It’s sad that one comment can mean more to a debate than years of attacking public employees and public works and months of attempting to destroy the California dream. That should be disqualifying enough. But Governor Hot Tubs and Stogies’ “let them eat cake” comment in the New York Times has gained some traction. Apparently this was a target big enough for everyone in Sacramento to hit. The Assembly Democrats included it in a video showing the Governor’s hypocrisy during recent budget talks.
And that’s great. Narrative-setting can be powerful and important. That’s what’s behind the Governor’s idiotic crusade to criticize legislators for legislating while he stamps his little feet. At least for today, I think the Democrats are getting the better of ol’ Hot Tubs and Stogies.
Labor groups file initiative to repeal corporate tax breaks included in recent budget deals.
These are the massive corporate tax breaks, which could cost the state up to $2.5 billion dollars a year, agreed to in secret by the Governor and the Legislature during the February budget agreement. In a time of recession, the state’s political leadership, hijacked by the 2/3 requirement, gave away billions of dollars to the largest corporations in America while crying poor about social services for the indigent and the needy. And those corporate tax breaks are the ONLY permanent tax changes made in the budget this year.
Damn right they should be repealed. They offend the conscience, cost the state needless cash, and do nothing to help the vast majority of businesses (80-90% of the proceeds of these tax breaks will go to just 200 corporations).
Bottom line: Budgets are about values, and they are about priorities. Before lawmakers take health coverage away from children whose parents are struggling to make ends meet, eliminate financial aid for students who understand that hard work and a college education provide the best promise of future success, or shutter state parks that protect California’s natural environment and provide affordable recreational opportunities, they should reverse these permanent and massive giveaways that will compromise the state’s long-term financial security.
With newfound spunk from Democrats, at least in the Assembly, and serious moves by progressive advocates to reverse the horrible decisions made in past budget years, I think the ground is being prepared for a legitimate reform of the broken structure that has brought us to this point.
Peter Schrag is one of the few columnists left in this state who consistently makes sense, and today he attacks that silly NYTimes article about California, in particular the elements of conventional wisdom:
In his passing references to California’s serious issues, many of which have major implications for the nation as a whole, Leibovich collects pieces of the conventional wisdom, even when, as in his facile summary of the causes of gridlock in Sacramento, it’s wrong. Since Democrats have again and again agreed to multi-billion dollar cuts, it is not, as he thinks, just a matter of “‘no more taxes’ (Republicans) and ‘no more cuts’ (Democrats).”
And while Jerry Brown, in his prior tenure as governor was indeed labeled “Governor Moonbeam” (by a Chicago columnist) for his space proposals, as Leibovich says, the label applied much more broadly to his inattention to the daily duties of his office and, most particularly to his dithering while the forces that produced Proposition 13 began to roll.
Brown later acknowledged that he didn’t have the attention span to focus on the property tax reforms that were then so urgently needed to avert the revolt of 1978. But to this day, almost no one has said much of Brown’s role in creating the anti-government climate and resentments that helped fuel the Proposition 13 drive.
It was the Brown, echoing much of the 1970s counter-culture, who, as much as anyone, was poor-mouthing the schools and universities as failing their students and who threatened to cut their funding if they didn’t shape up. It is Brown who spent most of his political career savaging politics and politicians, even as he ran for yet another office. Now this is the guy who wants to be governor again. But Leibovich doesn’t tell his readers that long history. Maybe he doesn’t know it.
The line about how those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it can be inserted here. But Schrag hits on the most important failing of the article, and indeed of a good chunk of the political media here in California – they airbrush out the people who suffer for the failures of the politicians.
Where are California and the people who are feeling the pain – the school kids and teachers in hopelessly underfunded schools, the children who are losing their health care, the minimum-wage working mothers struggling to pay their child care, the students who are losing their university grants? Is all this really about nothing?
To far too many, the answer is yes. It’s politics as theater, as a sporting event, where winners and losers are checked on a board, and whether or not a leader will keep their position is made the story rather than the principles he or she represents. And yet it’s not Governor Hot Tubs and Stogies who will feel the pain of an economic downturn and massive budget cuts, nor well-heeled consultants or columnists who make up the scorecards. It’s people.
