The Stacy Peralta-directed documentary Crips And Bloods: Made In America looks at the history of gangs in South Los Angeles over the last 50 years, and the violent civil war on the streets that has raged for the past 30, killing as many as 15,000 residents, three times as many as in the Unionist/Catholic war in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and 80s.  Anywhere else in the world, UN peace negotiators would be brought in and Security Council resolutions passed to stop the violence.  In South Central, the battles continue, and children growing up among the chaos, according to a recent RAND Corporation study, have higher rates of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) than children growing up in Baghdad.

One of the more amazing things about the documentary is that, despite unparalleled access to the gang-bangers surviving on the streets over the past 30 years, there is precious little about the actual feud between the Crips and Bloods.  Most of the history of why they fight and why they kill has been lost in the minds of the young leaders on both sides who suffered an early death.  Crips and Bloods shoot and get shot largely because they are supposed to oppose one another.  Wearing the wrong colors in the wrong neighborhood is a death sentence, but it’s unclear why.  At one point, one of the original gang leaders, Masuka, says that “one of the ways the oppressor state functions is by turning the subjects against one another.”

The story traces gang culture from the earliest days, through the Watts riots of 1965, the Black Power movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the rise of the Crips and Bloods, as South Los Angeles fell into a self-perpetuating cycle of decay and despair.  After the major factory jobs left in the early 1960s, residents were without opportunity and without hope.  Crack cocaine and other drugs eventually became the only economic salvation.  And it led to violence and warfare in the streets.

The most revealing sequence in the film comes when every current gang member is asked about their childhood, and they all – to a man – respond that they were products of a broken home, without fathers, with the family members who raised them selling drugs out of the house, caught at an early age without positive role models or figures to enable their own empowerment.  Those living in South LA with strong family units had mothers and fathers who kept them off the streets and away from the gangs.  Those without had little hope.  And this is a very direct consequence of an insane prison policy that locks up nonviolent offenders, particularly in the black community, at absurdly high rates.  One out of every four black men will be imprisoned at some point in his life, and particularly in California, the inability of the system to handle all the warehousing of inmates leads to a lack of rehabilitation and an expanded recidivism rate.  In fact, the explosion of gang activity inside the prisons ensures an increase outside the jail.  This revolving door in and out of prison rips apart families and leads to a sustained cycle of gang activity and violence.  The “war on drugs” is unquestionably a war on people of color and the lower classes.

That is the faillure we are talking about when we look at California prison policy, a failure that will now lead to mass release in the absence of leadership in Sacramento.  Policymakers would rather lock away the problem instead of facing the terrible blight in the black community.  Indeed, they have locked up these people inside AND outside of prison, confining them to the few miles in South Central that is their turf; there are stories in the film of young gang members who have spent their entire lives in a 10-block radius.  The border between South Central and suburbs like Lynwood and South Gate has been a virtual pen for black youth for 50 years, with anyone crossing the border risking a beating or even their lives.  We built communities that are prisons, through restrictive housing covenants and police directives to “maintain order”.  This is what created gang life, out of mutual protection from whites.  And what now sustains it is not only the locking up of parents from sons and daughters, not only the locking up of blacks inside ghettos and away from opportunity, but the locking up of minds, the locking in of self-loathing and the snuffing out of the flame of hope.

While South LA is now as Latino as it is black, the difficulties for residents and the ravages of gang life remain.  While violent crime has decreased since 1992 it remains unspeakably high.  As we look at prison policy in California, and in particular the efforts by elites in Sacramento to block any meaningful reform, despite bending over backwards from federal receivers to work out agreements that allow for inmates to retain their Constitutional rights to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, we need to think about the Crips and the Bloods, about why they persist, about why they fight, and about why we made them.

Sources say that Gov. Schwarzenegger is spending the day in Idaho.  Now, he normally visits Idaho to ski in Sun Valley, so I’d have to assume that’s the reason for this trip.  But we’re in the midst of secret budget negotiations, and right when a deal is nearing, the Governor leaves for the ski lifts and the hot cocoa?

