Our Governor is always talking about the lack of money coming into the state. Perhaps there would be more if he would pay his taxes:

According to documents filed in L.A. County Superior Court, Arnold Schwarzenegger owes the IRS $39,047 from 2004 and $40,016 from 2005. In total the Guv owes $79,064.00 … and as we all know, he’s definitely not saving the money for rainy day traffic violations.

An official at the L.A. County Recorder’s Office tells TMZ their system shows the lien is still active.(TMZ)

As the governor of the largest state in the union, Arnold has a committment to lead by example. Perhaps this is why he’s furloughing the Franchise Tax Board tax collectors.

You can grab the PDF of the lien form here.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s right-wing Director of Finance, Mike Genest, is resigning from his post, after being the governor’s point man on the budget since 2005. And after being the governor’s point man on gutting the state these last few years, he is leaving with a few parting shots. Not at the current governor, but at one of the hopefuls looking to replace him: Steve Poizner. As Genest tells it to George Skelton, Poizner’s 10-10-10 tax cut plan is a political non-starter as well as economically and financially ruinous:

“Tax cuts do tend to improve the economy,” Genest says, “but it’s very hard historically to find where they result in a revenue increase. You could argue that the best thing for the economy is to have no taxes at all, but people depend on some government services. Without them, we don’t have any economy. If you don’t believe me, look at Somalia.”

Genest continues: “There’s no basis to believe that a tax cut now would be affordable given the budget situation the state faces. I know Rush Limbaugh is going to hate me.”

As for deeper spending cuts, Genest says: “You can always cut spending by 10%. The question is do you want to. We just tried to close parks, and that didn’t work out. We tried to take money away from women’s shelters and had to relent on that.”

I like Genest’s honesty here – he says they wanted to close parks and cause further harm to battered women, but that public outcry prevented this. One wonders if Democratic leaders will get the message: Arnold can be forced to back down if the Dems refuse to go along with his hurtful cuts by mobilizing public outrage. Skelton, for once, helpfully connected the dots and showed that the attack on government itself actually hurts instead of helps businesses and jobs:

There’s also a dispute about whether businesses and wealthy Californians really are fleeing the state to escape high taxation. Many think any fleeing has more to do with high property costs, traffic congestion and subpar public schools.

“If high income taxes were chasing away rich Californians, high-income households would be more likely than low-income households to move to states without income taxes, but they aren’t,” the Public Policy Institute of California reported in July. And two years ago, the institute found that “when California businesses relocate, most stay within — rather than moving out of — the state.”

This gets to a fundamental truth that most Californians understand, but that Poizner is determined to ignore: without strong public services, California is an undesirable place to live, work, create, and innovate. The best way to chase away businesses and jobs is to destroy our schools, wipe out our health care system, and let our transportation system become paralyzed through gridlock and dependence on oil.

In fact, a coalition of business groups have come together to fight for one of the big government spending programs designed to help California’s crisis – high speed rail. I fully expect Poizner to oppose the high speed rail project, so I would like to see him explain that opposition to the corporations that comprise the SF Chamber of Commerce, the Bay Area Council, and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, who together founded the new HSR coalition.

Skelton also quoted from Lou Cannon, noted biographer of Ronald Reagan, who pointed out that the Republican hero himself supported several tax increases in California, including the largest ever (as a proportion of the budget) to close a budget gap in 1967. At least while he was governor, Reagan understood the role of government in providing for the California Dream.

It’s a role Poizner refuses to understand, even when a fellow right-winger like Mike Genest tries to explain it to him. Although I’m sure it will play well with the teabagger base.

George Skelton catches a few, ahem, tall tales in some of Meg Whitman’s radio spots.  

“Did you know,” Whitman asks radio listeners, “that in the last 10 years, state spending has gone up 80%?”

*** *** ***

It doesn’t take much digging to learn that general fund spending “in the last 10 years” has risen just 27%, according to finance department data. Adjusted for inflation and population growth, spending actually has decreased by 16.6%.

(LA Times 10/29/09)

They have some fun with numbers excuse for the 80% number by finishing with the 2007-2008 closed book numbers, but, of course, even that excludes inflation and population growth.

