United State and should not be treated as such.

Arnold’s also willing to consider lowering the 2/3 rule, but only on budgets, and only if it becomes a de facto spending cap:

Schwarzenegger has long defended the two-thirds majority vote requirement for budget passage. But after the just-concluded months-long struggle, he’s now willing to consider reducing the vote threshold to a simple majority if spending growth is kept under 5%.

And Skelton plays along with Arnold’s dreams of being remembered as anything other than an epic failure by suggesting that anti-Democratic solutions such as a top-two primary and the spending cap are decisive factors in determining his legacy as a reformer:

Schwarzenegger says he wants to make the parties “less relevant.” They’re already pretty irrelevant in California. But the governor says: “Right now, every [candidate] is like, ‘How can I win the primary? How can I kiss up to the party?’

This is nonsense, and should be read in the context of voters’ total unwillingness to give Arnold the complete control over the state that he has long sought. Arnold’s argument isn’t with the system but with the voters themselves who have quite deliberately chosen to populate Sacramento with Democrats precisely because they don’t want Arnold’s term in office to become a runaway train of conservatism.

It’s a shame that Skelton isn’t willing to actually be a reporter and question why Arnold is saying these things. Arnold’s versions of “reform” have always involved pursuit of anti-progressive options designed to concentrate power in the hands of Republican governors.

Whereas the Constitutional Convention Summit saw a diverse collection of groups from the center and the left openly discuss ways to increase democracy and make government work better. The contrast with Arnold’s concept of “reform” is striking.

If Californians ultimately decide to call a convention, it will be in recognition of Arnold’s failure to produce anything positive in the way of change in California government. If he likes the idea of a convention so be it, but it will happen to fix what he helped break, instead of to implement his desired “legacy” of destroying Democrats.

Recent rains have caused some flooding damage around the state, but have generally failed to dent the drought that now threatens to cripple the already stressed agricultural-based economy of the Central Valley, as a recent UC Berkeley study suggests (h/t to Aquafornia):

Substantial cutbacks in water deliveries from the delta to Central Valley farms will severely reduce the region’s income, employment, revenues and farm acreage, according to a new report from the University of California’s Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics.

The report projects potential economic impacts for 2009 as the state grapples with its third drought in the last 30 years…

Based on projected allocations, Central Valley farmers could sustain revenue losses from $1.2 billion to $1.6 billion this year, depending on their ability to increase groundwater pumping.

The economic impact is already being felt:

Across the valley, towns are already seeing some of the worst unemployment in the country, with rates three and four times the national average, as well as reported increases in all manner of social ills: drug use, excessive drinking and rises in hunger and domestic violence.

With fewer checks to cash, even check-cashing businesses have failed, as have thrift stores, ice cream parlors and hardware shops. The state has put the 2008 drought losses at more than $300 million, and economists predict that this year’s losses could swell past $2 billion, with as many as 80,000 jobs lost.

“People are saying, ‘Are you a third world country?’ ” said Robert Silva, the mayor of Mendota, which has a 35 percent unemployment rate, up from the more typical seasonal average of about 20 percent. “My community is dying on the vine.”

This is a double whammy hitting the Central Valley. They have been the hardest-hit region in the entire country, perhaps the entire world, by the housing bust. The economic crisis alone leads to reduced demand for farm products, but the drought is going to make a bad situation much, much worse.

The Central Valley is at the leading edge of the 21st century crisis, brought about by California’s overdependence on debt and sprawl. As I’ve explained before, the “debt” is not merely financial – California has lived beyond its natural resource means for some time, overpumping water to slake the thirst of new suburbs AND to water the fields to feed the suburban consumer.

This is much the same problem that hit the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. 50 years of farming the marginal lands of the Great Plains eroded the topsoil, creating an environmental catastrophe at the very moment that a collapse in farm prices and wages led to a massive foreclosure wave. The place they headed to escape the crisis was the Central Valley.

Some farmers would like to just keep pumping the water, and cut off fish (which are already in severe distress) or cities (which are already facing mandatory rationing), and others believe a Peripheral Canal is the solution. But if this is the leading edge of climate change, those solutions will be the deck chairs on the proverbial Titanic.

I personally believe it’s important to maintain agriculture as an industry in California. But we need to find a way to make it sustainable. Continuing the methods of the past is no longer an option, as the Steinbeckian scenes now unfolding in the Central Valley should make clear to us all.