First off, major kudos to Dave Dayen, who won a Credo Mobile Blackberry as the best state blogger!  Thanks to everyone who voted, and it was an award well deserved.

Since I wasn’t on any panels this year, I actually had the time and inclination to be a simple observer for the first time in three years.  To me, the convention felt more subdued in the hallways than in previous years, but the parties were just as energetic.  And as part of my observer duties, I took a rough transcript of the panel on California (how process creates crisis) moderated by Dave Dayen, and including Jean Ross, Robert Cruickshank, and Kai Stinchcombe.

See below, and apologies for any misspellings or inadvertent omissions.  Live transcripts can be a tough business.

California budget panel

There has now been a lot of national attention devoted to this topic at the national level, except for the fact that it has all been wrong.  Starting with the insistence on referring to it as a budget crisis.  Related example would be the debate over the healthcare town halls.  We have a fairly large majority in Congress, Democratic President, and surely, in a perfect world, with majority rule, there wouldn’t be much of a problem finding decent legislation supported by 50+1, except for the hurdle of a filibuster and the uneven democratic representation in the Senate.  It’s a crisis of process, not so much policy.  And if you take that situation and multiply it by 10-20 orders of magnitude, that’s California.

We have a center-left electorate, and it’s not a problem of  personality, it’s a problem of structure.  We could elect Noam Chomsky next year and still have the same problems, so we have to get rid of the structural hurdles to responsible governance.

They also describe this as a “perfect storm”-a lot of factors combining to create a big problem.  The first thing we want to talk about is  that it wasn’t a perfect storm, it was a 70-year bout of rain.  It will take time to restore, just as it took time to create.  And if we figure out a proper model of government that has accountability to the public, seeing what is done, voting up and down on that, we won’t just save California, but the whole nation.  This can be a harbinger for the national level.

First big heading:  history.

I don’t think it’s very well understood how we got to this point, starting with Robert.  Where did this all begin in California in terms of creating these structural barriers to a sane, responsible governance?

ROBERT: I live in Monterey, so maybe it was the American conquest!  But I think you’re right to use a 70-year time frame when this idea of 2/3rds for budgeting and the state proposed to raise the sales tax to raise core services.  That’s how the 2/3rds rule came about for more than a 5% budget increase.  And it passed, and it didn’t seem like a big deal.  Through the 60s we had a consensus budgeting process.  That was helped because we didn’t have a far-right Repblican party that didn’t think we needed strong public services.  Republicans bought into the California dream.  But it was also the time that Ronald Reagan pulled the Republicans far to the right, and imposed  their will on a state they knew was trending away from them.

There was a field poll showing that the California electorate was becoming more democratic.  That was known in the 70s, so the conservatives pushed for the 2/3rds rule to prevent that trend.  Most Californians, when you ask them about prop 13, they think it’s what keeps them in their homes.  And what they did was use that  wedge, the fact that people were freaked out about losing their homes, they used it to impose the right-wing stricture on government to add the 2/3rds rule to taxes as well.  The conservatives have veto power over everything in the state.  And through the 80s, the answer from the Democrats was a series of asset bubbles that could grow the economy without taxes.  We had a housing bubble in the 80s.  And then when they blew up, they had to cut a deal with reasonable  Republicans.  But Democrats have not realized how crazy the Republican party has become.  We elect a lot of Democrats out here, but the Republicans are very good at imposing their will on the state, and accept Republican frames on issues.

And now there’s a political spending cap in California because Democrats feel the need to accept the necessity of cuts to get Republican votes on the budget.  And now the progressive majority in California cannot govern itself.  The question is whether government in California can be used to help people.  We say yes, they say no.  But it doesn’t matter how often we answer it, we can’t put it into practice until we can fix what it broken.

DAVE: There are three 2/3rds rule.  One for budget, one for taxes, and one that doesn’t allow local governments to raise taxes in many cases without 2/3rds.

JEAN: I’m going to disagree with some of what Robert said.  I didn’t realize I was going to speak to an audience of all Californians, but I think there are some good generalizable lessons.  I certainly fall into the trap of blaming all evils on prop 13, but you  have to ask how we ended up with prop 13, especially since the governor then wants to be our next governor, especially in terms of understanding the role of the political process in that time.

