We have become so used to the rabid anti-tax politics of the right-wing, in thrall to the Club for Growth and the Howard Jarvis Association, that we might have forgotten that they have other ways to use the budget to destroy working Californians and the public services they depend on.

Such is the case with a recent op-ed from the California Foundation for Commerce and Education which is, as Shane Goldmacher notes, the California Chamber of Commerce’s think tank. The op-ed ever so gingerly floats the idea of raising taxes to close the budget deficit:

Yet, as with the securities markets, common sense must prevail against principle if critical public services are at risk.

It is simply implausible that we can solve in a single year a deficit problem unaddressed for years without devastating important education, public safety and safety net programs.

But this comes at a price:

Any budget solution – but especially one purchased with new taxes – must unshackle elected officials to set priorities: repeal automatic inflation adjustments, cap guaranteed benefit programs, reopen union contracts that automatically boost wages (including in school districts) and at long last control future public employee health care and retirement obligations.

And a budget solution that includes tax increases must be accompanied by education reforms that improve performance of programs that spend half of state revenues and are critical to California’s economy.

Any tax increase should be legislated as a stop-gap measure that would be temporary. Taxpayers should be made whole during the upside of an economic cycle if they have been tapped for help during the downturn.

In other words, we can have some temporary tax increases to help close the budget but ONLY if we tie this to yet another attack on those public workers we hate. Accomplish Grover Norquist’s anti-government agenda by cleverly tying it to desperately needed new revenues.

For example – repeal inflation adjustments and cost of living increases? That is not a very smart solution in this age of increasing inflation. It would set public workers even further behind the cost of living and push them out of the middle class entirely, thereby hurting the state’s economy. The “control health care costs” language is code for “cut health benefits,” as is “cap guaranteed benefit programs.”

In this scenario, public services would be impacted anyway, as they would be locked into a downward spiral, prevented from catching up to real-world costs and real-world needs. It might stave off collapse of some of the public services threatened in this year’s budget, but only by a few years – this concept would accomplish the same goal over a slightly longer timeframe.

And “taxpayers should be made whole?” This sounds like a recipe for sending checks to taxpayers when the budget picture recovers – which would simply continue the real problem with the state budget, which is a decades-long hollowing out of our revenue streams by ill-advised tax giveaways during the good years.

Unfortunately this plan may not be limited to a think tank op-ed. Goldmacher again:

That position — advocating new, if temporary, taxes in return for budget reforms — is where many are speculating the governor is headed, especially with his shifting rhetoric about taxes, loopholes and fees.

That would not surprise me in the least, and would complicate the budget fight even further.

Yesterday morning NPR ran this report on housing prices:

Economists say home prices are nowhere near hitting bottom. But even in regions that have taken a beating, some neighborhoods remain practically unscathed. And a pattern is emerging as to which neighborhoods those are.

The ones with short commutes are faring better than places with long drives into the city. Some analysts see a pause in what has long been inexorable – urban sprawl.

This is a predictable fact of soaring gas prices. Older city centers have more commute options, and usually shorter commutes period, meaning less gas consumption. This eliminates a key source of pressure on household incomes.

In fact, we can see a similar pattern here in California. The areas hardest hit by foreclosures are those places with the longest commutes – Stockton, Modesto, the SoCal Inland Empire. And when did the housing bubble begin to burst? Late 2006 and early 2007, as gas prices broke through the $3 barrier for good.

This view is bolstered by a new study and widget from the Center for Neighborhood Technology. It shows that once you factor in transportation costs, living in a city center is just as, if not more affordable, for a middle-class family than a suburb – at least in Seattle (a typical West Coast city with sky-high rents and home prices in the city center).

All of this reinforces the point I made last August in Redefining the California Dream, where I argued that the only way lower- and middle-income Californians will have economic security and be able to afford the cost of living is if we abandon the obsolete 20th century model of sprawl and embrace the 21st century model of elegant density.

It would help, of course, if folks like Zev Yaroslavsky would stop spending their time trying to prevent this necessary shift in living patterns. We need to bolster affordable housing policies, provide mass transit alternative, and zone for walkable communities if we are to avoid a situation where we merely exchange the inner city slum for a suburban slum.