People like the students in the Cal State system who may see their fees raised 20%, just months after a 10% hike approved in May. This will effectively block higher education for a non-trivial number of students, as will proposed enrollment reductions of 32,000 students.
People like LA County homeowners who have defaulted at twice the rate in May as they have in the previous month, as a foreclosure backlog builds up due to various moratoriums and an increase in repossessed homes entering the market.
People like IOU holders who may have to turn to check-cashing stores to get less-than-full value for their registered warrants after Friday, when most major banks (who have all been bailed out by the federal government, by the way) stop the exchange of the notes.
And people like the elderly, disabled and blind, who rely on the in-home support services that the Governor is trying to illegally cut in contravention of a contempt-of-court citation, at least in Fresno.
These are the great unmentioned in this California crisis, the people who Dan Walters tries to smear in his column today by turning every Democratic concern for the impacts of policy as a sellout to “public employee unions.” Behind those unions are workers, and the people they serve need the help the provide, in many cases, simply to survive. But it would be too dangerous to Walters’ beautiful mind to consider those faces, so he chooses to make political hay out of the violation of people.
Mr. Schrag’s latest screed is a good example of why politics in Sacramento is so dis-functional. Instead of trying to find the truth in the Leibovich article, he mocks both the writer and each of the subjects. In recent years, Schrag has become increasingly bitter. That’s very sad because he once was an open-minded person with real insight into the predicaments of modern society. Finally, his memory is not serving him well regarding Propistion 13 and the factors that constituted the ethos of that period. In fact, there was a long and hard fought battle to get property tax relief that got all the way to the state Senate but foundered just short of the necessary two thirds vote. There is much to say about government, schools and taxation in California. But to get anywhere it requires a degree of empathy and engagement with opposing perspectives that no longer seems congenial to Mr. Schrag.
As the budget talks stall, let’s bore in on what new items the Governor has recently proposed. Out of nowhere last week, he called for policy changes as a condition for agreeing to covering the full budget deficit. He can call them budget-related, or part of the “reform” agenda, but that’s a lie. He added new issues into the negotiations, and Karen Bass was right to call him out for it.
Among those new items was this call to “root out fraud” in several programs, including IHSS, Cal-Works and Medi-Cal. The Governor claims that implementing programs to end this fraud would save the state $500 million dollars a year – meaning it would take 14-16 years for this program fix to cover the wasted money caused by his intransigence in refusing the stop-gap fix last week, which lead to the issuance of IOUs. On top of that, those numbers are overstated, and changing eligibility standards is a complex, costly process that will neither improve customer service or even reduce an already-low error rate.
The Governor’s response to these comments is that Democrats are somehow protecting union allies and the status quo. If that’s the case, what to make of this fact:
In April of THIS YEAR, Democrat Bonnie Lowenthal introduced AB682, which would investigate fraud in the IHSS program. Here’s the analysis of the bill:
1) Requires that, beginning January 1, 2010, DSS dedicate two positions to evaluate implementation of five specific anti-fraud provisions of the Welfare and Institutions Code related to the IHSS program and authorizes DSS to fill the positions either by using existing resources or, if an appropriation is provided for that purpose, by adding new positions.
2) Requires DSS, in consultation with the state Department of Health Care Services, the district attorney in the county with the largest caseload, and stakeholders, including IHSS consumers and providers, to provide a report to the Legislature by December 31, 2010, which shall do all of the following with respect to IHSS-related fraud:
a) Identify the magnitude of fraud in terms of the total dollars inappropriately spent or removed from the program, and the number of consumers harmed or placed at risk of harm as a result of fraudulent activity, through instances resulting in a fraud conviction between January 1, 2005 and January 1, 2010;
b) Identify the number of people involved in fraud for each of the following categories: IHSS providers, IHSS consumers, state workers, county workers, and others. In the case of “others,” the report shall describe the function of the persons committing fraud with specificity but without revealing personal identifying information; and,
c) Provide recommendations on the best means to combat IHSS fraud.
It may interest you to know how the Assembly voted on the bill. In the Human Services Committee, the Democrats voted yes, the Republicans NO. In Appropriations, all Democrats voted yes, all Republicans NO. The final floor vote went 49-28, with three abstentions. EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN VOTED NO except for Paul Cook, who abstained.