Here are some images of Californians who won’t be making the trip out to Sun Valley now or probably any time in the future.  First, the jobless who will be lucky just to receive their benefits:

California not only has the nation’s third highest unemployment rate but its Unemployment Insurance Fund has taken a bigger beating than any other state, a new report from the National Conference of State Legislatures indicates.

California’s UIF dropped from $639.2 million to just $71.8 million during 2008 as unemployment soared to about 1.5 million workers, forcing it to join six other states in borrowing money from the federal government to keep the checks rolling out to the jobless.

Then there are the state employees, who got their own vacation last Friday, albeit one of the “forced and unpaid” variety, and the effect on the cities that serve them was immediate and negative:

An unpaid holiday for its largest employer was the last thing Sacramento needed Friday.

Already suffering under 8.7 percent unemployment, the region endured its first day of state-worker furloughs. Most state offices stayed closed, while an appeals court denied a last-ditch union petition to block the furloughs.

The effect was immediate. Traffic was light through much of downtown and midtown Sacramento, where tens of thousands of employees normally congregate, and business was down at numerous restaurants and stores.

“It’s tough to be a small business downtown, and for them to take out a Friday,” said Ryan Rose, manager at Zocalo restaurant east of the Capitol. Friday is usually his busiest day for lunch, and though business was better than he feared, it was lighter than usual.

And then there are those serviced by county governments, who are seeing those services vanish due to the delay in payments from the Controller because of the cash crisis.

What exactly is the controller withholding from counties?

The controller is getting ready to delay the state’s February payment to counties for social service programs. Meanwhile, the Schwarzenegger administration is proposing to defer payments for up to six more months as part of a new state budget agreement.

How much money are we talking about?

The state controller is looking to delay $172 million in payments to counties for February, according to the California State Association of Counties.

What is that money for?

That money is for social service programs like foster care, food stamps, child welfare, adoption programs, adult protective services and more.

What happens in March if counties don’t get their state payments this month?

It depends on the county, but many will not be able to cover the cost of state- mandated social service programs. Sacramento County spent most of its reserves in recent years and doesn’t have enough to pick up the tab.

With the state at rock bottom and some kind of deal urgently needed, it’s curious that the very man who railed against lawmakers for dawdling and dithering and leaving the state during budget negotiations for years is doing the EXACT SAME THING himself.

Both the Washington Post and the LA Times have stories today about the budget crises facing the states, where governors and legislatures have exhausted every gimmick and now must enact painful cuts that will work against the federal program to bring us out of the economic downturn.  The personal stories are significant:

Nevada resident Margaret Frye-Jackman, 71, was diagnosed in August with ovarian cancer. She had two rounds of chemotherapy at University Medical Center, the only public hospital in the Las Vegas area.

Soon after, she and her daughter heard the news on TV: The hospital’s outpatient oncology services were closing because of state Medicaid cuts. Treatment for Frye-Jackman and hundreds of other cancer patients was eliminated […]

“If this is what it’s like in Nevada, with cancer stuff closing, is it like that everywhere?” said Frye-Jackman’s daughter, Margaret Bakes, accompanying her mother to the doctor’s recently. “Are all the other states closing stuff too?”

The answer, in at least 39 states, is “yes” — or “soon.” With personal, sales and corporate income tax revenue plummeting, state governments — which recently trimmed their budgets to cover a cumulative $40.3-billion shortfall for the current fiscal year — are now watching in horror as a $47.4-billion gap opens for 2009.

And for fiscal year 2010, they will face a $84.3-billion hole, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The total shortfall through fiscal 2011 is estimated at $350 billion, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.

This article frames it as there being “no choice” but tough budget cuts or tax increases for states facing shortfalls, states that cannot print money or run budget deficits.  But that’s not entirely true.  There was a good deal of help being offered by the federal government in the House stimulus bill, which included $79 billion in state fiscal stabilization aid.  But among their other cuts, the Axis of Centrism cut that aid in half, by $40 billion dollars, and in so doing guaranteed additional layoffs to teachers and firefighters and cops and nurses and all sorts of other professions which rely on a state paycheck.

