Yesterday the San Diego Union Tribune ran two dueling columns on Prop 23, which would destroy California’s green jobs economy and efforts to address global warming. The anti-Prop 23 article, by John Reaves of Citizens Climate Lobby, was a good articulation of the reasons why Prop 23 would be so damaging.

The pro-Prop 23 article, by Bryan Bloom, made a number of deeply flawed statements that need a strong rebuttal. So that’s what I’m going to do here, to start off the week. Much of his argument is of the typical “government taxes and regulates too much,” but Bloom adds some other pieces that should be dealt with more directly:

A California State University study estimates an average family cost of about $3,900 per year, a small business cost of about $50,000 per year and a total loss of output in the range of $180 billion in order to comply.

But what of the cost of doing nothing? Bloom and Prop 23 backers assume that the cost of doing nothing is zero – that if we “suspend” AB 32, then we save all that money.

This is not so. Climate change costs us all a lot of money already, from higher firefighting costs and home insurance premiums to lost jobs in the wineries and agricultural industries when their work is disrupted by extreme weather events. San Diegans should be concerned about rising sea levels, which won’t come cheap.

Bloom’s analysis also ignores the fact that AB 32-spurred innovation will help us save money through the development of more efficient uses of energy. California has already led the way on this. Our air pollution laws, the nation’s strictest, have dramatically slashed (though by no means eliminated) smog, while also helping spur innovations that save us money at the pump or save on our electrical bills.

Bloom’s op-ed also relies on a flawed Legislative Analyst’s Office study of AB 32, which I debunked here at Calitics a few months back. In fact, there is considerable evidence that AB 32 has already fueled the growth of a green jobs and clean energy economy in California that is one of the only bright spots in our otherwise dismal economic picture.

That dismal economic picture is used by Bloom as justification for “suspending” AB 32:

That’s why so many voters and small businesses are supporting Proposition 23, which would temporarily suspend costly AB 32 regulations until California’s unemployment rate reaches 5.5 percent for four consecutive quarters, a threshold reached numerous times in recent years, according to the state’s Employment Development Department.

Notice how Bloom fudges the numbers: “numerous times in recent years.” That’s because the truth is damning. Since January 1975, the 5.5% for four consecutive quarters threshold has only been met three times – and for short periods:

1. November 1988 to August 1990

2. February 2000 to July 2001

3. April 2006 to September 2007

If you believed that climate change was a serious problem, it wouldn’t make any sense to support this proposal, which would have action on climate change move only in fits and starts.

And that’s even if it were to move at all. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, even if job growth matched the four fastest years of growth during the ’00s bubble, we wouldn’t be at 2007 levels of employment – required under Prop 23 to revive AB 32 – until April 2021 when you account for population growth. Prop 23 would likely “suspend” AB 32 for eleven years – and that’s under the best-case economic recovery scenario.

Bloom also argues that California can’t solve global warming on its own:

California produces only a tiny fraction of the world’s greenhouse gases. Without the rest of the world following AB 32-like rules, California could reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to zero and still have no impact on global warming.

Of course California can’t eliminate global carbon emissions on our own. This is obvious and not in dispute. But neither was that the point of passing AB 32. As was widely acknowledged in 2006, AB 32 was passed to kickstart a national and, eventually, global effort to force reduction of carbon emissions. If Prop 23 fails, it will be a huge signal to Congress that real action on climate and energy is popular with voters. Bloom and other right-wingers are actively trying to stop California from providing progressive leadership by destroying AB 32 before it can spread.

Ultimately Bloom’s argument rests on a defense of the status quo – that everything is just fine in California, and that all AB 32 offers is higher costs. It only makes sense if you do not believe global warming is a serious issue. If you do, it does not make sense to support Prop 23, as it will ensure California does absolutely nothing to prepare for it or build a more sustainable economy to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Back in 1990, after 10 years of Willie Brown outfoxing Republicans and preventing the state from collapsing as the right-wing intended in 1978 with the passage of Prop 13, California conservatives decided they needed another solution to break Democratic power.

