As Brian noted below, the propositions are pretty much a done deal. 92 lost (though by a much closer margin than earlier in the night, suggesting Obama supporters went for 92), as did 93. The Indian gaming compacts all won by healthy margins.

The common factor that explains all six outcomes is the state budget deficit. It now looms over state politics like nothing else. Sure, there were reasons specific to each measure that influenced the outcome, but looked at as a whole, voters appear to have seen these ballot measures through the lens of the state’s dire fiscal situation.

Prop 92, which was seen by some as squeezing the budget to help community colleges, failed. Props 94-97, which the barrage of ads claimed (questionably) would raise $4 billion for the state, passed. And Prop 93, which would have reformed term limits and given current legislators more time in office, failed – voters seem to have held them responsible for the budget crisis.

The lesson here is that it is long past time for state legislators to help craft a permanent budget solution. A 30-year succession of one-time and short-term fixes haven’t gotten us any closer to a stable budget, or to fixing the structural revenue shortage. As a result, community colleges are now facing budget cuts without any protections, four of the state’s largest casinos now can operate without strong unionization rules, and 120 legislators are looking at an early end to their terms in office.

Add to that toll the Núñez-Schwarzenegger health care plan (which I opposed, but was still primarily a victim of the budget crisis) and the possibility of future programs getting axed, like the high speed rail bonds on the November ballot, and it should now be clear that the state budget crisis isn’t just a fiscal problem but a major political obstacle.

Term limit reform will be back. We likely haven’t seen the last battle over Indian gaming and labor rights. Public education at all levels is still hurting and growing less accessible. The health care crisis continues, and we badly need 21st century, sustainable transportation solutions. But until the state budget crisis gets a permanent solution, it’s going to be very difficult to move forward on any of that.

That is where our focus must now turn.

Cross-posted on the California Majority Report.

It was overcast and dreary in Oakland today, and the dark clouds spread to Lake Merritt United Methodist Church during a budget crisis forum sponsored by Assemblymembers Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) and Sandré Swanson (D-Oakland).

“I believe the drastic cuts proposed by the Governor would be devastating to the people I represent,” Hancock told the 100-person crowd. “The budget will define our values as a community.”

The budget as a statement of values was a theme repeated throughout the program. “We can have this conversation about numbers,” Swanson added. “But that kind of misses the point. This is really about values.”

Jean Ross, Executive Director of the California Budget Project, laid out what values are being put to the test in Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s budget:

• Confronting education — a $4.825 billion cut to K-12 schooling. That’s a reduction of $786 per student;
• Confronting health care — a $1.126 billion cut to Medi-Cal spending;
• Confronting crucial social services for children and families — a $463 million cut to CalWORKs programs. The largest share of these savings would come from removing aid for 150,000 children in low-income households; and
• Confronting crucial social services for the elderly and disabled — a $324 million cut to cost-of-living adjustments for cash assistance programs for low-income seniors and persons with disabilities in the SSI/SSP program.

To make matters worse, some of these cuts would take away federal matching funds. “What sense does that make?” Assemblymember Swanson pondered.

For more, including a discussion of the early release of prisoners, see over the flip…

As Assemblymember Hancock noted, California is the only state in the nation to both require a two-thirds vote in the legislature to raise taxes and grant the Governor line item veto authority. “This reminds me of the seven layers of Hercules,” Hancock said. “You have impossible barriers you need to cross before you get to the place you need to be, but if we don’t do that this year in California, we will find that this place is no longer the place it has been or we want it to be.”

Previous Schwarzenegger budgets in comparatively good economic times have relied on a combination of bonds, gimmicks, and already steep cuts. With a $14 billion budget shortfall this year, that will no longer be sufficient. Lenny Goldberg, Executive Director of the California Tax Reform Association, laid much of the blame on Governor Schwarzenegger’s revocation of the vehicle license fee and the Governor’s subsequent bonds to make up for lost revenue. Combined, these add up to $9 billion, nearly two-thirds of the budget deficit.

During previous deep red budget years, Republican governors Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson combined a mixture of tax and fee increases and spending cuts to balance the budget. But this year, legislative Republicans and even our so-called post-partisan Governor have vowed to oppose all new fees and taxes. “The rational conversation on the tax side has been completely cut out,” Goldberg lamented.