The ostensible reason for the Yacht Party united front against the bill? It costs $350,000 to hire two new employees at the Department of Social Services, and give them a budget to look into fraud at the IHSS. To pursue fraud that the Governor says would save the state $500 million a year.
This is basically what you do in government. You learn of a problem, you study it, and then you implement potential fixes for the problem. IHSS fraud was brought up as a problem in April, and Bonnie Lowenthal sought to fix it. The Governor waited around for a few months, then barged in and said Democrats, who were taking the steps to fix the problem, were safeguarding public employees, and that anti-fraud measures must be taken immediately in conjunction with an unrelated budget deficit.
The only fraud here is the Governor. He’s tried to cut IHSS funding since the day he entered office. The Assembly passed a “quality assurance” provision in 2004 to ensure that the program ran smoothly, and the county investigations were kicked up to the state, and then the Governor NEVER FUNDED THE NEW POSITIONS for investigators to look over the county referrals. Small wonder a lot of cases with no action ensued.
In the final analysis, the Governor is doing what he has done multiple times in the past – attempting to cheat the needy out of lawful care and services instead of doing the politically unpalatable work of cutting programs. He’d rather reduce costs by making it virtually impossible for enrollees to stay eligible. It’s cowardly and craven.
The resignation of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin provides an opportunity to understand what is happening to us in California. There are people who have so little respect for government and governing that they thing Palin’s resignation is a good thing. In California there are also people who have so little respect for government and governing that they think it is a good idea to let the state fall off of a financial cliff.
Sarah Palin is said to be resigning so she can climb the ladder of Republican politics — possibly even to run for the Republican nomination for President in 2012. One would think that abandoning office in the middle of her term would disqualify her from having a future in seeking elected office. But this is not the case — just the opposite. In fact this is so much not the case that the resignation is seen as a “brilliant” strategic move to increase her chances of obtaining that Presidential nomination prize.
The lesson to take away from Palin’s resignation is that actually governing once elected to office is not the point. Modern-day Republican Party politics is not about governing, not even a little bit. It is about being against governing.
This is how they can get away with being against government: Good government was put in place in this country in the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s (with 90% tax rates at the top, by the way) and has been taken for granted since. The infrastructure of roads, laws, trash collection, etc. has been in place and functioning for so long that it is taken for granted. And so it all provides a safe platform for anti-government ideologues to pretend that government is not needed.
This brings us to California. We have a minority of elected officials who also do not care about governing. So far they have been able to get away with it, because of the work that We, the People did for several decades to build this state and make it governable.
California enjoyed massive government infrastructure investment from the 1930s through the 1960s. We built the best roads, water systems, schools, courts, etc. As a result we had the most prosperous industries, most well-educated people and best-functioning government.
And so the anti-government tax-cutting ideologues were able to defer maintenance of that wonderful system, handing the maintenance money out as tax cuts, and no one saw the foundations of that prosperity slowly begin to erode. They were able to complain about government and ignore governing because government was there for them and all of us anyway.
Well now we have coasted along on the infrastructure built decades ago, but it has eroded, and we are coming to the end of the time when the ideologues can enjoy the luxury of deferring maintenance. But our Republican leadership is firmly entrenched in their anti-governing ideology. They are willing to let the state fall off a cliff rather than actually pay to maintain the governing structure they depend on — because they believe it will just operate as it seemingly always has, for free.
But governing is about about the people of the state and their needs. It takes skill, wisdom, an understanding of government and governing to be an elected leader. Sarah Palin obviously has none of these qualities, nor does Ahnold, for that matter. While our most vulnerable people are begging for their services and programs not to be dismantled so that they can actually have food and help in their most basic needs, our Governator boasts about sitting in his jacuzzi smoking a stogie.Would FDR ever suggest that? Would Dwight Eisenhower? What kind of leadership, compassion, understanding is reflected in these kind of “leaders.” The answer is obvious and dramatic: NONE.
