All posts by Robert Cruickshank

California

Robert Cruickshank’s CDP Endorsements

2 Comments

I know you’ve all been waiting for this with bated breath, but here are my endorsements for the contested California Democratic Party (and a few California Young Democrats) races that will be decided at this weekend’s convention.

  • Chair: John Burton. I consider Chris Finnie a friend and believe she’s doing the right thing by offering a conversation and ideas about how to modernize the party for the 21st century. But when it comes to the CDP, right here and right now, I can’t pass up the chance to put a bulldog in the spotlight. John Burton is going to be an activist chair, more willing to take openly progressive positions and assert leadership for the kinds of changes this state needs, including the 2/3 rule. As the right-wing organizes to make 2010 another wingnutty year on the model of 1994, Burton can hold that tide back without trying to push the party to the center.

    He does have plans to revitalize the party’s grassroots operations, so it’s not the case that he is lacking in that department. That being said, I hope he considers the proposals Chris Finnie has offered.

  • Vice-Chair: Alex Rooker. She is committed to the development of a truly grassroots network of organizers in the state, and has pursued this in her role as vice-chair over the last four years. Alicia Wang offers lots of enthusiasm but I see no reason to not support Alex Rooker for another term. Note: Since Eric Bauman is now running unopposed, there’s no need to make an endorsement there. Which is good because I hadn’t made up my mind on that one anyway.
  • Controller: Hilary Crosby. I’m glad that Eric Bradley now claims to understand the need to provide some better oversight and management of CDP funds. But he is not the right person to implement this, especially since he does not appear to have done much to counteract the “Laundromat” (Eric’s words) that the CDP finances have been during the last four years when he was Controller. That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement of giving him another four years.

    Further, at the E-Board meeting in Anaheim in November he argued that “nobody could imagine” in the spring of 2008 that November 2008 might offer unprecedented pickup opportunities for Democrats, so it was fine that the party didn’t allocate as much money to those races as it should.

    Hilary Crosby has long understood the need for changing how the CDP handles its money. She is the right person for the job of cleaning up the finances.

  • Region 9 Director – Shawn Bagley. I don’t know if this is even a contested race, but Shawn deserves a statewide shout-out. He has done truly amazing work as the regional director here on the Monterey Bay. Last year he helped build a robust network of Democratic campaign HQ’s and did the work to make sure they were staffed and effective in their communities. The Salinas HQ, which he had the most direct leadership over, was a hub of activity and left a powerful organizing legacy in the Salinas Valley. Now he has taken the lead in organizing these HQs as permanent “Centers for Change”, along with Monterey County Dem chair Vinz Koller and a group of activists and organizers. He is showing how you organize the party in this state.

    Plus he has been very warm and welcoming to me, which was helpful since I’m a newbie here in town. Shawn is a model of how to build an inclusive party, where the leaders bring in newcomers with open arms and support their involvement in the party. Even if you don’t get a vote in his reelection as Region 9 Director, if you see him, say hi and “job well done.”

  • CYD Parliamentarian – Dante “Hekebolos” Atkins. I first got to know him in the comments at Daily Kos, and have since gotten to know and work with him in person. Dante is a wonderful progressive, a true grassroots activist, and a future leader in this state. He’s done some excellent work on the CDP Platform Committee. He knows how to make organizations like the CYD relevant and important, and isn’t seeking this for personal status or as a rung on a career ladder. He deserves the support of California Young Dems. Note: I’m not endorsing in any other CYD races, mainly because I can’t generate the necessary enthusiasm for those races. Sorry.

So, those are my recommendations for the CDP and CYD offices. Feel free to offer yours in the comments – and I’ll see you guys at the convention on Friday!

Uncategorized

Let’s Talk About May 19 – And What To Do On May 20

We’ve had a lot of discussion about the May 19 special election here at Calitics. Now it’s time to bring that to the California progressive rank and file. The Courage Campaign (where I work as Public Policy Director) is going to host a Courage Campaign Conversation Thursday evening at 5pm to discuss the initiatives, why they’re not likely to solve the core problems our state faces, and what some long-term structural reforms and budget solutions might look like.

Joining us on the call is Jean Ross of the California Budget Project, Anthony Wright of Health Access California, and Dennis Smith of the California Federation of Teachers.

The Courage Campaign believes that the special election will be a turning point for California. Either we will start down the path of progressive change, overcoming our economic crisis and solving our state’s ongoing budget crisis — or we will give in to Republican extortion and approve conservative limits on our collective ability to provide public services.

You can RSVP to the call here. Over the flip is the email we sent to our members about the call.

Dear Robert,

On May 19, you will be asked to decide California’s future. Are you ready?

