For several years now the California Teachers Association, one of the state’s largest and most powerful labor unions, has been considering the idea of putting an initiative on the ballot to close the loophole in Prop 13 that gave commercial property owners the same protections as residential property owners. Now they are closer than ever to bringing it before voters.

Earlier this month, CTA filed two initiatives to close that loophole. They are both pending at the AG’s office for title and summary. Here’s how they’d work:

• Tax commercial property at fair market value, and frequently reassess property taxes at fair market value (instead of locking in a value and rate, as Prop 13 currently does). The main difference between the two initiatives is how that reassessment is accomplished.

• Provide a small business exclusion of up to $1 million

• Double homeowners’ exemption from $7,000 to $14,000 (as a sweetener to voters)

It’s a clever approach, one that almost certainly polls well with voters, since the initiatives offer tax relief for residential owners and small businesses – making it crystal clear, at least in the initiative language, that this is NOT an attack on the sacred cow of residential property protections offered in Prop 13.

CTA has said it will decide in January whether to go ahead and collect signatures to get this on the ballot. If they decide to do so, they will have no problem whatsoever getting the required amount. Of course, it’s also possible they’re just holding this out there as a threat to the Legislature in order to prevent them from cutting education funding any further.

The right-wing isn’t waiting for CTA to decide. They’re already trying to defend their corporate allies by framing this something that will hurt consumers and not the rich, as Joel Fox argued:

How much of that new $70 tax savings will be left when increased property taxes on business are passed on to consumers? Probably nothing. The overall tax increase contained in the split roll proposals is in the billions of dollars. Taxes were increased $12.5 billion last February. But, while that tax increase was temporary, the split roll tax increase would be permanent and will cost consumers much money in the end.

What Fox doesn’t explain is that the February tax increases haven’t hurt the CA economy, nor have they bankrupted households. Of course, he is exploiting wide public acceptance of the “trickle-down” theory, which assumes that whatever business does affects the broader public. If something’s good for business, it’s good for the masses. If something’s bad for business, it’s bad for the masses.

If CTA does go ahead and put these initiatives on the ballot, they’re going to need to have some way to counter that framing. That should not prevent them from putting these on the ballot – it’s long past time we closed that loophole and saved our schools.

In what’s become a depressingly familiar story over the last 2 years, California faces another big budget deficit:

Less than four months after California leaders stitched together a patchwork budget, a projected deficit of nearly $21 billion already looms, according to a report to be released Wednesday by the state’s chief budget analyst.

The new figure — the nonpartisan analyst’s first projection for the coming budget year — threatens to send Sacramento back into budgetary gridlock and force more across-the-board cuts in state programs.

As the article points out, the deficit for 2009-10 (current fiscal year) is $6.3 billion, and the projected deficit for 2010-11 is $14.4 billion. Arnold is already talking about closing it with cuts:

“I think that there will be across-the-board cuts again,” he said at a San Jose news conference….

“I can’t think of any good solutions,” said Assemblywoman Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa), who chairs the budget committee. Although the projected deficit would be smaller than the last one, she said, “the cuts are going to be harder to make because we’ve already made such substantial cuts.”

Notice the difference between the two statements. Arnold is saying “there will be cuts again.” Simple, declarative. Noreen Evans is saying “the cuts are going to be harder” but the subtext is “they’ll happen anyway.” Not a strong or clear statement at all.

Instead, what is needed is a very clear and simple statement from Sacramento Democrats: no cuts. CDP Chair John Burton got a loud ovation at the E-Board meeting this weekend in San Diego when he said we’ve had enough cuts to core services. The activist base, crucial to Democratic turnout hopes in 2010 (Dems lost 9 Assembly seats in 1994, giving Republicans a brief 1 seat majority for the first time in over 20 years), clearly hungers for a strong “no cuts” stance from their Democratic leaders if they’re going to be motivated to go out and win the seats Dems need to get to 2/3rds.

Further budget cuts will only worsen the state’s economy, at a time when we’re at a fragile stasis – not getting worse, not getting better. We might be seeing genuine recovery had it not been for the billions of cuts made since the summer of 2007. Instead, California is poised to collapse by embracing these cuts.

Of course, Democratic refusal to cut won’t solve the problem alone. California desperately needs a second stimulus. Talk of a new jobs bill has ramped up in recent days, and much of the talk includes aid to state and local budgets, as a way to protect and directly create jobs. Typically, Rahm Emanuel and the White House are still recklessly talking about deficit reduction, and ominous rumors of 10% across the board federal spending cuts have surfaced in recent days.