I was wondering when this was going to happen (h/t to Suburban Guerilla):

Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.

At a Costco Warehouse in Mountain View, Calif., yesterday, shoppers grew frustrated and occasionally uttered expletives as they searched in vain for the large sacks of rice they usually buy.

“Where’s the rice?” an engineer from Palo Alto, Calif., Yajun Liu, said. “You should be able to buy something like rice. This is ridiculous.”

The bustling store in the heart of Silicon Valley usually sells four or five varieties of rice to a clientele largely of Asian immigrants, but only about half a pallet of Indian-grown Basmati rice was left in stock. A 20-pound bag was selling for $15.99.

“You can’t eat this every day. It’s too heavy,” a health care executive from Palo Alto, Sharad Patel, grumbled as his son loaded two sacks of the Basmati into a shopping cart. “We only need one bag but I’m getting two in case a neighbor or a friend needs it,” the elder man said.

The Patels seemed headed for disappointment, as most Costco members were being allowed to buy only one bag. Moments earlier, a clerk dropped two sacks back on the stack after taking them from another customer who tried to exceed the one-bag cap.

“Due to the limited availability of rice, we are limiting rice purchases based on your prior purchasing history,” a sign above the dwindling supply said.

Part of the issue is that in the face of rice shortages, Asian nations have begun rationing exports. California, one of the nation’s leading rice-growing states, has seen problems with rice production, especially with seawater intrusion in rice paddies in the Delta.

And although the article focuses on rice, it also notes problems with grains. Grain shortages have hit the rest of the globe hard, causing riots in Haiti and severe bread shortages in Egypt. Americans used to believe themselves to be immune to such “third world” disasters but our sense of privilege isn’t going to save us. Climate change, the idiotic biofuels policy, and financial speculation in commodities are all contributing to the shortages, and it’s only a matter of time before Californians face growing problems with the food supply.

Because agricultural policy is largely in federal hands it’s not clear what we can do at the state level to help mitigate this worsening problem. Advocacy around the national Farm Bill – still under debate in the US Senate – might be the best approach. Increased attention to levee repair in the Delta would be useful too.

Perhaps the best thing we can do here in California, though, is encourage local food production and consumption networks. Most towns now have farmers markets, and many folks (like me) subscribe to a local CSA. The next step would be to encourage community gardens for food production. It worked in World War II with the victory gardens and would be useful today – but will require state support, especially to secure rights to land on which to grow crops, and to override idiotic limits on gardens in various planned suburbs.

This is also ultimately an argument against the bad Prop 98 – cities need to be able to use eminent domain to take vacant or abandoned land and turn it over to the public for local food production. Prop 98 would severely limit the ability of cities to do this.

Sure, we may think Costco’s abundance is limitless, but we’re finding out that it is not, and we had better start preparing to do without it.

Over 2,000 students from UC, CSU, and community colleges gathered today for a protest march from Raley Field in West Sac to the State Capitol to denounce Arnold’s planned higher ed cuts, and 200 more gathered at Arnold’s LA office. The protest is getting big coverage – it’s the featured article at SFGate this evening:

“Kick us out, we will vote you out,” the crowd in Sacramento chanted as they walked along a bridge crossing Highway 99, through downtown and onto the Capital steps. The line of students, which included hundreds from the Bay Area, stretched six blocks, and dozens of motorists honked in support as they drove by.

The fears, voiced again and again, where that if Schwarzenegger’s proposed funding cuts go through, students will end up paying more to attend, while reduced services and a narrower selection of classes….

One student from San Jose State, 24-year-old Joel Bridgeman, said raising the money for college was so tough that he was homeless – couch surfing – for about a year as he went to school.

“Most of the people who work in this building probably either went to CSU, UC or (community college), but as the next generation comes up they are looking for the easy solution,” he said. “They are looking for what is going to get them re-elected. They say our voice doesn’t matter, but I have a message for them… we are here to demand our chance.”

I especially liked that framing – it’s worth noting that millions of Californians owe their current wealth and prosperity to investments in higher ed made in earlier decades. Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, whose office helped organize the march, mentioned that both Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson increased taxes to prevent destructive education cuts.

