The Los Angeles County Democratic Party held their endorsement meeting for the May 19 special election yesterday. The Yes side brought out all the big guns to talk up Prop. 1A: four State Senators, including President Pro Tem Steinberg, Attorney General candidate Ted Lieu, State Superintendent for Public Instruction candidate Gloria Romero and Lieutenant Governor candidate Dean Florez. The No side had two union members from the SEIU and the California Faculty Association and a 2008 Assembly candidate. (UPDATE: It was Carol Liu, not Ted Lieu.)
And the LACDP went neutral.
It’s quite remarkable to see practically the entire establishment of the Democratic Party selling fear and so few people buying. My fear is that they will chalk up their failure to the typical right-wing anti-tax bias, when the real indictment here is a failure to lead, to articulate an actual solution instead of the same nonsense that does nothing to effect structural reform. The first ads for 1A and 1B only have one unequivocally true statement in them – that the budget is “A total mess, and we all know it.” And yet the prescription for solving the mess is nothing more than making people afraid of some amorphously bigger mess, while neglecting the clear disaster that would arrive with the passage of a spending cap.
This is not about an aversion to two years’ worth of sales taxes. It’s about an aversion to more demonstrably awful solutions to layer onto an already dysfunctional system. Maybe instead of dictating to their constituents, the leadership in Sacramento could bother to listen to them.
….Both parties are brain-dead.
If business does not get better for me soon I am going to enter politics. You can be a bloviating dinosaur who knows nothing about anything and go straight to the top.
is how a defeat will be spun to mean whatever anyone wants it to mean.
As I see it right now, I can’t vote for these measures. Maybe they stave off trouble for the next year, but they make things far worse 3, 5, 10 years down the line. It’s not because of the taxes, but because of the anti-tax anti-spending elements that they want to codify.
What can we do to ensure that if these measures are defeated that the legislature actually does find ways to put us back on the right track, instead of playing in the weeds again?
The problem with tying this into the 2/3rds requirement is that every day a budget doesn’t pass, California’s bond ratings are hurt and the state loses millions of dollars more and programs have to be cut. If these measures don’t pass, then there will have to be some dramatic new cuts to get to 2/3rd’s because the damage done by waiting will be even worse than the cuts. One economist has already estimated that money going back to local government will have to be cut by an additional 20% if these measures fail and in a lot of places, especially poorer areas, that will bring devastation. It’s nice to think voters will blame one ideology for that, but I think that’s still an open question and in the meantime a lot of people will be hurt in a big way.
I keep hearing this presented as an all-or-nothing debate. Why shouldn’t we vote yes on 1C,1D, & 1E, and no on 1A? We will have adopted the budget moves to get us to June 2010, while refusing the permanent spending cuts. Yes I understand we lose the tax increases then, but does anyone seriously doubt that the budget will again be out of balance in 2010 regardless of whether 1A passes?