All posts by Robert Cruickshank

Who Wants To Be A Speaker?

It seems like just yesterday that I was standing by a pool in Santa Barbara when I learned that Karen Bass, a community organizer from South Los Angeles and a two-term member of the Assembly, was going to be the next Speaker of the Assembly. Most of us, myself included, were excited to finally get some progressive leadership in that office, after the era of Fabian Núñez.

That was nearly two years ago. In that time, Speaker Bass has become the poster woman for how the structural problems of our state can frustrate even good people. I have disagreed with her on many issues while she was Speaker, and broke with her on the May 19 special election propositions, even after a long Sunday afternoon phone call last spring where she tried to convince myself and other Courage Campaign staffers to support those initiatives (ultimately, our members voted to endorse a “No” vote on all six). She never fully broke with the wheeling and dealing culture of Sacramento, perhaps because she felt she had no other options, or perhaps because she felt the deals were genuinely good ones.

Even so, I still believe she was and is a progressive person. We don’t know all the details of what went down in her two years as Speaker, but we know that for whatever reason, whether by choice or by insurmountable obstacles, she wasn’t able to produce the more progressive state she wanted.

And since she is termed out in 2010, the jockeying to replace her has already begun:

Bass wants to follow the procedure she agreed with in taking over from former Speaker Fabian Nunez, with a lengthy transition period, beginning in January when she hopes the Democratic caucus will agree with her.

But, two members, Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes of Van Nuys and Kevin De Leon of Hollywood, are aggressively trying to get commitments to back them as the next speaker.

So far, the two are going along with Bass’ request, but observers say that is because neither one has the 26 votes needed to get over the top….

The result: Democratic caucus members have been looking at a third choice, Assemblyman John Perez, D-Los Angeles.

Perez, who is a cousin of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, would be the first openly gay member to serve as speaker.

I’m not sure that the way Rick Orlov has framed this is quite correct – I’ve been hearing that Pérez was a possible successor to Bass since late last year. And there may still be other candidates seeking the post, such as Fiona Ma.

Still, the Fuentes-de León-Pérez contest seems to be where all the action is. As usual, these races don’t typically turn on the issues themselves, so much as power politics, relationships, promises, connections, etc, particularly in an era of term limits. de León is termed out in 2012, but Fuentes and Pérez aren’t termed out until 2014.

We’ll be watching closely how this all shakes out.

UPDATE by Robert: More on this from Capitol Weekly, which reports Fuentes and his supporters are throwing their weight behind Pérez. de León has 22 votes, needing 26 to win, but Asm. Jared Huffman of Marin County says “it’s over” and that it will be Pérez:

Huffman told Capitol Weekly Tuesday, “I believe John now has the votes. I believe it’s over.”

Huffman said the pivotal moment came when Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, D-La Cañada Flintridge, dropped out of the race and pledged his support to Perez.

If indeed it is Pérez, he could potentially be speaker for four years, about as much continuity in leadership as is possible in a term-limited environment.

The Con-Con and California Forward: Peas in a Pod?

Over at Calbuzz this morning, former Assemblymember and current Santa Cruz County Treasurer Fred Keeley examines the Con-Con and California Forward reform proposals and pronounces them both “outstanding” methods of fixing what is broken in our state. Keeley is a member of the board of California Forward, but doesn’t see any competition or rivalry between the two high-profile efforts to address California’s governance crisis:

Either of these ways of getting to the place where there is a spirited debate and decision by the voters is an outstanding idea.  The difference between the two is the difference between substance and form.  This is not a comparative judgment of either.  They are not the same.

Cal Forward is pushing substantive proposals flowing from the contemporary state of agreement regarding meaningful budget and fiscal reform of the miserable budget process we all seem to loath.

The Bay Area Council’s Con-Con proposal is about form and it takes more time.  It may (or may not) produce the same or similar set of budget and fiscal reforms.  The Con-Con could give us a better outcome, or not.

It’s not as if we’ve had about all the reform we can take.  It seems more like we ain’t getting enough.  Let’s get on with all of it.

Keeley is likely trying to play down any potential rivalry between the two proposals. But what I’ve found more interesting about the two proposals in recent weeks is just how similar they really are.

Keeley’s argument is that the CA Forward plan offers specific, substantive changes, whereas the Bay Area Council’s Constitutional Convention plan would offer the “form” in which changes to the Constitution could occur. CA Forward is specific, the Con-Con less so.

