8 thoughts on “June 16 Open Thread”

1. I got Brown’s “supporters email” for today, and it leads me to think a bit:  what do we want to ask of a gubernatorial candidate?

   So far, there’s no reason to get excited about anybody running so far, including our former and like-to-be-future governor, Jerry Brown.

   So progressives are for now “free agents”.  Why not bid one candidate off on the other, and see what we can get?

   What’s a list of “this is what I want from you” to ask of candidates like Brown?  It should be reasonably short, and focused?

   I’d argue:
   
   1. Fighting on the 2/3 rule.
   
   2. Genuine engagement of the grassroots portion of the party in the way they campaign.
   
   3. Talking to the voters like grown-ups on the need to fix the way the state taxes, and what the state taxes.

   What else should be on a list like this?  What should we prioritize?

2.   Democrats get serious.  Announce support for the recall if Schwartz won’t sign a majority rule/fee increase.  We’ll have to limp along with 80% funding of programs until next June but at least it will be all programs, not just poor/disabled/etc.

3. from incompetent Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (trademark pending).

   She puts a Bush acolyte in charge of a tax commission and we should be shocked when they pull this crap?

   Bass is the quintessential epitome of someone who continues to fail upwards.  Just wait until she quickly caves on the budget so Arnie will appoint her LG if Garamendi wins CD10.

4. Runs the state like a mafia kingpin.

   “Ve vill never talk about dis again.”  

   He probably demanded they kiss his ring, too.

5. It’s become an article of faith that taxation is by definition “punishment.” There’s no consciousness at all that taxes are levied to provide necessary and desirable government services for the common good. There’s no sense of “common good,” for that matter.

   There’s absolutely no sense that those with the greatest ability to pay — those who have been rewarded the most in our highly tilted political and economic system — should pay relatively the most in taxes for those necessary and desirable government services in the common interest and for the common good.

   No, since they see taxation as punishment, they believe that the appropriate reward for their success in our tilted political and economic system is relief from taxation. The more successful they are, the smaller their tax burden should be.

   Those who should be punished with taxation are the “losers,” those who haven’t made and won’t make millions and billions and trillions…

   So of course they would try something like shifting the tax burden onto the working and middle classes. That’s been their objective for generations. Crisis provides an opportunity, eh?

   Ideally, there would be a progressive alternative that doesn’t just seek to preserve the current dysfunctional model of taxation in California, but actually develops an alternative taxation model that expands and extends progressive taxation of all income, not just wages (or maybe even exempts wages up to a certain point, ha ha ha) and taxes services — moreso at the high end than the low — reduces the sales tax rate to something sustainable,  institutes fair property taxation, imposes, say, a luxury tax on the absurdities of wealth in this state (I’m actually all for confiscatory taxation on the rich at this point, given that they no longer serve any useful function, and if they want to live in some other state, let them, the bloodsuckers) and so on.

6. As a star in Hollywood, the Worst Governor Ever had a reputation as being a great deal-maker, and he brought this style with him as part of his idea about how government works. It was all a permanent media campaign with occasional pauses to negotiate the European DVD rights and back-end points.

   “I said to them, I said, ‘Look, I go there this time. But everyone has to understand, we’ll never go back again.’ And everyone said, all four of them said, ‘No, we understand that we will not address this issue of taxes or fees again. We’re going to solve everything else from now on with just cuts.'”

   Arnold promised us that he was going to pay for his car tax cuts by finding waste and mismanagement and reinventing government.

   When he honors that promise, which has cost us four billion a year for the lost revenue, and another two billion a year to fund the borrowing to pay for that lost revenue, maybe we can trust any new deal he makes, or anything else he says about anything.

   Arnold always wants to forget the Big Lies he told, and focus on some new lies he made up.

   And he understands that the media is so vapid and star struck that they will continually play along.  

7. As a star in Hollywood, the Worst Governor Ever had a reputation as being a great deal-maker, and he brought this style with him as part of his idea about how government works. It was all a permanent media campaign with occasional pauses to negotiate the European DVD rights and back-end points.

   “I said to them, I said, ‘Look, I go there this time. But everyone has to understand, we’ll never go back again.’ And everyone said, all four of them said, ‘No, we understand that we will not address this issue of taxes or fees again. We’re going to solve everything else from now on with just cuts.'”

   Arnold promised us that he was going to pay for his car tax cuts by finding waste and mismanagement and reinventing government.

   When he honors that promise, which has cost us four billion a year for the lost revenue, and another two billion a year to fund the borrowing to pay for that lost revenue, maybe we can trust any new deal he makes, or anything else he says about anything.

   Arnold always wants to forget the Big Lies he told, and focus on some new lies he made up.

   And he understands that the media is so vapid and star struck that they will continually play along.  

8. Julia Rosen nailed Arnold in 2007 at California Progress Report.

   Arnold is attempting to raise his national profile by offering himself up as the perfect politician: principled, and interested in governing, not focusing on partisanship. It is complete and utter bullcrap.

   Out here in California, we refer to our governor by software version numbers to describe his drastic ideological shifts. There was Arnold 1.0, during his heralded first year. Version 2.0 was a right wing nut job, running around telling nurses he was kicking their butts and calling lawmakers “girly men”. We are currently experiencing v. 3.0, a “post-partisan” deal-maker who insults people behind closed doors instead of at women’s conferences.

   We didn’t know what Governator 5.0 would be, but we knew that Arnold would reinvent himself once again, and that governing by back room deal and lying soundbite would be part of the style.

   Arnold says one thing and does another. It is his legacy. I don’t trust him any further than I can throw him. He will always come back to contradict himself in the end. He will continue to believe that he had a bunch of “good ideas” in 2005. He will keep calling people names behind closed doors, only, he just won’t tape it. Arnold v. 4.0 and 5.0 is just around the corner and don’t you forget it.

   Dug back into the California Progress Report from 2007 to dig up this from a brilliant piece by Julia Rosen.

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