Of course, Arnold has no interest in doing the same – he’s a true believer in Milton Friedman’s shock doctrine theories – but lying to the public seems right up his alley:

Aaron McLear, a spokesman for Schwarzenegger, said higher education continues to be high priority for the governor, but considering the scope of the budget deficit, it would be unfair to cut certain items in the state budget while leaving others untouched.

“The governor is as frustrated as the students are that he has to make these cuts. He doesn’t want to make these cuts,” McLear said.

Students weren’t buying it.

And they’re right to not buy it, because it’s a lie. Arnold doesn’t have to make these cuts at all. If he hadn’t cut the VLF and insisted on borrowing our way out of the last big deficit we’d have a much smaller hole now. And if he supported closing the tax loopholes he could potentially raise $12 billion, which would prevent budget cuts that would destroy California’s economic competitiveness.

Organizers of the protest tell me this is just the beginning of activism on the budget. This is the fight of this generation’s lives, and the longer the Yacht Party refuses to accept reality and the need to find new revenues, the more activism we’re going to be seeing from young Californians.

When Arnold took office in late 2003 he argued that one of the state’s highest priorities was to “reform” a workers’ compensation system that was supposedly driving businesses, and therefore jobs, out of the state. And the Legislature did so, cutting benefits to injured workers in order to try and keep business and the Chamber of Commerce happy.

Five years later California faces a similar crisis, as skilled workers flee the state in droves, taking their salaries and therefore their positive economic  impact with them. But this time, Arnold seems happy to see their backs, because it’s teachers and not well-connected corporations that are fleeing a state thanks to poor budget priorities:

Precious Jackson has two years of teaching under her belt and two school teacher-of-the-year awards to show for it. She also has a pink slip…

“Your future is in our classroom,” the Fort Worth, Texas, school district says on a San Diego billboard. It plans to send recruiters to the city next month to dangle $3,000 signing bonuses.

Several Los Angeles-area newspapers are carrying ads for the Clark County, Nev., school district, which hopes to lure teachers to Las Vegas with $2,000 incentives.

“We don’t hear things like that here,” said Jackson, 25, who teaches English at Lincoln High School, her alma mater in San Diego’s hardscrabble Lincoln Park neighborhood. “Instead we just don’t know what to expect, and it makes us feel underappreciated.”

Here is a teacher who gave back to her community, sacrificing opportunities for better pay and easier working conditions to devote herself as a teacher to the students in need in her community. Now she’s looking at leaving the state because California isn’t willing to do what it must to keep her employed.

It’s not as if California has a surplus of teachers to lose to other states. It has been estimated that California needs to recruit 100,000 new teachers over the next 10 years just to maintain current staffing levels thanks to retirements. Given the staffing needs, and the economic benefit of having employed teachers contributing to the state’s businesses, one would think that Arnold Schwarzenegger would be moving heaven and earth to keep California competitive and stop this economic exodus.

Instead we have young teachers looking at moving to Atlanta, or Las Vegas, or Fort Worth just to make ends meet:

Andrea Wiesner, a middle-school teacher in San Diego whose one-year contract won’t be renewed, plans to apply in Henderson, Nev., south of Las Vegas, to take advantage of generous student-loan repayment assistance offered by the Clark County School District.

“I worked really hard to be a teacher and now it’s like, ‘Well, if you want to stay in California, go back and work jobs you worked in college,'” the 28-year-old said. “But I can’t just volunteer. I need a job.”

I would love for Arnold and his fellow members of the Yacht Party to explain how any of this is good for California’s economy.

Mimi Walters appears to be running one of the wingnuttiest campaigns in California history in her bid to get elected to the State Senate. Last week we told you of her proud affiliation with the Howard Jarvis Association at the expense of California schools. Now she is touting her anti-immigrant credentials, even at the cost of fiscal responsibility on the state budget.

Republicans who have made immigration a campaign centerpiece have fared pretty poorly at the ballot box. So while that might suggest silence while California Republicans prepare another immigration-focused campaign, my respect for common sense and human rights forces me to speak up.

Mimi has sent out two pieces of mail to her constituents in recent days playing up her anti-immigrant stance. In a glossy mailer she not only lists her support for various immigrant-bashing measures such as cutting off social services and forbidding something like the DREAM Act – but she also engages in an overtly racist attack on Latinos.

