When Arnold Schwarzenegger endorsed Prop. 93, some considered it the result of some deal on health care or some other quid pro quo.  I thought it was much simpler than that.  

Schwarzenegger has a good working relationship with Fabian Nuñez and Don Perata.  He for the most part gets what he wants out of that relationship.  Why would he want to change it for his last two years in office?  The pessimist’s view would be “Why would he want to housebreak someone else when these two are already housebroken?”  The optimist’s view is “He’s moving forward on his agenda, why rock the boat?”

Arnold has now confirmed this, by the way.

Schwarzenegger said he has developed a “trust” with sitting legislative leaders and hopes to continue to work with them. The governor said he felt a loss when former Senate leader John Burton was termed out of the Legislature.

“I just got this groove going with this guy and we got to understanding each other and all of a sudden he’s being ripped away,” Schwarzenegger said.

The governor said he and current lawmakers would be better able to tackle major issues facing the state, from the budget crisis to the state’s need for $500 billion worth of infrastructure improvements.

Besides, he said, “I really want some of those guys to stay.”

It’s a selfish view from the standpoint of Schwarzenegger (should the governor really be picking the majority leaders in the opposite party?), but perfectly coherent.  He wants to continue the working relationship.  In the short term, it’s up to the voters to decide if that working relationship is good for California.  I think the sum total of this site could be “Exhibit A,” but your mileage may vary.

(As a side note, interesting how this experience vs. change question continues at the state level, no?  Of course, we must wonder about the right kind or the wrong kind of experience.)

(Regarding the summoning of the devil below, I’ll get there at some point.  But I’d prefer to talk about something important over an obscure argument about which Americans deserve to decide things over which other Americans.)

The battle between environmental groups and the US Navy over the use of sonar off the California coast appeared to come to an end last week, when a federal judge forbade sonar use within 12 miles of the shoreline.  But for this ruling to hold, you would have to have a President who believes in an independent judiciary and the rule of law.  Alas, we have a king.

The Navy announced today that two important steps have been taken under existing law and regulations to allow it to conduct effective, integrated training with sonar off the coast of southern California after a federal court earlier this month imposed untenable restrictions on such training.

In accordance with the provisions of the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA), and at the recommendation of the Secretary of Commerce, the President concluded that continuing these vital exercises without the restrictions imposed by the district court is in the paramount interests of the United States. He signed an exemption from the requirements of the CZMA for the Navy’s continued use of mid-frequency active (MFA) sonar in a series of exercises scheduled to take place off the coast of California through January 2009. The Navy already applies twenty-nine mitigation measures approved by federal environmental regulators when using active sonar, and these will remain in place.

In other words, the President thinks killing whales is a small price to pay for not having to tell the Navy move their boats a bit.  Anyway, if the whales aren’t willing to die for the cause of liberty, then they simply want the terrorists to win.

The Navy takes steps to limit damage to whales, granted.  But that is pretty much besides the point.  Between denying the waiver for California to regulate its own tailpipe emissions and this latest action, it’s clear that this Administration doesn’t find the normal structures of the law to apply to them.  This next election is in large part about bringing this back into balance, about finding an executive who doesn’t treat the Constitution like something on which you wipe your shoes.

I went out to see Sen. Feinstein speak to the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce this afternoon.  The speech was billed as an address on the environment, and that was surely part of the speech (which I’ll summarize below).  But of more pressing concern to the Chamber was the growing unease with the economy in California and across the nation.  Sales taxes and auto sales have flattened out here in Santa Monica, and that represents 22% of all municipal revenue.  As this was the focus of a short panel before Sen. Feinstein’s remarks, she felt compelled to address it.  On the economy, she said that the coming year will be very difficult.  She called for the need to address the mortgage crisis and a need to extend unemployment benefits as part of an economic stimulus package.  But interestingly, she added this (paraphrasing from notes):

I hate to say it, but I don’t believe the Governor’s budget helps.  The cuts are very deep, and you cannot fund debt through accounting tricks and through floating bonds.  That’s the most expensive kind of budget funding there is.

I’d love to know why she “hates to say” that she has a substantive policy difference with a Republican governor who is trying to run the state into a ditch for generations to come.  It really shouldn’t be that hard to say.  The lack of forcefully connecting the Governor to the fiscal mess we’re in accounts for the fact that he continues to maintain high approval ratings despite the state’s wrong-track number approaching 60%.

The Senator dared not mention the “t” word, and stayed away from what an ultimate solution should look like.  But there was applause when she decried the Governor’s approach.  Clearly, people are more than willing to hear this argument; it just needs to be coupled with a realistic look at a solution that ends the perpetual motion machine of  budget crises in the state, and structurally fixes the revenue model.