On the issue of convincing Republican legislators to act more rationally in regards to tax and fee matters, Hancock and Swanson played good cop, bad cop.

Hancock emphasized that there are some genuinely rational legislative Republicans, even if their voting records suggest otherwise. She told the crowd that she has had Republican legislators approach her and say, “I know a really good tax loophole that you should cut. Of course, I can’t actually vote for it.”

Swanson was a bit less concilitary on the subject. “I can be just as irrational,” Swanson quipped. “I will not make cuts to Prop 98. I will not make cuts to after-school programs.” If Republicans insist on holding firm on revenues, Swanson made clear, then it’s up to Democrats to do the same on the services we care most about so we can finally have a “fair and rational” debate and make a genuine compromise.

Karen Hemphill, a Berkeley Unified School District Board Member, gave the best summary of why Democrats care so much about preserving education funding. The Governor’s proposal would take away revenue equivalent to a month in school for every school district in the state. That’s $768 less per child. At stake aren’t just pencils, textbooks or dodge balls. Education is the most important investment a state makes, she emphasized. Lower performing schools lead to lower performing students. Lower performing students will make less money on average, increasing their reliance on state services and decreasing their contribution to the tax pool. Lower performing students are also at a greater risk for falling into a life of crime, which of course ups the costs associated with courts and incarceration. “I don’t think many of us thought this was what was meant by the Year of Education,” Ross joked.

Hemphill also informed the audience that the district expects to lay off most of its counselors if the Governor’s budget moves forward. But she warned that Berkeley Unified School District is actually in better shape than most schools in the state, because Berkeley voters recently approved a parcel tax to help fund school programs.

The discussion on education costs frequently returned to the question of local government solvency. Assemblymember Swanson noted that much of the Governor’s budget simply shifts responsibility to the local level as an unfunded mandate. “It doesn’t go away; it just passes responsibility,” he said.

Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson gave a sobering breakdown of statewide city and county concerns. 50% of Oakland’s revenue comes from federal and state money, but this includes property tax revenue collected by the city and transferred to the state. And local governments’ access to local property tax revenue has been on the decline. Less than 25% of the county’s budget is discretionary.

Naturally, as on the state level, the services provided with discretionary funds disproportionately harm those most in need of help. If the Governor has his way, the services that will be cut include things like preventative health care, educational opportunities programs, job training, rehabilitation programs, prison deferral services, and the like. While the state may see a short-term savings by destroying these programs, Carson made a crucial point that is frequently lost in the blustering anti-tax rhetoric that frequently permeates in Sacramento and among the chattering class. Simply put, in the long term, these programs improve society and save the state money. Preventative health care stops illnesses before they become a huge financial burden. Programs to broaden educational opportunities and to provide job training help the children of poor Californians become part of the well-educated, higher tax-paying, more flexible middle-class. Drug and alcohol rehabilitation and prison deferment programs reduce imprisonment costs, help reform broken lives, and ultimately generate more tax revenue for the state. Schwarzenegger “clearly didn’t have an understanding of how his budget proposal would impact local communities,” Carson explained.

The Governor’s budget also includes a $372 million cut to the Department of Corrections, mostly through the early release of 20,000 inmates and a quickening of the parole process for another 20,000. While this proposal has received bipartisan condemnation, many progressives will be inclined to support this part of the Governor’s budget, because there are far too many non-violent offenders in prison who simply don’t belong there, and because our country’s incarceration system all too frequently creates hardened criminals where there once was a good chance at rehabilitation. But the panelists cautioned that early release alone is insufficient.

As Ross explained, “I know many of you probably think that’s a good idea, but the problem is those individuals would not have supportive services in the community to help them find housing, help them find jobs, and help them restart their lives in a positive way.”

“It is irresponsible to [release prisoners early] without some funds to help the counties manage,” Swanson cautioned.

“Many of those individuals we would like to have in our community,” added Carson. “But they don’t have the supportive services necessary to assist them.”  

But there is reason for cautious optimism on this issue. Hancock thinks we have a real chance to turn the budget lemon into public safety reform lemonade by including rehabilitation block grants for local governments in conjunction with early release. This would still save the state money and provides a realistic opportunity to permanently reduce the population in our state’s overburdened prisons.

Clearly, Governor Schwarzenegger wasn’t the room’s favorite person, but there was some praise for the Governor, sort of. While previous budgets have relied on “smoke and mirrors,” Ross gave the Governor credit for presenting a more or less honest portrayal of what the budget would look like without additional revenue. “This budget makes clear that California is facing a very serious challenge,” she said.