California law mandates that layoff notices to teachers be given out by March 15 for the next school year. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing $10 billion in education cuts. Republicans, which use our state’s rule requiring a 2/3 vote of the legislature to pass a budget, are demanding these cuts as the price of a tax increase to close the remaining $40 billion and ensure that the cuts aren’t bigger.

But all of us were hoping and expecting that the US Congress would come through with aid to stabilize state budgets, to help ameliorate the problem and save teacher jobs by providing stimulus money. It must be in the stimulus because, as I just noted, the layoff notices will go out within 5 weeks – there is no time to include it in another bill.

Now we are told that Ben Nelson and Susan Collins, two Republican Senators, have reached a deal to cut that education assistance and that the Senate is likely to accept it.

In short, what they have done is guarantee to my sister and to thousands like her that they will receive a pink slip within five weeks.

To call this fearmongering, as John Ensign did on Meet the Press today, just denies reality, par for the course for both Republicans and bipartisan fetishists like Claire McCaskill, who was at first giddy about cutting 600,000-700,000 jobs in the stimulus, and then passive-aggressively “defended” it by saying the alternative was no bill.

Claire McCaskill is now defending herself against Krugman on Twitter:

Just saw Krugman’s comments on reduction in recov act. Question for him. Would no stimulus act be better than one thats 800 B instead of 900.

She follows that up with

Compromise had to happen or we would NOT have 60 votes. Period.

And for further evidence of how much the bill is the same, she claims:

Original Senate bill was 60% appropriationss, 40%tax cuts. Compromise was 58, 42.Senate bill is 90% the same as House bill.

I’m glad that’s she expressing herself here, and that we’re able to somewhat have a dialogue. But I’m not sure how much in good faith it is. McCaskill began by stating how glad she was that they got a $100 billion cut out of the bill, that the “silly stuff” that Republicans didn’t like is now out. She then switches to a passive aggressive mode in defending the cuts – it’s basically the same bill and it wouldn’t have made it through the Senate – but glosses her own role in making the cuts. From the way she talks about the bill, wouldn’t she have been among those voting against the bill if the cuts hadn’t been made and new non-stimulative tax cuts hadn’t been added in?

McCaskill doesn’t want to admit her role in putting 600,000 Americans out of work on Friday, which will harm public safety and increase class sizes and shut down bus and rail lines and send the sick and uninsured looking in vain for treatment and a host of other inadvisable outcomes.  And there’s no rational economic reason for it, just that the Axis of Centrism choked on the price tag and had to compensate for the non-stimulative tax cuts the Senate tossed into the bill.  Massive job loss or increased property tax rates (as states compensate for the loss to education funds) is on McCaskill and Nelson and Collins and Spector’s hands.

The big question is what will come out of the House-Senate conference next week, whether the cuts, especially the state government relief, will be restored at the expense of things like the $70 billion dollar patch to the alternative minimum tax.  Larry Summers left that an open question on ABC this morning.

One of President Barack Obama’s top economic advisers forecast Sunday a difficult struggle with Congress over Senate cuts of $40 billion for state and local governments from the administration’s massive spending and tax cut package to stimulate the failing economy.

The $827 billion Senate version of the plan — designed to bring the economy out of the worst downward spiral since the Great Depression — was expected to pass the Senate on Tuesday. The House had already passed its $819 billion version of the measure.

And in the opening moments of This Week, an exchange between George Stephanopoulos and Larry Summers went like this:

STEPHANOPOULOS: …does that mean the President prefers the Senate version to the House version?

SUMMERS: No, the President feels that above all, we need a major program enacted very quickly that would create 3 to 4 million jobs. He believes we need to perfect it in every way we can.

If the cuts are restored, suddenly the sense of urgency works back in the direction of passing a bill more like the House version.  The Republican business lobby is urging passage.  I don’t think the moderates signed on to the bill could break ranks on the final vote if the changes in conference are limited to, say, swapping the state cuts for the AMT patch, combined with an assurance from the President that they will make that fix down the road.

The action needs to be entirely directed at the Speaker, who has spoken out against these cuts and ought to appoint conferees that will get the House version at least partially restored.  Being from California, she knows exactly how hard-hit the states are and what the consequences will be.  

