The Yacht Party wrapped up their convention in Sacramento yesterday, and while they didn’t censure the members of the caucus who voted for tax hikes, they did deprive them of support in future elections.  There’s a problem with this, of course – only Dave Cogdill and Anthony Adams are running for their seats in the next election, as everyone else is termed out.  In addition, what this really prevents is slate mailers, not really anything else.  It doesn’t prevent mailers that candidates can buy a spot on, or funding from individual members of the party, etc.  This measure is good for the “heads on a stick” crowd but not for much else.  You can already see the Yacht Party trying to run away from the insanity they’ve enabled for 30 years.

Shortly before the voice vote, a banner reading “The Six Losers” was unveiled listing lawmakers who voted for the budget. State Republican chairman Ron Nehring quickly closed curtains to cover the sign, which was displayed behind the table of party executive officers.

Hilarious.

I eagerly await seeing how the suicide cult reacts to a gubernatorial candidate who will try to buy the election.  Meg Whitman is certainly an economic conservative but differs with the base on a few social issues.  Unlike with an Assembly or Senate candidate, the state party delegates will have no chance of holding the purse strings over someone like Meg Whitman.

Ms. Whitman predicted that her campaign could cost $150 million, much of it coming from her own fortune. (Forbes most recently estimated it at $1.4 billion.)

This doesn’t make her unbeatable, even in the primary – Ms. Whitman, say hello to Al Checchi.  But it does mean that the base will have less leverage and less relevance.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t governing by magazine cover, he’s governing by Sunday talk show.  This is a good venue for him, because nobody asking him questions has any idea what Arnold’s actually done to California, and he can spout off one-liners and talk the Beltway language of post-partisanship without rebuttal.  These kinds of interviews are never given to reporters in his home state, because they might actually have experience with his tenure and thus would be in position to know a lie when they see one.

For example, the Governor is getting a lot of ink for the line about how he’d be willing to take any stimulus money from any governor in the country who rejects it.  Less discussed is the essential falsehood present in this comment:

STEPHANOPOULOS: So when you — we’re looking at a similar budget crisis in the coming years here in the United States. Does the Republican Party have to re-think its absolute opposition to tax increases of any kind?

SCHWARZENEGGER: Well, no, I think that the Republican Party or any party has to always think, when you make a decision, “Do I want to make a decision that’s based — that’s best for the party? Or am I a public servant and have to serve the people, what is best for the people?”

And in this particular case, in order to solve a $42 billion deficit, the only way you can do that is a combination of making severe cuts and also having some revenue increases.

Really?  Arnold was “listening to the people” when he helped ram through a massive corporate tax cut, in a time of deficits, for large multinational corporations?  Show me the poll where the public was clamoring for a multinational corporate tax cut.  How about the poll where the public was desperate for waiving environmental laws regarding public works projects and delaying implementation of laws regulating diesel emissions?  Actually, the California public has spoken pretty profoundly that they want a serious reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

I mean please.  This is a guy who campaigned almost entirely in 2003 on cutting the vehicle license fee, costing the state almost enough to fill this entire budget gap over 6 years, and now he’s raised it after admitting defeat.  Arnold Schwarzenegger is a born liar.  He has the interests of the California Chamber of Commerce and anything but the people of California.  That’s why he refuses to engage with them or their elected representatives, preferring to float above it all and run to the national media with false tropes about “serving the people.”  Forget just apologizing to Gray Davis, he should abdicate to him.

This last bit from John Myers was amusing:

And in non-governor news, he confirmed an interest in a cameo appearance in an upcoming Sylvester Stallone flick, picked Mickey Rourke to win an Oscar, and said The Candidate was his favorite political flick. That movie is an interesting choice, given it’s about a candidate who’s so focused on winning — rather than governing– that after his victory famously says: “What do we do now?”

Exactly.

The weekly Democratic radio address (which ought to be a YouTube address, come on guys) called for an end to the 2/3 requirement for budget and tax increases.  This is the first time in my memory that so many lawmakers are openly talking about revising 2/3.  It’s not a new problem – 28 of the last 32 budgets have been late due to legislative squabbling, with the fights becoming more protracted than ever over the past decade.  And every economic downturn, no matter how slight, sets off a crisis.  Assemblyman John Perez made it clear:

The budget would not have taken so long and would have not included non-budget related issues like an open primary if California did not have the unusual requirement of a two thirds vote for budget approval.

Reforming this two-thirds requirement should be a priority for all Californians.

