I will be on KRXA 540 AM this morning at 8 to discuss this, as well as to recap the California election results

There’s been a consensus among California progressives that as far as our state was concerned, the 2008 election was either a disappointment or a disaster. Silver linings are few. But there was a significant development that should not only give us hope for the future – but MUST give us direction and focus over the next few weeks as the budget battle resumes in Sacramento.

As I explained back in August, conservatives were planning to unite around the issue of taxes in this election. We saw it here in California when right-wingers like Joel Fox were concern trolling small businesses and working Californians to vote against badly needed government programs like Measure R, the LA mass transit expansion. Nor did it help when credulous journalists repeated this framing themselves.

These anti-tax politics were part of a larger effort to revive the policies of Herbert Hoover and prevent a New Deal from coming to California (little known fact: California never had a New Deal the first time around either). Their argument is that instead of using government to provide a safety net and stimulate economic growth, we should cut back government in a time of crisis, no matter the social or economic cost.

On Tuesday Californians resoundingly rejected these arguments. The Reason Foundation and the Howard Jarvis Association threw everything they had at Proposition 1A but it passed anyway and we’re gonna build that SUPERTRAIN.

Voters also approved a number of tax increases, which is all the more stunning because of the absurd 66.7% requirement. In addition to LA’s Measure R, Sonoma and Marin counties approved Measure Q, a tax increase to build a passenger rail line near the Highway 101 corridor. Santa Clara County voters may have approved a BART sales tax. Voters in Imperial and Stanislaus counties renewed transit taxes. Here in Monterey County we fell just short of approving a transit tax – 62% is a significant show of support.

Other tax proposals fared well. San José approved a telephone tax. Alameda County approved a parcel tax to pay for AC Transit bus service. Voters in small towns in Monterey County rejected efforts to repeal utility and sales taxes. Nine of 13 tax proposals in LA County were approved.

This should not actually surprise us. Polls have shown that Californians DO support higher taxes including as a solution to our budget crisis. They understand the value of taxes for government services. Mass transit, schools, libraries, police and fire departments – all those things create economic value, jobs, and save people money. Californians get that.

It also helps when a specific tax is connected to a specific service. State legislators are loath to do this, wanting more control over the general fund and the revenues going into it. I do not think that is the right approach to take, at least not until the structural revenue shortfall is ended.

Sacramento Democrats would do well to remember that when Arnold Schwarzenegger calls them into special session today. Mike Villines is already throwing down the no new taxes gauntlet.

Democrats should ignore his concern trolling (and that of journalists like Kathleen Pender, who doesn’t know what she’s talking about). Conservative anti-tax neo-Hoover whining is the mouse that never roared in the election. It doesn’t move the electorate the way they claim it does. Californians understand that during this economic crisis taxes for services are the right way to grow the economy.

One of the most important but so far overlooked narratives of this election cycle is the return of taxes as a major political issue. The recession is hitting government budgets just as that same downturn, combined with soaring gas prices and global warming is creating demand for new spending.

Against this backdrop conservatives are now convinced that their way out of an ugly election cycle is to rally the public behind their rabid anti-tax politics. Constant attacks on Obama as a tax-raiser are partly to blame for McCain’s recent rise in the polls.

And here in the states Republicans are again turning to the tax revolt, their bread and butter for 30 years. Republican intransigence on the California budget is best seen as part of this national strategy to break Democrats on the tax rack.

The Wall Street Journal has a great overview of tax politics in the states, including a lunatic proposal to eliminate Massachusetts’ income tax and a equally nutty plan to allow Oregon residents to deduct an unlimited amount of federal tax on their state returns.

Here in California conservatives are already circling the wagons on taxes. John and Ken, the reliable bellwethers of SoCal conservatism, raked Arnold over the coals yesterday over taxes:

Schwarzenegger tried to defend new taxes as necessary because the state was still paying off debts incurred by predecessor Gov. Gray Davis. But the hosts pressed further and suggested that Schwarzenegger abandoned his original mission of fixing the state’s fiscal situation in order to pursue environmental goals.

That seemed to upset the governor, who maintained that his environmental policies had nothing to do with the state budget.

“This is absolutely absurd what you’re saying right now,” Schwarzenegger said. “….You’re living in the Stone Age if you think that the environmental issue has anything to do with the budget or the declining economy worldwide.”

“Don’t lie to the people,” Schwarzenegger added. “That’s all I can tell you, don’t lie to the people. Don’t pull wool over their eyes. It’s nonsense Republican right-wing talk.”

To which John and Ken then asked whether Arnold was under anesthesia. Stay classy, Los Angeles.

