Note: I will be hosting the morning show on KRXA 540 AM from 8-10 to discuss this and other topics in California politics

In the aftermath of last week’s delivery of layoff notices to 26,000 teachers and news that the budget is already $8 billion in the hole it makes sense to continue to look at serious revenue solutions to close a 30-year shortfall. Unless, of course, you are a Republican:

Assembly GOP leader Mike Villines of Clovis (Fresno County), one of three Assembly Republicans who voted for taxes in the latest budget package, said taxes to close additional budget shortfalls can’t be on the table.

Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth, R-Murietta (Riverside County), who became the Senate minority leader last month after a coup during the marathon budget session, said passing any more taxes or fees “would add insult to injury to California taxpayers.”

It seems highly unlikely that Republicans will support new taxes without a major public movement to demand that they do so. And if Californians understand that new revenues are the only way to protect schools and health care services from even more crippling cuts then they might be willing to make those demands.

As reported by the SF Chronicle several Democratic legislators have proposed various measures to raise revenues, most of which are very sensible:

AB87 (Davis)/SB531 (DeSaulnier): Fees for shoppers who use plastic bags.

AB89 (Torlakson)/SB600 (Padilla): Increases the cigarette tax.

AB390 (Ammiano): $50-an-ounce tax on marijuana, which would be legalized for recreational use.

AB462 (Price): 1 percent income tax for individuals who earn more than $1 million a year, to fund public schools and universities.

AB656 (Torrico): Oil severance tax to help fund the state’s community colleges and universities.

AB1019 (Beall)/SB558 (DeSaulnier): Tax or fee on alcohol.

AB1082 (Torrico): Sales tax on pornography.

AB1342 (Evans): Cities and counties would be allowed to raise income taxes and vehicle license fees.

SB96 (Ducheny): Increases the income tax rate on the state’s wealthiest residents while lowering the rate for some middle-class taxpayers.

California remains one of the few oil-producing states that does not tax companies for taking that oil out of the ground, and Torrico’s bill would change that. Ducheny and Price are on the right track with their tax-the-rich proposals, probably the best way to quickly raise a significant amount of money to help close the budget gap. Tom Ammiano’s marijuana proposal is interesting and deserves serious consideration.

Of particular importance is Noreen Evans’s bill to give local governments more of their own tax power. Republicans, who generally loathe democracy when it comes to government finances, do not want to give Los Angeles and San Francisco the power to raise their own taxes in such a broad way, even though many cities (like New York) possess that power and even though it could help ease the state’s own financial burdens by letting localities make up some of the difference. This is a bill that definitely ought to pass.

I also think Democrats would be wise to get behind efforts to tax the wealthy. That dovetails nicely with President Obama’s own federal tax proposals, and is probably one of the revenue answers that Californians can rally behind at this time. Doing so would help expose Republican obstruction for what it is – a naked defense of wealth and power. And if Democrats are to be serious about building a long-term movement to break anti-tax politics in this state, higher taxes on the rich are a necessary starting point.

Darrell Steinberg, after the brutal February budget battle, doesn’t seem inclined to make that fight:

“Frankly, our focus ought to shift to tax reform,” he said. “That means seriously addressing the volatility in our tax system. That means realigning the relationship between state government, local government and school districts. Whoever is providing the service ought to be able to raise revenue.”

Last month’s passage of the $12.5 billion tax package as part of the budget “was an exception to the rule because of the magnitude of the problem,” Steinberg said.

I think he ought to be more supportive of exploring the wealth taxes, but he is clearly indicating support for the kind of ideas Noreen Evans is talking about – giving local governments the power to help fix their own problems. If a local school district wants to impose an income tax to support schools, why not let them do so?

That’s a question we ought to force Republicans to answer publicly and often.

As Arnold Schwarzenegger starts the campaign for the May 19 special election ballot measures, the Legislative Analyst’s Office points out that the budget deal will come up short by $8 billion and that it hasn’t solved our structural revenue shortfall problems:

“Unfortunately, the state’s economic and revenue outlook continues to deteriorate,” the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) said in a review of the package, which covered the remainder of this fiscal year and all of the next.

“Even in the few weeks since the budget was signed, there have been a series of negative developments. Our updated revenue forecast projects that revenues will fall short of the assumptions in the budget package by $8 billion. Consequently, the Legislature and governor will need to adopt billions of dollars in additional solutions in the coming months to bring the 2009-10 budget back into balance.”

Taylor had some more bad news for the state’s political leaders. Because so many of the “solutions” adopted last month are temporary, “without corrective actions, the state’s huge operating deficits will reappear in future years – growing from $12.6 billion in 2010-11 to $26 billion in 2013-14.”

The full LAO report in fact makes some assumptions I would consider rosy, such as a recovery in employment and personal income in 2009, when many economists do not expect this to occur until the second half of 2010 at best.