Next month’s special election will be a turning point for California. Either we will start down the path of progressive change, overcoming our economic crisis and solving our state’s ongoing budget crisis — or we will give in to Republican extortion and approve conservative limits on our collective ability to provide public services.

Republican leadership exploited the rule requiring a 2/3rds vote to hold the state hostage and block the budget in February. To resolve the stalemate, Democrats agreed to put six initiatives on the May 19 special election ballot that could hurt progressive causes and values. Now Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders in both parties want you to approve these initiatives, even though they won’t provide the change California needs.

What will the Courage Campaign do? That’s ultimately up to you.

Because the Courage Campaign is powered by more than 700,000 members like you, we’re placing the final decision in your hands. This Thursday, we’ll send you an email asking you to vote on each of the propositions on the May 19 ballot — and we’ll provide you with our staff recommendations for your consideration before you vote.

On Tuesday, April 28, we’ll announce the final results of your vote when we send you the Courage Campaign’s Progressive Voter Guide.

But first, we want to give you the opportunity to share your thoughts on the May 19 special election with the Courage Campaign community.

That’s why we’ve invited three of California’s leading progressive advocates to a special Courage Campaign Conversation conference call this Thursday, April 23, at 5 p.m. Space is limited, so please RSVP now:

http://www.couragecampaign.org…

Our guests on this special Courage Campaign Conversation will be:

• Jean Ross of the California Budget Project, an advocate for fair budget solutions

• Anthony Wright of Health Access California, a passionate leader for health care reform

• Dennis Smith, Secretary-Treasurer of the California Federation of Teachers and an advocate for California’s schools

No matter what happens on May 19, we will be confronted with an enormous budget deficit on May 20. And the legislature will have to try again to fix the mess.

Now is the time to push for truly progressive solutions to California’s problems — solutions that we think will actually fix the budget mess:

• Following President Obama’s lead in seeking new revenues from the wealthy to fund the vital and accountable services needed by the poor and middle-class.

• Eliminating the conservative veto by repealing the 2/3rds rule in the legislature to pass a budget.

• Holding a Constitutional Convention to address the flaws in the budgeting and initiative process that helped create this crisis.

Jean Ross, Anthony Wright and Dennis Smith also have their own ideas for reforming California, which they’ll share on Thursday at 5 p.m. in this special Courage Campaign Conversation. We have a limited number of lines available, so click here to reserve your spot:

http://www.couragecampaign.org…

We can’t wait to join you and California’s leading progressive advocates for change on Thursday night.

Rick Jacobs

Chair, Courage Campaign

Uncategorized

The Logic of Props 1D and 1E: If It Isn’t Broken – Break It!

4 Comments

In 1998 California voters approved Proposition 10, taxing tobacco sales to pay for educational and health care programs for children under age 5 whose families are otherwise unable to afford those services (the First Five program). And in 2004 voters approved Proposition 63, levying a 1% surcharge on incomes over $1 million to finally reverse decades of deliberate underfunding of mental health services. These programs have been VERY successful and both programs have stable long-term funding.

Only in the twisted logic of the May 19 special election could that be seen as a bad thing.

Propositions 1D and 1E on the May 19 ballot are raids on the Prop 10 and Prop 63 programs, respectively. As the LA Times explained in their article on the propositions today:

The early childhood and mental health programs became prime targets for budget negotiators working to solve the state’s $42-billion deficit. They were sporting a budget surplus of about $2.5 billion each at a time when health and welfare programs funded the old-fashioned way — through the state’s general fund appropriations — were being stripped.

Backers say those surpluses were a fiscal mirage, because the money had been committed to future programs or was being saved for tough times.

Let’s be clear here – because Props 10 and 63 were a successful method of creating important programs and paying for them, they are now seen as viable targets for attack. The LA Times goes further and uses this as an occasion to criticize ballot box budgeting:

But the measures, Propositions 1D and 1E, also represent ballot-box budgeting coming back to haunt the California electorate.

Though they often complain that statehouse lawmakers spend like drunken sailors, the state’s voters have in recent decades repeatedly performed in much the same manner. Time and again they have approved propositions that critics say have combined to straitjacket the state’s budgetary process.

“The voters have been as responsible for this budget mess as anyone else,” said Larry Gerston, a San Jose State political science professor. “Election after election they have authorized money for this or that. And it ties the hands of the Legislature at budget time.”

I don’t buy this. True, I tend to reject the “ballot box budgeting is bad” argument generally speaking, but in particular it’s not appropriate for this situation. Especially when voters are being asked to do more ballot box budgeting. Voters haven’t “tied the legislature’s hands” by things like Prop 10 or Prop 63. What they’ve done is say “we like social programs, we like taxing people to pay for them, and since you have proved unwilling or unable to do it, we’ll do it instead.”