What this shows is that the conservatives are in no mood whatsoever to give ground on taxes. The drubbing John and Ken gave Arnold is a taste of what many Sacramento Republicans might face from within their own party. Their fear is that by voting for a tax increase, they’re going to face primary challengers who will simply tell the wingnut base “my opponent voted for a tax increase” and their ambitious political careers will be over.

So it seems very unlikely that Republicans will give in this time. That leaves it up to Democrats to force the issue. The only thing that should scare Republicans more than a primary fight is losing the general election. That means Dems have to go after Republicans hard – and that in turn means Dems have to finally stop avoiding the issue and for the first time in 30 years make a case for taxes.

The problem is that, with reporters like Lisa Vorderbrueggen repeating conservative tax framing, Dems have an uphill battle. Way too many Californians assume taxes are taken out of their own pocket and never returned to them, even though Californians derive great and real economic value from government spending.

One angle would be to, as Anthony Wright suggests over on the left-hand column, make the budget about the economy. Explain the value of the services Californians receive from government and show how, in a recession, the loss of those services will hurt their bottom line.

Dems would also do well to explain to voters how Republican tax cuts are behind this crisis – from the 1998 McClintock tax cuts to Arnold’s $6 billion VLF cut to the repeated borrowing that Republicans have demanded, this budget crisis would be quite manageable were it not for reckless tax cuts.

Further, explain how tax cuts are also responsible for our economic downturn. With more government spending on higher education, health care, and mass transit, many of the costs that currently cripple households would be eased.

It’s not about the “budget” and never has been. This about taxes. With their backs up against the wall conservatives have returned to the strategies that brought them to power in the first place, and in California that means stoking a tax revolt. Unless Dems are able to defang that argument this budget crisis, and perhaps even the 2008 election, are not going have a happy ending.

In an article that could have been a press release from the Howard Jarvis Association, the San Jose Mercury News has an article by John Woolfolk arguing that tax proposals are inherently bad “in these times.” While an analysis of the costs and benefits of tax plans would be a welcome product of the traditional media, Woolfolk’s article is instead a hopelessly biased attack on tax plans that rarely mentions the savings the plans would generate.

No wonder California is so hard to govern effectively – with these Republican talking points being passed off as journalism, Californians aren’t being given the full information that they deserve.

Like so many families these days, the Gravelles of San Jose feel squeezed. Their home has lost about $250,000 in market value, their monthly gasoline bill hit $394, they’ve got one son heading to college and another to Catholic high school.

But valley officials are urging them to keep their pocketbook open, with more than a dozen local revenue measures filling the November ballot. The county hospital needs an earthquake retrofit. A long-planned rapid transit extension needs operating funds. Schools and libraries need refurbishing. City budgets are potholed with deficits.

And Andrea Gravelle isn’t sure her family can afford to be so generous this year.

That last sentence gives away the framing used throughout the article – taxes are like charitable giving or Christmas presents – something expendable, to be cut back on when times are tough.

But look at the list of what would be funded. Hospital earthquake retrofits. In the event of a quake Andrea Gravelle’s family is going to need the hospital to be open – without it she’s going to spend a LOT more money otherwise. The hospital tax is a form of insurance. The BART extension might help her save money on gas, and the potholes require higher amounts of maintenance.

NONE of that is mentioned in the article. Woolfolk implicitly agrees with the far-right argument that one never gets anything in return from government. Look at his section on San Jose’s 911 dispatch fee:

So while families like the Gravelles might save $7 a year on city phone taxes if both city measures are approved, the savings could be three times that if the 911 fee were simply allowed to expire.

You mean they might save a whopping $21 if they sat back and watched the city’s emergency dispatch system be destroyed? I dunno about you, but $21 a year to enable police, fire, and paramedics to quickly reach the scene of an emergency sounds like a pretty damn good use of money, don’t you think? But here again, Woolfolk never mentions the value – literal or figurative – of what the taxes purchase.

The same happens when he discusses Prop 1, the high speed rail bond. He even gets the costs wrong as he tries to make minor costs look like budget-busters, in the absence of an explanation of what it will save people:

Critics of the biggest bond measure, $9.5 billion for high-speed rail, argue it will cost the state general fund a total of $20 billion, or $2,000 per average California family over the 30-year life of the bonds. It would require the state to pony up $67 million a year at a time leaders in Sacramento are already struggling to patch a $15 billion shortfall.

Actually, the bonds have a 40 year lifespan, which would make it even less than $2,000 total. But using Woolfolk’s figures that comes out to $66.66 a year, and that’s for a family.