But Meg Whitman has a story for the people of California. A story that bears no resemblance to the more complicated reality, but it’s simple: California’s state government spends too much. That somehow California is just tossing around money because the numbers are big.

Yet, despite the numbers that Whitman would like to show you, here are the real numbers. California is 26th in per capita state spending with about $5,000 per capita. And that’s from FY 2007, the high water mark where eMeg’s ads were proclaiming out of control spending. (Data from Kaiser Foundation). Since that time, we’ve slashed and burned through our budget. We’re spending substantially less money, and providing a lot fewer services. But, we can’t all keep up with those spend happy states like Oklahoma (#18), Louisiana (#9), Alabama (#7) and Alaska (#1).

So, it’s going to be more of the same crap. Lies, deceptions, and half-truths. Yup, a real change candidate, that Meg Whitman.

It’s not like the “budget deal” hasn’t already accomplished some sort of dark goal of letting a large group of Californians float in the wind.  Clearly, the “deal” will result in the untimely deaths of hundreds, but more likely thousands, of Californians.

We’ll get more details of the cuts up as soon as we can. But here is what the Bee has for now:

Line items totaled $656 million, including cuts in the Office of Aids Prevention and Treatment. (SacBee 7/28/09)

What does this mean? Well, it means more Californians will get HIV. Some will die young, and others will chronically take HIV meds for the rest of their life.  This is just one more  profound failure in an administration that has been one big disaster after another.

In case you are wondering what exactly the Office of AIDS does, here is the official Office of AIDS website. Because clearly this goal is just a waste of money:

OA is committed to assess, prevent, and interrupt the transmission of HIV, and to provide for the needs of HIV-infected Californians.

Oh, never mind actual statistics showing overall rebounding rates of seroconversion and skyrocketing HIV rates among minorities, especially African-Americans, Asian/Pacific Islanders, and young people.

No, we need to “live within our means” aka dying without them.

UPDATE: Over $52 million of the cuts were from the Office of AIDS. I wonder how his good buddies in Hollywood feel about this.

$52,133,000 General Fund for various programs administered by the Office of AIDS:

Education and Prevention, Therapeutic Monitoring, Counseling and Testing, Early

Intervention, Home and Community Based Care, and Housing

A while ago, I mentioned the regional centers. The Regional Centers protect California’s mentally disabled, both children and adults.  However, with the recent budget cuts, there simply aren’t the resources to protect everybody.  But that’s far from it.

In today’s California Report, the Contra Costa County Adult protective services tells the tale of a 5’7″ adult female who weighed only 90 pounds and had severe physical trauma. While you don’t get the visuals, you can understand why an in-person investigation is so important. However, under the new rules, social workers are required to investigate by phone only. While these great social workers are truly miracle workers, it is nearly impossible for them to protect everybody. In fact, the county grand jury now says that APS “no longer has the resources to carry out its legal mandate to investigate physical and financial abuse.”

state	rank	per capita spending($)
Alaska	1	16952
West Virginia	2	10245
Alabama	7	7872
New York	14	5804
Iowa	25	5051
California	26	5028
Pennsylvania	31	4583
Nevada	50	3209
FY07 Stats from Kaiser Foundation

Arnold is talking about “living within our means,” but what does that mean if we are letting people simply die? How are we living within our means then?  The fallacy of the right in this state that we are simply overspending has somehow been taken to heart by all sorts of moderates and even many progressives. But it is simply not true. As Jon Ortiz pointed out in the State Worker blog yesterday, we have the second lowest number of state employees per capita. We are solidly middle of the road in terms of state spending per capita.  In fact, we are 26th in state spending of the 50 states. Take these few examples in the table to the left.

As you can see, California is hardly overspending relative to other states in the union. We aren’t some sort of outlier.  The only thing that we have that is an outlier is our completely dysfunctional system of government.  We are living within our means. We are providing the state with slightly above terrible level of services. Yet, the myth of California “living outside our means” persists. Why? Well, you know why, I know why, everybody knows why. Yet only a few actually say it.  It is convenient to believe this myth. It makes scapegoats out of those who dare to use government services.