To criticize ballot box budgeting without explaining why it happens – because Prop 13 gutted the state’s ability to pay for core services and created the conservative veto through the 2/3 rule – is to miss the point almost entirely.

And it enables things like Props 1D and 1E, which seem designed to punish voters for having successfully funded important programs.

One-time program raids are not a solution to the budget mess anyway. Nothing the LA Times has included in this article does anything other than convince me a NO vote on Props 1D and 1E is the right move for our state.

California

Join The Movement To Impeach Jay Bybee

I am the Public Policy Director for the Courage Campaign

When I read the torture memos that President Obama released, I was shocked, but I can’t say I was too surprised. Nevertheless, the details are horrifying. Waterboarding a detainee 83 times in a month, cramped confinement, putting “stinging insects” into a box with a detainee, and “walling” – throwing someone’s head into a wall – these are the things that Jay Bybee’s August 2002 memo approved. In 2003, Bybee was nominated and confirmed to a seat on the all-important 9th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

Since the release of that memo a broad movement has emerged demanding the impeachment of Judge Bybee. Our own David Dayen has taken the lead in organizing the netroots behind this effort, creating an online petition to gather support behind the impeachment resolution passed by the LA County Democratic Party that will be taken up at this weekend’s California Democratic Party convention.

Last Friday David Dayen asked the Courage Campaign to join the grassroots effort to impeach Jay Bybee by helping pass this resolution. And we were happy to participate. Today we emailed our members asking them to sign up as supporters of the CDP impeach Bybee resolution.

The email we sent references the powerful NYT editorial calling for Bybee’s impeachment. Since then Congressman Jerry Nadler, who chairs the House Subcomittee on Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and is a ranking Dem on the House Judiciary Committee, has announced his support of the impeachment of Jay Bybee:

“He ought to be impeached,” Nadler said in an interview with the Huffington Post. “It was not an honest legal memo. It was an instruction manual on how to break the law.”…

“Any special prosecutor on torture would have to look at the authors of those torture memos,” said Nadler. “And certainly you have real grounds to impeach him once the special prosecutor took a good look at that. I think there ought to be an impeachment inquiry looked at in any event. Which should happen first, I’m not sure.”…

“[Bybee] should be a target. Yoo should be a target. There are a number of targets,” said Nadler, referring to for Bush administration counsel John Yoo, who also authorized torture and is now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Bybee, noted Nadler, “is the only one who’s a federal court judge now.”

The momentum is building. Please add to it and help push the House to launch an impeachment effort by signing your name to the CDP resolution.

Over the flip is the email we sent to our members.

“To read the four newly released memos on prisoner interrogation written by George W. Bush’s Justice Department is to take a journey into depravity…..They were written to provide legal immunity for acts that are clearly illegal, immoral and a violation of this country’s most basic values….These memos make it clear that (Judge Jay) Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution. Congress should impeach him.” — Editorial in the New York Times, Sunday, April 19

Dear Robert,

Will you help grassroots activists put the California Democratic Party on record against the torture memos and the man who helped write them?

The memos, released last week by President Obama, describe in horrifying detail the shocking and inhuman tactics used to torture the detainees at Guantanamo Bay prison camp. One of the memos was written by Jay Bybee in August 2002.

Bybee’s memo authorized the use of waterboarding, “cramped confinement”, “walling” — where a detainee’s head is repeatedly pushed against a wall — and even putting insects into a confined space with a detainee.

Instead of being brought to justice for his authorization of these illegal and unconscionable acts, Jay Bybee is now a judge here in California, serving a lifetime appointment on the Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco. Judge Bybee is in a position to make rulings regarding the rights and freedoms of Californians — and his decisions can only be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

That isn’t right, and that isn’t justice.

Grassroots and netroots activists are demanding Bybee be held accountable for his role in President Bush’s illegal torturing of detainees. Last Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Democratic Party approved a resolution written by progressive Democrats John Heaner, Agi Kessler and Richard Mathews to demand that the House of Representatives begin impeachment proceedings against Bybee.

This weekend, this resolution will be considered for action at the California Democratic Party convention.

Will you build the movement to impeach Judge Jay Bybee? A growing group of progressive grassroots activists need your support for this impeachment resolution. Please sign on now and show your support before the California Democratic Party convention. DEADLINE: Friday at 9 AM:

http://www.couragecampaign.org…

Reading those memos made me sick. And they made me angry. As a delegate to the California Democratic Party convention, I am determined to ensure that my party takes a stand and demands that Jay Bybee be held accountable for the damage he has done to our rule of law.