Nowhere does he explain that high speed rail would save at least that much per family per year in travel costs. Airfares are steadily rising as the price of oil rises, and will price out families like the Gravelles if HSR isn’t built. Do the Gravelles go to the occasional Giants game in SF? It would save them both time and money in gas costs and travel times. But none of this makes it into the article either.

The article concludes by quoting San José mayor Chuck Reed as saying the failure of the tax plans would result in “cutting core services.” The article doesn’t report what those cuts might be but I suspect Reed gave Woolfolk some possibilities that somehow didn’t make it into the paper.

The total yearly cost to a family of the San José tax plans, based on the info in this article, is around $400. But the savings produced by the spending the taxes enable are not quantified or even mentioned. Woolfolk has given readers only half the equation, a false accounting that creates a notion that San Joseans are being taxed to death, even though $400 is a small price to pay for quality services.

And it’s the big picture that the article gets so very wrong. It’s no coincidence that in the 30 years since California went on a tax cutting binge that California has experienced a “generation of inequality” as reduced services erode the middle class into nothing. Economic security in America comes from wise government spending – the 20th century proves this. In its absence Californians have seen their wages stagnate and the cost of basic needs soar as they lose protection against catastrophic life events. Smart taxes, used for good purposes, save people money and help them become prosperous and secure.

Ironically the Gravelle family, held up as an example of a family being taxed into oblivion, plans to vote for most of the tax measures. They understand the importance of having a functioning hospital trauma center, for example. Their stance suggests that more Californians understand what I just described – that taxes bring savings – than do the journalists who write in their morning papers.

Yesterday’s SacBee has a Q&A with Darrell Steinberg on the budget. His answers are brief but brilliant – along with Speaker Karen Bass it is clear we now have leadership in Sacramento that finally understands not just what is wrong with the budget but how to properly frame it:

Q: Why would the Democrats roll out a tax plan that they knew ahead of time the Republicans wouldn’t vote for?

A: There’s actually some consensus that has developed over the past several years. It’s clear from even the way the Republicans are acting in the budget negotiations, there is a common recognition that we cannot cut our way out of this problem. The Republicans aren’t putting $15 billion of cuts on the table, for good reason. … That would implicate the department of corrections and law enforcement, public education, transportation, a whole host of other policy areas that are not necessarily partisan in nature, so now the debate is framed very clearly.

This is very good framing. He’s pointing out that Republicans tacitly accept that spending cuts are not a realistic option – that even Republican programs like prisons would be crippled. California voters need to hear more of this – that spending cuts are just not possible.

Q: Are the Democrats concerned that the increase in taxes would have a negative effect on business retention in California?

A: I think the Democrats are approaching the tax question in an intelligent way. Look at the upper-income tax. This was a tax that (Pete) Wilson, a Republican governor, pushed through. I know the claim is made that wealthy earners would leave California, but that belies the facts. I did Proposition 63, the mental health initiative, which was just a surtax on earnings over $1 million, and there hasn’t been some great flight out of the state. … People choose to live in California for a lot of good reasons, and ensuring that we have the resources to properly invest in education and health care and an infrastructure, I think, is more important to the business community.

These are excellent evidence-based arguments and build off of what Speaker Bass and John Laird have been saying – that California has previously turned to taxing the wealthy without cost to our economy. The lie that taxing the wealthy hurts the overall economy has been the cornerstone of conservative anti-tax sentiment for decades, and it is long past time for Democrats to be rejecting it.

Further, Steinberg touches on a point that should be made more explicit. It’s not just the business community that finds more value in good government services over low taxes – it’s working Californians. Most of us understand that Californians get far more in value from affordable, quality schools; affordable, quality education; affordable, quality mass transit, etc – but that message hasn’t been truly embraced by Democrats ever since Jerry Brown’s notorious “born again tax cutter” emerged the day after Prop 13 passed in 1978.

California owes its current economic prosperity – such as it is – to the legacy of Pat Brown. We’ve been living off of earlier government spending. Even Ronald Reagan increased taxes when faced with a similar crisis (in 1967). If Democrats can make that argument loudly and as often as possible they will undermine the Republicans.

Q: Does the state of California have a revenue problem or a spending problem?

A: That’s a question that is always asked in the political context, and I believe we have a revenue problem. … The governor went through the stage of blowing up the boxes … he didn’t find a lot of the waste, fraud and abuse. We have a very complex state, with a growing population and with significant unmet need, and so I think we have both a revenue problem, and we have a major structural problem. … We’re misaligned, for example. Local government has significant responsibility to provide services and little authority over the revenue side of the equation.