I’m the classic product of the California dream.  I graduated the year voters approved prop 13, so I’ve lived that history and got my start as a community organizer trying to keep city libraries open.  That has been my entire adult life.  And if you think about how we ended up with prop 13, we had totally wacky formulas for how we funded services in California.  Old ladies were getting taxed out of their homes, which allowed  Howard Jarvis to put them on the TV commercials, and the legislature didn’t take it seriously.  Everyone from the chamber of commerce and leftward opposed it.  But this is where I take issue about who is at fault.  We do have an entrenched conservative Republican minority, but the problem and the challenge is for a lot of us who believe that government can play a constructive role-and yes, I do think we have a political spending cap-but it’s the absolute failure-what we haven’t seen is a willingness on the part of elected Democrats to articulate why government is important.  This is why we’re seeing the town hall meetings around the country that we’re seeing-like, Government, keep your hands off my medicare, and I don’t know if it was ever said in this context.  We have an unwillingness to defend what government can do, and therefore the taxes that are needed to pay for  it.  And if  you go back to how we ended up with the budget agreement that we ended up with in California, it’s because Senator Steinberg and Speaker Bass said-they never said we’re going to decimate higher education and K-12 without more money in the system.  We have a fear on articulating what in the system is important.  And that has allowed the 2/3rds vote.

The 2/3rds on the budget was never an issue because the spending side was never an issue.  But now there is a nascent debate among those who want to  change vote requirements between those who just want to change the budget, and those who want to change taxes.  And if it’s just budget, they’ll say that you can do a budget by majority vote, but it’s really about the money you need to pay for it.

At the local level, you don’t need a supermajority vote, it’s that  you have to go to the voters.  So in any community that’s not small or homogeneous, unless you have a well-articulated need, you can’t raise revenues at a local level.

And the fact that voters can impose spending requirements, can create unfunded mandates, is a large part of the problem.  It’s not good that  one and a half million dollars can put an initiative on the ballot.  If a rich guy in the flat earth society decided to put that money in, we’d be in real trouble.  So we need to think deeply about articulating why government matters and why we should pay for government services.

DAVE: The Dems have failed with regard to leadership for 30 years, and now 30 years later Governor moonbeam is a born-again tax cutter.  Kai, you’re running to get into office in a system that’s broken, and this idea of advocacy being more important than governance at this point, how does this play on the campaign trail?

KAI:  Good question, and we’re working on that one.  Dave and I are both honeymooning here, so I haven’t seen a computer in two weeks.  It’s very tempting to say, what’s the fundamental problem here and how do we undo it?  But there are seven or eight, and we’re multiply screwed in California.  Technical term.  So I would  point to-there are six that are a big deal.  Including what we’ve talked about, there’s also the public school funding formula, which, talking about it is like driving your  car into the water.  Legislative leadership as well, and then balance of the sources of revenue.  And the part of the history that I would talk about is the reform effort to date.  Arnold is a reformer in every leap year, and then Steve Westly, Fabian Nunez, it’s like blind people feeling an elephant.  Westly wants more moderate Democrats, Fabian says, you know, if we could just get rid of term limits, so basically, you have a huge colossal octopus of problems.  And our leaders seem to be attacking them in a partial way for one, and also at their point of lowest credibility.  So what I would say is that it’s good that we’re having this discussion here because the netroots are the conscience of the Democratic party, so if anyone’s  going to come up with solutions, bloggers and advocates will end up supplying it.

JEAN: Term limits we should also flag.

DAVE: Yes, I think they’re a major problem and it has removed all the institutional memory out of Sacramento.  There’s more on the third mic on this panel (JEAN) than in the entire legislature.  And everyone skipping out to the next job.  But, let me ask-under the current trajectory, we’ve seen what Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee has described as a 5-month budget cycle, kicking the can down the road, and then, wow, another deficit nobody could have predicted.  Given what’s out there in the economy, what should we be expecting over the next year in terms of the next legislative fights?

JEAN: Five is about right and that gets to the forecasting cycle of state revenues, which you don’t want to talk about in public.  But if you talk to staff in the legislature, they say they will hope to make it to January, when we will have another gap.  It won’t be as large because we have permanently lowered the spending base through the agreements in July.  They won’t generate savings for some time, like, taking away COL adjustments for the blind, which Reagan signed into law.  We really are reversing the policies to where we’re looking at Ronald Reagan as the good old days.  COL for higher education, and funding the basics.  I actually think we’re looking at a $10-15 billion shortfall the next time around assuming the state doesn’t lose  all the litigation it’s involved in and gets money from the feds.  And I think we need to make a powerful case for another stimulus package.  And the one other shoe in the economy that hasn’t dropped  is state and local budgets.