What this means is that the budget situation is still a total mess, and that improvement is far away. The May 19 election will have little meaningful impact on the state’s financial health, although a spending cap would ensure that services will continue to be gutted. Republicans and Arnold Schwarzenegger are likely to use the deficit projections as an argument for Prop 1A, when all that will accomplish is an even worse destruction of core services, such as schools which could face larger cuts than what we’re seeing now, a truly frightening thing to consider.

This also means political leaders who deny the need to find tax solutions, like Jerry Brown, are not being realistic. Fundamental change is necessary, and perhaps a constitutional convention alongside the elimination of the 2/3 rule conservative veto can help get us there.

One thing is certain – if anyone thinks California can remain a competitive place to do business and attract jobs and employees with the worst school system in the nation and no ability to address our water, transportation, or health care crises, they are deeply deluded.

The once and future governor Jerry Brown gave an interview to the SF Chronicle’s Carla Marinucci earlier this week in which he suggested that despite the passage of 30 years and proof that anti-tax policies have been a catastrophic failure for California, he will still fight against new taxes:

With the state in fiscal crisis, the job this time around could be a no-win situation, he said, but added: “I would not be advocating new taxes, I’ll tell you that.”…

The California governor’s job this time around could be a no-win situation, he acknowledged. It’s an era when just the state deficit is out of control and budget battles are bloody. There’s no one easy answer, “there’s just pain,” he said.

Still, “I would not be advocating new taxes, I’ll tell you that,” he said. Already, California is “one of the highest tax states around,” he said. “So we’ve got to be competitive. We can’t drive all the jobs out and tax the few people who stay.”

Um…wow. This is not very good stuff for a Democratic gubernatorial candidate to be saying – Brown is reinforcing some of the typical right-wing lies about our state. Keep in mind that in terms of overall taxes we actually rank #17.

Perhaps even worse is his repeating the notion that tax increases hurt competitiveness and business. It is a totally 1980s thing to say and divorced from the lived reality of most Californians, who are losing their jobs and their chance to get retrained or educated for new ones because of the collapse of government.

I have written favorably of Jerry Brown in the past and think he could be a good governor for our state. But for that to happen – and for him to win – he needs to stop defending the last 30 years. Instead he needs to articulate a new vision for California for the next 30 years – something that voters can embrace as a credible and hopeful path toward a more prosperous future.

Brown isn’t going to get there by pretending it’s still 1978. A hard anti-tax line is the last thing California needs, as there is no way whatsoever to balance the budget and preserve vital services without the right kind of new taxes.

Additionally, statements like these only benefit Republicans, who use them to reinforce the notion that Californians dislike taxes (which is not true) and to undermine Democrats.

As if on cue, enter Steve Poizner, who in an email to supporters makes the inevitable attack:

Are there any of the tax increases that Brown does support if he opposes the overall budget deal?

Is Brown going to oppose Proposition 1A, the spending cap placed on the May 19th special election ballot, which would keep the recently approved tax increases in place for an additional two years if the measure is approved by voters?

Brown has been playing the political version of “duck and cover” on most issues since he started plotting his campaign for a third term as California Governor.  He often refuses to take a position or offer anything more than vague and non-committal rhetoric. But Californians deserve to know where Jerry Brown stands on the key issues of the day, particularly given his latest political posturing.

So, Jerry, we’re waiting.

In 1978 Brown was able to get reelected by claiming to be a “born again tax cutter”. At the time it worked for Democrats to appease the right-wing anti-tax beast, even though it did massive damage to the state. Now we are also seeing that it does damage to Democrats as well.

Most of the voters who will help a Democrat win the governor’s office in 2010, including myself, weren’t even alive when Prop 13 passed (and unlike me, many weren’t even alive when he was governor). Brown needs to offer a political vision that speaks to their needs, instead of repeating something that hasn’t been fresh for 30 years.

This morning on CNN Rep. Loretta Sanchez (CA-47) endorsed Tom Ammiano’s call to legalize, regulate and tax marijuana in what Sanchez calls “an experiment” (hat tip to OC Progressive):

“Well, certainly, I have seen in my own state of California people over and over voting a big majority the whole issue of marijuana and possession of that,” Sanchez said this morning on CNN. “So maybe it would be a good pilot program to see how that regulation of marijuana might happen in California since the populous, the majority of Californians believe maybe that’s should happen.”

Taking a page from a number of those who favor the reform of pot laws, Sanchez likened the issue to the prohibition of alcohol in the early 20th century.

“Well, certainly there is one drug – it’s called alcohol – that we prohibited in the United States and had such a problem with as far as underground economy and cartels of that sort that we ended up actually regulating it and taxing it,” she said. “And so there has always been this thought that maybe if we do that with drugs, it would lower the profits in it and make some of this go away.”