Brown had just stopped an effort by the so-called “Gang of Five” – moderate Democrats who threatened to bring down Speaker Brown, including Gary Condit – in 1988, and with Brown having high approval ratings in his San Francisco district, Southern California conservatives placed Proposition 140 on the November 1990 ballot, to limit the terms of all legislators (including Congress).

It passed by a narrow margin, and by 1995 it had started to produce its intended purpose – Willie Brown left to run for mayor of San Francisco, and by the end of the decade, the accumulated experience of the legislature began to erode, as elections became a game of musical chairs, and the legislature became a kind of graduate school for politicians who were always seeking the equivalent of a tenure-track job – a non-term limited elected office.

The results of term limits have been extremely destructive. Legislators focus on the short-term and show little interest in long-term solutions. It takes about 5 or 6 years to fully understand the state budget process, by which point a new Assemblymember is on their way out or too focused on finding their next elective office. Institutional knowledge is left with legislative staff and lobbyists instead of the people who were elected by the voters to represent them.

After 20 years, it’s become clear to almost everyone that term limits has been a failure. And now, in a San Jose Mercury News article, conservatives themselves are finally admitting the error:

“Of all the mistakes I’ve made in public life, the one I regret most is advocating for term limits for the Legislature,” said Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Granite Bay, a leading conservative figure in California who was one of a small number of incumbent legislators who backed the term limits measure two decades ago. “It has harmed the institution badly.”…

Robert Naylor, a Republican Assembly leader in the mid-1980s and former state GOP chairman, said shorter terms have made lawmakers increasingly unwilling to even consider proposals that are opposed by what he called the parties’ “anchor tenants” – for Democrats, unions and trial lawyers; for Republicans, the Chamber of Commerce and anti-tax groups…

Jim Brulte is another one-time term limits fan who’s had a change of heart. A former Republican leader in both the Assembly and Senate, he said term limits fundamentally altered the dynamic between special interests and legislators, especially legislative leaders. And not for the better.

“When I was Republican leader in the Assembly, special interests needed me,” Brulte said. “Today, the leadership in the Legislature needs the special interests.”

The article suggests that there has been an increase in bills sponsored by “special interests” since term limits took effect. Obviously we have to be careful whenever we see the term “special interests” thrown around – those “special interests” often are the working people of California, and there’s a world of difference between a labor union seeking better working conditions and a fairer economy and the California Chamber of Commerce that’s always looking for ways to hoard wealth and impoverish everyone else.

But the overall point is clear: term limits destroyed what had once been seen as the nation’s best state legislature. What began as a spite initiative pushed by right-wingers who saw they were losing their grip on California has become a reckless policy that leaves 36 million people without good representation and without an effective government.

The occasion of the Mercury News article was the qualification of a term limits reform proposal that would allow legislators to serve 12 years in either house, but would not protect current legislators as Prop 93 had. It’s not clear which ballot this new proposal will be on – if it’s on either the presidential primary ballot or the June 2012 primary ballot, I’m not sure it will succeed. If it’s on the November 2012 ballot, it has a strong chance of success.

Perhaps it might have a better shot at passage in the earlier elections in 2012 if more conservatives spoke out in support of it. And while Tom McClintock’s support is useful, the fact remains that the real powers in the California Republican Party – the Howard Jarvis Association, the California Chamber of Commerce, and Grover Norquist – all strongly support the current term limits rules, as it helps guarantee their power over the state GOP.

It’s nice that some of these right-wingers recognize their mistake, even if it’s 20 years too late. But we’re going to have to mount a bigger, stronger campaign against the right if term limits are to be successfully reformed, our legislature fixed, and California’s government made democratic and effective once again.

Speaking of hypocrisy: Republicans consistently act as if deficit and budget concerns only apply to programs and policies designed to help working people. When it comes to something that would benefit the wealthy and large corporations, however, “deficits don’t matter”, as Dick Cheney memorably declared.

We see this with Meg Whitman’s call for a capital gains tax cut that would add at least hundreds of millions of dollars to the state’s budget deficit. We see it with Carly Fiorina’s call for extending the Bush tax cuts even though they are the main factor in the federal budget deficit.