Just a précis on budget negotiations today: the Big Five leadership has met over the last couple days, with more heat than light. The Governor remains committed to adding unrelated policy changes into any budget deal, items like changing contributions to public employee pensions, and tightening eligibility and rooting out fraud in programs like in-home supportive services for the disabled, Medi-Cal and Cal-Works. These items will do nothing to affect the current budget numbers, a fact Schwarzenegger has acknowledged, but he continues to leverage the impasse to capture long-sought goals. The Governor also has taken to lying about how these issues suddenly appeared in the negotiations, claiming that “reform issues were very clear” from the start, which is true if you define “reform” as “whatever Arnold wants it to mean.” Karen Bass signaled her frustration with the Governor’s clear unwillingness to close a deal by inserting unrelated items, boycotting today’s meeting and questioning the Governor’s figures on what reducing “fraud” would actually reap in savings (and since he’s been consistently wrong on this front in the past, it’s a good bet). The Governor did concede that suspending the Prop. 98 education funding mechanism would not be viable, but he keeps pushing for the amorphously defined “reform”, no doubt because he thinks it plays well with the public (Matier and Ross transcribe that private polls show a jump in Arnold’s approval ratings). This speaks more to the Democrats’ inability to clearly explain reality than anything else, though Bass gave it a try today:
But Bass said she believes talks have gotten worse, not better. And she publicly blasted the governor for comments he made in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, in which he said he explained why he doesn’t go home depressed by budget woes.
“Someone else might walk out of here every day depressed, but I don’t walk out of here depressed,” Schwarzenegger told the Times. Whatever happens, “I will sit down in my Jacuzzi tonight,” he said. “I’m going to lay back with a stogie.”
“He said he’s happy to just go home and sit in his Jacuzzi every night,” Bass said Monday. “I’m very, very concerned about this. He doesn’t seem to be concerned that people are getting IOUs, and all he has to do is go out and blame the Legislature.”
With squabbling and posturing like this, you’d think I’d agree with the Calbuzz take of why this crisis has dragged on for so long.
The constitutional requirement for a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to pass a budget is clearly the single most important reason why the Capitol is in a state of near-permanent political gridlock. But the two-thirds rule has been around since the New Deal and budgets used to get passed. So what’s the hang-up?
Power: Nobody’s got it.
The governor and the Legislature fulminate and flounder simply because no one in the Capitol in 2009 has the stature, clout or influence to cut a deal like Ronnie and Jesse or Pete and Willie once did.
Actually, the budget has ALREADY been passed once this year, closing a $42 billion dollar deficit. The new $26 billion dollar problem points to the unique nature of the current deep recession. I’d like to see good ol’ Ronnie and Jesse and Pete and Willie deal with a $68 billion shortfall in the space of six months.
But beyond that, what is also missing from this analysis is the lengths to which the “big bully” theory of how to manage California government, where Democrats and Republicans get together and “cut a deal,” is in a real sense RESPONSIBLE for the problem we now face. Take the assessment of the 1992 budget in the midst of a recession:
Contrast this year’s with the budget meltdown of 1992, the last time California issued IOUs. Although many of the same conditions applied, the big difference was that both Gov. Pete Wilson and Speaker Willie Brown wielded enough political authority to sit down in a room and cut a deal: Wilson took responsibility for rounding up Republican votes for tax increases and Brown for putting a lid on Democratic caterwauling over program cuts.
Somehow the inability of these major players to avoid a situation where IOUs had to be issued gets put to the side. But what Willie Brown did not use that clout to do, what no Democrat has done since 1978’s Prop. 13 opened the structural revenue gap enforced by the 2/3 requirement for budgets and taxes, is actually solve the real problem. Instead he cut a deal, relying on a future asset bubble to bail him out again and again, and setting the table for today’s crisis.
The 1980s saw the construction of the model. Sprawl was used to provide affordable housing. Special tax systems were set up to pay for suburban schools – the 1982 Mello-Roos Act – which were funded as long as there was enough credit to sustain sprawl. The loss of property tax revenue led cities to shift toward retail, further promoting sprawl (big box stores, malls). The jobs and spending created by sprawl provided enough prosperity to keep voters happy and the politicians in power. For those who were left behind – those living in the city centers, people of color, and the poor – 1978 had been partly about their political and economic marginalization, and the majority of Californians embraced it as part of the deal.