And there was some good news to report too. Assembly Bill 32, California’s landmark global warming bill co-authored by Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) and then-Assemblymember Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills), is not particularly threatened by the Governor’s budget, because the California Air Resources Board has limited authority to raise fees without legislative approval. Indeed, the state’s budget wonks are looking into redirecting money from the general fund that Governor Schwarzenegger reserved for AB 32, since that money could also be generated via a CARB fee hike.

So where do we go from here? How do we insure that our values are reflected in California’s budget this year? Goldberg had some suggestions:

• Tax oil producers. This would generate more than $1 billion yearly, and we are the only oil-producing state that doesn’t tax the oil producers;
• Bring back the vehicle license fee;
• Restore the top tax bracket that Governor Wilson abolished. This would generate $2 billion yearly, and those who faced the tax hike could even get a portion back in their federal tax returns;
• Institute a tax on goods purchased on the Internet;
• Find fees that can help relieve the general fund. Fees only require a majority vote, so they provide an opening for the Governor and legislative Democrats to increase state revenue without the support of legislative Republican obstructionists. He cited a carbon fee as one option;
• Organize parents, teachers, and concerned citizens in Republican districts to fight against cuts to education. Schools in Republican districts tend to be even more vulnerable to state cuts to education, and it’s possible the pressure could sway some legislative Republicans to take a more nuanced perspective on taxes;
• Get taxes on the ballot. While a legislature-approved tax initiative would also require a two-thirds vote, it is possible that enough Republicans could be persuaded to let the people decide their own financial fate; and
• Support groups that wish to independently carry revenue-generating initiatives. Even if a tax hike initiative can’t clear the legislature, we should expect signature gathering to begin from concerned interest groups.

So those are some of our options. Where are we likely heading? Said Goldberg, “My guess is one way or another, we’re going to be fighting this out on the ballot.”  

Antonio is still a favorite to be the next governor, so this is a unique opportunity to see how he’d respond to a budget crisis:

Faced with a budget shortfall that has doubled in three months, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called Monday for paring city spending by suspending most hiring, asking thousands of workers to take unpaid furloughs and selling vacant fire stations […]

Despite the troubling financial situation, Villaraigosa pledged to continue his 1,000-officer expansion of the Los Angeles Police Department — an effort he called key to attracting business, even if it means cutting other services such as street paving and graffiti removal.

“My priority has got to be public safety,” Villaraigosa said at a City Hall news conference. “Keeping the city safe is the answer to how we support revenues.”

Villaraigosa outlined $35 million in cuts as he made a pitch for Proposition S, a telephone users utility tax that is expected to generate $243 million annually. Voters will decide the issue next Tuesday, and the mayor has been arguing that the city will have to slash public safety services if the measure fails.

So, fairly flat taxes to fund public safety (which is among the bigger expenditures for a mayor), a threat to cut public safety if it fails, and cuts across the board beyond that.  It’s not perfect to apply this to what he would do in the Governor’s chair, because the state obviously has a far better opportunity to raise revenue.  But it’s food for thought.

The country’s economy may be experiencing another stock market crash, and the housing bubble has been bursting, causing a housing market crash.  And this is all happening before the expected recession hits and causes unemployment to increase.  This is grim news indeed for state government budgets.

In particular California just experienced a sharp rise in unemployment.  Saturday’s San Francisco Chronicle reports, California’s jobless rate up sharply,

California’s employment market took a sharp turn for the worse in December, the strongest sign to date that the state’s economy might be falling into recession.

The same say the San Diego Union Tribune reported, State’s jobless rate tops 6 percent,

Despite relatively strong job growth, the unemployment rate in California jumped above 6 percent last month, prompting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to speed up construction projects that would result in the hiring of 5,000 new workers.

According to the story, the Governor is speeding up state construction work to help soften the recession’s blow by providing jobs, which provide income to people who are likely to rapidly circulate those funds to stores and other parts of the state’s economy.

Let me repeat that: the Governor is speeding up state government construction work, because it helps the economy.   Shorter version: Government spending helps the economy.

So why does the Governor understand that this spending increase helps the state’s economy, but not understand that his 10% “across-the-board” spending cut will hurt the economy by cutting jobs and incomes at exactly the wrong time?