All of this is eminently sensible public policy, and it’s good to have someone widely viewed as a moderate selling this to the public. She is absolutely right to compare marijuana to alcohol (even though alcohol tends to be the more dangerous drug) and remind us what we did when the Prohibition policy failed by creating widespread evasion as well as massive crime – we repealed the 18th Amendment and legalized alcohol.

The Hill article notes that Sanchez’s subcommittee, Border, Maritime, and Global Counterterrorism, has jurisdiction over the American side of the drug war that has brought parts of northern Mexico into chaos. Drug policy reform advocates have been pointing out for decades that the best way to encourage more stability in Latin America, and to cut down the power of the cartels, is to end America’s prohibition policies.

Let’s hope this sparks a broader level of political support for marijuana legalization in California. It’s been the right move for a long time. It’s also now a necessary move if we’re to have any hope of starting to fix our budget mess.

As someone who has written before of the water problems our state faces, and who has repeated the “omg worst drought ever” frame, it’s important that I give some necessary attention to Michael Fitzgerald of The Stockton Record, who called bullshit on the whole thing today:

California’s “drought” is overblown. The alarmists calling it a historic disaster are trying to pull a fast one….

Besides, state officials, SoCal water importers and other Chicken Littles don’t mention they drained Northern California reservoirs prior to February’s storms.

“In the first year of the drought, we passed water like a drunken sailor,” said Bill Jennings, head of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.

Some perspective: In the 1990s, the state and feds exported 4 million acre-feet of Delta water annually. In this decade – and well into the drought – officials imprudently powered up exports to more than 6 million acre-feet a year.

They irresponsibly sucked reservoirs down. They nearly killed the Delta. They stopped only when a federal judge called a halt.

“We cannibalized Northern California to sock it away in the Kern water bank and Diamond Valley water bank down south,” Jennings said, “giving no thought to the question of a second or third year.”

In short, those who have the weakest water rights claims – such as sprawling Southern California exurbs – have been recklessly drawing down our water supplies to support a totally unsustainable  use of the land. We’ve had intimations that this is going on, with the collapse of Delta fisheries and the West Coast salmon population. But the media often reported this as an unfortunate consequence of mandated water deliveries from the Delta, through the pumps at Tracy and down the delivery chain that the drought (and everyone agrees we’re in some sort of drought) has exacerbated.

Funny thing about those “mandated water deliveries” though:

The 80-year average for Delta water is 29 million acre-feet annually. The state and feds wrote contracts promising 130 million acre-feet: 41/2 times reality.

Other contracts bring total export contracts to an insane 245 million acre-feet, an ocean of paper water promised to people who gauged their farms, businesses or urban water consumption accordingly.

In other words California water policy has been built on debt, just as I’ve been arguing. To water the suburban sprawlconomy and the agricultural sprawl necessary to feed that sprawlconomy, we created a kind of “water bubble”, where contracts to deliver water were written without regard to mother nature’s ability to pay. This almost exactly parallels what went on in banks during the housing bubble.

And like the collapse of the housing bubble, those who engineered the water bubble are saying the answer is to spend more public money on bailing them out – in this case through more canals and dams.

Don’t get me wrong, California does face water problems and does need to change how we use water here. But the answer isn’t to waste more water on sprawl. Instead it’s time we got serious about providing water security by reducing how much we use, retrofitting urban areas to do more recycling, and implementing more water-friendly and environmentally sensible farming practices across the state.

My sister got her layoff notice yesterday. After teaching 5th grade for three years in an Orange County school district, and having achieved “permanent” status, she was told her services will no longer be needed as of the end of the school year. By all accounts her students’ parents loved her, and as she told me last night, “I don’t know what else I would do, teaching is all I’ve ever wanted to do.” And that’s true, ever since she taught our cousin what a fork was. Teaching is the family business, and now, she’s been told her dreams are no longer possible because California has stopped caring about schools.

She is not alone in watching her hopes and dreams vanish. Over 20,000 of her fellow teachers have been pink slipped, with LA Unified alone firing 9,000 teachers. Uncounted numbers of support staff – the people who answer the phones, who drive the buses, who enable teachers to focus on their jobs, are getting laid off as well. Nobody in Sacramento or the offices of the Zombie Death Cult have been able to explain how this is going to help our state survive economic crisis.

The mass layoffs are an act so vile and insane that it almost defies description. Teachers should be the last people in society laid off, before almost everyone else but the technicians at the water treatment plant. To engage in a mass firing of teachers in the midst of a Depression is like a man stranded in the desert poking out his eyes with a stick because the sun is too bright. Sure, it might help temporarily, but eventually you’re going to want to see where you’re going, and wish you’d never acted so rashly back there on the dune.