More on her speech on the flip…

On the environment, Sen. Feinstein touted the green credentials of Santa Monica (“as good a green city as we have in California”) and legislation she introduced to expand the red subway line to the Pacific Ocean, which is 20-plus years in the making.  But while offering a very stark, almost “Inconvenient Truth”-like assessment of the scientific proof of global warming and its potentially catastrophic effects (she cited the escalating ice loss in Antarctica and essentially concluded that coastal cities would be wiped out without meaningful action), Feinstein continued to champion flawed, incremental approaches that don’t meet the targets we need.  She touted the recent passage of the federal energy bill (which she authored), and weirdly said that “the House couldn’t get their bill through,” when in truth the House bill would have been much more impactful, but the Senate couldn’t show the leadership and had to drop two key elements of the legislation, which would have set a renewable energy standard and removed the massive tax breaks for Big Oil (also, the bill includes massive expansion of biofuels, which many are starting to see as counterproductive).  She cited hard statistics, that we need to reduce emissions by 65-75% below 1990 levels, then endorsed the Lieberman-Warner global warming bill, which only gets us 60% below 2005 levels.  Lieberman-Warner, of course, is a half-measure that would set up a cap-and-trade system without auctioning off the credits, essentially giving away the right to pollute to the nation’s biggest industries.  But Feinstein said that while “it isn’t perfect,” the bill is “the best bet today for passing comprehensive global warming legislation.”  This is a push and pull that has been bubbling in the environmental community for some time.  Reasonable people can disagree.  But unsurprisingly, Feinstein went for the half-measure (and Barbara Boxer isn’t covered in glory here; she reported the same bill out of the Environmental Committee).

On a final note, Sen. Feinstein said that “I hope the next President will give California the waiver (to implement its tailpipe emissions law) it needs.”  She very specifically explained how the EPA action was political and not environmental, and she announced that she has asked the Inspector General of the agency to open a full investigation.

“Budget Nun” Elizabeth Hill’s pessimistic report about Governor Schwarzenegger’s budget stressed the need for more revenue to close the $14 billion dollar gap and maintain a professional level of services.  But if the money boys on Wall Street are to be believed, even that $14 billion dollar shortfall represents a number borne of outsized optimism.

Deep spending cuts proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last week were followed yesterday by more bad news – a Wall Street firm placed the state’s bond rating on “negative watch” amid fear that a $14.5 billion budget shortfall could get bigger.

The governor’s budget is based on data from November and early December that assumes tax revenue will grow 2 percent next year. But in recent weeks, some economists have begun to warn that the economy may slide into a recession, which would shrink tax revenue and widen the budget gap.

Fitch Ratings placed California’s bond rating of “A+,” already one of the lowest ratings of any state, on “negative watch” because of lawmakers’ inability to close a chronic budget gap and revenue forecasts in the governor’s budget that may be outdated.

By the way, the bond rating becomes slightly more important when you finance the government by, you know, floating bonds.  Boy, do we ever need a governor with a strong fiscal background to ensure our bond rating doesn’t go to crap!  Where d’you think we should get one of them?  Do we need another recall?

(over)

What choice did I have but to reach for the phone and dial three ringleaders from the 2003 recall of Davis? […]

Ted Costa, the anti-tax crusader and the man who drafted the Davis recall petition, was on the horn right away.

“We’ve got to get it going again,” I told him.

Costa seemed confused.

The recall, I said. The recall.

All the same conditions are there again, I told Costa, and there has to be another “throw the bum out” campaign.

“There probably should be,” Costa agreed, warming to the idea.

(that article is hilarious.)

The point is that if you have to use creative accounting just to get to a $14 BILLION dollar loss, something is fundamentally wrong.  And cutting spending is not going to produce a satisfactory solution.  For one, it will result in forfeiting $1.5 billion dollars in federal matching funds, doubling the real-world impact on Californians.  For another, it will not make up for shrinking revenues that will necessitate more cuts, and on and on.  I know that the Governor, and really the whole Legislature too, has a speech impediment where the word tax comes out sounding like the word fee.  But fixing the revenue side is unavoidable, and Sacramento is not a movie set.  Welcome to reality, Governor.

Well that’s… interesting.

oftening his past opposition to changes to California’s term-limits law, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is endorsing a February ballot measure that would allow many sitting lawmakers to run for office again this year rather than be forced to leave the Legislature.

Schwarzenegger, who as a candidate in 2003 supported California’s existing term-limits law as a shield against “special interests” obtaining too much power, reversed himself in an essay released today that said the original law “went too far.”

“Under the current system, our elected officials are not given the time they need to reach their full potential as public servants,” Schwarzenegger wrote in an essay to be published in The Times on Tuesday. “Imagine what would happen if we told a big-city police chief or a sheriff he could stay in the job just long enough to start mastering it and then had to move on.”

The op-ed announcing the endorsement is here, and it amusingly includes the line “It takes time to learn how to govern effectively.”  You said it, Arnold, not me.  Also, considering you’re in your fifth year, what’s your excuse?

The No on 93 campaign is kind of freaking out about this, calling it the result of a “deal on healthcare.”

Discuss.