And yet both are designed in very similar ways. Both groups are led by business-friendly moderates who believe that the state’s budget process is broken, but who do not believe we either can or should propose a more fundamental set of changes to the way the state has done business since 1978.

The Con-Con initiatives are designed to produce center-right outcomes. The Con-Con will not be able to propose fixes to constitutional language on taxes, but is mandated to examine “government efficiency” in the form of program reviews, is mandated to look at rules regarding state spending, and has a delegate selection model that favors the center-right at the expense of progressives.

Similarly, the California Forward proposals would produce a center-right set of outcomes, eliminating the 2/3 rule for budgets but preserving it for revenue, and extending it to most fees (and I agree with Calbuzz that this means the negation of the Sinclair Paints decision). They also would create a commission to review all government programs, a commission that could kill a program if it doesn’t meet certain targeted goals, a kind of “No Child Left Behind” for everything state government does. They do offer a complicated way for local governments to raise revenue by majority votes.

How will these fare at the ballot box? My sense is that the Con-Con has a better chance than do California Forward’s plans. By being more specific, and by offering some things that are inherently anti-progressive, they’re going to ensure strident opposition from both the right and the left, which may be enough to sink the package.

The Con-Con may find opposition from the left, which sees it as rigged to deny them a chance to make their case for change, and the right, which is quite happy with the status quo. And yet the Con-Con has a better chance of survival because it isn’t as specific. It offers voters the chance to say “we want reform, now go make it happen” without having to commit to supporting any specific policy proposal. That seems to be the reason why it is polling well so far.

We will see what voters decide in November 2010.

Is California the Next Dubai?

The likely default of the emirate of Dubai on its debt is a shot heard round the world – and perhaps heard nowhere as loudly as here in California. As with other countries that rode an unsustainable real estate bubble to overindebtedness and are now facing financial crisis – places like Greece, Hungary, Latvia and Ireland are just some examples – California faces its own looming debt crisis.

The collapse of Dubai is especially significant for California. Dubai was framed as a financial paradise for the wealthy and the celebrity set, built on real estate borrowing, unsustainable use of natural resources (including water), and exploitation of a laboring class that lacked many basic democratic rights and certainly wasn’t participating in the wealth creation.

Those conditions describe a lot of places in the world right now, but Dubai’s basic logic was being used here in California as well, where a real estate bubble was used to promote an economy essentially ordered around serving the interests of the wealthy, with everyone else seeing only cursory benefits that were conditional on the continuation of the bubble. The bubble has burst, and now California faces a crisis every bit as severe as Dubai.

California’s prosperity since 1980 has rested on three asset bubbles, each one larger than the last, culminating in the Great Zeroes Bubble, where both private and public spending were fueled by a mountain of debt. A political system unwilling and unable to raise taxes to capture the wealth and use it to sustain services instead turned in this decade, just as it did in the 1980s and 1990s, to debt to keep the lights on, the teachers in the classrooms, the cops on the beat.

It’s not that debt is bad, per se. It’s instead that since 1978, California has been locked in a mentality that sees debt as the answer to their problems. An economy and a society that had become unwilling to pay for what it needed and wanted found that debt was the magic way to get what you wanted without worrying about how to afford it. And while many Californians have been willing to indeed pay for services, by raising taxes at the state and local level on several occasions since 1978, our political leaders and our post-Prop 13 system made these options difficult or impossible to exercise.

California became a state built on debt. Arnold Schwarzenegger chiseled the principle in place in the 2000s by using debt to balance the state’s budget in 2004, in order to avoid a tax increase he claims, wrongly, was unnecessary.

Again, not all debt is bad. Debt is the right way to fund the large infrastructure projects like high speed rail that will pull us out of the crisis. But it cannot be the only basis for an economy, and it cannot be the only basis for a government. In California, it had become both.

Dan Walters today argues that California has over $500 billion in debt, a sum that might further the comparisons to Dubai – until we look at the details:

Lockyer’s warning pertained to the state’s “general obligation debt,” which currently stands at $59 billion, and there are an additional $50-plus billion in general obligation bonds that have not yet been sold. The biggest chunks of debt, however, are the unfunded obligations for pensions and health care of retired public employees….

state and local pension funds have lost at least $150 billion on investments, so a reasonable estimate of today’s unfunded liability is $200-plus billion. A state commission, meanwhile, says the state-local liability for retiree health care is about $100 billion.