Two months ago I wrote about how Mike Villines’ threats on the budget were illegal under Section 86 of the California Penal Code:

86.  Every Member of either house of the Legislature, or any member of the legislative body of a city, county, city and county, school district, or other special district, who asks, receives, or agrees to receive, any bribe, upon any understanding that his or her official vote, opinion, judgment, or action shall be influenced thereby, or shall give, in any particular manner, or upon any particular side of any question or matter upon which he or she may be required to act in his or her official capacity, or gives, or offers or promises to give, any official vote in consideration that another Member of the Legislature, or another member of the legislative body of a city, county, city and county, school district, or other special district shall give this vote either upon the same or another question, is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for two, three, or four years and, in cases in which no bribe has been actually received, by a restitution fine of not less than two thousand dollars ($2,000) or not more than ten thousand dollars ($10,000) or, in cases in which a bribe was actually received, by a restitution fine of at least the actual amount of the bribe received or two thousand dollars ($2,000), whichever is greater, or any larger amount of not more than double the amount of any bribe received or ten thousand dollars ($10,000), whichever is greater.

It appears that the California Labor Federation includes some readers.  Yesterday, they sent a letter to the Attorney General calling for an investigation into illegal vote-trading.

The charge by leaders of the California Labor Federation, State Building and Construction Trades Council, Sierra Club California and the Planning and Conservation League stems from reports that Republican legislative leadership are withholding their votes on a state budget as they attempt to extract votes on policy matters unrelated to the budget.

“Republicans are holding the state budget hostage in a shameful attempt to gut vital workplace and environmental standards that have absolutely nothing to do with the budget,” said California Labor Federation Executive Secretary-Treasurer Art Pulaski. “These actions aren’t just unconscionable, they may be criminal.”

According to a release from the California Labor Federation and the Sierra club there are several examples of actions that may be in violation of California Penal Code.

“Specifically, (Republican leaders) have demanded that legislators vote for proposals to weaken labor and environmental standards as a condition for any ‘aye’ vote from Republican caucus members on the overall budget,” the letter states.

According to the release, “This conduct appears to violate Penal Code Section 86, which prohibits any legislator from offering to give his or her vote in exchange for another legislator’s vote on the same or a different matter.”

Some would call this the criminalization of politics, but in this state, politics is too often a criminal enterprise, and it’s high time somebody was taught a lesson.  Like the Yacht Party.  

AG Brown should do this.  There’s already a Facebook group set up; I urge you to join it.  End the Blagojevich-ization of the California legislature.

Welcome to furlough day, that time of year twice a month where state workers take a (government-imposed) break, stopping to smell the roses, think about the good times, and just be.

Scores of state offices will be closed today as more than 200,000 workers take their first unpaid day off in response to California’s deepening fiscal crisis.

That means Californians won’t be able to take a driver’s license test or conduct business at some state office buildings […]

Among the closed offices will be all Department of Motor Vehicles outlets, Fish and Game, Food and Agriculture, Social Services and the Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

The Department of Mental Health will be closed, but mental hospitals will remain open. Workers Compensation offices will be closed.

State parks, which generate revenue from entrance fees, will remain open, as will state courts, the secretary of state’s offices, California Highway Patrol offices and campuses of the University of California, Cal State and California Community Colleges. Public safety employees are exempt from the Friday furloughs and can schedule their days off differently.

I particularly enjoy that the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services is closed.  Good thing no emergencies happen on a Friday!  I’d ask Arnold’s press secretary about that one, but he’s probably not working today.

The other offices that are closed are the Employment Development Department and the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board.  The salaries of those employees are largely paid by the US Department of Labor, and so, while very little or no money will be saved, the jobless will find it harder to collect, which is probably the point.

Over the objections of the federal government, workers handling jobless assistance claims and appeals have been ordered by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to go on furlough — even though nearly all their salaries are paid by the U.S. Labor Department, and their days off will save the state very little or no money.

In a letter late last month, the department warned that furloughs could worsen the state’s current “below standard performance” in meeting criteria for the timely handling of unemployment claims and appeals.

Failure to comply with the department’s demands could violate Social Security laws, said the letter’s author, Richard C. Trigg, regional administrator in San Francisco of the Labor Department’s Employment and Training Administration.