We need the Californian Democratic Party to stand up for the Constitution. Every signature from a Courage Campaign member that we can bring to the Convention is another voice that will amplify the call for justice and help grassroots activists ensure the resolution’s passage.

The movement to impeach Jay Bybee is growing rapidly. Since Tuesday, the resolution has been endorsed by the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club, Progressive Democrats of America, the Democratic Party of the San Fernando Valley, and a growing list of California Democratic Party delegates. Calitics blogger David Dayen is also helping build a netroots coalition to publicize and support the resolution to impeach Bybee.

Now these progressive activists need your help in getting the resolution approved. Please sign your name to the resolution calling for Bybee’s impeachment — and ask your family and friends to sign it as well:

http://www.couragecampaign.org…

Thank you for taking a stand for the rule of law and to restore justice.

Robert Cruickshank

Public Policy Director

Uncategorized

Where’s the May 20 Strategy?

14 Comments

Yesterday David Dayen wrote about the letter Karen Bass and Darrell Steinberg sent to CDP delegates asking them to endorse Props 1A-1F at next weekend’s convention. I found it striking that they felt the need to contact delegates about this, and it clearly suggests they’ve seen the grassroots rebellion within the party against the May 19 propositions.

As a CDP delegate myself I expect to be in the thick of the endorsement battle in Sacramento, and as a member of the Calitics Editorial Board I plan to support our “no on everything” endorsement at the convention.

That being said, I don’t agree with the increasingly negative attacks being levied at Speaker Bass and Senator Steinberg in the comments to David’s post. They are both good progressives who have been backed into a corner by the severity of the economic crisis and the Zombie Death Cult’s desire to see this state go over the cliff. I don’t agree with how they handled that tough spot but I have no doubt they believe they’ve made the choices that were necessary for the welfare of everyone in this state.

I’ve had the chance to talk with Speaker Bass at some length about the May 19 propositions and she is passionate about the need to bring some revenue to the budget to stave off worse cuts. Again, I disagree with the way she’s looking at this – these propositions are going to worsen the long-term budget mess, ensuring that ugly cuts will be made, whether it’s in 2009 or 2013 or 2015 – but her position is understandable.

And yet she is not winning the argument. Democratic clubs across the state are either rejecting the package outright or are endorsing one or two of the initiatives with great reluctance and only after a considerable lobbying effort. There is no enthusiasm at all for these proposals among most Democrats and progressives, even those who endorse them.

This is due to several factors: the inherent problems with the proposals, the lack of trust and faith in Democratic leaders, the lack of a long-term strategy, and terrible framing. All of these are related. As David Dayen has repeatedly demonstrated, the chief selling point of the initiatives by Democratic electeds is fear. Fear that unless we hold our noses and approve these inherently conservative proposals (Prop 1B being the only one that might not be fundamentally right-wing in nature) Californians will suffer, that schools and health care and local governments will be made to pay the price of balancing the budget.

What that demonstrates is the deeper problem – there is no May 20 strategy coming from the Sacramento Democrats. They aren’t offering any kind of plan for what happens the day after the election. And they need to, because win or lose, the state will still face a multibillion deficit on May 20.

Of particular concern is the fact that few if any Democratic legislators seem to be planning to fight the concept of budget cuts or to fight for wealth taxes. In the conversations I’ve had with Assemblymembers and Senators and their staffers on the May 19 election, they almost all argue that horrifying cuts are an inevitability if the May 19 props fail. They don’t seem interested in, or confident in their ability to, mobilize the people of California against Republican efforts to destroy our government, to mobilize voters for saving schools, hospitals, buses, and jobs.

It might have been possible to mobilize some of  the Democrats and progressives who oppose the May 19 props to support them, despite the fact they represent bad public policy – if they had any confidence that there was a clear May 20 strategy. That strategy would have to show how the Dems will resist Republican demands for cuts,  to move the ball forward on the 2/3 rule and wealth taxes, and to provide economic growth.

But there has been no such strategy offered, not now, and really not at any time since 1978. These ballot propositions are sadly typical of the product of the Democratic legislature over the last 30 years – a slightly less wingnutty set of proposals that Democrats feel obligated to support, and that they insist we become a party to by ratification at the ballot box. If the grassroots had any confidence that the Democratic legislature had a clear and compelling plan to fight for progressive budget solutions, more of them might be willing to reluctantly back the initiatives as a necessary evil. (To be clear, I do not count myself among this number, and I cannot imagine a scenario where I would support 1A or 1C-1F.)

What is happening is that Democratic and progressive grassroots activists, joined by a number of prominent progressive organizations (from labor unions like CNA to good government organizations like the League of Women Voters), are rejecting the entire way of thinking that went into the May 19 proposals.