Obviously a cut in state spending is exactly the wrong thing to do at this time.  

How do we get out of this mess?  Part of the cause of the coming recession is a concentration of the country’s income and wealth into fewer and fewer hands at the top of the economic scale.  And at the same time that more and more of the income is going to fewer and fewer people, they are paying lower and lower tax rates.  War on Greed is asking for taxes to be increased on the “buyout industry.”  Their statement,

Buyout industry executives with multi-million dollar incomes have been exploiting a tax loophole that allows them to pay a lesser tax percentage rate than most of the workers in the companies they manage.  This is a disgrace!

Another example is hedge-fund managers have a tax loophole that lets them pay less in taxes than their maids.  See this video:

My previous post titled, Do taxes drive California’s economy? concluded by saying,

The prosperity we have experienced comes from public investment and that comes from taxes. Cutting spending is like eating our seed corn. It is taxes that drive the economy. Spending cuts hurt us. Borrowing hurts us. It is time for people and companies that are getting wealthy off of our public investment to pay us back.

Perhaps it is time to start getting some of the money from where the money went.  It is time to close tax loopholes, raise income taxes at the top, and raise corporate taxes.  These are the biggest beneficiaries of our government’s spending – it’s why they’re doing so well!

The Governor has continued to assert, and the people largely believe him, that he is somehow removed from the financial troubles that face the state.  And he got an assist from an unlikely source today – former Governor Gray Davis.

So why is California suddenly faced with a $14-billion budget shortfall? Is it because the governor (or the Legislature) did something terribly wrong?

No, the governor of a nation-size state like California can affect the economy, but only on its margins. The reason this deficit is looming is because no one can repeal the business cycle. Just as night follows day, expansionary times will be followed by recessionary times. And yet the overwhelming impulse in Sacramento is to spend every dollar on the table. If a booming economy has the state coffers flush, Democrats say: “There will never be a better time to expand programs than right now.” Republicans counter: “We have too much money. Let’s reduce taxes.” […]

Believe me, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn’t want to close 48 parks, reduce education funding or release prisoners. Like all governors, however, he is required to bring expenditures in line with revenues. I don’t agree with all of his suggested cuts, nor do I endorse all of the critical responses from the Legislature.

There is a significant reform suggested by the governor, however, that I fully endorse. It is a constitutional amendment that would require putting aside a portion of surging revenues in good times as a buffer against painful cuts in bad times. I called for such a “rainy day” fund while in office — and recently former Gov. Pete Wilson also spoke in favor of this idea.

Gray Davis is showing the political acumen that made him the most reviled governor in recent California history.  He’s also being massively dishonest.  Schwarzenegger repealing the Vehicle License Fee’s return to 1998 levels had an undeniable impact.  Furthermore, so did his borrowing through bonds, which costs the state billions of dollars per year.

Are Arnold and the California GOP to blame for this? Who else? Nobody put a gun to their heads and forced them to respond to our last crisis with nothing but a toxic combination of demagoguery and tax-cut jihadism. They did it all on their own. I understand the desire to roll up our sleeves and stop sniping about the past, but let’s not actively rewrite history to pretend that our latest crisis “just happened.” It didn’t. Arnold and his party, despite plenty of warnings from nonpartisan budget analysts about what they were doing, deliberately bequeathed it to us.

And, contrary to Schwarzenegger’s belief, he has a great deal of control over state spending, including a line-item veto.  Trying to fault the legislature for “runaway spending” when he has to sign the document is just completely absurd.  The legislature didn’t go on a “spending spree” on its own, nor did they use revenue only for the purpose of spending; there were billions in tax cuts thrown in as well.

The Governor, and his predecessor, are writing a history of government in California that doesn’t have an executive branch.  This is a falsehood that can only be met with laughter.

By Dave Johnson, from Speak Out California

California faces a large budget deficit, and the Governor has declared an emergency.  The Governor has proposed “across-the-board” spending cuts — which means cutting all state services by an equal amount.  

This inability to prioritize the importance of any particular spending cuts should be taken as a de facto declaration that there is no waste or unimportant spending left to cut — that all spending is equally crucial.  Driving home this point, the Governor is asking for the release onto the streets of prisoners.  

If we don’t want prisoners released onto our streets the legislature must raise revenue.

