I think it’s notable that the budget gap is so wide this year that the SacBee’s house conservative Dan Walters felt the need to actually come up with a proposal himself rather than carp and gainsay everyone else’s.  That alone shows you the gravity of the situation and the wideness of the budget hole.  And I have to say, I think Walters came up with some half-decent ideas, or rather bit off some of them from elsewhere:

We devote too much money to prisons, with eight times as many inmates and 20 times as much spending as when we launched California’s massive prison-building program a quarter-century ago. Schwarzenegger is on the right path in suggesting the release of low-security inmates, especially those with drug problems, into treatment and transition programs. Spending $40,000-plus per year to keep a drug addict or a geriatric inmate in prison is ludicrous.

We spend too little on K-12 schools, and we spend it badly. We should raise per pupil spending to at least the national average, which might cost $4 billion to $8 billion more a year. We should also eliminate or consolidate billions of dollars in so-called “categorical” programs and redirect funds toward the kids and schools needing them most and toward proven educational strategies […]

We should expand Hill’s modest recommendations on tax loopholes, ruthlessly closing those whose only bases are political pull or bad habit, to finance what we really need and/or reduce overall tax rates to encourage economic investment.

A $10 billion-plus loophole-closure effort would be justified. But to overcome special interest resistance, we may need an independent commission, such as the one Congress created to close unneeded military bases. While we’re at it, we should rework the tax system to align it with the real economy, such as extending sales taxes to services and reducing the sales tax rate […]

Finally, we should stop financing infrastructure with bonds to be repaid from a deficit-ridden general fund. We should raise gas taxes, impose levee improvement fees on property owners and bill water users for the costs of supplying their needs.

Mostly, we should accept the reality that there’s no free lunch and if we want something from government, we must pay for it.

I excised the more dodgy ideas about increasing student fees on four-year colleges and reining in “out-of-control” public pension obligations.  But there’s a decent amount of common sense here, and it brings into balance the conversation needed about the budget by focusing on services instead of taxes, at least as related to education and water and infrastructure improvements.  The day that a conservative writes “we should accept the reality that there’s no free lunch” is a rare day indeed.

At the same time, there’s a lack of focus here on economic growth and in more innovative budget solutions that would make California a proper 21st-century state.  Judy Chu’s proposal to apply the sales tax in the same manner as New York, Texas and Florida would wipe about $10 billion dollars off the books at the drop of a hat.  The services in question, including health club dues, landscaping, and taxidermy, are in general utilized by the higher-income residents of the state, and thus the taxation will be somewhat progressive.  Moreover, the services California could provide would have a substantial economic impact to practically everyone who lives here.  Indeed, there is no free lunch, and taxes are the dues we pay for a free society.  It’s as patriotic an action as you can make, and those who want to avoid taxes actively hate America and don’t think it’s worth paying for.  As far as I’m concerned, April 15 is Patriot’s Day.  And it can be a windfall for the people of this state if we manage our finances in such a way to provide equal opportunity and economic justice for the 38 million who live here, which will lift up all of us.  Dan Walters is coming around to this, believe it or not.

The Bush Administration’s Department of Transportation proposal to raise fuel economy rates faster than Congress mandated last fall comes with a catch – obliterating California’s proposal to regulate tailpipe emissions.  Think Progress has the relevant passage in the report.

(b) As a state regulation related to fuel economy standards, any state regulation regulating tailpipe

carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles is expressly preempted under 49 U.S.C. 32919.

(c) A state regulation regulating tailpipe carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles, particularly a regulation that is not attribute-based and does not separately regulate passenger cars and light trucks, conflicts with:

1. The fuel economy standards in this Part

2. The judgments made by the agency in establishing those standards, and

3. The achievement of the objectives of the statute (49 U.S.C. Chapter 329)

This actually changes little in the near term.  The EPA has already denied California a waiver to regulate their own emissions, a ruling that is under court appeal.  And the Supreme Court has already ruled on the belief that gas mileage standards and greenhouse gas emissions are separate, and that the states may act to regulate the latter.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and a coalition of governors have acted swiftly:

NHTSA has no authority to preempt states from regulating greenhouse gases.  Congress and two federal district courts have rejected NHTSA’s claim to such authority.  Furthermore, this attack completely undermines the cooperative federalism principles embodied in the Clean Air Act, and is an end run around 40 years of precedent under that law.

Our states intend to comment on the proposed rulemaking and, if necessary, will sue NHTSA, just as California and other states have sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, to ensure that states retain the right to reduce global climate change emissions…

It just adds to the extreme hackitude that has characterized this Administration’s actions on global warming.  We learned this week that over half of all EPA scientists have “experienced incidents of political interference in their work.”  Now the Department of Transportation gets added to the list.