Here at Calitics we have repeatedly explained why these layoffs are happening – a conservative veto (the 2/3rds rule) enables Republicans to starve government of revenue and then force crippling cuts while Democrats fail to craft a coherent response. Our knowledge of those underlying causes should not blind us to the insanity of these layoffs.

These pink slips also make a mockery of President Obama’s education plans, which revolve around trying to attract new teachers to the profession:

And so today, I am calling on a new generation of Americans to step forward and serve our country in our classrooms. If you want to make a difference in the life of our nation; if you want to make the most of your talents and dedication; if you want to make your mark with a legacy that will endure – join the teaching profession. America needs you.

Such words ring hollow here in California, where those who already have stepped forward to make the most of their talents and to make a difference in the life of our nation have discovered that the legacy that will endure is a pink slip telling them “sorry, we don’t really want you after all.”

As Chris Bowers pointed out yesterday Obama’s education plans have an overemphasis on dealing with “bad teachers”:

I don’t entirely understand why talk of making teachers work harder, making their profesion more competitive, and making their job secure is so common in America.  We don’t talk about making the lives of other people who work in public service, such as soldiers and first responders–or even health care workers–in such a foreboding way.  If, as a nation, we actually want to solve our teacher shortage, part of that is going to mean dropping our constant national threats to make teachers lives more difficult.  That is just a really, really bad way to recruit and retain teachers.

Obama’s efforts to attract and retain the good teachers is simply impossible and unrealistic when those teachers who, like my sister and her 20,000 colleagues, have been given glowing reviews from administrators and parents alike and yet still find themselves turned away from the career they love.

His plans also suggest he is too wound up in what education writer Stanley Fish called the neoliberalization of education – the belief that education reform involves introducing market forces into schools, even though market forces prioritize money and denigrate other values such as good teaching, care for students, and building communities.

If Barack Obama wants to be serious about education reform, he needs to realize that you must first stop the bleeding before you can do anything else. The US Senate’s decision to gut the state stabilization funds is behind the mass layoffs here in California. That act will neutralized the effect of the stimulus in California and cause lasting damage to a generation of young people whose education has been sacrificed to appease Republicans in Sacramento and the US Senate.

Before Obama focuses on how to fire bad teachers, he needs to first ensure that we retain the good ones. If teaching becomes seen as a profession where quality work brings no job security, then reforms are doomed from the outset.

I don’t know how many times I have read this kind of article this decade, but it’s still once too often:

Facing a significant budget shortfall, the University of California plans to increase tuition at its 10 campuses by nearly 10 percent by July, in time for the summer session.

The proposed 9.3 percent fee increase would raise basic tuition for undergraduate students from $7,126 a year to about $7,789. In addition, various student services fees are also expected to rise….

Birgeneau said middle-class families will bear the brunt of the tuition increase.

Under the proposal, families earning more than $100,000 would pay the full fee increase. Families earning from $60,000 to $100,000 would pay half the fee increase, or about 4.65 percent. Families earning less than $60,000 would not be subject to the fee increase.

Even considering this graduated level of increased tuition, the price is unsustainable. An annual tuition of $7,500 is out of the reach of most families, period. It’s nearly double what I paid from 1996 to 2000, and is a 570% increase over what a UC grad would have paid from 1961 to 1965. Student loans might make up the difference, but those are much more difficult to get during a credit crunch and even if you can get one, they’ll be an anchor around your neck for decades, preventing you from finding financial security.

As I argued here back in October 2007, this is all likely part of a deliberate move to privatize public education slowly but surely over time. The Schwarzenegger Administration in 2004 rolled out a plan to raise fees and cut funding in order to accomplish this privatization goal.

Although the UC and CSU systems (which are likely to follow UC in making their own fee increases soon) remain officially public entities, they have been effectively privatized over time, as their funding now depends on private giving or student payments. The state contribution is now becoming almost incidental – with this recent budget nearly 80% of UC funding is coming from sources other than the state of California.

Even with the massive fee increases, educational quality isn’t necessarily going to be sustained. New faculty hires are going to be dramatically scaled back, meaning new profs who bring new ideas and fresh blood to the university – and who often bring the best teaching to the classroom – will be fewer in number.

The original goal of the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education was to guarantee access to college and affordability for those who were qualified in order to grow the middle class in California. It worked spectacularly, creating one of the leading economies of the globe over the last 50 years. But in the last 20 years this has begun to ebb, as fewer people can afford higher ed. And as the California Budget Project’s study A Generation of Inequality found, young college educated Californians have had a harder time finding work than those with just a high school diploma while they are saddled with debts they cannot pay off.

In Vietnam they “destroyed the village in order to save it.” Here in California, it seems clear that the goal is just to destroy higher education  and the economic mobility and the foundation of the middle class along with it. It’s time for us to determine how to reverse this trend.