The first place to look is toward taxes and fees that were cut when times were good.  The vehicle license fee is the most obvious place to start.  A letter-writer in today’s San Francisco Chronicle makes this point:

“When Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor, he immediately repealed the increase in vehicle registration fee that Gov. Gray Davis had used to help close the budget gap. This returned money to the pockets of Californians with cars (I received a check for $1) and took $4 billion from our state’s budget. This is roughly the amount he now wants to cut from our public education. … It is hard for me to feel empathy for people who complain about a 1.5 percent tax increase on their $100,000 car when there are families that will lose their ability to have a home if these cuts go through.”

We should examine the record from past tax cuts.  Have they helped or harmed us?

The record shows that tax cuts actually harm state economies and finances.  The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, in a 2005 report titled, TAX CUTS AND CONSEQUENCES: The States That Cut Taxes the Most During the 1990s Have Suffered Lately found that tax-cutting states actually performed worse fiscally and economically than other states.  From the sumary:

Those big tax cuts do not seem to have contributed to state fiscal and economic health.  In fact, when the economy began to weaken in 2001 and states fell into a fiscal crisis, those big tax-cutting states generally faced larger fiscal problems, and had worse economic performance, than other states that had been more cautious about tax cuts.

Since these cuts were clearly a bad idea it is time to repeal them.

Click to continue

(more pics, courtesy of the Edwards campaign, at this photo set.)

John Edwards has generated a bit of notoriety today for smacking down Barack Obama’s suggestion that Ronald Reagan can be credibly seen as a model of change.  Edwards didn’t mention any of this today at a rally before hundreds (I’m really no good at judging crowd size, but there were a lot of people there) in downtown Los Angeles at the SEIU Local 721 headquarters, but he did have some choice words for another actor-turned-politician.

On the flip…

The speakers prior to Edwards included members of the Los Angeles City Council, Herb Wesson and Richard Alarcon (Janice Hahn was also in attendance).  All of them made a straight electability argument for Edwards’ candidacy, which was a little jarring (especially because Edwards did not do so).  Wesson even added “I don’t care who’s the first this or the first that, I want the best candidate to lead our country.”

(Wesson also asked “When was the last time California mattered in the Presidential primary, and I yelled “1968 and 1972,” but I don’t think he heard me.  Incidentally, given that three of the intervening races between now and then weren’t competitive, that was only 5 primaries ago.)

Edwards, however, stuck to the facts, and his powerful argument for why he should be President.  He offered the same policy shifts on Iraq (all combat troops out in 12 months), health care (universal coverage mandated for every American, mental health, preventive and long-term care included), global warming (80% reductions in emissions by 2050, no new nuclear or coal-fired power plants), defending the Constitution (ending Guantanamo, torture, rendition, and illegal spying), poverty (expanded social aid and an increase of the minimum wage to $9.50 indexed to inflation), and labor (fair trade and tax policy, the Employee Free Choice Act, no scab hiring, strong support for unions).  But I want to cite two moments that deviated from the script.

First, Edwards has been discussing the sad case of Nataline Sarkysian, the 17 year-old from Glendale who was denied a liver transplant by her health insurer CIGNA, and died shortly after the company reversed the decision.  This time, Sarkysian’s parents were on stage with Sen. Edwards, and when he related that tragic story, I couldn’t help but watch Nataline’s mother choke up.  It was affecting, it hit you right in the gut.  And when Edwards said, in respect to the health insurers, “Are you telling me we should sit down at the table with these people?  Never!  I don’t want to be their President,” it was undeniably moving.

Second, Sen. Edwards obviously did his homework before the rally.  He brought up the California budget crisis, and the austere across-the-board cuts proposed by Gov. Schwarzenegger.  It’s fair to say that he wasn’t a fan.  Here’s his comments (a paraphrase):

I spent a day earlier this year with an SEIU health care worker… the people she cares for need her.  The last thing this or any state needs are cuts to that kind of health care.  The last thing you need are cuts to K-12 education.  Does anybody believe that we are spending too much on K-12 education in this country?