The current crisis is the product of too much short-term conservative-lite solutions. No matter what happens on May 19, we will be confronted with the same basic crisis on May 20. It is long past time for us to articulate progressive proposals, educate the public on their value and the problems with conservative “solutions,” and organize voters to enact them.

That is what the opponents of the May 19 initiatives are saying. Perhaps we will have to produce a May 20 strategy ourselves.

Environment

Obama’s HSR Plan: How Will California Benefit?

Note: for much more detail on the plan, visit my California High Speed Rail Blog

Today President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood announced the DOT’s high speed rail strategic plan. You can find the full details of the plan at the USDOT website.

It’s an important announcement and contains some long-awaited policy changes that will help make HSR a reality across the nation. It’s not yet clear how this will impact the California HSR project, but the way the funding allocation categories are set up appears to be quite favorable to us here in California.

First, I want to quote from both President Obama and VP Biden – these guys get it when it comes to HSR. It is a sea change from the last 25 years of refusal to speak openly and honestly about our nation’s transportation needs.

“My high-speed rail proposal will lead to innovations that change the way we travel in America.  We must start developing clean, energy-efficient transportation that will define our regions for centuries to come,” said President Obama.  “A major new high-speed rail line will generate many thousands of construction jobs over several years, as well as permanent jobs for rail employees and increased economic activity in the destinations these trains serve.  High-speed rail is long-overdue, and this plan lets American travelers know that they are not doomed to a future of long lines at the airports or jammed cars on the highways.”

He nailed it. This quote has it all – energy independence, job creation and long-term economic growth, and relieving congested airports and freeways.

That case is made strongly and powerfully in the HSR strategic plan document (PDF, 3MB). It is one of the best arguments for HSR that I’ve ever seen. This administration is serious about HSR. The plan includes a good overview of the history of rail funding in America, explaining that we have spent over $1 trillion on roads and airports in the last 50 years but have starved rail – even though, as the report makes clear, high speed rail is one of the best methods to move people over distances from 100 to 600 miles.

The report also recognizes the need to update the FRA’s regulations to make HSR more of a possibility in this country – current regulations require trains to be unusually heavy, which makes it difficult to import existing “off the shelf” train technology or to achieve high speeds in an energy efficient way.

The heart of the plan is a three-pronged approach to funding HSR using the following “tracks” – shovel-ready projects (including engineering and EIR prep); “corridor programs” to support HSR corridors where planning and engineering work has already been done but that aren’t yet shovel-ready; and “projects” to help new HSR planning efforts get off the ground. The CA HSR plan potentially qualifies for funding under all three categories, since our project has some shovel-ready elements to it, as well as corridor design work to complete.

California has to compete with some other states, of course, including the Pacific Northwest, Illinois, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, and perhaps even Florida and Texas. The California High Speed Rail Authority had been hopeful that we could get as much as $4 billion out of the $8 billion HSR stimulus money. That’s going to be a challenge, but the plan hasn’t been set up to make that impossible.

So overall I think this is a huge boost for HSR, even though it does leave some things unclear as to how exactly our own project will fare. And it all depends on Congress’s commitment to funding HSR in future years, especially in the next transportation bill, where the highway lobby will fight to prevent their money from going to HSR.

Over the flip, I take issue with Matthew Yglesias on this announcement.

This announcement has gotten a lot of reaction around the blogosphere, but I want to single out for criticism Matthew Yglesias’s take on the announcement:

My take on this is that the most promising projects on the merits, from a federal point of view, are probably those that upgrade the existing Northeast Corridor (where we know demand exists) and those that connect to the Northeast Corridor since the existing passenger rail corridor extends the utility of the new link. The Chicago Hub Network and the California Corridor concepts strikes me as very important for the long-term future of their regions, but for it to be useful will take a lot of time and money. I assume that the relevant state-level politicians for the Gulf Coast and South Central Corridors aren’t going to be interested in ponying up the sort of state funds that would make these projects competitively viable, and that may be for the best since I think those corridors may be a bit ill-conceived. It seems strange to build so much track in Texas and not manage to link Houston with Dallas.

This is a pretty flawed way to look at things. What Yglesias proposes is in fact the model Clinton eventually adopted. In 1993 he proposed a broad national HSR plan, but by the late ’90s he decided to just focus on upgrading the NEC and rail was left to wither around the country.

Yglesias is wrong to say that we should prioritize the NEC and connections to the NEC. Significant improvements in speed and carrying capacity can be made in the Midwest with a few billion dollars, and the California project need federal cash infusion now to ensure completion by 2018. All of those will revolutionize rail transportation in America to a much bigger scale than upgrades to the NEC. Too much focus on the NEC is one of the primary reasons for the lack of passenger rail upgrades and improvements around the country. It’s time we took HSR national.