No one keeps complete data on local government general obligation debt, but it appears to be roughly the same as the state’s, perhaps $50 billion, plus several billion dollars in debt incurred by local redevelopment agencies.

Walters uses this to argue that the $11 billion water bond might be “the straw that breaks our back” and that we will want to consider not taking on as much debt or paying some of it down.

I don’t agree. My jeremiad about California’s dependence on debt offered above isn’t intended as a “deficit hawk” argument. Instead it is intended to say that debt should be used wisely, and dealt with sensibly – not out of reckless panic.

More below.

If you assume that we have to pay the $500 billion or so all at once, then yes, California has a very serious debt crisis, and calls to stop adding to it and start paying it down will gain traction.

But we don’t. Much of the liability – $200 billion for pension obligations and $100 billion for retiree health care – will be paid out over time. And that gives us time to craft solutions that aren’t neo-Hooverite rollbacks of benefits, but that sustain and even expand public services to deal with both the fiscal and economic crisis.

The first step is conceptual. The best way to pay back debt is to earn more money. That means the state has to stop seeing “economic recovery” as a dirty word and instead see it as their primary obligation. Government policy needs to be oriented toward building sustainable prosperity, as that’s the best way to bring down the projected deficits in the pension system.

CalPERS, for its part, should start investing in sustainable projects. One specific thing they could do is invest money in our high speed rail project, and be repaid out of some of the operating surpluses from the trains. Arnold Schwarzenegger currently envisions private investors playing that role, but why should HSR operating surpluses go them? Wouldn’t it make sense to instead plow that back into the state’s pension needs? And can’t that model be expanded to solar and wind power generation?

The $100 billion figure for retiree health care obligations is easily dealt with by creating a universal single-payer health care system. SB 810 would save billions for state and local governments, and its overall cost in California would not be $100 billion. It would then be possible to find a way to use the single-payer system as a substitute for the retiree health care obligation.

California should also explore chartering its own bank in order to deal with its ongoing debt obligations. It’s possible that the bank could be used to refinance existing debt at lower rates and avoid being held hostage by private investors.

Ultimately, of course, California is going to have to pay for its services by higher taxes. Our 30-year experiment in low taxes and high services has catastrophically failed, as the institutions our state needs to thrive are being destroyed as we speak. Higher taxes on the wealthy and on corporations would help right the fiscal ship, help give us a cushion to deal with the debt we do have, and enable us to escape the downward spiral we’re mired in.

A state government, even one facing a serious financial and economic mess, still has a number of tools, resources, and funds to use to get us out by restoring economic prosperity and reorienting us away from unsustainable ways of life and toward something more sustainable and sensible.

Of course, we shouldn’t be in this alone. Just as Abu Dhabi may help Dubai restructure its debt, the US government still has many things it can do to help California move away from a dangerous debt dependence and toward sustainability. There’s no reason California should have to do this by ourselves, especially when national economic recovery depends on Californian economic recovery.

SD-15 Candidate Field Shaping Up

Darrell Steinberg may no longer want a 2/3 majority, but Central Coast Democrats do, and we’re already starting to get organized for the coming battle to win SD-15. So too are the potential candidates, as the Santa Cruz Sentinel explains:

Former state Assemblyman John Laird of Santa Cruz and current Assemblyman Bill Monning of Carmel, both Democrats, say they would consider running for Maldonado’s seat. On the Republican side, Assembly Minority Leader Sam Blakeslee of San Luis Obispo has expressed interest….

While Laird said it was too early to decide on a Senate run, he said he would consider it should Maldonado become lieutenant governor. His bid would require him to move from his current home on Santa Cruz’s Westside, since he now lives in Sen. Joe Simitian’s district, to nearby Scotts Valley or points south, something Laird said he is willing to do.

“I represented a significant amount of that district when I was in the Assembly: Santa Cruz County, Santa Clara County, Monterey County,” he said.

Monning, who replaced Laird in the Assembly last year, said Tuesday he would also weigh a run for the Senate.

Meanwhile, Assemblyman Blakeslee, considered the Republican front-runner for Maldonado’s seat, has already raised more than a quarter million dollars to seek that office in 2012, according to filings with the Secretary of State. Blakeslee’s office, reached by phone Tuesday, declined to comment.

This all jibes with what I’m hearing on the ground here in Monterey County. It’s a certainty that Blakeslee would run in the special election on the Republican side, and he will likely have a clear field.