Perez did not reference whether the new requirement should be the arbitrary 55% number, which is what the current initiative being circulated states, or a simple democratic majority.  We’ve learned where a number of Democrats stand this weekend:

• Darrell Steinberg decided not to mention 2/3 hardly at all in his op-ed in the Sacramento Bee.  That’s a lack of leadership.  No elected official should be speaking in public and pass up the opportunity to advocate for majority vote.  He instead opted for a Broderist call for working together and the awkward tag line “Smarter going forward.”

In comments to David Greenwald, Steinberg did call for repeal, but failed to pick a side.

“The answer in my view is to take this two-thirds supermajority requirement. We are one of three states in the country that allows a small minority of members to hold up the progress…. It doesn’t really work for California; it worked this time barely because of the magnitude of the crisis… We need to take the question this two-thirds supermajority to the ballot. I feel even stronger now than I did when I started on December 1.”

• Karen Bass is also talking about 2/3, but she is looking at the arbirtrary standard:

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, has proposed one that would allow lawmakers to approve budgets with 55 percent majorities if they do it by June 15. After that, it would take two-thirds votes.

It’s not necessarily that this kind of measure would definitely not pass because all the thrust of majority democratic rule is lost, but that’s certainly a factor.

• In that same article, Loni Hancock calls for a simple majority:

Hancock has introduced a constitutional amendment that would require only simple majorities to approve budgets.

“California needs to have a normal democracy like every other state in the nation except Rhode Island and Arkansas,” she said.

That’s a talking point.  55% is mush.

The point is that we have the Democratic leadership finally talking about the main impediment to the perpetual budget crisis.  Without two-thirds, you can fix a tax system that is too closely tied to boom-and-bust economic cycles.  Without two-thirds, you can end the virtual bribery of Yacht Party and moderate lawmakers.  Without two-thirds, you can end the Big Five process that facilitates official secrecy and backroom deals and use a deliberative process involving the committee structure and relying on the input of the entire caucus.  And without 2/3, you won’t have to hear from high Broderist windbags tinkering on the margins with proposals that make them feel good but will do absolutely nothing to solve the problem.  It’s kind of hilarious that the LAST proposal in George “Can’t We All Get Along” Skelton’s long list in today’s column is this:

* A simple majority vote for budget passage; 55% at most. Scrap the two-thirds vote requirement.

In both the Friday and Saturday editions of the Los Angeles Times, right on page A1 above the fold, there was a graphic of a “tax calculator,” which projected the additional taxes an individual would pay based on certain factors like income, number of dependents and values of vehicles.  They have a corresponding tax calculator on their website where users can type in the data and get the precise tax hit coming to them.  The Sacramento Bee has the same thing.  Talk radio was having a field day with these calculators over the past couple days, getting people to call in and disclose their statistics and telling them how much money they will owe.  This led to perverse complaints like the lady making $126,000 a year ranting about an $800 tax increase.

In my life, I have never seen a “spending cut calculator,” where someone good plug in the services they rely on, like how many school-age children they have, or how many roads they take to work, or how many police officers and firefighters serve their community, or what social services they or their families rely on, and how much they stand to lose in THAT equation.  Tax calculators show bias toward the gated community screamers on the right who see their money being piled away for nothing.  A spending cut calculator would actually show the impact to a much larger cross-section of society, putting far more people at risk than a below 1% hit to their bottom line.

But of course, people who are perceived to depend on state services probably don’t log on to the LA Times and the Sacramento Bee websites very often to calculate their tax burden.  In reality, we all depend on the state for roads and law enforcement and libraries and schools and county hospitals and on and on.  And in Los Angeles County, one in five residents – almost 2.2 million people – receive some form of public aid.  So wouldn’t it make sense to portray the real cost of spending cuts in the same way that tax increases are portrayed?

Contra Dan Walters, it is completely untrue that “liberal Web sites” are unilaterally condemning cuts to education and health & welfare spending.  We fully understand that a $42 billion dollar hole cannot be filled by revenue alone.  We certainly condemn corporate tax cuts at a time of massive deficits, or counter-productive actions like selling the lottery, which will produce net losses in the long-term.  But there is no question that the media mentality is to highlight the tax side of the equation over the spending side, and dramatically portray the tax increases – splashed across the front page – while relegating the spending cuts to further down the page.  It feeds the tax revolt and distorts the debate.  And it’s completely irresponsible.