The path for Democrats – in California and in DC – is clear. Say no to budget cuts, and yes to new spending in order to create jobs.

For a long time this summer, California Forward’s info sheet regarding their proposals for reform included a line about “providing certainty regarding passage of fees”:

Clarify the circumstances in which the Legislature and the Governor can impose fees without a two-thirds majority vote to those areas with a clear and justifiable nexus to the service provided.

In other words, they wanted to reverse the Sinclair Paints decision that ruled the Legislature can impose fees by majority vote, given certain conditions, replacing it with a 2/3rds vote to raise a fee.

CA Forward and its staff got a LOT of pushback from progressive groups over this. And by October, that plank had disappeared from their info sheet.

But it’s still in their proposal, and is included in the first of two initiatives they filed and intend to place on the November 2010 ballot. I’d caught this over a week ago, but hadn’t yet written about it, so the scoop goes to Calbuzz:

But the process people – the folks who believe that passing a budget by majority vote is crucial to governing and would give the majority party a modicum of more running room – were so eager to make it possible to pass budgets that they were willing to trade off a right recognized by the courts in Sinclair Paint vs. Board of Equalization, 15 Cal.4th at 881….

Fred Keeley, Cal Forward’s most avid pro-tax liberal, says he’s thinks giving up the majority vote on fees that replace taxes in exchange for a majority vote on the budget is a good deal. And Bob Hertzberg, the former Assembly Speaker and co-chairman of Cal Forward, thinks it’s not even a close call.

In other words, California Forward’s Democratic members believed that it was worth reinforcing the undemocratic rule-by-minority regarding revenues, which is by far the number one thing state government most desperately needs, in order to get support for majority vote on the budget. Fantastic. They’ve just repeated the same process that goes on inside the Capitol inside their own conference room.

The repeal of Sinclair Paint is just one part of the problems with CA Forward’s agenda. The initiative includes “government efficiency” language that mandates the legislature “examine every program at least once every 10 years, looking for ways to improve efficiency and reduce waste.” It also would create a “process” to use “spikes” in revenue to pay down debt, instead of using it to fund other worthy programs.

When you include all that with the reinforcement of minority rule on revenues and majority rule on the budget, which would have the practical effect of making Democrats solely responsible for making budget cuts without the ability to raise revenues, the California Forward proposal certainly seems designed to produce a state that offers fewer public services and further straitjackets progressives’ ability to reverse the decline and restore the California Dream.

As Calitics alum David Dayen put it, it’s the “news of the year”: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s outgoing Finance Director Mike Genest explored both bankruptcy AND turning California into a federal territory as a solution to our financial mess:

“I looked as hard as I could at how states could declare bankruptcy,” said Michael Genest, director of the California Department of Finance who is stepping down at the end of the year. “I literally looked at the federal constitution to see if there was a way for states to return to territory status.”

This confirms a series of rumors we reported on back in January and February, but at the time we didn’t know that Genest was even considering abolition of the state government itself by having California become a US territory. (Historical note: California never was a US territory – we went directly to statehood after the American conquest.)

While turning California into a ward of the federal government would be an extreme and unlikely measure, bankruptcy was always a more plausible outcome. Even then, there are considerable obstacles to that, including provisions in the state constitution mandating repayment of debts as a primary budget obligation.

The context of Genest’s quote was a Wall Street Journal story about state budget woes. The article makes it crystal clear that California’s problems are not unique, and are not the result of “overspending” or “waste, fraud and abuse” as the right-wingers claim:

“We’re facing a cliff in 2011 when stimulus dollars run out,” said Mitchell Bean, director of the Michigan House Fiscal Agency. “There is not an end in sight, even in recovery.”

As of July 2009, California’s budget shortfall was 49.3% of its general funds. States have considered drastic options to fill such gaps….

There were no bankruptcy options, and the legislature chose to cut back sharply on education and health care to fill the gap. Mr. Genest already predicts the 2011 shortfall will outpace the projected $7 billion gap. It is a smaller deficit than this year’s gap, but the choices will be more difficult because so many cuts have already been made.

Mr. Genest estimated that, eventually, 40% of the state’s budget would go to the state Medicaid program, 40% to education, 10% to debt service and 6% to retiree medical services and pension-leaving little left for anything else, such as the state’s corrections system.