This is pure gold. Steinberg points out that Arnold’s own performance review failed to find the “waste, fraud and abuse” that we were told we’d find in the budget. It no longer exists, if it ever did. You cannot cut something that isn’t in the budget. Plus it’s nice to see him using the structural revenue shortfall framing I’ve been using for months.

Q: Why is it that the state always seems each year to spend more money than it takes in?

A: The system of public finance that we have in California is not keeping up with the public demand for public education, for more and better quality transportation, for improved access to health care, and for first-rate local government public safety and other services.

Steinberg refuses to be baited by the Bee’s leading question here, and insists that the problem is a government that cannot play the central role it needs to play in guaranteeing economic stability to all Californians.

Overall Steinberg is pushing out some great frames that attack the heart of the Republican nonsense that we can cut wasteful spending that does not actually exist. The Republicans are left to propose massive cuts to core services which they are of course unwilling to make. All they have left is a dogmatic stance that everyone now sees right through. If Niello is an emperor then he’s clearly got no clothes.

By Dave Johnson, Speak Out California

For decades people have been hearing that government “spends too much.”  They have been hearing that it’s spending cuts that we need, not tax increases.  They’ve been hearing that most of the government’s money is spent on “waste, fraud and abuse.”  They’ve been hearing that it mostly goes to welfare, for people who won’t work and sit around all day.  They’ve been hearing that taxes are too high, the highest in the world, the liberals who run the world only want to tax and spend, etc. And no one has been reaching the public with the facts.

And after decades of this here is a surprise: people think the government spends too much, that we need spending cuts not taxes, that the money goes to waste, fraud and abuse — and welfare and stuff like that.  Who would have thought?

But ask for specifics like, “What specifically would you cut and by how much?” and you’ll get a blank stare.  Try that question on a conservative politician some time and you’ll get the same blank stare.  (Usually accompanied by an exercise commonly known as “the run-around.”)

OK, occasionally when an elected official is faced with no choice but to cut or raise taxes you’ll get an answer.  We saw this recently when the Governor spelled out drastic cuts in schools and other government services — the actual stuff that our taxes pay for.  The public didn’t like that one bit.  They want that “other” spending to be cut instead.  (Of course, the Governor also came up with that weird scheme to borrow from next year’s lottery revenue.  So what happens next year when we have to pay the bills and don’t even have the lottery revenue because that went to this year’s budget???  What do we borrow on then?)

Things might be changing. The public might slowly be coming around to understanding that taxes really do need to be raised — at least as far as a temporary sales tax increase.  The Public Policy Institute of California recently released the results of a survey titled Californians and Their Government.  (The full PDF is here.)  According to the summary,

Solid majorities of residents (58%) and likely voters (62%) oppose the governor’s plan to raise revenue by borrowing from future lottery earnings, but majorities of residents (54%) and likely voters (57%) favor a temporary increase in the state sales tax if the lottery plan fails.

And, according to the press release,

The potential temporary sales tax increase is the only tax increase included in the governor’s revised budget. Asked whether they believe tax increases should be part of his plan, residents are split (48% yes, 46% no), although the percentage favoring tax increases has risen sharply since December (30%). [emphasis added]

Of course, this doesn’t get the budget solved.  It’s a start but as for real-world solutions today, the public still isn’t ready to face facts.  This may be because no one has dared explain that there isn’t really some “other” spending yet to be cut.  Also from the press release:

Californians fail budget math quiz – Page 12

When asked which area gets the biggest share of state spending, only 20 percent of residents correctly identified K-12 education. Asked where the biggest chunk of revenue comes from, only 32 percent give the correct answer: personal income tax.

Let me leave you with a few suggestions for helping solve the budget mess:

Proposition 13, an initiative that was sold as keeping little old ladies on fixed incomes in their homes, cut both residential and commercial property taxes. How about bringing commercial property taxes back to market rates?

Oil companies don’t pay a “severance fee” when they pump our oil out of the ground to sell back to us.  How about they pay for the oil before they sell it back to us?

How about we ask the wealthy to pay sales taxes – the same sales taxes that the rest of us have to pay – when they buy yachts and airplanes?  And how about we ask the wealthy to pay their fair share of other taxes as well?

If you are talking to friends and family about the budget, point out that when Governor Schwarzenegger — who solved previous budget problems by borrowing — tried to balance the budget without raising any taxes he had to cut schools, health care, parks and much more, and still find ways to borrow.  He is a Republican, not a “tax and spend” liberal, so if there were ways to cut “other” spending he would have done that.  

There is no other spending to cut because it takes money to rin a government and provide the services we want and need. “The line at the DMV” is an example because if you cut DMV spending the line you hate just gets longer.