I’m reading the accounts of delusional maniacs from across the state with not a little bit of bemusement.  The lack of economic thought is matched only by the lack of recognition that Republicans got far more out of this budget than they deserved to get, thanks to the anti-democratic 2/3 requirement.  Here’s a sample of this Algonquin Roundtable:

“The Republicans should have stood their ground,” fumed 70-year-old Tony Dragonetti. “Abel Maldonado is sick, and so are the other Republicans who voted for this. They give the you-owe-me crowd everything they need, but the poor slob who is working day after day paying taxes gets nothing.” […]

“I think they could have held out. There are a lot more cuts they could have made,” said Steve Pyle, 61, who said he was so unhappy with the country’s direction that he seriously was considering moving to Australia. “They could start by getting rid of all the illegal immigrants and the teachers unions.” […]

“I don’t believe everything would have stopped if this budget wasn’t passed,” Sanders said. “I support what the Republicans did.”

Local GOP activist Adele Harrison predicted new taxes would push the state and country into a depression […]

Terry Carter, 65, just smiled behind the counter and kept pouring coffee. The boisterous regulars have helped keep him in business for 22 years. As for his own opinions, he keeps those to himself.

“Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is listen,” he said.

Well, that depends on who you’re listening to.  For example, listening to talk radio is most definitely NOT the smartest thing you can do.  I’ve been tuning in to a lot of this down in Southern California, and the ignorance abounds.  A typical commenter is a well-off suburbanite bitching about $700 bucks in new taxes for their $126,000 salary (that was an actual conversation).  Roger Niello, one of the Yacht Party’s own who voted for the budget, got hammered on a Sacramento station.

John in Sacramento warned, “You’re going to bankrupt the state with taxes.”

And Dave in Cameron Park told Niello he was “outraged that you, as a Republican, caved in and voted with Democrats.” […]

“You should have let (California) fall off a cliff,” John from Sacramento told him. “Then, we pick up the pieces and put this state together, the way it used to be.” (emphasis mine)

This is the suicide cult politics played by the GOP.  And it features a lot of righteous anger and talk of censure and recalls and primary challenges.  There’s even some Ventura County Supervisor and anti-tax nut who’s mulling a run for Governor as the conservative alternative.

But I’m not sure it’s such a force anymore.  The John and Ken show ended Thursday with the two musing that “somebody should do something about this” and asking listeners to find each other to fight against the turncoats.  In other words, they’re not going to lead it.  Ultimately, these are lazy people shouting at the end of the bar.  Independents have turned dramatically against them, and the leader of the party won’t show up at their convention.  I don’t know that they’re entirely coordinated, after years of mismanagement and an almost broke state party apparatus, to even pull off the enforcer role.  If someone like Anthony Adams survives a primary challenge, that would be a powerful signal that the Yacht Party is all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

In fact, in maybe the most pathetic rallying speech I’ve ever heard in my lifetime, neo-Hooverist South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford argued for losing now, losing tomorrow, losing forevah!

“We are at the incredible gut check point for what happens next in American civilization,” Sanford said in the introductory address for the state party’s three-day Sacramento convention […]

“Would you be willing to lose? Would you be willing to support folks who may likely lose,” Sanford told the gathering at the Capitol Hyatt. He went on to say that it was paramount for party members to support the GOP “at a time when it may look like a losing cause” because their efforts will be “pushing the ball forward in the larger conservative movement.”

California Republicans: Willing To Lose.

State Superintendent for Public Instruction Jack O’Connell discusses the impact of the budget on education today, and it’s predictably negative.  After going through the particulars ($7.4 billion cut to Prop. 98 funding, additional flexibility for local control, a repayment measure on the ballot to return $9.8 billion to education under Prop. 98 in the future), he makes a strong announcement:

The painful budget process at our state and local school district level calls out for reform of California’s dysfunctional budgeting process. It is time for a sincere and frank conversation about reform. Central to this conversation is the idea of throwing out the two-thirds vote requirement to pass a budget and simply using a majority vote. Nearly every state in the nation and Congress, as well as counties, and cities use majority votes to pass their budgets. California should follow suit.

I understand that the minority party may feel that this would make them irrelevant to the process but, if anything, it would hold their majority party colleagues even more accountable.

Most importantly, a simple majority vote would protect our schools and districts from the instability they are forced to endure anytime the Legislature cannot reach a budget compromise.

It is time to bring about substantive changes to the way we do business in Sacramento – we owe the people of California this much.

Good for him, and it’s explained and framed well.  And now we have to line up our lawmakers along the fault line of a majority vote restoring democracy versus an arbitrary shift like 55%.

