(You can find Poizner’s remarks here. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Willie Brown has been known to bring in big names, and it is really hard to say no when he asks you to come speak at one of his events, or any event really.  So, as you may have guessed, everybody was at his “Breakfast Club” this morning. Arnold, all the candidates, and, well, everybody except the reclusive Meg Whitman. You’ll have to forgive my camera work.

The speeches went as you would expect them.  Poizner, Campbell, and Brown all gave speeches. All of which I missed, however, I did get reports from a solid (Democratic) source, who called Tom Campbell the best of the bunch.  Jerry Brown’s speech was just a standard stump speech, and according to Carla Marinucci, Brown has no inclination to announce his candidacy anytime soon.  And Poizner, well, he was Poizner.  

Check out the full wrap over the flip.

Poizner apparently lectured the crowd, especially any educators in the group, about how principals ignored him when he cold-called schools wanting to teach.  Let’s rewind to get the background on this.  Poizner knew he wanted to get himself elected to something after he made a bunch of money in the business world. So, he started calling principals of many local peninsula schools. Shockingly, nobody called the crazy guy back who wanted to volunteer at the schools. Note to Poizner: You know how many pedophiles would have tried that game if we just opened up the doors to anybody with a halfway decent education? And just to show off how brilliant he truly is, he went ahead and listed off his accomplishments, and was shocked that a principal would find him unqualified for his own classroom. Because, in the Republican world, being successful in business makes you qualified for Everything!

I stood in at an impromptu press avail for Poizner with Carla Marinucci, and got a bit more information. He tweaked Whitman for not showing up at debates, and trying to wait until March. But the important, and kind of crazy part, was that Poizner said that he wants a clear mandate, and wants voters to buy into his (kind of scary) plans for the state. He doesn’t want the votes of those who don’t follow his plan for the state.  Kind of bold there.

Now, to Campbell, he delivered a speech saying that he was going to deliver “25 Whoppers” ie things that politicians say that have no real meaning. On the left and the right. From my source, I got some doozies like “You can lower taxes to raise revenue,” a direct shout out to Poizner’s “economic plan.”  And “Everything would be better if we ran the state like a business” was pointed toward Whitman, who has advocated that relentlessly.  Campbell pointed to the Legislature and said, how does that fit into a corporate structure?

Campbell is good, and if he can find some way to get through that Republican primary, he could be a very tough opponent for any Democrat, Jerry Brown or otherwise.  Of course, the fact that Campbell isn’t loaded in a race with two super-rich candidates is a major problem to his viability in the race. I actually think that his rhetoric could throw the race into a scrum even if he only runs as an independent.  But, again, money is the huge problem for Campbell. He just can’t raise enough to be really competitive.

And then Arnold struts on the stage, welcoming some elected officials saying how he loves the job. And four minutes into the speech he busts out with this line:

I’ve been hear four minutes, and nobody has screamed to kiss my gay ass yet. So I love this crowd.

Of course, this is a reference to Tom Ammiano’s remark at the SF DCCC gala event. However, I was unable to catch this part of the video, so you’ll have to do with his listing of reasons why he loves California. Sorry for the crazy camera work.

However, there was some substance to the speech. he discuss the stimulus package, of which he is a big fan. With $18.5 Billion already received, and the state expecting $50 bn. total, it is obviously a big deal. And to those who say it isn’t worth it, Arnold says to go ask the teachers who weren’t laid off whether it was worth it.  He also pitched California’s HSR, real HSR, not that 120 mph stuff they want to do on the East Coast. Arnold wants to get most, if not all, of the federal stimulus for HSR.

On water, Arnold outlined the problem, with most of the water coming from NorCal, and most of the users coming from SoCal. He clearly wants the Peripheral Canal. He framed it as part of Pat Brown’s infrastructural plan of the 1960s, and it was just one part that never got built.  Good idea, but those who have followed will remember that it was more than just funding that was blocking the construction of the peripheral canal. He wants the bond package to pass with both Rep and Dem support, and it will likely be around $10 bn.

He then goes on to praise ever possible aspect of Arne Duncan, Obama’s education secretary, for the “race to the top” scheme. He had always wanted to create the link between achievement and teacher pay, and this is how he is getting it done, by hanging federal cash over the heads of the CTA. He is also excited at the opportunity for greater public school choice, and to allow students from any area enroll in any school. Of course, this is hugely problematic for the neighborhood school concept and having schools in the bad parts of town across the state. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the motivated parents will move their kids to the good schools, while those who aren’t so caring let their kids sit in the bad schools. Making the good schools better, and the bad schools worse.  It’s a recipe to leave a whole group of children behind. But as I wrote in my notes: Arnold Hearts Duncan.

Arnold can’t pass up any opportunity to rail against the tax system, but he only lightly suggested the Parsky plan. It is clear that that particular plan is dead in the water, Arnold really wants to get some changes in before 2010 elections roll around. Whether these changes will be good for the state is an open question.

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 some might say that Willie Brown was part of the system in the period where our government was functionally disabled, he does have a keen eye on these things.

It’s not that the public won’t go for it – the problem is that the Legislature can’t put together the two-thirds vote needed to put something on the ballot.

I was up in Sacramento on Thursday, and it was clear from my meetings with Democratic lawmakers that while there may be the votes to add some new “fees,” taxes just are not in the equation. (SF Chronicle 6/7/09)

This is pretty much conventional wisdom at this point. The issue, it seems, is getting beyond conventional wisdom in Sacramento.  Your guess is as good as mine on how that happens…

There are some other items of note going on beyond the Democratic Party (or at least somewhat beyond the Democratic Party). Some items of note:

Anything else?