The problem is going forward.  I used to say five years ago that the state was running out of tricks and gimmicks for fixing budgets, and that’s not true.  A lot of highly paid staff in the legislature is paid  to make sure we never run out, but they’re  getting increasingly more expensive.  We did petty theft in the early 90s, but now it’s a third-strike felony.  I frequently say to the press that Arnold’s legacy will be closing off any flexibility that we had in the budget, because  he’s moving Prop 42 money, and local property tax money, and has closed things off by doing it.  So that’s why we’re now stuck with these very expensive fixes.

DAVE: Incredibly good point.  We’re borrowing to avoid a tax hit, create loopholes, change payment dates to July 1 from June 30, and that “saves” $1.2 billion?  But yes, we now have a legacy of breaking the law to balance the budget.

ROBERT: That goes along with what Jean just said.  There are cuts to AIDS programs being litigated among other things, and the “third-strike felony” term is accurate because people will be hurt or even killed by these cuts.  And what it will look like over the next five months isn’t good, but what we need is a mobilization to avoid it.  The state has been in fiscal crisis since 2002, temporarily averted by the housing boom.  The state has cut $30 billion in spending since 2007, and that hasn’t hit the majority of Californians since then-it hit the people who were invisible.  But that’s starting to shift.  The victims now are themselves or their neighbors.  And the programs we need to survive and thrive are under direct assault.  This may be the Iraq War movement-just like the Democratic party failed to stop the war and we took to the blogs.  A similar point may be developing in California.  I just read that 100 state parks are going to close.  You’ll know some of them.  Everyone knows someone who’s being hit, and that creates an opportunity to hit back.  The defeat of the May initiatives was a huge victory for us.  We have a huge amount of work ahead of us and we’ll talk about that later in the panel, but we still have a deteriorating situation, but we’ll come back to it with new knowledge, power, and a recognition that this crisis is threatening our very livelihoods.

DAVE: First thing is, they committed $1.2 billion in cuts to the prisons, but they didn’t specify where.  So either the legislature gets rid of all  treatment and rehabilitation programs, or b) it can do a saner, more sensible prison policy where you don’t lock up every non-violent offender, and don’t do a thing where you have three quarters of all prisoners, or something like that, on technical parole violations.  That’s the #1 crime that people are being returned to prison on.  And that’s where you can see the difference between a progressive and a conservative response.

And a federal judge has said that we have to release 44,000 prisoners because we’re violating the 8th amendment against cruel  and unusual punishment.  And another thing I want to talk about is the Parsky commission, which gets to Kai’s point about using reform in a self-serving way.  This commission was designed to change the tax structure in California to dissociate from the boom-bust cycle.  So the commission-whose appointee Mr. Parsky was a Bush pioneer-they want a flat tax for the state of California, to entirely cut corporate  taxes, and to add a VAT to make up for it.  The “Latvia-ization” off California.

And there is pushback, mainly by Fred Kealey who’s a former legislature.  And much like the base closure commission, they want an up-or-down vote on that, because that for some reason doesn’t need a 2/3rds majority.

KAI: This was something that was said earlier and I want to reiterate it.  The question is, when will CA run out of money?  But that’s less important than the damage that has already been done and is being done every day.  People  don’t see a lot of it, but people are dying already as a result of the cuts that have already been made.  Reducing homecare workers so people have tougher decisions, or cutting hospital reimbursement rates, which will lead to denial of care.  And the UC-it takes hundreds of years to build a world-class university, and you can piss it away very quickly by cutting away all of the student funding, and then you start losing faculty because you can’t attract good people.

I think people will be organizing by demanding more from the party leadership.  You take a look at the compromises that have been foisted on us and you can tell that they’re  not really trying.  It’s not as easy as all that, but the citizens have never been presented with an honest alternative-we get the propositions that Brian among others worked hard to defeat.  If the Republicans stop you from pushing a budget, cry out against them.  The legislative districts aren’t competitive so the right-wing gets extreme, but the Democrats have already started figuring out what the worst thing there is that they can sell to the electorate and go for that as opposed to thinking what they  would  want if the Republicans didn’t exist.  For instance, AFSCME had a great program where they itemized a series of revenue items that could be raised with a majority vote, and asked what they disagreed with and why.

Prop 11 wasn’t a perfect redistricting initiative, but now we won’t have all-safe legislative districts, but now-

DAVE: I don’t see how you redistrict Santa Monica.

KAI: California was the only state where no legislative district changed party hands in 2006.