Majority Vote

John Burton, Jack O’Connell

55%

John Garamendi, Gavin Newsom

Every leader in the Democratic Party should be able to articulate where they stand on this crucial issue, the most important one facing the state.  Call your lawmakers and ask them what they prefer.

The California Budget Project has done a preliminary report on the “solution” (and I’m glad they put it in quotes) reached yesterday and expected to be signed by the Governor today.  They demystify the fact that this is, once again, a short-term fix that will actually worsen our budget situation in the future.  The $42 billion dollar hole from this year is a direct result of constant short-term fixes over the past several decades, pushing off the problem until the current legislators are out of office.  Even in this budget, it is balanced through $6 billion in borrowing, which might as well be magic since we have the worst bond rating in the country.

The worst part of this is the spending cap, which could cripple future budget and severely ratchet down state services well beyond demand or even the rate of inflation and population increases.  We have seen from other states how this is a hammer on the heads of the least of society and it must be fought in the May 19 special election.  But the CBP is just as perturbed about the massive tax cuts, at a time of a $42 billion dollar deficit, to large multinational corporations:

Give multi-state corporations the option to choose between two different formulas for determining how much of their income would be subject to tax in California. This provision would be in effect in tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2011 and would cost $650 million in the first full year of implementation, eventually increasing to $1.5 billion annually. This provision provides no benefit to small businesses that only operate in California.

The tax breaks for movie companies and new construction home buyers and for hiring new workers (which history has shown doesn’t end up increasing employment but increasing employer chicanery with their payrolls) are all temporary, as are the tax increases.  The only PERMANENT tax in the entire plan is this giveaway to giant corporations like Exxon.  This is why Richard Holober claims that big business is the “only winner” in this budget.

The worst of the business tax cuts is a permanent change in the formula for calculating the income tax for multi-state and multinational corporations. This produces an initial big business tax cut of about $700 million a year. The State Senate analysis estimates the recalculation will eventually yield a corporate tax reduction – and state revenue loss – of $1.5 billion a year. This is not tax fairness. Combined with the tax hikes on everyday Californians, it is redistribution of income away from workers and consumers and into the pockets of our state’s biggest businesses. And it provides no tax savings for the mom and pop businesses that we usually count on to provide the camouflage for these corporate welfare schemes.

Another major sin in this budget are the agreements secured by Republicans to essentially increase greenhouse gas emissions by relaxing environmental regulations for large diesel vehicles.  This is another example of Arnold Schwarzenegger being a complete hypocrite, running around the country painting himself as the “green governor” while ramming through a provision directly contrary to that.

Like the budget itself, AB 8 XX was not the subject of any public hearings. The measure’s scaling back of emission controls was one of many concessions sought by Republicans in order for three of them in the Assembly and three in the Senate to vote for the budget.

Since there were no public hearings on the measure, it was easy for the GOP to side with the construction industry and ignore the majority of its members who want California to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve air quality.

A 2006 statewide by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 62 percent of Republicans strongly support state action to ratchet down greenhouse gas emissions. So do 73 percent of Democrats and 70 percent of independent voters.

That same poll found that two-thirds of likely voters for rolling greenhouse gas emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020. That is the legislation that became AB 32.

Finally, there is $5.8 billion that will be on the ballot for voters to agree upon, including a privatization of the lottery (which assumes a $5 billion sale… who is lining up to buy the California Lottery?) that would be a net loss of revenue for the state in the long-term, and $800 billion in raids from various voter-approved funds for things like mental health treatment.  Considering how unpopular the legislature is these days, there is no guarantee that any of these will pass, which will leave another hole to fill by June.

These are just some of the details that reinforce the object lesson that major fundamental reforms, in particular repealing the 2/3 rule, are desperately needed.  None of the above measures help the state.  They were put in to placate a fanatical minority who is emboldened by a conservative veto.  Sign the pledge to repeal 2/3.

Done for the Facebook reference: I may not get to 25.

1. One bit of schadenfreude in this is that Doug McIntyre of KABC and the comment section of the OC Register are flipping out over the heretics who broke with dogma and voted for tax increases.  McIntyre was particularly incensed about a Sacramento Bee editorial lauding Dave Cogdill as a “hero.”  He’s not a hero, he’s an extortionist, but McIntyre was calling him a guy who “took money out of your pocket to give to someone else.”  Typical Yacht Party jihadism.