And now we see it with Prop 26. That proposition would require a 2/3 vote for all fees – the only revenue source that can currently be created by a majority vote. That alone would devastate public services even further and make it impossible to fund important programs from recycling to oil disposal.

But that’s not all Prop 26 does. As Artem Raskin reports at the California Progress Report, a new Legislative Analyst’s Office study shows Prop 26 would also blow a $1 billion hole in the state budget:

The LAO’s nonpartisan analysis released last week revealed that Proposition 26 would nullify the “Gas Tax Swap” approved by the legislature in March, and eliminate about one billion dollars annually in anticipated revenues from the general fund for schools and other programs….

Proposition 26 is funded principally by the oil, tobacco and alcohol industries to make it more difficult for state and local government to impose mitigation fees on business activities that cause harm to the environment or public health and safety.

Once again we see the right-wing mega-corporate approach to California’s budget: deficits are OK when it benefits them, but awful and terrible and horrible when it benefits someone else.

This is worth keeping in mind as the media freaks out over a city manager in Southern California making $800,000. That’s chump change compared to the $1 billion cost of Prop 26. Where’s the outrage?

As I predicted, the story of high-salaried city officials in a small city in LA County is being used to call into question all public employee salaries, from the people who empty the park trash cans, put books on the shelves, teach your kids, to the people who make sure all this is done within the budget. This SacBee article on a recent League of Cities meeting is a good example of how the local government feels they’re on the defensive:

“For city managers, it’s kind of like the Rodney King beating,” said Winters City Manager John Donlevy, who is on the League’s city manager executive committee. “It had to be one of the most reprehensible things done. City managers are charged with being the fiduciary of the public trust. Cities have to live within their means and I don’t care how good (they are), nobody should be paid close to a million dollars.”

The scandal in the city of 37,000 comes at a vulnerable time for California cities. Trust in public officials has eroded, particularly when the discussion turns to those with high salaries. In addition, as cities and counties use layoffs and wage concessions to balance their budgets, labor unions are accusing public agencies of protecting bloated management staffs at the expense of the rank and file.

I’m sure everyone would probably agree that $800,000 to run a small city like Bell is a bit much. But the focus on city salaries seems more than a little hypocritical when compared to the far larger, much more widespread, systematic robbery of the middle-class by the CEO class, who get paid exorbitant salaries even when they fail.

Carly Fiorina, candidate for US Senate, took a $21.4 million payout when she was fired from HP after having destroyed that company.

As to Meg Whitman’s exorbitant salary, Jerry Brown made the obvious connection while on Neil Cavuto’s Fox News show recently:

CAVUTO: You sound like your Republican opponent, Meg Whitman. It’s almost word-for-word what she says.

BROWN: Well, no, you’ll — listen, wait a minute, this lady gave herself $120 million and then they had to lay off 20 percent of the employees. She had a private jet that flew her around for 200 hours on private…

CAVUTO: Yes, but she wasn’t on the tax-payer’s dime, you know what I’m saying?

BROWN: No, but that was shareholders, and shareholders are really the citizens of the corporation. So, look, she is flying around on a private jet. She has almost 100 employees paying — spending $500,000 a day. It’s the only business that I know of that has no limit. There’s no sense of cost containment. And that’s not a good preparation to take over California which is $19 billion in the hole.

Cavuto’s response is revealing: he thinks it’s perfectly OK for a CEO to rob the shareholders and employees, paying them lower dividends and wages in order to enrich themselves, but when it comes to public employees, how dare they make anything other than poverty wages.

Jerry Brown was absolutely right to call out this hypocrisy. CEOs make hundreds of times what their average employees make, a form of systematic robbery that has contributed to the wage stagnation and economic imbalances that helped produce the recession.

And both Fiorina and Whitman support extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, with Whitman wanting to worsen the state budget deficit with a capital gains tax cut that would further enrich her wealthy friends while forcing more teacher layoffs.