After all these years of “two santas” tax cuts, we simply have nothing left to give. We are at the point of completely cutting welfare, completely cutting state aid to state parks, completely cutting adult and child protection services.

That’s not anything resembling “living within our means.” That’s just unjustifiable societal manslaughter.

Dave Johnson, Speak Out California.

Here at Calitics there is an interesting diary from ‘zeroh8’ asking “Why Are We Spending So Much More?”  zeroh8 looked at the changes over the last ten years in how the state spends money.  The result, according to the diary, is a per-capita increase of $1088 as follows:

California Government Department
2007-08 less 1997-98 Per Capita Spending

Criminal Justice $185
General Government $14
Health $265
Higher

Education $109
K-12 Education $399
Resources & Environmental

Protection $27
Social Services $59
Transportation $30
Total $1,088 

Robert Cruikshank commented that the appearance of an education spending increase is an illusion, (sadly California still ranks 47th in education spending-per-pupil)

Much of the “increase” in K-12 funds is illusory. When Arnold cut the VLF in 2003 that money had to be backfilled by the state. That backfilling is listed on  the books as “spending” and so it appears as a huge “spending increase” when in  fact it is no such thing. Schools didn’t actually get more money. It’s an  accounting trick.

Robert is pointing out that this appearance of a large increase in education spending is actually just replacing spending that was already there, but that was cut from local budgets when Governor Schwarzenegger cut the Vehicle License Fee, so the state had to make up (backfill) the loss.  The state is spending more because local governments are spending less, but the total hasn’t increased.  Lesson: you have to look at the whole picture including local budgets to see the whole story because the state has to step in when local governments lose their funding sources.

Health care spending increases are certainly not isolated to California state government.  This is the health care crisis that is eating up government, business and family budgets around the country.  So far We, the People, in our wisdom, had avoided the kind of “socialized medicine” that the rest of the world has, which means we spend vastly more for health care with vastly worse results.  There is little California can do about it, except to further deny health care to people.  Is that the kind of people we will decide to be? 

Then there is that huge increase in criminal justice (prison) spending.  Was that necessary?  Well, we decided to pass laws that put people in prison for life for stealing a pizza or for years for smoking a joint.  And in the last few decades we have cut education spending, which to some extent has necessitated the increases in prison spending, because we know where that inevitably leads,

“18-to-24-year-old male high school dropouts have an incarceration rate 31 times that of males who graduated from a four-year college”      

We’re seeing the health care crisis eating the state budget, and the problem of the prison costs. Part of our problems today are because yesterday we were “penny wise and pound foolish,” saving some money by cutting education only to spend it on prisons (and who knows how many other ways) later.  Along with foolish tax cuts like cutting the VLF, and cutting property taxes for big corporations, and instead borrowing which has led to huge interest payments, those are the spending problems that brought about the budget crisis and that keep our government from being able to spend more on things We, the People need.

About those choices: zeroh8 did a ton of research because no California citizen would know any of this from sources available to most of us.  The corporate media is not explaining the state budget and the functions of government to the public.  The example of the state making up local revenue losses in order to save our schools is a great example — instead it is just presented to people that the state is “spending even more”.

So what is the point of this exercise? To give the people the facts, not the phony sound-bites designed to further anger people against government and rail even further about having to pay taxes to fund the programs and services. The goal of the conservatives is to simply unfund government, thus making “We the People” powerless against the big moneyed interests — the people who brought you the sub-prime fiasco, the Wall Street boondogles, the Haliburton no-bid contracts and the Blackwater mercenaries.  As long as the bucks are flowing, what do they care if government can’t do its job…. what do they care about long lines at the DMV, wildfires that burn down communities, gangs that take over our streets and oh, yes……swine flu epidemics that kill millions?  They can just fly away in their private jets or sail away on their yachts — that California won’t tax.

Click through to Speak Out California and leave a comment.

The California Budget is a mess. That is bad news but the really bad news is that this mess is really complicated.  And then the Assembly wants us – the voters – to somehow make sense of things and make the hard decisions.