2. It’s very clear to me that this got wrapped up today before the Yacht Party’s meeting in Sacramento, just blocks from the Capitol, so the spectacle of the crazies on the lawn demanding that old people eat cat food and public schools use the weeds out back for lunches be averted.

3. Joan Buchanan voted for the budget and then voluntarily cut her pay 10% in the name of shared sacrifice.  It’s a stunt, but it will probably go down well back home.

4. One loser in all of this is Zed Hollingsworth.  He got nothing in this budget for his newly-minted Minority Leadership, including no re-negotiation, and the next major talks may not be until summer 2010, at which point a repeal of 2/3 may be a fait accompli.  Meanwhile he’s already embarrassed himself by scheduling a $1,000-a-person fundraiser with fat cat lobbyists just HOURS after being made leader, one that generated such bad press he had to cancel it.

5. The big winner in all of this, perhaps the only one?  Twitter.  In a cavernous Capitol with a dearth of political reporting, the microblogging site was practically the only way to get quality information in real time.  It cannot replace in-depth analysis for a mass audience, but it was great for opinion leaders.

6. Though I’ve knocked him in the past, kudos to John Burton for recognizing the real problem and seeking to boldly fix it.  From an e-mail:

If the last 48 hours has proven nothing else, we can no longer allow Republicans to hold the people of California hostage and therefore dictate to the Democratic majority the terms under which the budget is passed.

California should join the 47 other states who don’t require a supermajority to pass the budget.

If I am elected as the next Chair of the California Democratic Party, I will make majority vote budget a top priority.

7. The federal stimulus is really helping out to reduce the pain in this budget.  It does appear that as much as $10 billion dollars will flow to California in this fiscal year, which would “trigger” some jiggering to the cuts (which would be reduced by $950 million) and the tax hikes (reduced by $1.8 billion).  It’s an open question whether or not all of them can be spent right away because of the cash crunch, but we’ll have to see how the markets react.

8. This is a baseline overview of the deal.  The cuts are going to be really, really bad: 10% across the board for education, huge cuts for public transit operations, health care, etc.  The new revenues basically fill in the loss of revenue from massive unemployment.  Essentially, this is the same level of spending as a decade ago, adjusted for inflation and COLA, despite greater need and higher population.  Not pretty.

9. Capitol Weekly reports that the cuts could hit Republican-leaning areas harder:

But data from the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) suggests that cuts under the budget plan approved Thursda morning could likely hit many Republican areas hardest-while the tax burden is already falling more heavily on Democratic leaning counties.

According to the data distributed by Assembly Budget Committee chairwoman Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, the majority of the counties using the most in state services are generally represented by Republicans. When this data on 2007-2008 state spending is compared to registration data from the Secretary of State’s office, it shows that seven out of the top 10 counties receiving state expenditures, measured per capita, have Republican registration majorities. Of the top 10 counties that contributed the most per capita tax dollars in 2006, eight have Democratic registration majorities.

“I hate to put this in partisan terms, but it’s the wealthier counties who are paying that are represented by Democrats,” Evans said. “Everybody needs to take a step back and look at what the data actually says.”

Food for thought.

10. Wrapping the week up into a nice little bow, on the day the deal was secured, they found Lance Armstrong’s bike.

11. There’s a big TV/film production credit in here.  While as a member of the industry I’m mindful of runaway production, I reject the “race to the bottom” that constant credits to get crews to shoot in California presume.  It’s corporate welfare, essentially.

12. The “single sales factor apportionment,” which is the massive business tax cut, doesn’t kick in until FY2011, predictably and conveniently after Gov. Schwarzenegger is out of office and it will be someone else’s problem to make up the revenue!  It’s almost like somebody planned it that way!

13. Of the items on the May ballot, only privatizing the lottery would really kill this whole thing and send everybody back to the bargaining table.  That would be $5 billion in lost projected revenue for this fiscal year.  But it’s a NET LOSS OVER TIME, which is what makes the provision so completely absurd.  Also, I’m not convinced anyone wants to buy our lottery, as revenue has shriveled in the past year.

14. Arnold still has $600 million in line-item vetoes to make to bring this into balance.  Hands up if you think they will impact the poor, the elderly, the blind, and others with almost no voice in Sacramento!

15. Karen Bass is vowing “additional Legislative actions before the start of the new fiscal year on July 1.”  So get ready for more fun!

There is no 16-25.

So Abel’s tears found a floor, and the deal is now done.  It’s a terrible, terrible deal.  Let’s first focus on what Maldonado got, which is less than meets the eye.