The governor’s office said it was unmoved by the federal concerns.

Now that’s the spirit of the furlough holiday season!

Somebody should ask Arnold if he’s closing the unemployment office so people can’t get their benefits.  Maybe on Monday.  Because, you know, he’s a state employee, so he must be off today.

…I would actually be OK with a 4 day, 10 hour work week that would save on energy and transportation costs and increase employee satisfaction as well as recruitment for state jobs.  And if employees staggered their time off, government offices could stay open full-time.  But this blanket furlough and pay cut is nuts.

According to Darrell Steinberg there’ll be a budget vote next week.  Thanks for leaving the cone of silence to let us know, pal!  In the meantime:

• The judge who allowed furloughs for state workers to go through is saying that the order does not necessarily apply to employees of Constitutional officers.  Jon Ortiz discusses the ramifications at The State Worker.  The first furlough day, by the way, is set for tomorrow.

• The editorial board revolt in the Central Valley, hard-hit by the economic crisis, continues.  The Merced Sun-Star is unusually blunt: “Why should Democrats negotiate if Republicans refuse to budge?”  And the Stockton Record is actually calling on its readers to take action in a way I’ve rarely seen from a local newspaper.  Something is different.

• The UC Board of Regents approved an overhaul of the admissions process. President Yudof hopes that the changes will increase socioeconomic diversity, thus increasing other sorts of diversity.

• This is an incredible story about ACORN saving a couple’s home from foreclosure in Oakland.  While the Feds do little to stop foreclosures, community organizing is making things happen.  But they’re destroying the fabric of our electoral system!!! /peak wingnut

• OC Progressive asks you to  name the conservative, and it’s not who you think.

• The May Day lawsuits, stemming from police brutality and tear gassing after a pro-immigration rally, have finally been settled, to the tune of $13 million dollars.

If Republicans in Washington are offering a united front for neo-Hooverism and against any real effort to save the economy and prevent a Depression, Republicans out in the state who actually have to govern are doing anything but.  Arnold Schwarzenegger and 18 other Democratic and Republican governors have come out in support of the recovery package, leading Dan Walters to call him Keynesian.  Actually Arnold is just slightly less than insane, recognizing that without massive investment from the public sector, California will never be able to cover its budget deficit and revitalize its economy.

We support the objectives of ARRA and welcome the partnership it offers us as governors. The support for a temporary increase in the federal commitment for public education, health care (including cost control through initiatives such as health records IT), and for rebuilding our public infrastructure will create and preserve jobs today, and represents a sound investment in our long-term economic interests as well. We look forward to working with Congress and your Administration to advance an economic recovery package that puts federal dollars to work in our states in the quickest and most efficient manner as possible.

But this is being threatened in a big way.  Yesterday we learned that enough moderates were blanching at the cost of the package to threaten its passage.  President Obama met with the ringleaders of this neo-Hooverist movement, Sens. Ben Nelson and Susan Collins, and talked them part of the way off the ledge.  They were planning up to $200 billion in cuts, but now have pared that down to closer to $100 billion.  And in exchange for meaningless tax cuts and stupid initiatives like tax breaks for home and auto buyers (reinflating the bubble at great danger to the economy), they want to screw the states:

Sens. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Susan Collins (R-ME) have come up with a list of about $100 billion in programs they want slashed from the stimulus package, according to a working draft of a staff paper outlining the cuts.

Among the biggest cuts under discussion: $24.8 billion in state stabilization money for education, which was intended to plug existing budget holes; $15 billion in state incentive grants for education; and $1.4 billion for the National Science Foundation, which is wracked by a porn-viewership flap. Pell Grants were the biggest program to survive the debate over cuts, with $13.9 billion staying intact.

Senate Democratic leaders are likely to bring this package up for a floor vote today, aiming to achieve a filibuster-proof margin in support of these cuts before pushing to pass the entire stimulus by day’s end. Hang onto your hats.