Therein lies the true hypocrisy of the Bell scandal. A few city managers are making high six figures and suddenly it’s the end of the world for local government – but failed CEOs take home ridiculous amounts of money at the expense of their shareholders and employees while their companies suffer and struggle, while these CEOs fire tens of thousands of workers so they can have more money to finance their campaigns for office, and we’re supposed to see it as the natural order of the world?

I don’t think so.

Public Policy Polling (PPP) has been polling California this week, and found some very favorable news for Barbara Boxer and Jerry Brown.

In their Senate polling, PPP found that Boxer has a 49-40 lead over Fiorina, up from 45-42 back in May. They also found that Fiorina’s negatives are rising, with 28% having a favorable view and 40% having an unfavorable view. Independent voters in particular have shifted against Fiorina, with Boxer leading there 48-38.

Fiorina’s inept campaign and her desire to run as an extreme right-wing candidate, combined with her support of high unemployment and mass layoffs, means that if we continue to work hard, Boxer should be able to win this race.

PPP found similar numbers for the governor’s race, with Brown up 46-40 over Whitman. Whitman’s massive TV ad barrage may have backfired, with 50% of voters having an unfavorable opinion of her (30% are favorable). Like Boxer, Brown also leads among independents, 47-31.

One reason why Whitman and Fiorina aren’t doing so well: Californians really do not like the idea of rich people buying public office. 52% think there should be a cap on how much money a candidate can give to their own campaign.

If there’s any difference between the two races, it’s that Brown is doing a bit less well with his own party than Boxer is with Dems, or Whitman with Republicans. Boxer leads 77-13 among Dems, and Whitman has 76% of Republicans – but Jerry Brown has only 69% of Democrats.

I can understand why some Democrats might not be enthused about Jerry Brown. Like I said earlier this week, the best we can hope for from him is an Obama-style presidency where we can have an opportunity to play offense. Brown will never be a progressive leader, and he will propose some things we’ll have to fight against.

But there’s really no good excuse for Democrats to support anyone else, especially Meg Whitman, who is determined to destroy what remains of the California Dream and use the state as a launching pad for her own White House ambitions.

Brown has to do some work to get Democrats to strongly back his campaign. And he needs to do much more to encourage Democrats to get engaged – running a “Rose Garden” campaign isn’t going to inspire the broad and deep California progressive grassroots to work to elect Brown and beat Whitman.

But if that convergence does happen, the PPP poll suggests Meg Whitman might well spend $150 million on a losing effort. And that would be a very good outcome indeed.

So it’s been almost a month since the 2010-11 state budget was to have been enacted, and yet so far there’s been hardly any movement or action at all on the budget. With Prop 25, restoring majority rule to the budget process, Republicans would be out of the picture and Democrats could negotiate directly with the governor. With a Democratic governor, majority vote budgets that involve the use of fees could be approved and signed without a single Republican vote being needed – that is, if Prop 26 fails.

The common thread here is that Republicans, in the governor’s office and in the state legislature, are all actively prolonging the state budget mess. Why? Because it’s in their interest to do so.

Prior to 2008, the longest budget standoff in California history was in 2002. Republican legislators prolonged the standoff into September in order to undermine Governor Gray Davis’s re-election campaign. In 2006, however, when Arnold Schwarzenegger sought re-election, Republicans quickly agreed with Democrats and passed one of the only on-time budgets in recent history.

Obviously, Republicans feel they can score political points by making the state government look ineffective, perhaps boosting Meg Whitman’s chances. She’s already positioning herself as an outsider and Jerry Brown as an insider, so a long budget standoff could play to her advantage.

There are also the usual shock doctrine goals of the Republicans at work here, as Shane Goldmacher reports:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has demanded overhauls of the public pension system, the state tax code and the budgeting process, on top of the annual budget-balancing struggle. He has said he won’t sign a spending plan that lacks those things, and California could languish without one until he leaves office – in 2011….

Schwarzenegger proposed deep cuts this year, including the elimination of welfare, to close the deficit. Democrats have countered with some tax increases, mainly on oil companies, and the rollback of some corporate tax breaks.

This is all quite similar to the 1995 budget standoff in Congress, where Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich shut down the government in order to force President Clinton to cave. Clinton didn’t mind being thrown in that briar patch, knowing that the public really does want their public services and wants them to continue, and Gingrich folded.