• He got his open primary legislation on the ballot, but not until June 2010.  Arnold was interested in it, and so it was likely to get on that ballot anyway.  This won’t help Maldo in 2010, which was probably a condition of the deal.  Considering that it affects Congressional races as well as legislative ones, I expect Nancy Pelosi to go all in trying to defeat and I don’t expect it to pass.  Open primaries have lost on the ballot in the past.

• The constitutional amendment banning legislative pay increases during deficit years passed; the amendment cutting all legislative pay during a late budget failed.

• The 12-cent gas tax increase was cut, replaced with a slight increase to the state income tax, federal stimulus money (which was always going to fill in because it was more than budgeted for) and $600 million in unspecified line-item vetoes from the Governor, which  are going to be ugly.  Let’s just say that the huge corporate tax cut is not the first place Arnold’s going to look.

Now, that’s what Maldonado got.  Among the other goodies in this budget, besides the corporate tax cuts and the privatization of state highway projects and the rest, are:

• A $10,000 tax credit for homebuyers, but only if they buy new construction.  So a “developer bailout” when there is all kinds of existing inventory sitting on the market and lowering property values inside communities.  And now there’s an incentive for them to stay there.  Great.

• Large commercial vehicles are exempt from the increase in vehicle license fees, because… gee, I have no idea.  This is perverse, the opposite of what we should be taxing, which are inefficient vehicles.

• Rental car companies can pass VLF increases on to customers, which they probably would have done anyway, but this makes it even easier.

• One provision allows for the delay of retrofitting of heavy diesel equipment, which will maintain poor air pollution in at-risk communities, and let’s face it, kill people.  Don’t believe me, take it from the Chairman of the Air Resources Board, Mary Nichols: “There are people who will die because of this delay.”

Dan Weintraub is right – this is a budget the GOP can be proud of, because it’s a profoundly conservative budget.  Because they hold a conservative veto over it.  And they get the best of both worlds – they don’t have to vote for the budget en masse so they don’t have to own it.  In short, the hijacking worked.  And that’s a function of process, not personality.

As Jean Ross says, “If this year’s budget negotiations don’t increase public support for reducing the vote requirement for approval of a budget and tax increases, it is not clear what will.”

…there are two initiatives that have entered circulation that would repeal 2/3 for budget and taxes, and replace it with an arbitrary 55%.  It should be majority rule.  But it’s about to gather signatures.  Budgets and bad policies can eventually be changed if the process is changed.

Because he knows he can get it, Abel Maldonado is offering his list of demands in exchange for being the 27th vote on the budget.  I guess Darrell Steinberg’s “1 Republican Vote” sign got to him.

In what could be a break in state budget talks, legislative Democrats are contemplating a firm offer – approval of three constitutional amendments – from Republican Sen. Abel Maldonado as a means to closing the state’s $40 billion budget shortfall.

Maldonado, R-Santa Maria, could provide the crucial 27th vote necessary to pass a budget package that has been stalled since Saturday. In a lunch meeting at Spataro with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maldonado asked for ballot measures to create an open primary system, prohibit legislative pay raises in deficit years and stop legislators from receiving salaries if they do not pass a budget on time.

Maldonado said in a brief interview Wednesday that there was “a good chance” for a budget vote tonight and that he wants all three of the reforms he has put forth to secure his budget vote.

Asked if he would settle for one or two, he said, “I’m asking for all three,” before rushing into a meeting with Assembly GOP leader Mike Villines. “We’re very close on the details and I just want to leave it at that.”

The move here would be the one Rick Hasen at Election Law Blog came up with – to intentionally draft the law in a way that is unconstitutional.  But there already is a draft of it, and it sounds similar enough to the law in Washington State that passed the Supreme Court’s muster.  Candidates wouldn’t have to put their party on the ballot, leading to oftentimes intentional confusion.  The vindictive part of me thinks I should sue to tangle this up in court until the day after the 2010 Controller’s primary just to screw with St. Abel.

Oh, and Schwarzenegger has wanted this for a while.  It’s entirely possible that St. Abel is a sock puppet.

The three constitutional amendments, combined with the rest of the bill, would potentially put EIGHT measures on a hastily assembled ballot in May, all of which are essentially must-pass or it’s back to the drawing board.

I hate this fucking broken system.

…the only saving grace is Roy Ashburn invoking Reagan raising taxes in 1967 on the Senate floor and shoving it in the rest of the Yacht Party’s faces.  Didn’t know he had it in him.