Ironically, Genest’s old boss has consistently opposed prison reform and sentencing reform, continuing to lie to voters that they can have tough-on-crime policies without having to pay for them.

The looming crisis in 2011 is compounded by the expiration of the temporary tax increases enacted in April 2009 – which, we should note, have not produced further economic ruin for California, and are not responsible for the more fundamental weakness of the CA economy. New revenue is absolutely essential to California’s future, or else we are going to see an even deeper and more destructive round of cuts. This is compounded by both the lack of majority rule in California, as well as the unwillingness of any of the remaining gubernatorial candidates, Jerry Brown included, to propose new tax revenues.

Without stronger and better funded government services, economic recovery is simply impossible. And maintaining what we have will be difficult enough. The collapse of revenues – we’re 50% below where we need to be since this recession began, according to the article – is the primary crisis for both California and the federal government to address.

Unless the gubernatorial candidates, along with the Congress and the White House, start to offer a more lasting solution to the mess, it’s going to be hard to take any of them seriously.

We didn’t intend today to be Jerry Brown Day here at Calitics, but we could not pass up reporting on some rather stunning statements Brown made at a recent appearance at UC Irvine. As reported by the OC Register (with a h/t to Calitics alum David Dayen):

But Brown did address Proposition 13 – the property-tax limit – and taxes in general.

“I don’t think taking on Prop. 13 is viable,” said Brown, who was on hand as part of a speaker’s series at the school. “I don’t think it (change) is needed.

“As a candidate, if you even peep about a tax, you’re dead,” he said. “We’ve got to downsize government to the maximum degree. We’ve got to make it efficient and bring it to the community.”

Brown said he opposed reducing the two-thirds majority vote required for tax hikes, but said he was open to reducing the two-thirds majority vote needed to approve the budget. He voiced support for the state’s three-strikes law, remained uncommitted on a public option for health care, and said he supported a path toward legalizing those now in the country illegally.

Anyone who still thinks Brown is a progressive, please raise your hands. Thought so.

If Brown is not even willing to embrace the public option, which is widely popular here in California, if he won’t commit to majority rule, and if he believes in “downsizing government to the maximum degree” then we’re looking at someone who is clearly planning to run a centrist, even DLC-like campaign here in California.

Brown likely has concluded that 2010 will be like 1994, and that if he is to avoid his sister’s fate he must appease Republicans and independents who supposedly are skeptical of government.

The problem with that thinking is it almost certainly guarantees the same outcome as in 1994. Sure, Jerry will improve on the 40% Kathleen got in that race, but if he is going to refuse to embrace the public option, there’s just no way at all he will be able to motivate California progressives, and even many California Democrats will not be enthused to do more than cast their vote for him on Election Day.

As I’ve argued before, 2010 will be a turnout election. If Brown can’t motivate the Democratic base, he’ll be facing a Republican candidate with a strongly motivated right-wing base, and his victory will become anything but certain. Brown may think those statements played well in Orange County (even though Irvine voters cast a majority of their votes for Obama). They’re definitely NOT going to play well with the people he needs to help him win.

Sometime next month Time Magazine will announce their “Person of the Year,” and it should be obvious by now who best personifies 2009: Herbert Hoover. 80 years after he helped the nation slide into Depression with his austerity budgets and refusal to use government to help provide relief and recovery, his basic approach to political economy is enjoying quite a renaissance. Alongside Sacramento, one of the most prominent places to embrace the new Hooverism has been the United States Senate.

Now it looks like they’re moving to up the Hooverite ante, and two of California’s powerful federal politicians are at the center of the debate. Sen. Dianne Feinstein is joining 6 other Senators to demand that Speaker Nancy Pelosi approve a commission to recommend cuts to Medicare and Social Security – or else they’ll refuse to vote to increase the US government’s debt ceiling:

Congress is under pressure to raise the cap on what the federal government can borrow by mid-December. If the debt ceiling is not raised above its current $12.1 trillion mark by then, the government will exceed its borrowing limits and will be forced to default on the debt. Economists have warned that the inevitable result would be a lowering of the U.S. credit rating, triggering substantial increases in the interest rates the government is already paying.

But before Tuesday’s hearing was over, Sens. Conrad, Gregg, Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), George Voinovich (R-Ohio) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) publicly vowed to vote against raising the debt ceiling if a budget reform commission bill doesn’t come along with it.