The ideal feature of the centrist system, from the view of its practitioners, is that it apparently neutralized the right-wing revolt of 1978. Low taxes could be paired with preservation of core services, albeit at a slightly reduced level, and thereby avoided another Jarvisite outburst. Well-paid consultants could run statewide TV campaigns to force the public to accept the consensus, without having to do the messy work of engaging a grassroots that would challenge the centrist status quo.
When the system came crashing down in 1991-92, the centrists found it possible to cut a deal to keep things going. Pete Wilson and Willie Brown had much in common, and were able to hammer out a package of tax increases and spending cuts that got a 2/3 majority. I don’t romanticize that deal, but instead use it to show that it confirmed to the centrists that the system they’d built in 1980s could withstand crisis as long as everyone was willing to sit down and make a deal, damn the consequences.
However, the right-wing wasn’t sleeping. In 1990 they managed to convince a bare majority of voters to approve Prop 140, a radical term limits measure that should have fallen afoul of the “revision” rule. But the real moment of change came in 1994, when the far-right in the Republican Party grabbed control of the agenda and launched a massive attack on Latino Californians. Pete Wilson wholeheartedly embraced the attack, and although it brought Republicans gains that year, it was a victory to make Pyrrhus jealous. Latinos registered for citizenship and to vote in massive numbers, and beginning in 1996 what had once been a state whose politics were fairly balanced shifted massively to the Democrats.
As long as Republicans stood a reasonable chance of winning control of California’s legislature or its electoral votes, Democratic deal-cutting with Republicans could be sold to the base as a necessary move to stave off the Jarvisite hordes. But after 1996 this became less and less plausible. The California Republican Party became a captive of the extreme right, even more than usual, and in one of its last acts before leaving power in 1998, pushed through a massive and reckless series of tax cuts.
I don’t disagree at all that we currently face a lack of leadership and clout to get deals done in Sacramento. Arnold Schwarzenegger has no role inside his own party, and Bass and Steinberg preside over a dysfunctional set of rule requirements and are term-limited out of gathering political capital. My point is that such leadership has ALWAYS been lacking from the Democratic side of the aisle, at least since 1978. When prosperity waned, it was clear that California’s political structure would resist responsible governance at every turn. But instead of preparing for that eventuality by changing the rules, those good old boys of the past cut deals that exacerbated the problem. They forced the current crop of non-leaders into ringing up the state credit card and enabled the right-wing faction that holds a veto over economic policies. The center did not hold – but it could never hold. And the centrists who ruled California in the years after Prop. 13, the timid types who ran away from real solutions and put the state in the position to fail, should not be lauded. They should be ashamed.
While at this point it seems pretty clear that comparing Arnold Schwarzenegger is kind of like comparing diseases that you could get, Gray Davis does come out a winner. But really, only just. The failures at the end of his administration made his hold on the office even weaker. So, yeah, Davis was a better governor, but kind of like how falling in a prickly pear is better than sleeping in a fire ant hill.
But, while there were many differences between the two administrations, there is at least one commonality: Susan Kennedy. In an interview last year, Kennedy compared herself to a CEO:
Susan Kennedy likens her job to being CEO of a large corporation. In this case, though, the company is the State of California, “with the governor being chairman of the board.”
***
“Actually, the governor’s office is run like a corporation,” Kennedy says. “I have a legislative secretary who handles the governor’s legislative matters; a cabinet secretary who oversees health and human services, prisons and education; a legal affairs secretary; {and} then we have finance and research departments. Governor Schwarzenegger, as chairman of the board, makes final decisions and we carry out his directives.” (Marin Magazine April 2008)
Well, I qon’t quibble with her metaphor and argue that the Governor is supposed to be the CEO, and she is the COO or what not. But, if she claims to be an officer of the state as corporation, wouldn’t she have been fired by now?
The fact is that the state is a mess, and her “corporation”, the Governor’s shop, has caused much of said mess. And her record as Davis’ deputy chief of staff was hardly stellar. What kind of corporation would stick with somebody with this kind of record?