I tend to think that the problem with the California State Budget is spending.  But I haven’t been able to find out exactly what all of this increased spending is going for.  So I worked up some numbers – based on the data from the Legislative Analyst’s Office web site (they are reputable aren’t they?) and put together the following information so I can understand it better.

I am not sure if you were here in California back in 1998.  I was – right here in Burbank – and I thought things were going pretty good back then.  I didn’t get the feeling that the state government was in financial trouble. Things seemed to be moving along smoothly.  Back then, here is what the state was spending for me (and for every other Californian) out of the General Fund at that time:

California Government Department

1997-98 Per Capita Spending

Criminal Justice $158

General Government $132

Health $258

Higher Education $202

K-12 Education $648

Resources & Environmental Protection $25

Social Services $189

Transportation $7

Total $1,619

Next I checked to see how much they were spending for me in 2008:

California Government Department

2007-08 Per Capita Spending

Criminal Justice $343

General Government $146

Health $523

Higher Education $311

K-12 Education $1,047

Resources & Environmental Protection $52

Social Services $248

Transportation $37

Total $2,707

Then I calculated how much more the state government decided to spend for me in 2008 than they were spending for me back in 1998 (remember that is when I thought things were going just fine):

California Government Department

2007-08 less 1997-98 Per Capita Spending

Criminal Justice $185

General Government $14

Health $265

Higher Education $109

K-12 Education $399

Resources & Environmental Protection $27

Social Services $59

Transportation $30

Total $1,088

Wow, what a difference 10 years makes!  Maybe they needed $185 more for combating crime and building all those new prisons. It still sounds like a lot. I won’t complain about spending $27 more for the environment.  And even the extra $30 for transportation might be okay. The $14 extra for general government is not worth fighting over either but I don’t think they deserve any increase the way they are running things.

But did they really need to go spend another $265 for me on Health? I don’t get the feeling that the health care system in California is all that much better than it used to be. How about the extra $109 for Higher Education? Did the universities and state colleges get 50% better when they got 50% more money in the past 10 years?  Are there 50% more students? Did the other schools (K-12) improve 60% when they decided to spend 60% more on them?  I know they didn’t get a 60% increase in enrollment since the total population only increased 16.5%. They got $399 more to spend than they had back in 1998 from each Californian. Now I think education is important, but there needs to be a connection between spending more money and having better schools. We should have some amazing schools with that sort of money. Social services got $59 more.  I didn’t see exactly where this went – it is just labeled as “Department of Social Services” in the detail I found. I like to think of California as being progressive, so that could be okay by me, but it does add up to an additional $4 Billion.

So in total, the people that run California decided to spend an additional $1,088 for me in 2008 than they spent for me in 1998.  Like I started out, I thought things were going pretty good back in 1998.  If the California government just spent for me today like they did back then, I would be happy.  And that would mean that the state would spend almost $42 billion less ($1,088 x 38 million Californians).  Hey, doesn’t that number sound familiar?  Isn’t that the original projected deficit?  Maybe it is just a freaky coincidence.

My numbers are in constant 2008 dollars, so I can’t explain the extra spending on inflation.  The New America Foundation presentation on the same topic is impressive, but they base their analysis mostly as a percentage of Personal Income – which has undoubtedly grown in the past 10 years.  My point is that no matter how much we are earning, why should we be spending so much more?

 

Dave Johnson, Speak Out California

Let’s take a look at yesterday’s tea parties.   I am hearing from people who attended tea parties around the country that the people who showed up were by and large good, honest Americans who are upset about the bailouts, deficits and general direction that things have been going for some time.  I say good for them for getting involved, speaking up and showing up.  We need more of that in this country, after so many decades of apathy.