Post-Pennsylvania and… well, nothing much different actually.  But next time, for sure!  Meanwhile, here are some California-centric notes:

• The California School Employees Association made their endorsements for the June primary.  In addition to Migden, they strike of an aversion to go out on a limb.  They only endorsed one Congressional candidate in a Republican-held seat (Charlie Brown), and they opted out of a lot of contested primaries in the legislative seats as well.  Manuel Perez did get the endorsement in the 80th AD, however (he is a school board member, so not a big shock).

• We don’t get into a lot of rural issues on the site, probably because of the bias toward writers here in urban environments.  But this salmon fishing ban is a big deal along the Mendocino coast.  This actually goes back to the Klamath fish kill in the beginning of the decade and Darth Cheney’s efforts to ensure that.  I think there are going to be a lot of angry fishermen wanting answers this fall.

• I keep forgetting to write about the State Senate primary in my own backyard of SD-23, between Fran Pavley  and Lloyd Levine.  Here’s some background on the race to succeed Sheila Kuehl.  I actually attended an environmental forum with these two last week and found them both to be really solid, with different strengths.  While Pavley is an astonishingly effective lawmaker – she probably has her name on more far-reaching climate change legislation than anyone in the entire country – Levine really seems to understand the nature of the fight in Sacramento and how best to bring about sweeping change.  I’m not going to be disappointed on June 3, regardless of the winner.  We’re hoping to get both Pavley and Levine on a future Calitics Radio show.

• Here’s a user-created video of our debate protest at ABC last week.  We have our own video set for release as well.

• Adam Liptak in The New York Times today: “The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.”

Yet we must remain “tough on crime,” even though rises and falls in the crime rate are not correlative to imprisoning people (Canada’s rate goes up and down roughly at the same time ours does, without a corresponding increase in the prison population).

• John Yoo won’t talk to the House Judiciary Committee but it’s really not his fault, you see:

In a letter, Yoo’s lawyer told Conyers he was “not authorized” by DOJ to discuss internal deliberations.

“We have been expressly advised by the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice that Professor Yoo is not authorized to discuss before your Committee any specific deliberative communications, including the substance of comments on opinions or policy questions, or the confidential predecisional advice, recommendations or other positions taken by individuals or entities of the Executive Branch,” Yoo’s lawyer, John C. Millian, wrote in a letter to Conyers.

As we all know, the executive branch can ignore subpoenas and prevent Congressional oversight.  Why, Yoo wrote it in a memo!  But he can’t discuss it.  Because the executive branch follows the law.  That he wrote.

Round and round we go…

Yes, it’s a new record!

Sinking home values and the collapse of flimsy mortgages sent a record number of California homes into the foreclosure process in the first three months of this year, a real estate information service reported today.

Default notices — the first stage of foreclosure — were sent to owners of 110,000 California homes from January to March, about 1% of the homes in the state, according to La Jolla-based DataQuick Information Systems. Default notices were up 143% from the same quarter a year ago.

Most California homeowners in default are now eventually forfeiting their properties to lenders. Only about 32% of those receiving default notices prevent foreclosure by refinancing or selling their property to pay off their mortgages, DataQuick reported. A year ago, 52% of those in default were able to avoid foreclosure.

If you read between the lines here, the implication is that around 70,000 families are in the process of losing their homes.  In the first quarter 47,000 additional families had their homes repossessed, which is a 400% year-over-year increase.

This is hundreds of thousands of people, and it’s getting to be a significant percentage of the state’s population.  And the federal government is dragging their feet looking for a solution.  And the state can do little beyond stopgap measures.

This is why the budget projections are ballooning.

I’ll fill you in on the protest soon.  It went very well.  But I’m fortunate enough to be able to go to Burbank at 4:00 on a Friday and protest.  Some of our other fellow Californians aren’t so lucky.  They’re busy trying to find a way to keep their homes and feed their families.  The LA Times has the latest job numbers, and they’re obscene.

California’s unemployment rate rose by a whopping half a percentage point in March, reaching 6.2% as a weakening economy shed jobs in the ailing construction and financial activities sectors. In all, 1.13 million were unemployed […]

California is doing worse than Pennsylvania and Ohio … the two Rust Belt states that have figured prominently in the presidential primary elections because of their lost manufacturing jobs.

If the governor’s budget-cutting plan moves forward and thousands of educators across the state lose their jobs, this will only get worse.  The worst, absolute worst numbers are in the Inland Empire, where construction is at a standstill and housing-related employment is melting away.

The rise in unemployment during March affected all of Southern California, with the worst effects in the Inland Empire. The rate in Riverside County — not seasonally adjusted — rose to 7.4% from 7.0%, while in San Bernardino County it rose to 6.7% from 6.3%.

7.4% isn’t approaching the 1980s just yet, but it’s getting pretty damn close.  And areas like the IE, which don’t have a sustaining support structure for the unemployed or the needy the way that, say, Los Angeles does, are particularly vulnerable.  We’re on the front lines of an economic meltdown that is rapidly expanding.

Good thing we have a bantaaastic governor who gets on the cover of Time magazine!