I’ll be on KALW at 11 to talk about the week’s news…including this.

There has been a bit more attention paid to the budget situation in the last few days. But for the sake of comparison, how about we look at two national op-eds.  One is from Joe Matthews, a fellow at the New America Foundation, and appears in the New York Times. The other, in the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.http… is from the mayor of CrazyTown, Newt Gingrich.

Let’s check Newt’s first. The man is clearly completely unfamiliar with the California situation:

The elites ridiculed or ignored the first harbinger of rebellion, the recent tea parties. While it will be harder to ignore this massive anti-tax, anti-spending vote, they will attempt to do just that.

Voters in our largest state spoke unambiguously, but politicians and lobbyists in Sacramento are ignoring or rejecting the voters’ will, just as they are in Albany and Trenton.  … Sacramento politicians will now reject the voters’ call for lower taxes and less spending and embrace the union-lobbyist-bureaucrat machine that is running California into the ground, crippling its economy and cheating residents. This model of high-tax, big-spending inefficiency has already driven thousands of successful Californians out of the state (taking with them an estimated $11 billion in annual tax revenue). The exodus will continue.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a smart, tough, charismatic leader who has been forced to submit to policies he knows are ruining California on behalf of interests he knows are cheating the state. His failure to tame the union-lobbyist-bureaucrat machine that owns the legislature is a symptom of just how powerful it is. (WaPo 5/22/09)

Of course, Newt just plays with the same old rhetoric that he’s always used.  He highlights the Yacht Party theme that all these businesses are leaving California…except that they aren’t. As noted by the CA Budget Project blog, the PPIC has shown that this really isn’t true. PPIC event went so far as to say, in a report, that “it is important to be wary of anecdotal evidence of businesses fleeing the state to support arguments that California has an economic climate hostile to business.”

Furthermore, the special election was hardly a call to destroy state government as Newt alleges.  As the recent polling has shown, Californians want strong government institutions. They want good schools, and are generally supportive of raising revenues to do so. But that doesn’t fit with Newt’s, or much of the media’s theme. Putting aside that Gingrich clearly doesn’t understand California, California politics, or even Arnold (check that last ‘graf I grabbed), Gingrich was such an extraordinary failure as Speaker. There’s somebody to be giving lectures.

Finally, on the real-world side, you have Joe Matthews’ op-ed in the Times. Matthews, who actually knows what is going on with California, even wrote a book about Arnold.

What to do? Bankruptcy would appear to be out. Federal law authorizes only local governments, not states, to seek bankruptcy protection. Yet in California, irresponsible voices on the right (and a few on the left) have suggested testing the limits of the law and forcing the state to begin to delay or default on its obligations.

That would be a disaster, not only for California, but also for the country. Financial analysts fear that the failure of California’s government could further damage the state’s economy (and by extension, the nation’s) and shake confidence in the bond markets, making it difficult for cities and counties to borrow and perhaps sending some local governments into real bankruptcy. (NYT 5/21/09)

Matthews prescription is a bailout with strings that would force reform, such as the elimination of the supermajority rules. I’m not particularly sure that it stands much of a chance of happening, but it would be the best thing for both the state and the nation.  Despite that, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare/CrazyTown) has been blabbing all over the media that he spoke to an “unnamed Democrat” that said there is no way the Feds will save California.  I don’t doubt that there are misguided Dems who feel that way, but I also don’t doubt Nunes’ ability to make stuff up to fit his particular take on things.

One of these editorials has a basis in reality, the other, not so much.  It would be nice if there was some sort of requirement for the authors of these op-eds to actually know what they are talking about. Matthews does…Gingrich should be left to blab to rich conservatives around the country about his “family values.”