[UPDATE by Dave]: I have a couple:

• Here’s a Republican being a Republican.  Classy as hell.

Santa Ana City Councilman Carlos Bustamante has quietly resigned from two state commissions he was appointed to by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, after his published remarks last month suggesting that a male candidate for Orange County sheriff could’ve gotten the job if he had breast implants […]

After the Orange County Board of Supervisors appointed Sandra Hutchens over Santa Ana Police Chief Paul Walters as the county’s sheriff on June 10, Bustamante joked to a blogger: “I kept telling the chief [Walters]: ‘Maybe we should get you some implants. Or a water bra.’ “

• More coverage on John Garamendi’s speech at the launch of Health Care For America Now.

• TChris at Talk Left looks at the death penalty in CA.  This is pretty shocking:

Since 1978, the federal courts have ordered new trials in 38 of 54 death penalty appeals in California, an unacceptable 70 percent error rate.

Read the whole thing.

• And this is a few days old, but just so you know, the yacht economy is rocking!!!  Thanks to that avoidance of sales tax, I’m sure!

Oh how I love bullet points:

• The LA Times launched a cute little interactive primary calendar along with a presidential primary blog. Oh, and a message to Rudy. If there's a story about how you're arguing with Alan-freaking-Keyes, well, you might as well fold up shop.
• Anthony Wright is one of the most astute observers of the health care industry. The dude just understands it in ways that I'm pretty sure I never will. Well, yesterday he had a great post on the topic of the individual mandate at the national level.  Edwards and Clinton include one in their health care plans, and Obama has recently indicated that he'd be willing to include one. Although I suggest you mosey on over there to read the whole thing in its entirety, the post centers around the concept of a mandate as a challenge not to just the citizenry but also to the government to ensure affordability. But if the government fails, as is happening in Massachusetts, what then?

  Wright sums the argument up concisely: “The mandate muddle masks the real question: how much actual help does the health plan provide people?”

• For the time being, the Arnold Prison Papers are being held back from our prying eyes. The 3 judge panel stayed the order to the Governator to relase the papers pending a hearing tomorrow. These papers could be quite interesting.
• You want more words from smart people? Well, Peter Schrag fits that mold. In his column today he talks about the real story behind the PPIC forum in Sacramento with Willie Brown, Pete Wilson, Jim Brulte, and Fabian Nunez. Read it. He's smart.
• Somehow I forgot to mention that Warren Furutani won the special election to replace Laura Richardson in the Assembly. However he missed the 50% by 134 votes. That's actually a bigger number than it sounds as only 17507 votes were cast. That's just about 10% turnout. He'll face the American Independent Party winner and the Libertarian winner in the February 5 runoff whereupon he will become the next Assemblyman from the 55th District.

Yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle had a lengthy Ed Epstein piece on Speaker Pelosi marking 20 years in the house following her contentious special election victory over Harry Britt. Over the years, San Francisco politics have proven an effective training ground to allow the people we elect to excel. Feinstein is a powerhouse, Willie Brown was Da Speaker, the Burton brothers were titans in Sacramento and DC, Migden chairs the senate Caucus, Leno chairs Appropriations. If you can make here politically, you really can make it anywhere.

And if you want to see what I’m talking about, read Chris Daly’s op-ed at the Fog City Journal on the current budget battle. Making great use of the medium with literally dozens of links (going back to 1998), the Supervisor shows how San Francisco politics is fought in the trenches. And remember, all of this is over one half of one percent of the SF budget.

June 2nd is going to be a huge day in San Francisco politics. Gavin Newsom is kicking off his signature gathering with a rally and Chris Daly is holding is “convention” to try and force somebody to make it a race. At last night’s fundraiser, I heard from two very knowledgeable progressive supervisors about the state of the race. One insisted that Matt Gonzalez was going to run and make it a re-match. The other insisted that there was no way in hell Matt Gonzalez was going to run. In unrelated news, a reliable source told me that Alex Tourk was seen having dinner with former Mayor Willie Brown last night (BTW, section 3.101 of SF Code says, “There shall be no limit on the non-successive terms that a person may serve”). Could be an interesting race…

(I actually moved to CA to help get him re-elected as Mayor and if nothing else he is always a hoot – promoted by blogswarm)

This evening was my first at the Commonwealth Club of California and former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown was the guest of honor. I wasn’t here for his tenure in City Hall so I can’t say what kind of a mayor he was. However, he sure is a schmoozer, and a wise political hand. Anyway, he shared his take on local, state and national politics.

1. This is the best field of Democrats in a long time.

2. He predicted that barring a major mistake, Democrats will win the White House, maintain a solid hold on the House and keep the Senate. He even went so far to say that Hillary can be elected (he personally supports Bill Richardson).

3. No matter what happens with this election, Barack Obama has a fantastic future ahead of him, though his inexperience is beginning to show.

4. Giuliani is dead in the water.

5. Democrats should stand out of the way and allow Bush to hang himself with Iraq.

6. Arnold’s dark side is showing itself again with his proposed state budget and explained why he did not support Phil Angelides in 2006.

7. Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris will be handily re-elected, but does not rule out a run by Art Agnos.

8. Regarding the 49ers, he said in so many words that Newsom fucked it up badly, but that Santa Clara will eventually decline to fund their share of the costs.

9. Aaron Peskin is the most effective Supervisor.

Overall, it was an informative night. Tomorrow, I will be at the Fairmont to see the Newsom interview.