And with President Obama’s plan, that is exactly what will happen. Now, to make sure this all gets funded…

Budget

Using “Volatility” To Produce More Regressivity

4 Comments

Don’t let the teabaggers fool you – taxes are popular. Especially higher taxes on the wealthy, as 60% of the American public believes the wealthy pay too little in tax. Obama’s tax plans would make the wealthy pay the pre-2001 rate while cutting taxes for everyone else, and this is what the teabaggers oppose.

But then maybe it’s not strange that conservatives are supporting regressive taxation policies – after all, we’ve had conservative tax policies in California for 30 years and as a result we have a n overall regressive tax structure. We cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations for 30 years, but had to balance that out with higher taxes, especially sales taxes, on everyone else.

The obvious solution to this is to raise taxes on the wealthy in California. But there is a broad movement of establishment types moving against this, using as their argument the notion that progressive taxes make revenue “volatile” – dependent on what can sometimes be wild swings in the income and capital gains tax revenues – and that volatility is bad, mmm-kay.

That’s the argument advanced in an editorial from the LA Times today:

But the more progressive an income tax becomes — or the greater the share of the income tax burden that is borne by the rich — the more harrowing the revenue roller-coaster ride. That’s because the wealthy get such a large chunk of their income from capital gains and investments. Economic swings have a greater impact on that kind of income than on wages and salaries, which are the typical sources for lower and middle earners.

Would-be tax reformers on the right argue that it follows that California’s income tax should be less, not more, progressive. All earners would share the burden, and state revenues would be less volatile because they would rely less on the year-to-year fortunes of the wealthy.

The LA Times does acknowledge that one of the solutions to this would require higher taxes on the rest of us, but they aren’t quite as clear in making that point as they should be. Especially since this isn’t an abstract debate. The Commission on the 21st Century Economy, which is looking into our tax system, is under sustained pressure to cut the capital gains tax in particular, in the name of “reducing volatility.”

Bob McIntyre of Citizens for Tax Justice, in his testimony before the commission, slammed the idea as making the system more regressive and doing nothing to promote economic growth:

Over any reasonable time period, a progressive income tax, including taxes on capital gains, has been by far the most stable, most growing source of revenues for states. One reason why this is true is that at least since the late 1970s, the rich have been getting much richer, although not by the same amount every year. In addition, even without changes in the

distribution of income, a progressive income tax, even one indexed for inflation, rather naturally keeps up with the economy….

So if the income tax, and particularly the capital gains tax, is the one bright spot in California’s long-term tax picture, why would anyone want to cut it? I have no doubt that for many who favor eliminating or sharply reducing California’s income tax on capital gains, the real motivation is that they simply favor lower taxes on the rich – even if that means higher taxes on everyone else.

And that’s the real issue here. The concerns about “volatility” are really just neoliberal economics phrased in another way. The belief that if we cut taxes and regulations on the rich, everyone else will benefit. We’re experiencing an economic crisis that is directly caused by, and proves the failure of, those asinine policies.

McIntyre explains that the “volatility” of taxing the wealthy is overstated, especially in the longterm. But is “volatility” even a problem? As the California Budget Project notes quoting Board of Equalization chair Betty Yee, “tax volatility is a good thing“:

As Yee mentions, if Californians want to avoid exacerbating the income gap between high- and low-income Californians, any discussion of tax fairness must also include a consideration of another kind of volatility: the daily uncertainty many low- and middle-income Californians are experiencing about their jobs, their houses, or the choice to put food on the table or pay the energy bill.

“Volatility is what they’re experiencing day-to-day,” Yee said.

As far as I can tell, this whole concern trolling over “volatile” revenues is merely an excuse to produce a more regressive tax policy and worsen the actual volatility problems, which is the boom-and-bust cycles of economic security and public services for the working Californians who should be the focus of our tax and spending policies.

Election 2010

Jerry Brown Doubles Down

1 Comment

After endorsing Prop 1A Jerry Brown appears to not have taken Calitics’ constructive criticism to heart. Instead he has doubled down on his support of Prop 1A, appearing at a press conference in Alameda with Arnold Schwarzenegger and explaining why he thinks Prop 1A might actually help the next governor:

“If these don’t pass, it’s going to make the next governor’s job and the people’s job that much tougher,” Brown said in an Alameda press conference with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. “Partisanship in Sacramento has become poisonous. We’re in a crisis in the country, and that crisis reaches to California. This is a response that is helpful.”

Umm…OK. How exactly is Prop 1A helpful? How is it at all related to partisanship? And how is partisanship the problem? Last time I checked we had a severe economic crisis, and a severe financial crisis, both produced by conservative policies that Democrats did not sufficiently oppose. If anything we have too much bipartisanship.