Democrats are indicating they’ve learned the right lessons from Clinton and are refusing to give into Arnold’s demands, with Sen. Darrell Steinberg calling Arnold’s bluff.

So now Arnold is pushing further, reinstating furloughs that had just expired:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will impose unpaid furloughs through executive order on most state workers again beginning in August, according to a union official who was briefed on the plan by the administration.

As usual, this isn’t necessarily designed to force a budget solution. It’s designed to force Democrats and labor unions to cave to Arnold’s shock doctrine demands.

This is why passing Prop 25 is so important. It won’t solve the entire state budget mess. But it will bring an end to these shock doctrine-style demands, especially if Meg Whitman is elected governor this fall.

PPP is out with a new poll on Prop 19 showing more favorable numbers than other recent polls, including Field, have shown. PPP found Prop 19 has a 52-38 lead, which is closer to the numbers SurveyUSA found (50-40 in support) than to Field (44-48 against).

PPP also found that the strongest support of California’s ethnoracial groups comes from African-Americans, who back Prop 19 by a 68-32 margin. PPP reasons that this is because of the way marijuana laws are enforced:

Despite representing 7% of CA’s population, African Americans represent 50% of prisoners in California on marijuana charges.

This too is in contrast to the Field Poll, which found African Americans opposing Prop 19 by a 40-52 margin.

What explains the contrast between PPP/SUSA and Field? Nate Silver argues that it has to do with the fact that PPP/SUSA polls are automated, whereas the Field Poll is not:

Nevertheless, it’s possible that we’re seeing some sort of Bradley effect in reverse, which I’ve reluctantly dubbed the “Broadus Effect” after the given name of the rapper Snoop Dogg, himself a frequent consumer of cannabinoid-rich products.

The original Bradley Effect, named for former Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley, occurs when respondents in surveys are asked about socially desirable behaviors, such as being free from racial prejudice. Although the racial version of Bradley effect itself is probably a thing of the past, social desirability bias may manifest itself in other ways. Automated polls have sometimes shown relatively lower levels support for gay marriage initiatives, for instance, in states like Maine and California. Homophobia is fairly common, but has become socially undesirable; the purveyors of the automated polls have sometimes claimed that their respondents are free to be more honest when there’s not another human being on the line. If the theory holds, automated polls might also provide a setting for voters to be more honest about their feelings on marijuana use, another behavior that is probably more widespread (and privately tolerated) than it is socially acceptable. If so, that would be good news for Prop 19.

In other words, it might be the case that given the very real threat of incarceration for marijuana possession and lower levels of social acceptability, respondents are freer to be honest in responding to an automated poll than to a human being about whether they’ve used marijuana and whether they would support its legalization.

If Silver is right and there is a “Broadus effect” at work, it does raise another question: is the “Bradley effect” dead? Taken in its broadest form, are people more willing to say they’ll support marijuana legalization in response to an automated poll than they’re willing to go out and vote, or vote yes on Prop 19 when they’re filling out their ballots?

That’s a question better suited for voters and activists than the pollsters. The PPP and SUSA polls both indicate that it is possible to pass Prop 19 – if we can organize Californians to fill out their ballots for the November election. Like every other race on the ballot this year, victory or defeat is a matter of who can get out the vote.

So there’s been a LOT of discussion in Southern California over the last week or so about the situation in the small city of Bell, one of the hundreds dozens of incorporated cities in Los Angeles County, where top city officials were making truly stunning salaries, nearing $800,000 in one case.

The story is being pushed hard by the right, which sees an opportunity to undermine both government and public employee unions – although these salaries weren’t the product of a union contract, conservatives are ignoring that detail to imply that Bell is symptomatic of a bigger problem of “overpaid” public workers, so that we should simply impoverish everyone instead of making the relatively minor fixes to address the occasional abuse of the system.

But another story in the region has gone relatively underreported. Maywood, which borders Bell to the north, has laid off its entire police force and contracted with the LA County Sheriffs Department to police their city. In the SF Bay Area, San Carlos is considering a similar move. Here in Monterey, the Peninsula cities have been considering integrating their fire services, and already Pacific Grove has contracted with Monterey to oversee its fire services.