There is a problem with the tea party events as presented, however, in that the sentiments and concerns of these regular people were largely hijacked by professional manipulators, who wanted to make it appear that the the people at the rallies support an anti-democracy, anti-government, pro-corporate and right wing agenda.  These were the FOX News and Rush Limbaugh audience, and the people from militias with racist signs, and paranoid people convinced that President Obama is a “fascist,” etc. and who claim that the economic distress we are experiencing is somehow the fault of Obama’s and the Democrats’ policies even though he only took office less than three months ago

There are distressing photos of these event-hijackers, and there was troubling and violent rhetoric at many of the rallies. The Governor of Texas actually talked about his state seceding from the union — the very definition of hating America and the kind of talk once that led to a savage civil war. (FOX News called such talk “patriotic.” One has to ask, “patriotic to what country?”)

An obviously focus-group-tested phrase was repeated at the rallies: “Obama is going to raise taxes on our kids by borrowing for unnecessary government spending now.” But what did the people at these rallies think us “liberals”
have been saying all this time about the effect of all the Republican borrowing to pay for these huge tax cuts they gave to the rich and corporations, and to pay for the Iraq war and other military spending increases? This is the reason we have these huge deficits!

And, of course, no one ever says which spending is “unnecessary.”  Do they mean unemployment checks? Bush made those necessary.  How about money to rebuild roads and bridges and schools? Bush made that necessary.  How about money to reduce our oil use? Bush and Cheney, both former oil company executives, made that necessary. How about money to continue funding the Iraq war? Bush made that necessary. The bailout money? To the extent that it was necessary (I don’t agree that it was) it certainly was not Obama who wrecked the economy.

Which spending in the stimulus plan, specifically, is “unnecessary,” and which was made necessary by the Republicans who messed things up so badly?

Some contradictions from the rallies: 

• The people at the rallies were presented as protesting tax increases, yet in the current Obama budget only tax cuts have been proposed. (There are hints that there will be a request for a small tax increase on the very wealthy after a few years.)
• Many at the rallies were protesting against “government spending,” but did not seem to understand where the government actually spends a huge portion of our budget, such as on military and huge subsidies for big oil, agriculture and other corporations (like Wall Street bailouts) — but instead were protesting against imagined spending like “welfare” and foreign aid, which add up to only a tiny fraction of the budget. 
• Reagan’s and Bush’s tax cuts for the rich have created so much debt that we
  currently pay out over $500 billion to interest each year — paid to people who can
  afford to loan us trillions.  Now that is some serious government spending. 
• Many rallies were rebranded by their corporate-funded organizers as “Fair Tax” rallies. But the so-called “Fair Tax” is really about cutting taxes on the rich and making up for it by raising taxes on everyone else. This is an example of corporate astroturf convincing people to support raising their own taxes or cutting their own benefits so that taxes on the wealthy and big corporations can be further reduced.  (You can’t cut taxes for that group without making up for it somewhere.)

This all brings to mind something that I have said about marketing: with good enough marketing you can convince people to kill
themselves.  Think about cigarettes and the comet-suicide cult and you’ll understand what I mean.

Click through to Speak Out California and leave a comment.

Dave Johnson, Speak Out California.

Forbes List Of Highest-Taxed States Lists California — Not.

The Forbes list of states that tax their citizens the most is out!  And California ranks … well, California isn’t even on the list.

Forbes: Where Americans Are Taxed Most:
10. Pennsylvania (not California)
9. Wyoming (not California)
8. Washington  (not California)
7. Massachusetts (not California)
6. New York (not California)
5. New Jersey (not California)
4. Minnesota (not California)
3. Connecticut (not California)
2. Hawaii (not California)

Drum roll ….

… keep scrolling …

— And the winner is …

1. Vermont (NOT CALIFORNIA!)

So yesterday I’m driving and KGO radio has a show about the "tax revolt" that is "taking place all over California," with people rising up and having "tea parties" to protest the "incredibly high taxes" in California.  Here is KGO’s program listing:
 

2 PM – Growing Anti-Tax Revolt in California? And What About Prop  13?

Taking inspiration from a landmark 1970s tax revolt, a determined group of  activists say the moment is right for another voter uprising in California,  where recession-battered residents have been hit with the highest income and  sales tax rates in the nation. And like Proposition 13, the 1978 ballot measure  that transformed the state’s political landscape and ignited tax-reform  movements nationwide, they see the next backlash coming not from either major  political party, but from the people. How real is the latest anti-tax sentiment  and has Prop 13 run it’s course?
Guest: John Coupal, president Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association

Mr. Coupal was on the show to say that California is the highest-taxing state, and state taxes should be lower, and the government wastes all the money it takes in, and can’t be trusted, and is too big.  He talked about how other states get by with lower taxes while providing better services than California. He said, for example, that there is no income tax at all in Texas — without mentioning that Texas taxes oil taken out of the ground while California doesn’t.  He said that California spends more on schools than any other state, and called for "school choice" — which is getting rid of public schools and only having education for those who can afford it.