Even putting that aside, he needs to demonstrate how Prop 1A would do a damn thing to make the next governor’s job easier. As we explained in our endorsements this morning Prop 1A will actually make the next governor’s job harder by forcing them to make massive program cuts. Perhaps Brown wants to make those cuts anyway and prefers blaming it on Prop 1A. But he needs to explain this thinking to the public.

In an AP interview today Brown also addressed the emerging campaign dynamic between himself and Gavin Newsom:

“Newsom is trying to make everyone think I’m Hillary, and he’s Obama, but those analogies just don’t work,” Brown said of his Democratic rival.

Unfortunately Brown is actually doing his best to give fuel to that kind of analogy. Newsom endorsed Prop 1A as well, but to my knowledge he hasn’t stood next to Arnold Schwarzenegger and taken that kind of personal ownership of not just the May 19 initiatives, but of the way things have been done in this state for the last 30 years.

I may sound like a Jerry Brown critic here, but I would actually like him to start espousing some more forward-thinking ideas for our state. He’s going to have to show Californians his vision for the next 30 years of the state – but so far all I seem to be hearing is a defense of the ideas and the frames of the last 30 years. That’s what would give Newsom an opening to run an Obama-style strategy of change, should he choose to do so.

If Brown doesn’t want to play the Hillary role in that drama, then he has to be the one to stop speaking about the horrors of partisanship, stop defending bad budget solutions like Prop 1A, and instead actually speak to the problems Californians are facing. He may not realize it, but if we saw the Jerry Brown of 1992, he might not feel the constant need to look over his shoulder at Gavin.

California

The Depression Comes To Murrieta

2 Comments

Back in the early 1980s my family used to take weekend drives out to the Inland Empire from Orange County to look at housing. At the time it seemed that was the only thing they could ever afford to buy, although my parents balked at the long drive into OC along the 91 and we stayed in Tustin for good.

One of the places we used to visit was a bunch of empty fields dubbed “Rancho California” – which is now part of the city of Murrieta. Populated primarily by families like mine, folks priced out of OC and San Diego, who believed that the California Dream forced them to move inland to buy a home amid urban sprawl and commute for an hour or two (if not more) to their jobs in the coastal economic core. They brought conservative politics with them, reinforced in the SoCal exurbs where it seemed that low taxes and sprawl really were producing prosperity, where the government’s central presence in making it all possible was hidden or ignored.

And now it is collapsing. As the LA Times describes in an article on Monday rampant foreclosures, mass layoffs, and the almost complete lack of a safety net have overwhelmed the private sector to produce a catastrophe:

At this point in life, Linda Juarez expected to have five years of equity in her house, a secure future for her family and a viable stake in the American dream.

But that’s not how the story has played out. Her home’s value has withered, her husband was laid off and rehired for less pay and grand dreams have given way to more modest expectations….

Here in southwest Riverside County, where foreclosures and unemployment have taken an enormous toll, one of the biggest casualties has been the middle class, which is rapidly becoming the new poor.

“This is more of a middle-class recession than any before because of the housing component and because the shutdown of the financial system has spread into the service and construction sector where you have a lot of the better jobs,” said John Husing of Economics & Politics Inc., a regional economic research firm. “Recessions usually fall on those at the bottom, but now all tiers of society are being hurt.”

The article suggests that sales of foreclosed homes may be providing some easing of the pain – but in a must-read article from the Irvine Housing Blog, it’s clear that the sales are from “cashflow investors” – absentee landlords looking to rent the property, and that it’s not likely to be enough to arrest the downward spiral:

The third level inland [Moreno Valley, Perris, Murietta] is a high-risk market. There is little economic activity out there because it is dependent upon real estate. Market conditions will get worse here, and coditions will stay bad for quite some time. There are cheap houses here too. This one is $45/SF. However, based on current pricing across the area, this is the market slice I find least attractive. IMO, prices not low enough to compensate investors for the risk. I foresee continued downward pressure on prices across this entire market swath.

Irvine Housing Blog foresees an eventual recovery as the market bottoms, but that doesn’t take into account the human toll of the crash – widespread unemployment and families barely getting by, hoping that the food bank has enough to keep their children fed.

Zed Hollingsworth, the new State Senate Republican leader, represents Murietta in Sacramento. His coup against Dave Cogdill was predicated on the notion that new taxes were verboten and that California needs to cut spending instead to balance the budget.

His constituents are paying the price for this lunatic extremism. If Hollingsworth were to have his way they would have no government food assistance, no unemployment insurance, no foreclosure protection or assistance, and no health care assistance. He and his fellow members of the Zombie Death Cult have already stripped local governments of funds to provide jobs and education. Public safety cuts may be next.