The mailer includes an image from the 2006 immigrant rights’ protests of a Latino holding a sign reading – in English – “Today March, Tomorrow Vote.” The caption to the photo reads “Illegal aliens are demanding more and more rights. Even the right to vote in our elections!” even though there’s no evidence to suggest the protester was an undocumented immigrant.

The other piece of mail was a letter claiming that “it has been estimated illegal aliens cost California taxpayers $10 billion every year.” Not only does she provide no supporting evidence for this extraordinary claim, it flies in the face of evidence to the contrary. Undocumented immigrants contribute at least $9 billion to Social Security, and they also pay numerous state and local taxes, such as sales taxes, gas taxes, excise taxes, and (indirectly) property taxes.

The irony of Mimi Walters’ immigrant-bashing plan is that it seeks to drive taxpaying Californians either underground or out of the state entirely, right at the moment when we need all the tax revenue we can get. It’s an inhuman, reckless plan, but then what else can one expect from one of the most far-right members of the Yacht Party?

California higher education has not been having a good decade. When Arnold first took office a series of major cuts were made to the UC, CSU, and community college budgets. In 2004 a compact was agreed to between the UC and CSU leaders and Arnold, guaranteeing a stable, if low, level of funding. That agreement has been heavily criticized for having accepted a lower standard of state support – and that criticism looks to be merited, as Arnold now proposes to violate that agreement with his 10% cut of higher ed funding.

As a new study by the Campaign for College Opportunity shows, the proposed cuts would have the effect of severely curtailing enrollment by as much as 27,000 over the next two years, which is the size of an average UC or CSU undergraduate campus enrollment. And a study by the UC Academic Senate  found that “to maintain educational quality” student fees would have to rise from $7,500 to $10,500 – a staggering increase from an already high level.

“The Schwarzenegger revision accelerates the redefinition of the University of California away from a public university and toward a ‘public-private partnership,’ ” the UC study said. “The university becomes dependent on high student fees for delivering its core educational mission. . . . The university becomes quasi-private or poor — or perhaps both at once.”

UC has been suffering for years from what the Academic Senate study called a “hollowing out” because of lack of money. “From a distance, all appears normal; once one goes inside, the damage is clear,” it said. Leaky roofs go unrepaired; valuable faculty leave for better-paying universities…

The problem of “faculty brain drain” from public to private institutions is a serious one across the country but is hitting UC and CSU the hardest, as their funding has been the most dramatically impacted.

The study and the cuts were the subject of an article in today’s LA Times which contained some quotes from higher ed leaders about the impact of these cuts:

Diane Woodruff, chancellor of the California Community Colleges, said the governor’s proposed cut would mean those campuses would not be able to provide classes for more than 50,000 students. An additional 18,500 would not receive financial aid.

The cutbacks would most affect low-income, first-generation and nonwhite students, who generally depend more on university services, she said…

“By 2025. if we continue on this same course of cumulative budget cuts on a cyclical basis, the California workforce will be 3 million short and California will not be competitive,” Cal State Chancellor [Charles] Reed said.

In other words, Arnold’s proposed 10% cut of higher education would have a crippling effect on California’s economy. The student fees increases would squeeze middle-class families even more dramatically, and would be difficult for young students to pay – especially as student loan availability is shrinking due to the credit cruch – even the notorious Sallie Mae claimed “we’re at the cusp of peak lending.”

But this is sadly part of a larger pattern for Arnold and his Republican allies. Don’t let their occasional bickering and infighting fool you – they stand shoulder to shoulder when it comes to this state’s future. They all agree that our economy and the middle- and working-classes should be sacrificed for the sake of a few wealthy Californians who don’t want to pay more taxes. They agree that to save voters $150 a year in vehicle license fees, public education – from kindergarten to undergraduate – should be destroyed.

The article notes that “Despite the dire situation the universities and community colleges find themselves in, education leaders have been reluctant to challenge the governor.” It looks like that task is going to fall to the students who, abandoned by their schools’ administrators, are launching a statewide protest on Monday, April 21 to oppose these cuts.