Ben Nelson is now backing away from this draft, and it’s no wonder.  This would cripple states like California facing bug budget deficits.  They didn’t want to release these cuts until now because states having to fire cops and firefighters and teachers is deeply unpopular.  But that’s what slashing the stabilization fund would do.  Given that budget money is fungible, that wouldn’t just affect education but practically everything that states do.

This is typical of an anti-democratic body like the Senate, where the relative power of a state with 400,000 residents like Wyoming and one with 38 million like California is the same.  California has a budget deficit bigger than the expenditures of 39 states and has all sorts of needs that could be filled by this package, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and acting as a backbone for economic recovery.  But you have small-state neo-Hooverist idiots like Charles Grassley who think their job is to sink the economy, apparently:

The House bill, written by the committee chaired by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills), gives considerably more money to states whose unemployment rates have increased significantly. That would put California, with a 9.3% jobless rate in December, in the top tier of recipients — along with New York, Florida and others.

The House “took an approach that recognizes that in the current recession, all states need some help, but some need more help than others,” Waxman said. “It is only fair that the hardest-hit states with high unemployment receive more assistance than those with low unemployment.”

But senators in some smaller states say the House provision would shortchange their constituents. “The legislation is biased to big states,” Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) argued.

That’s like saying the legislation is biased to people.

None of these people are explaining WHY the price tag has to shrink; it just does.  And if it needs to go down, there are useless, not-multiplier tax cuts for businesses and people that can afford new cars and homes that have little to no stimulative value.  They didn’t have to insert them in the first place.

It would be absolutely absurd to cut off states – who are not to blame for the financial meltdown, and who cannot deficit spend – in exchange for giving away more tax cuts, with the same failed philosophy that got us into this mess.  Now that these cuts are out in the open, there should be outrage.

Yesterday I noted the insanity of the Big Five process, which subverts representative democracy and good government.

The Big Five process is absurd.  There are ways to decrease the influence of special interests, the biggest being full public financing of all elections.  The best practice is NOT to hide from them so that the legislative process is like a team of burglars trying to rob a jewelry store without being detected.  And the less people involved in any negotiation, the more possibility for eventual corruption through backroom dealing.

Others have piled on.  Greg Lucas has penned an open letter to the budget negotiators, all five of them.

Do none of you find it troubling that the decisions you are making regarding the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars are largely made in private and then announced deus ex machina to us, the public, whose money it is you are allocating.

Seems like there should be some public hearings on what’s happening to the public’s money. There used to be hearings like that. Of course, there used to be conference committees and compromise too […]

Better choices might be found if  some testimony were taken from the 1 million or so aged, blind and disabled poor who not only will not receive a cost of living increase this year but will see their checks rolled back to 2008 levels in order to save $177 million this year and $500 million the next […]

Sure, it’s a representative government and you’re supposed to represent us but most of you were around last year when a record for tardiness was set for passing an alleged budget that was both irresponsible and out of balance in 15, maybe 16, seconds. So, with respect, looks like you can use some help.

Finally, while the Legislature is not subject to the Bagley-Keene Open Meetings Act – a drafting error, no doubt – at a minimum some sunlight should be shone on the most important public policy act the state takes: putting together its annual spending plan.

And Jean Ross at the California Budget Project laments what she dubs the cone of silence.

Secrecy in budget negotiations is nothing new. However, the level of secrecy around budget negotiations that reached a new high last summer has been far surpassed by the lack of information in the current negotiations. While rumors fly daily – often several times a day – as to when a vote on a budget deal may occur, these rumors are neither confirmed nor denied by those truly in the know.

The one safe bet seems to be that there will be no public hearings and no opportunity for public input on major decisions that will shape California for years, if not decades, to come. The taxes and spending cuts that are likely to be included will no doubt be drawn from some combination of the Governor’s proposals and plans supported by Legislative Democrats in late 2008.  However, there are increasing signs that additional measures, such as a “hard” spending cap and sizeable tax cuts for the state’s largest corporations, may also be part of the package. The cone of silence has been particularly airtight with respect to “add ons” such as these. No details have been made available to rank and file lawmakers or the public that would enable a critical assessment of the impact they might have on current and future budgets.

This is just not a way to run a government that purports to be a democracy and not an oligrachy.  It’s our money.  Open the doors.