The real issues aren’t that government is incompetent or that public workers are greedy, as the right-wingers would have us believe. Instead the truth is that California’s city governments are in need of some fundamental reforms – including city consolidation – and that we need to do a better job of ensuring residents are fully engaged in the process of local government.

Joe Mathews and Mark Paul have argued that one problem is that we simply don’t need all these cities, especially in Southern California – there’s no need for these populations to be divided up into dozens of small cities. I tend to agree here.

The only reason cities like Bell, Maywood, South Gate, Huntington Park, and Compton – among the other so-called “Gateway Cities” – existed in the first place as separate cities and not part of the city of Los Angeles was a desire to maintain racial segregation. In an excellent book about the mid-20th century history of this region titled “My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965”, historian Becky Nicolaides explained that many of these cities incorporated to prevent being annexed not just by the city of LA, but by the LA Unified School district. The goal was to keep nonwhite residents out of these white working-class suburbs and to keep white students from having to share a school with other students of color in the LAUSD.

For a while it succeeded. My dad was born in South Gate in 1957, at a time when my grandparents recall the city being uniformly white. The nearby Watts Riots in 1965 began a trend of white flight to the suburbs (my family had moved to Orange County several years earlier) and in the 2000 census, South Gate was reported to be 92% Latino. Many of the other Gateway Cities also have large Latino populations, some of which are undocumented and therefore denied full citizenship in this country.

Steve Lopez made this point in a recent column:

Those cities have largely poor, immigrant populations that are too busy working to pay close attention to City Hall, which means they can be easily exploited. Voter turnout is low, in part because many residents are undocumented and even many legal immigrants aren’t yet qualified to vote. And there’s not much media presence because of cutbacks by everyone in the industry, including The Times, so the rascals are left to steal with impunity.

“It’s a very predatory type of mentality,” said Cristina Garcia, a Bell Gardens resident who is an adjunct professor at USC.

The right-wing is already trying to reject this argument. Pete Peterson (not the same person who is trying to destroy Social Security and Medicare, unsure whether they’re related) writes in Fox and Hounds Daily that Lopez is wrong:

First, even understanding that there may be a sizable number of undocumented residents in cities like Bell, with a stated population of 36,000, the special election, which allowed the city to set its own pay for the city council back in 2005 was won on a vote count of 336 to 54.  A quick addition and division shows that about 1% of the total city population made the decision to put the municipality on its ruinous course; there’s low turnout, and then there’s civic malpractice. It stretches credulity to believe that 99% of the city’s residents could not have been more involved – either directly through the ballot box, or indirectly through reading local press – in Spanish or English. Certainly, Bell’s citizens are engaged now, as the hundreds protesting around City Hall demonstrate.

Peterson’s claim is basically that it’s the residents’ fault for not showing up. But he simply dismisses Lopez’s reasons without any real explanation. It’s not just the number of undocumented residents, but the fact that if 99% of the city’s residents aren’t engaged, then there is some kind of structural problem.

Should city council meetings be held on a weekend? Should the city undertake more aggressive ways to reach out to the public, instead of just assuming that whoever shows up shows up and if they don’t, tough luck?

Or do we need more fundamental reforms, such as same-day voter registration, a comprehensive immigration reform to bring more people into the ranks of the voting population? And should we finally examine some kind of local government reform, whether it’s city consolidation with neighborhood representation structures or something else entirely, like turning LA County into a kind of Madrid-style city-state with dozens of elected representatives?

Joe Mathews wonders if Bell has ended local government reform:

Bell’s leaders may have set back the cause of restoring more local control over finances. While the particulars of each proposal are different, several good government groups are arguing for allowing local government to keep more control over tax revenues. But it’s hard to make the case for trusting municipalities after the abuse of power in Bell.

I disagree here. What’s more likely is that Bell will fuel the desire to return power to local governments so that Orange County isn’t “subsidizing” Bell, or that Carmel isn’t “subsidizing” Seaside. Cities with more prosperous residents and more effective governments will want to cut themselves off even further from places like Bell, Maywood, Vernon, and others that have had problems in recent years.

