The establishment in both parties continue to close ranks around the May 19 special election, even as the grassroots continues to reject it. Today Antonio Villaraigosa endorsed all six ballot measures, asserting that they will “bring stability back to California’s budget system,” like any artificial spending cap that forces spending $16-$20 billion dollars below initial baseline estimates during an economic crisis where state spending is needed urgently tends to do. Without question, Villaraigosa, a potential candidate for Governor, sees that giant pot of CTA money being tossed around in support of the measures and figures one of the candidates could draft off of that nicely in the primaries.
At the local level, more and more Democratic clubs are opposing the ballot measures, because unlike the establishment, they have read them and calculated that they would put the state in an objectively worse situation, and they are unmoved by the idle threats of Armageddon casually tossed out by the Governor and his minions. The dichotomy is both interesting and revealing.
Meanwhile, in maybe the lamest online initiative effort since the invention of Compuserve, Abel Maldonado’s tears have created “Reform For Change,” a site dedicated to the petty, self-righteous, useless Prop. 1F measure that would eliminate raises for lawmakers and staff during an economic downturn. In the silly video accompanying the site, Maldonado’s tears tell us that “we can fundamentally reform California and change it forever,” through apparently passing a .0001% change in funding for state lawmakers that is dealt with through an independent commission and not “the legislators themselves” (one of many lies on this site).
Sigh.
UPDATE: Apparently Antonio said this today – “If we don’t pass these initiatives CA will go into bankruptcy.” That’s just ignorant fearmongering. These people should be ashamed of themselves.
I’ll have none of that! 😉
On the subject of the post, I think I would pretty much agree with your assessment. There are some groups going yes, but I think there’s a far larger group going no.
….there’s a lot of pain now and more to come. Frankly I think if the mass of voters who’ve been guzzling the Kool-Aide take it in the goolies for a while I think….
…maybe they will pull their heads out.
We’ve been living on our credit cards and guzzling way too much beer in front of the HDTV.
Time to get a job and get to work and the first job on the list is:
Cleaning out the deadwood in Sacramento.
All of it.
This is disappointing, but not suprising, I guess. The League of Conservation Voters came out in support of all the props today.
The two commenters on the post that were there when I got there were against their position. That’s not a big enough sample size to conclude that the membership (aka grassroots) is going to be opposed, but perhaps a little indication that they may not be in step with those that care about the environment. I threw in a comment myself.