Arnold Schwarzenegger is a superstar. There is no denying that fact. It’s what swept him into office in 2003, and pretty much his modus opperandi since then. He governs and promotes programs like you would promote an action movie. You call the other action movies in the theaters, umm, “girlie-men”, and then go speak to every camera you can find about how awesome you are.
But, I must say, this is something new:
Schwarzenegger has been touting a need for transparency in the face of evidence that Californians don’t trust their government. He even says he would like his office to be a “glass house” so visitors can see inside.
“Everyone will be performing more, but I think eventually they will get used to it that there is cameras around,” he said in a recent interview. (LAT 7/6/09)
At this point, it is hard to tell when the man is being serious, when he’s posturing, and when he’s making some sort of bad joke. His first budget, the one that completely cut Cal-WORKS was apparently a posture, as the next one contained the stuff he really wanted: massive long-term reforms that would take the state on a hard-right turn. Then he revealed this latest budget, which doesn’t have the big news-grabbers like the elimination of welfare in California. However, it does have the suspension of Proposition 98’s education funding guarantees. And his push to include long-term reforms is ultimately what is making a short term deal impossible.
Yet, Arnold is a showman and will be a showman until the day he dies. And at this point, he’s abandoned all notion of governing and is instead just gone back to being a showman. It’s easy to bring your approval ratings up if you simply cater to the the insanity of the right-wing that had formerly abandoned you. It’s easy to say you are like Ronald Reagan, but Arnold hasn’t even brought Reagan’s level of negotiating seriousness to the table. He hasn’t shown any interest whatsoever in doing what it takes to build a consensus that 2/3 of the legislators could sign on to. It’s not for lack of trying on Speaker Bass’s part, and certainly not from Sen. Steinberg. Arnold has showed absolutely no leadership since he finished threatening people on May 19.
Of course, there are reasons other than Schwarzenegger for our state’s failures. Calbuzz covers most of that ground today, pointing out that the supermajority rules and term limits make the state ungovernable. (I would quibble with the gerrymandering claims, because you could draw districts in random squares across the state and still have strongly partisan seats. That’s a different subject though.)
But, Arnold at this point isn’t doing the work that Willie Brown and Pete Wilson did back in the day. If Arnold is simply doing the job for his legacy, or out of some perverse sense of spectacle, and isn’t in it to actually solve problems, he should pull a Sarah Palin, and resign. It would be better for the state, and better for him.
You can almost set your watch by it. The state budget picture is a mess, Democrats ask for a balanced solution, Republicans hold their ground and say no, Democrats don’t have the vote so they let it go. It happens practically every single year, and it’s happening again, according to CapAlert:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said separately Thursday that they are optimistic a budget deal can be struck within several days.
The tone of their comments marked a stark contrast to Capitol fighting over the last few weeks between Democrats and Republicans over bridging the state’s $26.3 billion budget gap.
Steinberg also said Democrats had given up any attempt to increase taxes on tobacco or establish an oil severance tax […]
The Senate president said that Democrats no longer are pushing for a 9.9 percent tax on oil extraction or for hiking the state’s tobacco tax by $1.50 per pack.
“We would like to see an increase in the tobacco tax and the oil severance tax as a solution, but in this chapter that’s not realistic and it’s not what we’re holding out for,” Steinberg said.
It’s never going to be realistic in ANY CHAPTER. Republicans know exactly how to play this game. Their votes are needed for tax increases, so if they hang together they cannot lose. The Democrats haven’t figured out how to shame the Yacht Party or make them pay for their votes, giving them no reason to do anything but hijack the process. You’ll notice that as a result of this horrific experiment in governance, California is operating worse than practically every other state in the union.
We’ve seen this kind of “it’s almost over” trial balloon on many occasions, so I wouldn’t put on the party hats just yet. But somehow at the end of this process, somebody will step up to a microphone and claim how reaching agreement is a sign of success. No. It’s a sign of failure. A failure to responsibly manage the state’s finances, reflected by the worst economy in 70 years. The only lesson that can be learned from this process is that it’s fundamentally broken.