On the Democratic side, either Laird or Monning would be strong candidates. Both hail from the northern half of the district, so they’d have to run a strong campaign in San Luis Obispo County and Santa Maria, where Blakeslee currently represents. But given that SD-15 has a 6.5 point Democratic registration advantage, and given that we in SD-15 voted for Obama by a 20-point margin, there’s every reason to believe either Laird or Monning would be able to do well in the southern half of the seat. Plus, it’s not exactly going to be hard to entice Southern California progressive activists to make the trek to that part of the beautiful Central Coast in the spring to help organize in SLO and Santa Maria.

It is also unlikely that Laird and Monning would face off against each other. Instead they would almost certainly find some way to work it out and ensure that only one of them runs for the seat.

The race between Laird/Monning and Blakeslee would be a battle over California’s future. We can expect Blakeslee to argue that a vote for his Democratic opponent is a vote for a certain tax increase, and that a vote for Blakeslee is the only way to stop Democrats from raising taxes. Laird or Monning would counter by pointing out that they’re going to save local K-12 schools and higher education (San Jose State, UC Santa Cruz, CSU Monterey Bay, and Cal Poly SLO have been hit hard by the budget cuts, as have the district’s community colleges), and provide for the economic growth and recovery that Blakeslee and the Republicans refuse to offer.

It is the kind of battle Democrats and progressives should wholly embrace. Laird and Monning are both deeply progressive people, the kind of Democrats we can get excited about putting in office. Central Coast Democrats aren’t just excited about winning the seat, but winning it with the kind of Democrat that we’re proud to work hard to elect, the kind of Democrat who knows the way forward for our failing state.

No matter which Democrat ultimately becomes the candidate in SD-15, we will have the strongest chance we’ve had in a very long time to finally win the 2/3 majority we so desperately need in order to finally solve California’s crisis. Bring it on!

I Guess They Don’t Actually Want A 2/3 Majority

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, back in July:

The 2/3 requirement that we have in this state. I know it’s a tired old saw. But when you really think about, that is the cause of so much of the dysfunction in the legislature. you have a minority party that obviously worked in tandem with the governor that cost the state 6-7 billion dollars tonight for no good reason. To somehow improve your negotiating position. It is without question the most irresponsible act that I have seen in my 15 years of public service…I hope that the significance will truly capture enough attention that the people will decide it is time to change the system that allows the minority to essentially rule the day. That’s not just the Senate Republicans, it was the Governor too, who was apparently out to prove a point. And he proved a point.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, today:

State Senate Leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) released a statement expressing “grave doubts” about the choice. Maldonado needs the approval of the Democratic-dominated Legislature to take the post.

Steinberg cited the $2-million cost of the special election that would be required to fill Maldonado’s Senate seat, suggesting the money could be better spent scaling back recent fee hikes at state colleges and universities.

The Senate leader, under pressure to keep the post open for Democrats running for lieutenant governor themselves in next year’s election, also suggested he would like to see the job left vacant.

“It may be both fiscally and politically prudent to permit the people to make their own selection for this statewide office next year and avoid the expense of a costly special election,” his statement said.

Once again, we see that the State Senate is unwilling to actually do what it takes to overcome the 2/3rds rule that has crippled our state. Instead of seizing a golden opportunity to win one of the two seats we need to get a 2/3rds majority, Steinberg prefers to help coddle a fellow Democratic Senator’s unwillingness to face Maldonado in a general election.

Steinberg and other Senators are starting to put out the talking points to defend their weakness. But none of them hold water. The election to replace Maldonado here in SD-15 can be combined with the June primary, saving money. But even if it weren’t combined, the $2 million or so is statistically negligible when compared to the billions of dollars in cuts Steinberg is apparently willing to accept by refusing to take the chance to win a 2/3rds majority next year (along with the race to replace Jeff Denham in SD-12, a district with a D+12 registration advantage).

Additionally, voters themselves are going to have the chance to pick the next Lt. Gov., and confirming Maldonado will not change that fact, as Steinberg implies. If Steinberg believes Maldonado is a formidable candidate in the GOP primary or in the general election, he is badly misreading the political landscape.