Chris Bowers at Open Left called this a national suicide pact, an apt description for this truly reckless demand:

Let’s review the threat that these five Democrats are making:

   * They will allow the United States to default on its debt, which will vastly increase the overall amount we have to pay on our debt

     UNLESS

   * Speaker Nancy Pelosi turns over Congressional power on Social Security and Medicare to an unelected commission that will almost certainly propose deep cuts in Social Security and Medicare entitlements.  Keep in mind that deep cuts to Social security and Medicare that pass under a Democratic trifecta would doom the party at the ballot box for years to come.

This is completely insane, and there is no choice but to call this bluff.

Bowers goes on to point out the obvious fact that if these Senators did cause the US to default on its debt (the practical effect of refusing to increase the debt ceiling) their political careers would all be over, so we have nothing to lose by calling their bluff.

And he is right. Cutting Medicare and Social Security benefits would be a truly insane, reckless, and radical act. At a time when the US economy is entering a period of long-term high unemployment, the very last thing you want to be doing is further undermining the ability of Americans, particularly the aged, to make ends meet.

Cuts in Social Security and Medicare will not only ripple through the economy in the form of reduced spending, they’ll also ripple through younger generations, who will fill the gap lost by the cutting of government benefits with money out of their own pockets to help their elderly relatives make ends meet and get the treatment they need.

Feinstein is embracing Hooverism, putting Democratic gains at risk, and threatening to make our economic crisis permanent. Of course, in doing so she’s merely going with the flow in both DC and Sacramento, so it’s not like she’s some kind of outlier.

Still, this kind of insane policymaking has to be stopped. Pelosi should call Feinstein’s bluff. Anyone here who thinks Feinstein would actually enable a debt default, please raise your hands. Didn’t think so. Pelosi already got rolled once this month by a block of regressive Democrats willing to risk future elections in order to roll back rights and screw the poor and the middle class. She shouldn’t let it happen again.

Once upon a time, in a far away land called Orange County, I was a Catholic. I come from an Irish-Catholic family and we did the usual church thing, though my own parents were infrequent about it. Over time I came to realize that my lack of belief in a god meant my ongoing participation in organized religion had no point, so I wound up joining the ranks of the lapsed Catholics. A proud group we are.

I have no specific objection to Catholicism. But I always did find it annoying that the church hierarchy, especially after John Paul II’s ascension to the papacy in 1978, chose to aggressively espouse conservative social politics as opposed to embracing the more enlightened, even socialistic aspects of the church’s teachings. I’m well aware of the reasons for that – the church enjoys being close to those with economic and political power, it has a long history of inherently anti-woman sentiments, and so on.

Still, it made it easier to leave the church when it became clear that, in addition to my realization that John Lennon was right about god (“above us, only sky”), the church wasn’t offering any positive reason to remain, as its bishops preferred to aggressively espouse a social conservatism that I resoundingly rejected.

Despite the fact that at least half of Catholics support allowing a woman to choose an abortion, their unelected bishops chose instead to mount an all-out attack on a woman’s right to an abortion through intensive lobbying for the Stupak Amendment last week. Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair and North Bay representative Lynn Woolsey call out the bishops AND their tax exemption:

I expect political hardball on any legislation as important as the health care bill.

I just didn’t expect it from the United States Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

Who elected them to Congress?

Right there Woolsey shows her willingness to call BS on the bishops. Merely because they are “Catholic bishops” politicians are supposed to tremble at the thought that they represent the views of all 70 million US Catholics. But the fact is they don’t. Ever since John F. Kennedy won the 1960 election, it’s been a widely known fact that most Catholics tend to ignore the political dictums handed down by the church’s hierarchy. Most Catholics don’t even know who their bishop is, not to mention what the bishop says about health care reform.

Woolsey goes further, pointing out that the church’s actions call into question their tax exemption:

The IRS is less restrictive about church involvement in efforts to influence legislation than it is about involvement in campaigns and elections.

Given the political behavior of USCCB in this case, maybe it shouldn’t be.

Of course, the Stupak Amendment wasn’t the only USCCB political action over the last 2 weeks – Catholic parishes played a major role in organizing to pass Question 1 in Maine to repeal the state’s same-sex marriage law.

If the Catholic church wants to play in politics, then it’s time they rendered up to Caesar what is Caesar’s.