JEAN: I was going to go back to the prison issue-if I were betting, I would expect the legislature to pass and let the courts take the fall, because the underlying violations are pretty ugly.  Mostly 44,000 bad guys, so the odds of them doing something else bad is pretty high.  And with the possible exception of the governor, who has actually put together some reasonable  ideas, I think they’re just going to let the courts deal with it.  On the tax issue, I think this is something that could play out over the next six weeks.  I don’t want to blow all the time we have on that project, and our site has a lot of stuff  on it, but there are two implications around the subject of volatility, which is a smokescreen.  I don’t think people grasp how if you move away from a progressive corporate  tax to a tax on consumption that it will slow revenue growth.  It’s a dramatic recipe for smaller revenues in California.  It is a smaller-government agenda and there’s a lack of a grasp of the underlying economics going on and that is also a bipartisan problem.  Anyone who wants to know more should read our blog.  Talk to your legislators because we need to be active.  There’s a lot of bad information out there.

DAVE: Just go to CBP.org, and you’ll find it.

ROBERT: this is a winnable fight and we need to  find more winnable  fights.  We need to find things we can actually do to claim some victories.  Ensuring progressive taxation is a key, winnable fight because it helps get our message out.  The way we’ve dealt with the banking crisis is a massive transfer of wealth to the elite, and this tax proposal, we can reverse that.  We can use this to tell Californians to  stop them from giving away more favors to the wealthy.  It shows that as we talk about progressive solutions for this state, it’s happening in the context of a right-wing shock doctrine being leveled against California.  Schwarzenegger has used this to push through attacks on basic government that we would take for granted.  We have to rise to the challenge to restore the California dream.

KAI: We have to jump in with more things that are winnable.  For example, splitting the property tax rolls and reassessing corporate property.  There are some hilarious tax rolls on the books, like, a major corporate headquarters being assessed at its 1978 value.  That’s a direct assault on Prop 13.

DAVE: There’s an organization around that already called “close the loophole.”

KAI: and something else that we haven’t put on the ballot, but enabling local school districts to chip away at that 2/3rds requirement.  Should the citizens be allowed  to vote to  raise taxes for  public schools to help kids?  You’ve got to be the grinch to say that we shouldn’t fund these.

DAVE: Perfect segue.  First, let’s talk constitutional convention.  You allow the people to call for one, then you call for one, then you ask the people to pass it.  There are too many things that need to be done.  You would drag it out over years, and have 20 ballot measures, and have stimulus for local media, but hundreds of millions that you’d have to deal with, rather than stuff there’s already organizing around, and trust that we can put together a neutral system where the will of the people can be reflected.  I come from a place where good government is progressive government.  If you have a government that rises and falls based on who the leaders can be, you’re going to have accountability and responsiveness.  But what do you think needs to be done in the long term to fix this mess?

ROBERT: This is a holistic crisis of government, of democracy, how we provide for our basic needs and services.  All the government does is being attacked because we don’t have a democratic process.  I’m interested in the ConCon process because we can think broadly.  Also, the 2-year budget cycle works well in Washington state, and the relationship between state and local governments, but we need to make our government better, like, same-day registration, or maybe, get rid of the Senate, and increase the size of the Assembly so we have a closer relationship with our legislators.

A constitution where a majority can take away rights from people is a problem as well.

JEAN: Weighing in on the opposite side of the ConCon, I’m intrigued but also scared.  The last time we had one, we got the Chinese Exclusion laws, and I don’t think it’s unrealistic to speculate that we might get something similar.  Robert talked about the Field Poll  about the gaps about who’s registered.  Getting a selection process that reflects the citizen population, much less the taxpaying population, is difficult.  How you educate people about how the urrent system works is difficult to do and I think we have a crisis of democracy, but also of vision and we  need a vision to go forward.  At this point in time I’m not convinced that the ConCon is the way to go forward.

KAI: We’re in a car with a brick on the gas pedal heading over the cliff with no steering wheel.  So the challenges facing us are severe and people are already dying.  So, on that happy note-

DAVE:  Cheery panel.

KAI: I think the ConCon is an exciting possibility because we can fix all the problems at once but we have a right to be terrified of it because the faith of citizens in government is terribly low, and we want to allow government to govern, which isn’t the inclination of the citizens.  So on principle, something like, one of the initiatives that took away from the First Five commission, well, I think that was a good idea.  Either the legislature creating one budget should-that’s the way you create a responsible government.  But the first five commission did a good job with the money, and the legislature just wanted it to tide over a shortfall.  And that’s a tough vote for the citizens.  Also, the best constitution is a simple one, and progressives might be tempted to put in the defensive rights of Redwoods  in court, or the rights of fish.  Literally, the constitution describes where you can’t fish-270 degrees from the South pier, no gillnet fishing.