Another argument we’re hearing is that Maldonado’s seat isn’t all that winnable:

Capitol Democrats said there was a more calculated political reason for not wanting to let Maldonado go. Democrats were humbled by this year’s election results in New Jersey and Virginia, and fear that 2010 could be a bad Democratic year. In addition, a low turn-out special election may make it tougher for a Democrat to win the 15th Senate District seat currently held by Maldonado.

Democrats have a slight 41-35 percent registration advantage in the district. Nearly 20 percent of the district’s voters are decline to state.  The district has been home to moderate Republicans like Bruce McPherson, and overwhelming voted for Schwarzenegger over Phil Angelides in 2006 – 61 percent – 34 percent. But in 2004, John Kerry narrowly carried the district over George W. Bush – 52 percent – 46 percent.

What the article doesn’t note is that Obama carried the seat by 20 points last year. And if it is turnout they’re concerned about, a candidate like John Laird will have no problem generating enthusiasm from progressives and Democrats across the state, who will gladly spend a late spring here on the Central Coast to put a good progressive in the State Senate.

More damning is the basic philosophy behind this “gee, winning the 15th is gonna be hard” nonsense. If Democrats are scared of winning a seat where they hold a 6 point registration advantage, a seat Obama won by 20 points, then they really have a serious problem providing the leadership this state needs.

Next year we’ll hear Democratic legislators exhorting us to help them in other Assembly and Senate races, saying that we have to help them win 2/3rds. But by refusing to actually go for 2/3rds when given the chance, they’re showing the California Democratic base that the Senate is fundamentally unserious about restoring majority rule.

The only conclusion one can draw from this is that Senate Democrats don’t actually care about the 2/3rds rule. That they prefer the status quo to having to actually take the opportunities they are given and take a winnable seat, or to set up a hated rival (Maldonado) to spectacularly fail when he can’t get elected Lt. Gov. next year.

UPDATE: The Courage Campaign, where I work as Public Policy Director, released this statement today on the Maldonado appointment:

“The best thing we can do right now is to remove Sen. Abel Maldonado from a position of importance where he can do great damage, the California State Senate, and place him in an irrelevant post, the Lt. Governor’s office,” said Rick Jacobs, Chair of the 700,000-member Courage Campaign. “For once, we agree with the Governor – Abel Maldonado should be demoted to Lt. Governor.”

Arnold to Pick Abel Maldonado for Lt-Gov

This is truly joyous news:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today said he would appoint Republican state Sen. Abel Maldonado to fill the vacant lieutenant governor’s job, perhaps setting off a partisan squabble over his confirmation.

Arnold announced this on the Leno show, taped earlier in Burbank, and the Gov’s office confirmed it.

I am one happy camper. This is perhaps the best news progressives AND Democrats have gotten in this state all year long. I live in SD-15, and Abel Maldonado is, sadly, my State Senator. He is a joke of a Senator, a “moderate” politician when it is convenient for him, a conservative one generally speaking. He only won re-election last year because he and Don Perata cut a terrible deal in 2007, where Perata promised to stop a Democratic primary challenge in exchange for his vote on that budget deal.

But more importantly, this seat – SD-15 – is one of the two seats we need to reach 2/3rds in the State Senate. And like SD-12, it is a majority Democratic seat. The current registration numbers are 41% Dem, 34.5% Rep, and 23% DTS. Arnold Schwarzenegger has just created a huge and invaluable opening for us to break the Zombie Death Cult grip on the State Senate.

If, that is, Senate Democrats don’t fuck it up:

Democrats may object to Schwarzenegger appointing a Republican to a job a Democrat was elected to perform. Moreover, two Republicans and one Democrat in the Senate are planning to run for lieutenant governor next year and may be unwilling to confirm someone who then could run against them as the incumbent.

That Senate Democrat is Dean Florez. We don’t yet know if he would try and block this, but Senate Democrats would be extremely foolish if they did so. Former Assemblymember John Laird might be willing to run here in SD-15, and he can win this seat, even against a likely campaign from San Luis Obispo Republican (and Assembly Minority Leader) Sam Blakeslee. Laird is popular in the northern half of the district, and can win in the SLO/Santa Maria part of the district as well.

The highest priority for ANY Senate Democrat right now is getting to 2/3rds. Don Perata already screwed the pooch on that last year (we could have beaten Maldonado with a real Dem challenger). We cannot miss that opportunity again.