At the end of it all, we ought to conclude that here, the system worked. The free press learned about the story, and the public demanded and have now won action to address the abuses. Compare that to the private sector, where Goldman Sachs still spends over $1 billion in bonuses even after helping destroy the economy, and the rest of us are essentially powerless to stop it.

I’m not surprised the right-wing has been silent as the night on that matter.

As progressive activists across America organize to fight the looming “cat food commission” proposals to destroy the futures of working Americans by slashing Social Security benefits and raise the retirement age, Jerry Brown is now proposing to do the same here in California – in this case with cuts to public employee pensions:

On his campaign website and in recent comments to the media, California’s attorney general and former governor has advocated rolling back state retirement benefits. Many of his points mirror changes pushed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and tentatively accepted by some unions, but don’t cut into pensions as deeply as policies proposed by Brown’s Republican opponent, Meg Whitman.

Whitman, the former eBay CEO, wants to raise the retirement age for most state employees from 55 to 65 and require increased employee contributions. New hires under her plan would receive 401(k)-style plans instead of defined benefit pensions state workers now receive.

Brown’s plan would keep defined plans in place, but with lower benefits for new hires, lengthen the retirement age for most state workers to age 60 and increase what workers pay toward their own retirements.

This is not only profoundly unhelpful to those of us fighting against similar proposals that would affect all Americans by cutting Social Security benefits – it’s also a bad idea.

Good pensions are good economic policy. They help fuel economic growth by ensuring seniors have enough to live on in retirement and not requiring financial support from their younger relatives. Retirees play an important role in sustaining the economy with their spending, and with the cost of living in California likely to be high for some time to come, a good pension helps retirees avoid financial ruin at a time when they literally cannot afford to have it.

A lower retirement age also helps ensure there are jobs available to younger workers, especially outside the major metro areas of California, where state and local government are a key source of employment for smaller towns and counties. Raising the retirement age, on the other hand, worsens the already-dire unemployment situation for younger workers and does little to help the older workers.

A two-tier system has also been a failure when tried at the local government level, as Mark Paul writes in today’s LA Times:

The problem is, California already tried this. State and some local governments put in place two-tier benefit systems during the long economic downturn of the 1990s.

That experiment taught two lessons. First, by its nature, a two-tier system provides little short- to medium-term relief for public budgets, particularly in an environment in which governments are hiring few new workers.

More important, long-term savings are equally elusive. A two-tier system is inherently unstable. Setting different levels of pension compensation for people doing identical jobs injects pension envy into the workplace and creates immediate pressure to equalize benefits. California’s last experiment with two tiers was quickly undone when SB 400 in 1999 made the lower tier optional and allowed workers to buy their way into the higher tier at bargain rates.

The workers this hurts aren’t the people who retire with “spiked” pensions and six-figure annual payments. This will instead hurt those public workers making $40,000 and $50,000: The librarians who read stories to children and help people use the Internet to find a job. The teachers who help our children learn. The police and firefighters who keep us safe. The folks who fill potholes in the heat and the rain, who keep the parks in good repair. They’re the ones who will see a lower quality of life and a greater economic struggle under these kinds of pension reforms – which it has to be said are still better than Meg Whitman’s “throw them all to the wolves” approach of shifting to a 401k system.

In this case, Brown’s policy proposal isn’t good policy and doesn’t help progressives with the politics of protecting seniors and promoting economic recovery through new job creation. This move is of course designed to help Brown politically, since he played a major role in the unionization of public employees in the 1970s and is being attacked by Whitman for that as part of her anti-worker, anti-job campaign.

So what are California progressives to do? Judging by the conversations here at Netroots Nation I’ve had with Californians, there’s a widespread sentiment that Jerry Brown isn’t the kind of inspirational progressive candidate we really need, not just to beat Meg Whitman but to lead California out of this crisis and into a more progressive future.