But it’s not just a failure of conservative budgeting policy at work in Murrieta. It and cities like it are experiencing the collapse of 20th century California. The notion that a sprawlconomy can provide economic security was at the core of California over the last 50 to 60 years. Murrieta was a logical outcome of the process. And it will probably remain an economically distressed place unless we reorient the basis of prosperity in California away from sprawl, away from housing markets, and toward something more lasting, that can keep families well-fed, in decent homes, and living fulfilled lives.

Somehow I don’t expect Zed Hollingsworth to be interested in any of that.

Budget

The Marijuana Legalization Movement Goes Mainstream

3 Comments

In 1932 Franklin D. Roosevelt, Democratic candidate for president, pledged to support repeal of the 18th Amendment – Prohibition – if elected. FDR’s support for repeal helped solidify an emerging political consensus that Prohibition had been a colossal failure. In February 1933, two weeks before FDR’s inauguration, Congress approved the 21st Amendment repealing Prohibition, and by December 1933 it had been ratified by 3/4 of the states.

Of course, the 1930s saw the beginning of another form of prohibition – that of marijuana – that has intensified over the subsequent decades. A 2005 Harvard study found that marijuana prohibition costs the state of California about $981 million a year – and that’s just in terms of police, court and prison costs. Tom Ammiano’s bill to legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana, AB 390, is estimated to generate $1 billion in tax revenue – which would add at least $2 billion to the general fund at a time when it is desperately needed.

Carla Marinucci took a look in today’s Chronicle at the reasons for the increased support for ending marijuana prohibition and concludes it’s a mixture of budgetary crisis and public desire to end the silly ban on bud:

Among them: the recession-fueled need for more public revenue, increased calls to redirect scarce law enforcement, court and prison resources, and a growing desire to declaw powerful and violent Mexican drug cartels. Also in the mix is a public opinion shift driven by a generation of Baby Boomers, combined with some new high-profile calls for legislation – including some well-known conservative voices joining with liberals.

Leading conservatives like former Secretary of State George Shultz and the late economist Milton Friedman years ago called for legalization and a change in the strategy in the war on drugs. This year mainstream pundits like Fox News’ Glenn Beck and CNN’s Jack Cafferty have publicly questioned the billions spent each year fighting the endless war against drugs and to suggest it now makes more financial and social sense to tax and regulate marijuana.

As you can tell Marinucci’s article suffers from a bit too much of the “it’s not valid until Republicans and Broderists support it” school of journalism. And as Nate Silver pointed out last week, it’s not just Baby Boomers who are driving this:

The key feature of this distribution is how rapidly lifetime usage rates decline after about age 55 or so. About half of 55-year-olds have used marijuana at some point in their lives, but only about 20 percent of 65-year-olds have.

There is not, of course, a one-to-one correspondence between having used marijuana and supporting its legalization; one can plausibly support its legalization without having ever inhaled, or vice versa. Nevertheless, I would venture that the correlation is fairly strong, and polls have generally found a fairly strong generation gap when it comes to pot legalization. As members of the Silent Generation are replaced in the electorate by younger voters, who are more likely to have either smoked marijuana themselves or been around those that have, support for legalization is likely to continue to gain momentum.

I don’t always agree with Silver, but here he seems on more solid ground. Voters above age 60 are much less likely to support legalization than any other age group, and some of the strongest support comes from voters under 40.

Marinucci quotes Alex Evans, director of EMC Research, whose annual poll on legalization for Oaksterdam University indicated majority support here in California for ending marijuana prohibition:

A new California poll by Oakland EMC Research specifically tracked state voters’ attitudes on marijuana use, taxation and legalization.

Alex Evans, president and founder of EMC, said his firm has done the same study for years for Oaksterdam University, an Oakland medical marijuana dispensary and education group, but 2009 marks the first time the poll showed that a clear majority of state voters, 54 percent, say the drug should be legalized, compared with 39 percent opposed. (The poll of 551 likely voters was taken March 16-21 and has a margin of error of 4.2 percentage points.)

The poll doesn’t seem to have broken out responses by age, as the Field Poll typically would, but it does seem indicative of growing public support for ending our failed prohibition policy on marijuana.

That policy and its fiscal impact in particular should serve to remind us that California’s budget deficit is a deliberate choice. If we didn’t want to give massive tax breaks to the wealthy and to big business, if we didn’t want to save money by abandoning the totally failed policies of law and order of the last 30 years, and if we didn’t want to appease the right and leave the conservative veto in place, perhaps California could actually have the kind of robust public services that are necessary for broadly shared economic security.

Or we could just keep on going as we have been. Our choice.