Especially since Maldonado will be a weak candidate. He enraged the right-wing with his vote for the tax increases in February, and he’ll have a very difficult time winning a primary campaign against Jeff Denham and Sam Aanestad, even with the power of incumbency. If he does somehow survive the election, I have every bit of confidence that either Dean Florez or Janice Hahn can beat Maldonado in November.

We can make Monterey County ground zero in the battle for 2/3rds in the State Senate – and it’s a fight we can win. Senate Democrats must keep their eye on the ball and confirm Abel Maldonado as Lieutenant Governor, a short-term price worth paying for the holy grail of 2/3rds in the State Senate.

UPDATE: Florez speaks, and it’s not good:

It is especially troubling to see the Governor miss out on an opportunity to save taxpayer money by rewarding Senator Maldonado with a post that could be left open until the next election only months away.

At minimum, since the Lieutenant Governor seat was held by a Democrat, appointing a Republican to the post only complicates and heightens the partisan divide.

The Governor has put Senator Maldonado in a difficult position to say the least. I don’t see the Senate confirming him.

Emphasis mine.

That’s really not a good thing. We need to push back, HARD, on this nonsense. Senate Democrats absolutely must confirm Maldonado. It is imperative that they do so, in order to win 2/3rds. We cannot protect one Senator at the expense of our state’s future.

Combating Republican Budget Crisis Framing

Today’s George Skelton column offers a classic example of how right-wing framing of the budget crisis works its way into common discourse through the media:

I don’t have to be so diplomatic. I’ll just say that there’s no way these people can produce an honest budget that forces Sacramento “to live within its means,” as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger persistently preaches, while consistently being one of the first to sin.

The “live within its means” quote is the problem, and it’s no accident Arnold Schwarzenegger frequently employs it. It suggests that government can only spend what it takes in – if tax receipts collapse by over 40% as they have since 2007, we have to cut spending by over 40% to match. It also suggests that we have been living beyond our means – overspending, having too many government programs – before the crisis, which is just not so. California never really recovered from the cuts of the 2002-03 era, and the spending increases since were either to pay for Arnold’s vehicle license fee cut or to keep up with a growing and aging population.

The better, and more accurate, frame is that California needs enough resources to meet the needs of its people. Especially in a severe recession such as this. We need to expand, not contract, educational services. We need to guarantee everyone has the health care services they need, not take it away from those who need it. We need to reorient our economy, land use, and transportation systems away from the failed models of the 20th century and toward a more sustainable and prosperous 21st century model as a way to create the jobs that are desperately needed,

California has more than enough resources to do this. We have a lot of wealth sitting off the table in the form of high-end property values, corporate property value, corporate profits, and rents. If we framed the budget crisis as a matter of getting those resources into play in order to meet the needs of our people, than the structural problems Skelton does describe, including the lack of majority vote, become seen as obstacles to progress rather than guardians of the people against a rapacious state government.

Until we have gotten our framing straight, we’re going to have a hard time solving this crisis. Especially if the media continues to play along with the right-wing’s arguments.

California’s New Deal

California never had a New Deal. While California voted for FDR in 1932 (and for each of his three reelection bids), state politics were dominated by right-wing factions in both the Republican and Democratic parties for much of the era. In 1934, when Upton Sinclair won the Democratic nomination on a socialist platform called End Poverty In California, or EPIC, he was unable to overcome a sophisticated campaign machine built by conservative Republican Frank Merriam, which included political ads created by movie studios and shown in cinemas statewide before the election. (A centrist Democrat, Raymond Haight, also ran in the 3-way contest, costing Sinclair anti-conservative votes.)

In 1938 progressive Democrat Culbert Olson finally broke through. An atheist and friend of labor unions, his term in office was marked by battles with conservative Democrats and Republicans in the legislature, frustrating his plans to bring the New Deal to California, beyond the few dams and bridges that had been initiated earlier in the decade. Moderate Republican Earl Warren beat Olson in the 1942 election, and a true New Deal for California would have to wait until 1958, when Pat Brown got elected governor.

As California sinks deeper into a similar economic crisis some 75 years later, we risk making the same mistake – being unable to overcome a legacy of Hooverism and provide the state with the government-led economic recovery program we so desperately need. So argue California scholars Richard Walker and Gray Brechin in a SF Chronicle op-ed today:

Meanwhile, what is California doing? The governor and Legislature are applying the same tactics as Hoover, the state’s onetime favorite son. They are balancing the budget by cutting spending. It is a formula for disaster.