But there’s also a strong commitment to making sure Meg Whitman isn’t our next governor. With her presidential ambitions, her willingness to massively fund the state Republican Party and elect her candidates downticket, and her extreme right-wing positions designed to prolong and deepen our economic crisis by handing more of our wealth to her wealthy friends, Whitman is a huge threat to our ability to build a more progressive California. Defeating her must be a top priority for all of us.

It’s always been clear that Jerry Brown will not be a progressive governor. Then again, it was clear to many of us in 2008 that Barack Obama would not be a progressive president. The argument that I and others at the time made was that Obama offers an opportunity for progressives to make our case and push our solutions – that he would not act as the kind of obstacle that John McCain would have.

As we know, it hasn’t always worked out that way, and the White House has often blocked progressive goals. But they have also proven susceptible to progressive pressure. They moved to finally end the discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy after activists like Lt. Dan Choi and organizations like the Courage Campaign (where I work as Public Policy Director) worked to force the issue. More needs to be done to finish that job, but the White House did feel a need to react to the pressure. And progressive support for Elizabeth Warren may be enough to secure her an all-important nomination to lead the new federal consumer protection agency.

Under Jerry Brown, progressives have a chance to play offense, just as we have under Obama. Under Meg Whitman, however, all we’ll ever do is play defense. For example, Brown has said that he’ll support a tax increase if the voters do, which gives us the ability to go out there and mobilize the public to do exactly that, whereas Whitman would actively fight us every step of the way.

None of this is to excuse those positions Jerry Brown holds that are not progressive. “Elect Jerry Brown so we can fight his pension plan” might not make the best bumper sticker slogan for the November election. But as progressive activists, we cannot afford the luxury of just complaining about Jerry Brown. We have to look at the bigger picture.

With Meg Whitman, massive and possibly irreparable damage will be done to California. If you thought Arnold Schwarzenegger was bad, wait until you see Governor Whitman – she will make you pine for the days of Hummers and cigar tents.

With Jerry Brown, we get an opening. A chance to make California the progressive laboratory that it ought to be. Not by leadership from the top, but by activism from the bottom. It’s not what we truly need. But it’s the situation that’s before us, in an election California cannot afford to lose.

With Chief Justice Ron George announcing his retirement, Arnold Schwarzenegger got the chance to nominate a new chief justice for the California Supreme Court. Today we learned who his pick is: Tani Cantil-Sakauye, currently a judge on the 3rd California Circuit Court of Appeals.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to name 3rd District Court of Appeal Justice Tani Gorre Cantil-Sakauye as the next chief justice, making her the first Asian American to lead the state’s judiciary and giving the California Supreme Court a female majority for the first time in its history.

Cantil-Sakauye, 50, a Sacramento native who rose through the trial courts, served as deputy legislative secretary and deputy legal affairs secretary under former Gov. George Deukmejian. He plucked her from the Sacramento district attorney’s office and later appointed her to the Sacramento Municipal Court.

Former Gov. Pete Wilson elevated Cantil-Sakauye to the Sacramento County Superior Court, and Schwarzenegger named her to the Court of Appeal in Sacramento.

The LA Times calls her a “surprise nominee” and a “moderate Republican.” Her primary qualifications appear to be her service on the state’s Judicial Council, which is important given that the Chief Justice oversees the state’s court system. Ron George played a key role in overhauling the courts, and so it would make sense to have someone able and willing to continue that role as Chief Justice.

Of more importance to most of us is Cantil-Sakauye’s record on the state bench. That’s unclear at this point in time. Obviously research is going to have to be done to look over her record in previous cases she’s heard on the circuit court, and if her moderate reputation is deserved – and what “moderate” really means in her case.

Ron George will go down in history as the swing vote that overturned Prop 22 and legalized same-sex marriage in May 2008 – and who then chickened out and threw equal rights to the mob in upholding Prop 8 in May 2009. Many of his other decisions were seen as being more business-friendly, and it would make sense, given Schwarzenegger’s own politics, that Cantil-Sakauye would continue this trend.

Voters will get to decide on her nomination at the November election, so there’s time to do the research and get the answers we need. If for some reason voters reject her, it’s up to the next governor to make a pick.