DAVE: Questions:

QUESTION: I blog at DailyKos as RLMiller, and I’ve argued against the ConCon because California’s legacy for national politics, our biggest gifts have been Richard  Nixon, Prop 13, Ronald Reagan and Prop 8.  Why not try a strategy that has been proven to work, like, a 50-county strategy?

DAVE: Well, we are trying.  The ConCon is a funhouse mirror.  People see in it the worst of what they expect to get out of it.  You know, there are things a notch or two below that we can talk about, like reversing two thirds, just for the budget maybe, which I think would be a horrible idea.  Also, to get rid of the corporate tax cuts, which were the only permanent tax solutions in the budget.  Ultimately, the way I look at it is whether things can get worse.  But I am constantly surprised  by the level of suck.

ROBERT: Also, it’s nice to meet our commenters.

RLMILLER: Also, I want to give a shout out to Calitics.  There might be only two comments, but they are damn smart.

ROBERT:  We’re going to need a local stimulus, but non-Californians say, you made your bed, now lie in it.  Voters haven’t always made the best choice, but voters haven’t been asked to reconsider the whole of Prop 13.  If you’re under age 50, you didn’t  have a chance to vote on Prop 13.  We haven’t produced the kind of solutions that voters can support, and we need a process that encourages democracy to thrive.

EDEN: I twittered a poll on the ConCon-three not convinced.

KAI: I’m not convinced but I think we should try it.  We should try everything.

EDEN: As far as the level of suck, what could be worse than the current system?

JEAN: The issue of immigration-

EDEN: I think most of the people here are behind a ConCon that will limit social issues.

JEAN: My understanding is that you can’t do that, but that’s disputed.  There are issues of privacy, choice, immigration, there are issues  of a hard spending cap that’s a problem.  California Forward, which is a business-dominated reform group in California, they are looking at refining again, sort of a techie area of case law-what’s a tax, what’s a fee-that would require a 2/3rds vote for  a lot of fees, including  environmental mitigation.  I could probably go on, but I would say, the spending cap, tax/fee issues, and the way we finance education is incredibly problematic, but unless you’re able to get rid of the transportation earmarks-

EDEN: Can you argue the other side of it?

JEAN: If we were on a 5-10 year time cycle I might argue the other side of if.  But I’ve been doing work on CA budget issues for 25 years now and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface, and I get paid to do it for a living.  We need voter education, voter registration, and change the entire issue of government in this society.

DAVE: the only short-term policy is a long-term policy, but we need both to fix these problems.

KAI: Whether a ConCon is a good strategy or not and whether we choose to adopt whatever comes out of it, because it could go both ways, we would all agree on the immediate steps of staunching the flow of blood, which leads into both things.  The worst possibilities stem from intense mistrust of public servants, the lack of imagination in the legislature, and the lack of progressive messaging with money behind it.  So nobody has heard what government can do.  And Democrats don’t put the stuff on the ballot that  we actually need.  Those policies lay the groundwork for the same thing.

DAVE: Question from Max via Twitter: The idea that the right’s messaging is so succinct on 2/3rds.  What is our elevator pitch message to reform government in CA?

JEAN: That’s an excellent question and there’s a lot of public opinion research right now on that issue.  And the double 2/3rds vote is my priority on what needs to be changed.  And I’ll show you prop 56 back in 2004, which would have reduced it  to  55%.  Because you’re asking voters to trust the legislature more, which is a tough sell.  There is preliminary evidence that the people want to be left out of  it.  I fundamentally believe in majority, but maybe  splitting the difference is how you do it.  Maybe it’s how you package  it.  I think the messaging will take a lot of  work, and that is our problem, broadly defined, and we’re not good about a common message.

ROBERT: as an avowed Democrat and Progressive, I would  make people like Chuck Devore the poster children for this.  You may alienate Republican voters, but they’re not a majority.  Dems bear quite a bit of blame for what is going on, but an  excellent waya to get  voters to realize the need for changing what’s  going on is to realize who it empowers.