Schwarzenegger and I then repaired to a tent that he had put up in a courtyard next to his office, which allows him to smoke cigars legally at work (no smoking is allowed inside the Capitol). The tent is about 15 square feet, carpeted with artificial turf and outfitted with stylish furniture, an iPod, a video-conferencing terminal, trays of almonds, a chess table, a refrigerator and a large photo of the governor. Schwarzenegger reclined deeply in his chair, lighted an eight-inch cigar and declared himself “perfectly fine,” despite the fiscal debacle and personal heartsickness all around him. “Someone else might walk out of here every day depressed, but I don’t walk out of here depressed,” Schwarzenegger said. Whatever happens, “I will sit down in my Jacuzzi tonight,” he said. “I’m going to lay back with a stogie.”
This is the guy who dares to chide others for not doing their job.
Dave mentioned a bit of what Sen. Steinberg said last night, but I thought this was worth while video.
In the end, we learn a few things. First, that Arnold was negotiating in bad faith. He refused to budge, and then piled on additional grand policy changes.
But, Steinberg starts out with 2/3. It’s worth transcribing…even if I miss a few things.
The 2/3 requirement that we have in this state. I know it’s a tired old saw. But when you really think about, that is the cause of so much of the dysfunction in the legislature. you have a minority party that obviously worked in tandem with the governor that cost the state 6-7 billion dollars tonight for no good reason. To somehow improve your negotiating position. It is without question the most irresponsible act that I have seen in my 15 years of public service…I hope that the significance will truly capture enough attention that the people will decide it is time to change the system that allows the minority to essentially rule the day. That’s not just the Senate Republicans, it was the Governor too, who was apparently out to prove a point. And he proved a point.
At one point, you can really see the emotion in his voice. Check out the video, it’s worth a few minutes.
Arnold Schwarzenegger thinks he’s got a “hook” for the budget crisis. It’s so stupid it’ll probably work.
In between vetoing acceptable solutions for the budget crisis, Schwarzenegger directed his staff to create a YouTube video of a Senate hearing held today on SB 135, which would ban animal cruelty and the practice of tail docking of dairy cows. Simply because it’s mildly annoying to have a tail in their faces while working, farmers chop them off of cows, for no material benefit to hygeine or anything else, and to the potential detriment of milk production by increasing stress. It’s illegal in much of Europe and opposed by the American Veterinary Medical Association. There’s an article here.
Apparently the 63% of the voters who passed Prop. 2 last November were wrong – animal cruelty is a secondary issue to the very important work of wasting billions of dollars through stubbornness.
So in the YouTube video Schwarzenegger cuts back and forth from the hearing to his schoolmarmish denunciation in his press conference to create the impression that “in the midst of the budget crisis, the Senate is debating cow tails.”
Hey Arnold, this is something called “governing.” I know you know nothing about it, since you spent a month dithering with different budget solutions while the legislature was holding a month’s worth of public sessions on the budget. But lawmakers actually can do more than one thing at a time. Some have standing committees, while others, in the leadership, can run into the brick wall that is the California budget process over and over, a brick wall you just applied with a new coat of paint by vetoing real solutions that would have stopped $7 billion dollars in additional cuts and the issuance of IOUs. For anyone who has been this much of a failure to say one word about how OTHER people govern is absurd.
By the way, Darrell Steinberg has already cancelled all future policy committee hearings to focus on the budget, which I think is a silly and unnecessary reaction to the rantings of a dullard Governor. But as long as we’re going down this road, here are a few tweets I contributed exposing the Governor’s horrible inattention in the midst of a budget crisis:
Right now, in the midst of a budget crisis @Schwarzenegger actually slept for EIGHT HOURS! That’s not leadership #cabudget
19 minutes ago from web
Right now, in the midst of a budget crisis @Schwarzenegger had dinner… at a restaurant! That’s not leadership #cabudget
19 minutes ago from web
Right now, in the midst of a budget crisis @Schwarzenegger excused himself to go to the bathroom! That’s not leadership #cabudget
19 minutes ago from web
Right now, in the midst of a budget crisis @Schwarzenegger breathed both in and out! That’s not leadership #cabudget
18 minutes ago from web
Join in with your own if you want.
This is just idiotic grandstanding from the Governor, who appears to know nothing about public policy or the American system of government. Any reporter who runs with this should be ashamed of themselves.