The results are the same as they were in Hoover’s time: making the Great Recession worse. Cities, counties, schools and universities are laying off workers, cutting expenditures and charging more, thereby raising unemployment and reducing consumer spending….

Now is the time for Californians to remember the lesson of what a great, public-spirited generation did for us. Instead of leaving our children a ruined public sector, we should be crying out for a new New Deal.

One thing Walker and Brechin don’t tackle in their op-ed is how California can bring that about, given our difficult budget mess. And yet Walker and Brechin seem to understand that in order to solve that intractable crisis, we have to approach it with the right vision in mind.

Californians WANT a new New Deal. They don’t want to see their educational opportunities obliterated. They don’t want to suffer in long-term unemployment. They don’t want to see their health care options taken away from them (even with federal reform, the state’s role will remain important).

They’re also willing to pay for it. Tom Elias notes in an op-ed today the same thing I pointed out right after this month’s election, that Californians ARE willing to tax themselves for services:

For there are signs aplenty that Californians are willing to work at putting things back on the right track – and even pay to do it.

Perhaps the best evidence for this appears in the results of the early November off-year election, where dozens of cities and school districts placed proposed new taxes before local voters. The vast majority of those proposals passed easily, even some parcel taxes aimed at helping school districts (Long Beach was a notable exception.)…

There are other signs of potential for improvement. One is the fact that even though some businesses have relocated outside California to take advantage of cheap land and special tax breaks, more businesses continue to start up here than in any other state. Far more, in fact, than are leaving.

What California needs, then, is a legislature unwilling to accept Hooverism as the default response to the budget crisis. Instead we need a legislature willing to embrace a New Deal for California, willing to articulate the need for it to the public, and willing to fight to properly fund it with progressive revenue solutions.

The fight, the vision, the leadership is what will enable us to overcome the structural problems this state faces. It’s time we stopped using those impediments as an excuse for failing to show Californians the way out of the abyss.

Anthony Adams’ Head Saved From Pike

Back in the February budget battle, notorious right-wing SoCal talk show hosts John and Ken put the heads of Republican legislators who voted for the tax increases on sticks as a threat of grassroots wingnut revolt. Their primary enemy became GOP Assemblymember Anthony Adams (AD-59), who they targeted with a recall effort, gathering and submitting signatures to put a recall on the ballot. It was to be the biggest demonstration yet of the power the KFI duo have over California politics – and the Republican Party.

Except they failed.

We learned today that the recall effort will fall 11,000 signatures short of qualifying for the ballot, according to the random sampling projections. John and Ken turned in 58,000 signatures but the sampling projects less than half – about 24,500 – will be valid, short of the 35,825 they needed to make the ballot.

Chalk this up as a pretty big FAIL on the part of John and Ken and their own SoCal version of the teabagger movement. Armed with one of the West Coast’s most powerful radio signals and one of the highest rated shows in the region, they still couldn’t muster the signatures to even get this before voters.

On Twitter I noted that if they couldn’t get the recall on the ballot, maybe John and Ken aren’t so powerful after all. Anthony Adams agrees. Once again, the great anti-tax revolution of 2009 is a mouse that failed to roar.

12.5%

California’s unemployment rate continues to rise, reaching 12.5% in October. However, the state may have actually added jobs for the first time in over a year and a half:

Still, not all signs are negative. The state gained 25,700 jobs in October, reversing a trend that’s seen California lose 687,700 jobs over the year. It is the first time the state has added jobs since April 2008.

There’s some dispute about that number. According to John Myers at KQED Capitol Notes, it’s numbers from state agencies that show growth, whereas federal numbers show a further decline. Even if the state really had added jobs (and the reports don’t say in which sectors those jobs were added) it’s a tiny fraction of what we need to restore the two years of job loss.

It’s also unclear whether this is the trough of the recession and the prelude to a long climb upward – or whether it is a temporary respite before another downward slide. The latter outcome is looking more likely, as California faces another crippling round of budget cuts, as we close off educational opportunity to the masses, and as we have another two years to go before foreclosures peak.

These numbers should be sobering news to California legislators, who need to emphasize job creation. We’ve tried creating jobs the right-wing way, through massive tax and spending cuts and letting corporations do as they please. It hasn’t worked. Perhaps it is time to do the only thing proven to create jobs this year, and that is spend public money to do it.

10 reasons to believe we’re in a Depression, from Seeking Alpha. Hard to disagree here.