KAI: The first thing-what brought everyone into this room-is that we have a short-term message with people like the Courage Campaign, but you also need a long-term message, like-our public schools matter, which is what makes California so great.  Health care impacts everyone because you can’t be productive when you’re sick.  Your messaging depends a lot on what you’re trying to do.  I dropped out of my Ph.D. program to actually try to change this stuff rather than writing a book about  it.  And I was focusing on the conservative case for repealing this stuff, and it’s easy to document a lot of inefficiency and pork-barrel politics and regulatory burden that comems out of this process.  And during the good  old days, the Democrats would  come out with a $100 billion budget, and Republicans scream, but end up voting for a $102 billion budget  with new cop cars for everyone in two counties.  So maybe we need to get good at that type of package, or center around higher education.  Santa Barbara and Merced are swing Senate districts that contain UC universities.  That might involve registering large numbers of students.  And I think that might either scare or convince two Republican Senators.

DAVE: Mine is, restore Democracy.  Ok, a couple more questions.  Paul, spoon, pam.

PAUL HOGARTH: We’re a blue state with an Alabama budget because the budget is decided by legislators from the Central valley and orange county.  And if we can bring this to all the voters in CA, we could  prevail.  But my question is, we may be progressive as far as the electorate, but asking people to raise their taxes is difficult.  Even in SF you put revenue measures on the ballot, you get your ass kicked.

DAVE:  That’s the two santa claus theory.

SPOON: You’ve talked about the lack of  political media in the state.  There’s only so much that Calitics and the CBP can do.  How do we get more message out?

DAVE: there are more working writers on political issues in this room than in the entire rest of the state.

PAM: Netroots are the conscience of the party, but we’re not the leaders.  And we need a coalition with the power to organize a campaign.  Where does that come  from?  I think what’s missing is the organizational capacity and leadership?

KAI: I’ll jump in on that.  Statistically, the time that people learn about politics is from campaigns, when there are state legislative races going on.  $30 million a year in a campaign cycle.  And there is a literal legislative process, and that’s what gets in the media.  So we need to demand more of our legislators and candidates.  A lot of us have run for delegate for the state party, and that’s the Dean model.  We need to demand more of our political process.  So every time you see one of those  piece of shit mailers put out from Sacramento showing a candidate with three smiling children, talk about that.  Tell them to cut the bullshit and introduce a real budget.  Every legislator can introduce laws.  Ask them what they would do, and say, sounds like a great idea, introduce a bill!  You’re a lawmaker!

DAVE: We should  note: Voteforkai.com.

ROBERT: Pam and Dave are asking a similar question.  Yes, the courage campaign does have a big list, and we’re going to use that.  But you’re all activists as well, which is the beauty of netroots  nation.  We’re not academics.  Nothing wrong with that, I was one, but we’re activists too, and we don’t need to analyze it very far.  And our friend Marta Evry in Venice put together a video called “California closed”, including the story of Nori, who’s being hurt by these.  And we can also get active in these legislative races.  And one benefit is that the primaries are so important to us.  And I urge everyone to get involved in these primaries, because every two years people are termed out.  A candidate for the state legislature is more  accessible than a Congressman.

JEAN: The lack of a broad-based progressive infrastructure in CA is a huge challenge.  The scale is incredibly difficult.  On the 5-10 year list, it takes all of the silent organizing to make this work, and we need to pay attention to that.  I don’t know what your professional interest is, but there’s a lot of work that’s going on.  We do try to coordinate across issue areas and help people get involved.  I think we do need to think about vision, accountability, and this has actually not been-I’ve been on some really depressing panels about this, and this has been more upbeat than a lot of them!  I think there has been a lot of interest, and one of the advantages of gray hair is that you learn to be patient, and to look in 5, 10, 15 year time horizons.  And usually, when we fail, it’s because we move too quickly.  I don’t really want to say “wait wait” but we need to work smart, to work to win, to not move in 8 different directions all at once, but figure out how to bring enough people together to win on something that works and then move to the next problem, and the next.  Broadening the voter base in CA is incredibly important.  We have an electorate that’s a mirror image of the state population.  I have a whole bunch of budget rules that I think we need to bring in the people who are California’s future, not its past.

DAVE: and one last thing.  This state  provided more organizing for the Obama campaign than any other by a wide margin.  We have a political trade deficit.  We export  people and money out and they don’t come back and take  care of this state.  We have no political  media and we have this political experiment of a nation-state of 38 million people without a media.  We have the infrastructure, but it’s not centered around the right place, especially when it’s the process problem.  There are villains, but it’s hard to talk about a fraction as a villain.  We have to bring organization back  into this state.

AUDIENCE:  You have to offer them the kind of experience or work  that brought them in in the first  place.

DAVE: Thank you very much.  We can continue the discussion, and I appreciate your interest.