It’s fantastic to have Edwards still in the race.  He’s obviously an underdog at this point, and he willingly acknowledged that, saying that he’s going up against “two hundred-million-dollar candidates.”  The compression of the primary calendar will make it very difficult for him to get his message out to the February 5 states.  Yet he said to the assembled crowd of several hundred that “you have the ability to send a message and build a grassroots movement, a wave across this state and across this country.”  There’s no question that Edwards has driven the policy agenda throughout this race, and his bold strain of populism and unabashed liberalism is sorely needed in Washington.  However, sadly, even some of his most ardent supporters were making the case for Edwards to stay in the race to horde delegates and extract something from the eventual winner, rather than a case for him winning.

A neat postscript: Cate Edwards, the Senator’s daughter, was on hand, and after the speech she was chatting with Mimi Kennedy of PDA, our local election reform activist here in LA.  Minutes later, I saw Cate with something written on her bag: “Bradblog.com”.  Progress is slow, but it’s happening.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger endorsed Prop. 93, some considered it the result of some deal on health care or some other quid pro quo.  I thought it was much simpler than that.  

Schwarzenegger has a good working relationship with Fabian Nuñez and Don Perata.  He for the most part gets what he wants out of that relationship.  Why would he want to change it for his last two years in office?  The pessimist’s view would be “Why would he want to housebreak someone else when these two are already housebroken?”  The optimist’s view is “He’s moving forward on his agenda, why rock the boat?”

Arnold has now confirmed this, by the way.

Schwarzenegger said he has developed a “trust” with sitting legislative leaders and hopes to continue to work with them. The governor said he felt a loss when former Senate leader John Burton was termed out of the Legislature.

“I just got this groove going with this guy and we got to understanding each other and all of a sudden he’s being ripped away,” Schwarzenegger said.

The governor said he and current lawmakers would be better able to tackle major issues facing the state, from the budget crisis to the state’s need for $500 billion worth of infrastructure improvements.

Besides, he said, “I really want some of those guys to stay.”

It’s a selfish view from the standpoint of Schwarzenegger (should the governor really be picking the majority leaders in the opposite party?), but perfectly coherent.  He wants to continue the working relationship.  In the short term, it’s up to the voters to decide if that working relationship is good for California.  I think the sum total of this site could be “Exhibit A,” but your mileage may vary.

(As a side note, interesting how this experience vs. change question continues at the state level, no?  Of course, we must wonder about the right kind or the wrong kind of experience.)

I went out to see Sen. Feinstein speak to the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce this afternoon.  The speech was billed as an address on the environment, and that was surely part of the speech (which I’ll summarize below).  But of more pressing concern to the Chamber was the growing unease with the economy in California and across the nation.  Sales taxes and auto sales have flattened out here in Santa Monica, and that represents 22% of all municipal revenue.  As this was the focus of a short panel before Sen. Feinstein’s remarks, she felt compelled to address it.  On the economy, she said that the coming year will be very difficult.  She called for the need to address the mortgage crisis and a need to extend unemployment benefits as part of an economic stimulus package.  But interestingly, she added this (paraphrasing from notes):

I hate to say it, but I don’t believe the Governor’s budget helps.  The cuts are very deep, and you cannot fund debt through accounting tricks and through floating bonds.  That’s the most expensive kind of budget funding there is.

I’d love to know why she “hates to say” that she has a substantive policy difference with a Republican governor who is trying to run the state into a ditch for generations to come.  It really shouldn’t be that hard to say.  The lack of forcefully connecting the Governor to the fiscal mess we’re in accounts for the fact that he continues to maintain high approval ratings despite the state’s wrong-track number approaching 60%.

The Senator dared not mention the “t” word, and stayed away from what an ultimate solution should look like.  But there was applause when she decried the Governor’s approach.  Clearly, people are more than willing to hear this argument; it just needs to be coupled with a realistic look at a solution that ends the perpetual motion machine of  budget crises in the state, and structurally fixes the revenue model.