He said a lot of things that turn out not to be factual if you look into them.  But you can’t bother be factual and argue for lower taxes and spending.  As Dave Dayen points out at Calitics,

"Right now we’re at the bottom of per capita spending in almost every major  category – 44th  in health care, 47th  in per-pupil education spending, dead last in  highway spending and 46th in capital investment among all states."   

But here’s the thing.  HE was on the radio, telling Californians that we are the highest-taxing and spending more on schools, etc. than any other state.  And the other side was not on the radio telling Californians the truth.  So he wins. 

Californians don’t really have much choice except to believe the anti-tax, anti-government, pro-corporate arguments because they are not hearing anything else. 

This was just one radio show of the hundreds of radio shows every month that repeat this message.  And the newspapers repeat it.  And the TV shows repeat it.  And there are even public speakers, funded to go from civic group to civic group around the state to repeat this message!

Why is it that he was on the radio and the other side was not?  Because there are so few "other side" organizations for radio stations to call on, funded, with people trained and ready to talk on the radio and TV, write columns, speak to public groups, and generally make the case that government serves a purpose, roads and schools and public safety and are beneficial and that democracy is better than rule by corporations.  Corporations are enabled by our laws to amass incredible sums of money with little oversight, and are using some of that money to influence the state’s policies, always to further reduce oversight and amass ever greater power.  That money leaks out of the corporations and into the political system, while pro-democracy organizations have few sources of funding.  

The result is that the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is very well funded and is widely quoted in the media. Organization that makes the case for government and democracy are not.  And democracy in California is the loser.  So if we think we’re going to be able to persuade Californians to overturn the 2/3 vote requirement for a budget or to increase taxes, we’re going to have to come out swinging… At the moment, we don’t even have a batter at the plate.

Cloick through to Speak Out California.

 

Dave Johnson, Speak Out California.

There was a positive response to the idea from last week’s post, No Schools For You, that suggested,

“If an Assembly or Senate representative demanded cuts to schools, fire, etc. then the schools, fire, etc. in that representative’s district receive the entire cut!  This would be an honest application of representative democracy, allowing the citizens of an area to be governed according to their wishes without it affecting all of the citizens in the state.”

Seriously, the leaders of the Assembly and Senate should make the few Republican holdouts an offer: if they think government services to the state’s citizens are such a bad idea they should stop insisting on so much spending in their districts!  They say that government spending is a problem, why can’t they take those Republican governors who are refusing to accept any stimulus money as role models and refuse any state spending in their districts.  Their constituents can then show their overwhelming support for the anti-government ideology that their elected representatives espouse.

Several years ago, then-Senator Phil Gramm of Texas – a Republican – was one of the loudest to complain and complain about spending and “pork” and “earmarks” in the federal budget.  What is called “pork” and “earmarks” are special appropriations of funds by the Congress for specific projects in specific districts: a museum, science lab, agricultural study or bridge that is badly needed is funded by our government.  This is what Republicans call “pork” — government doing things that citizens need.  Well the biggest, most expensive project in the country at the time was the Superconducting Super Collider, a massive physics lab being built under the ground in Texas, employing hundreds and keeping many construction businesses going.  Well, when it came time to cut some spending the Congress took Senator Gramm at his word and killed the project.

So I think that it would be a very good idea to ask the Republican anti-tax ideologues to put up or shut up.  Give them the opportunity to put their (take away the) money where their mouths are.  If you want spending cuts, let us cut all the spending in your districts — or please shut up.

Your thoughts?  Leave a comment.

Click through to Speak Out California.