When we last left EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, his agency was facing a lawsuit from California and over a dozen other states over his failure to grant a waiver allowing tailpipe emission regulation.  It was fairly clear that this decision was wholly political and in no way matching the scientific studies inside the EPA; Johnson’s staff was unanimously opposed to the decision.  Last week, Sen. Boxer chaired a field hearing in Los Angeles to investigate what was behind the denial of the waiver.  Johnson failed to attend.  This is from an email:

California Attorney General Jerry Brown, California Air Resources Board Chair Mary Nichols, the Sierra Club’s Carl Pope, the NRDC’s Fran Pavley, and Congresswoman Hilda Solis all appeared as witnesses.  Unfortunately, one chair at the briefing was noticeably empty:  the seat we reserved for EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson.

Clearly, EPA Administrator Johnson does not want California and 18 other states to implement California’s higher emission standard for automobiles — a key part of our fight against global warming — but the public deserves to know why.  We can’t let Administrator Johnson hide the truth from the American people.

At the hearing, Attorney General Brown called on Boxer to subpoena Johnson and all of the relevant documents that went into the decision.  Boxer is planning a hearing on January 24th with the EPA Administrator, and she’s attempting to use public pressure to get Johnson to release the documents.  She’s asking supporters to forward Johnson this email (over):

Dear Administrator Johnson,

I urge you explain why the EPA denied a request from California and 18 other states to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles, and to release all documents surrounding how the decision was made.

You would have us believe that granting California’s waiver request would establish a complicated “patchwork” of state regulation standards. But in reality, 14 other states have joined California and would use our higher standard, and 4 more states intend to do the same.  The national government should encourage — not stymie –the efforts of nineteen states to fight global warming.  

Last year, you told Senator Boxer’s Committee that the EPA needed more time to make a decision on California’s waiver request because it was “performing a rigorous analysis.” However, according to an article in the Washington Post, you ignored the advice of your technical and legal staff and denied our waiver request anyway.

We deserve to know the truth about why, over the unanimous advice of your own technical and legal staffers, you rejected California’s legitimate waiver request — waivers which have been issued 50 times in the past and never denied.

I urge you to explain to the public why you denied California’s waiver request, and release all related documents to reveal how the decision was made.

Meanwhile, House Oversight Committee chair Henry Waxman has also demanded the documents, and is scheduling interviews with EPA employees about Johnson’s decision.  These are two ornery committee chairs that will not let up on the EPA.

Let me also commend Hillary Clinton for being the first Presidential candidate to address this issue, lauding the state’s decision to take the EPA to court.  From the comments, Barack Obama sent out a press release on the EPA decision soon after it was handed down.  And Edwards urged granting of the waiver back in the summer.  There isn’t much daylight between the major candidates on this issue.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Sean from Warming Law has more.

I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon at Will Rogers State Park.  Named after the famed humorist (he coined the phrase “I don’t belong to any organized party; I’m a Democrat”), the park stretches across the Santa Monica Mountains and offers stunning views of both the Pacific Ocean and the city of Los Angeles.  And it is one of the 48 parks scheduled for closure.

The official reason for the closure is that the park doesn’t make enough money to cover its own overhead costs.  Apparently state parks now need to be money makers instead of gifts to the people of California.  There’s a $7 parking fee but no entry fee; people entering the park on foot pay nothing.  With a small residential community nearby, plenty of people just leave their cars a few blocks away and walk into the park for free.  According to 2006-20007 statistics, 28% of the park’s entrants were walk-ins.  Seems to me that there’s a fairly simple solution here that would relieve residential congestion and keep the park afloat, but what do I know, I just write for the Internets.

What struck me was the large number of people out for the afternoon.  I don’t know if it was because of the notice of impending closure or not, but this is not a portrait of a struggling piece of public land that needs to be shuttered.  There were hundreds of people playing soccer at the polo fields, hiking, and touring the fully restored 31-room ranch house.  There’s another point to be made here.  The grounds of the park include part of the 55-mile Backbone Trail which connects several state parks together along the Santa Monica Mountains.  It’s not entirely clear where one park ends and another begins, and putting up a chain to cordon off the closed portions isn’t really going to stop anyone.  In other words, you’re going to simply have an unsupervised park still used by hikers, decreasing public safety while saving very little, perhaps a half-million dollars in maintenance, which could certainly be less if the parking fee was an entrance fee.

The point is this.  Will Rogers’ widow offered the preserve as a gift to the people of California (the family is still fighting to keep it open).  The park system is part of the California dream, part of what makes the state so unique in its diversity, its landscape, its opportunity for activity.  In California, you can sunbathe in the morning and be on the ski slopes by sundown.  If we can’t “afford” the natural beauty of the state park system, we’ve done something terribly wrong, and every Californian has a stake in opening up the land and keeping it available for recreation.  

The austere, cuts-only budget will hurt people in a variety of different ways, most of them more profoundly than by closing 48 parks.  But the symbolism of having to close the land, having to close the ocean view, having to close part of what makes California what it is, this is truly ignominious.  And at some point, you’d think Californians would hold their leaders responsible for this shame.