More on her speech on the flip…

On the environment, Sen. Feinstein touted the green credentials of Santa Monica (“as good a green city as we have in California”) and legislation she introduced to expand the red subway line to the Pacific Ocean, which is 20-plus years in the making.  But while offering a very stark, almost “Inconvenient Truth”-like assessment of the scientific proof of global warming and its potentially catastrophic effects (she cited the escalating ice loss in Antarctica and essentially concluded that coastal cities would be wiped out without meaningful action), Feinstein continued to champion flawed, incremental approaches that don’t meet the targets we need.  She touted the recent passage of the federal energy bill (which she authored), and weirdly said that “the House couldn’t get their bill through,” when in truth the House bill would have been much more impactful, but the Senate couldn’t show the leadership and had to drop two key elements of the legislation, which would have set a renewable energy standard and removed the massive tax breaks for Big Oil (also, the bill includes massive expansion of biofuels, which many are starting to see as counterproductive).  She cited hard statistics, that we need to reduce emissions by 65-75% below 1990 levels, then endorsed the Lieberman-Warner global warming bill, which only gets us 60% below 2005 levels.  Lieberman-Warner, of course, is a half-measure that would set up a cap-and-trade system without auctioning off the credits, essentially giving away the right to pollute to the nation’s biggest industries.  But Feinstein said that while “it isn’t perfect,” the bill is “the best bet today for passing comprehensive global warming legislation.”  This is a push and pull that has been bubbling in the environmental community for some time.  Reasonable people can disagree.  But unsurprisingly, Feinstein went for the half-measure (and Barbara Boxer isn’t covered in glory here; she reported the same bill out of the Environmental Committee).

On a final note, Sen. Feinstein said that “I hope the next President will give California the waiver (to implement its tailpipe emissions law) it needs.”  She very specifically explained how the EPA action was political and not environmental, and she announced that she has asked the Inspector General of the agency to open a full investigation.

(Promoted due to database problems. This post originally appeared at Speak Out California – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

California is said to be having a budget “crisis.”  Last week the Governor signed an emergency proclamation forcing the legislature to meet and act on the budget within forty-five days.

“Crisis” and “emergency” are serious words, and the public is upset about hearing them.  This is, of course, the intent of those using the words — to get the public upset and demanding action.  When people are shocked and worried they will accept solutions that might not be what they would accept if they had time to think, consider all reasonable alternatives and weigh all the consequences.  In an “emergency” the public just wants the problem solved.  (This is a  “Shock Doctrine” approach.)

So having created a crisis atmosphere the Governor is asking for “across the board” cuts in state government spending.  This is a tactic that let’s him avoid specifying any particular cuts.  The reason the Governor does not want to specify any particular spending cuts is because people will realize that such cuts are not a good idea.  

Asking for cuts “across the board” sounds so fair.   But not specifying also means not prioritizing.  By setting no priorities for spending cuts the Governor is saying that one area of spending matters to him no more than another.

Let’s be clear about what the Governor is doing.  He is cutting police and other law enforcement and public safety.  He is cutting schools — when California already is 43rd in spending per pupil.  He is letting prisoners out onto the streets.  He is cutting disaster assistance.  He is letting roads and bridges deteriorate.  That is what government spending is — and we are who it is for.

Each and every thing the Governor is asking to cut is important to all of us, the people of California.  We, the people need and want what the state spends its money on.  We need our police and public safety departments.  We want our children educated in good schools.  It is rare to find a person who claims that the state “spends too much” who can tell you just what we, the people of the state actually spend our money on.  (Try it yourself – see if you can get specifics from anyone who claims that the state spends “too much.”)  That is why the Governor is calling for “across-the-board” spending cuts and not specifying where he thinks cuts should be made.

Meanwhile the Governor is not presenting the public with alternatives to spending cuts.  There ARE alternatives, but they are only going to be part of the process if people pay attention to what is going on.  Here are just a few examples of alternatives that should be considered:

Alternative: Restore the vehicle license fee.  This would bring back $5 billion that we, the people should be collecting and using.

Alternative: Tax oil as it is taken out of the ground.  The oil belongs to the people of California but we don’t ask companies to pay us when they pump it.  A California oil-severance tax would go a long way toward helping solve our budget problems.  Alaska, for example, has no income tax, and in fact the state instead sends a check to citizens each year because they understand that the oil is a common resource and tax the companies that pump it out of the ground.  

Alternative: Impose a surtax on upper incomes to balance the budget and pay off the bonds.  Consider that the reason some people receive so much more income is because the infrastructure we Californians have built and the benefits that we the taxpayers have granted to corporations helps build prosperity.  And one effect of having very high incomes is that they have large amounts of disposable income with which to pay taxes and still have plenty left over.  This money can also be used to pay off the bonds that the Governor has issued to avoid making touch choices in the past.  Currently we pay approx. $4 billion each year toward interest on these bonds.  Paying down these bonds and reduces these interest payments and THAT is a spending cut we all want to happen.

Click to continue.