Take a look at the Next 10 site and consider how you would revise the budget.

Click through to Speak Out California

The Field Poll has been surveying Californians’ attitudes on Prop 13, and the broader issues of taxes and spending. What they’ve found is that Californians don’t want spending cuts, prefer spending cuts to new taxes – but also are willing to support new taxes if they’re the only way to prevent health care cuts.

Frank Russo offers an excellent in-depth look at the poll, which suggests that the public is willing to cut prisons (even though we have to INCREASE spending by at least $7 billion), and supports higher alcohol, cigarette, income, and sales taxes top protect health care.

Reading these poll numbers against the Field Poll’s Prop 13 numbers, which indicated ongoing support for Prop 13 and a belief that the state’s problems stem from spending and not tax problems it seems clear that there is a massive disconnect among California voters. They cling desperately to the belief that government waste and overspending is the problem of deficits, otherwise they might have to honestly and openly explain that their support for tax cuts is a desire to get government-sponsored tax shelters at the expense of everyone else in society and our state’s economic competitiveness.

Frank Russo argued the Field Poll numbers might provide a “road map” forward for the legislature. I agree, although that map suggests confrontation will be the first stop on the trip. Something has to give – Californians cannot maintain their low-tax environment without crippling spending cuts they say they don’t want. Republicans will take that to mean a stubborn refusal to increase taxes is popular with voters; they’ll not be inclined at all to seek new revenues.

What is really needed is a strong and persistent argument from Democrats – in Sacramento and in the grassroots – that our state has a structural revenue shortfall – that our problems really do stem from a lack of revenue, that a state ranking 46th in per pupil school spending doesn’t have any revenue to cut. We need to not shrink away when Californians insist that our problems are on the spending side – those Californians are wrong.

It’s especially important to begin with fellow Democrats. The Field numbers suggest that many Democrats are ardent defenders of Prop 13 and believe spending cuts are preferable to tax increases. These Democrats should be the target of a broad-based and long-term campaign to show them the error of this thinking – that their Democratic values are not compatible with these thoughts on budgeting.

It won’t be easy, but it is necessary if we are to fix this state.

Last fall I took the LA Times to task for framing the state budget crisis as a problem of “automatic” spending, and not being sufficiently attentive to the structural revenue shortfall that is the true cause of the budget problem.

While the LA Times has shown some improvement – George Skelton’s column today is mostly if not completely on target and the incomparable David Lazarus always has some good insights – the rest of the state’s media seems slower to follow.

Take, for example, Sunday’s SacBee column from Daniel Weintraub, California  Budget 101: What went wrong, when. Weintraub’s column purports to be a “a fuller explanation of the dimensions of the problem” – but winds up repeating the same discredited arguments, namely that this is primarily a spending problem:

But the economic issues only worsened a basic, structural problem in the state budget: Spending is programmed by law to grow each year at a rate that is generally faster than tax revenues can match. Current state law would push general fund spending to $113 billion next year if nothing is done to slow it, according to the Schwarzenegger administration. Revenues, meanwhile, are projected to decline further, to about $95 billion. The budget Schwarzenegger celebrated last summer would have bridged the gap for one year at best.

Weintraub then goes on to detail the education, health care, prisons and transportation spending that makes up that growth. But nowhere in his column would you see the following:

• Tom McClintock and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s $6 billion VLF cut
• Another $6 billion in tax cuts made to the state budget after 1993
• And of course, the start of the state’s budget problem: Prop 13.

In other words, Weintraub makes it sound like the state is in a budget crisis because it is overspending, instead of because it is undertaxing. This is especially important when we consider what the state has been spending on – education, health care, and transportation – the very things California needs to remain competitive in a globalized 21st century economy.

The aforementioned George Skelton column provides an excellent contrast, showing what a more accurate explanation of our budget problem would look like:

People, one place it [additional spending under Arnold’s administration] went was for Schwarzenegger’s car tax cut. Yes, that tax cut counts as spending — about $6 billion annually. It’s because revenue from the car tax — the vehicle license fee — had gone to local governments, not the state. The governor generously agreed to replace the locals’ lost revenue with money from the state general fund. But he never replaced the tax he grandiosely whacked. Big hole. Big mistake.

Even Dan Walters, the dean of California conservative columnists, has recognized the role tax cuts have played in the budget shortfall:

The 2000 decision to spend most of a one-time, $12 billion tax windfall on permanent spending and tax cuts that could not be sustained, leading to the state’s chronic budget deficits, is another [wrongheaded move].

And to his credit, Walters has argued for higher taxes, although as part of a holistic budget reform package that contains some problematic ideas.

The fact is that if we are to finally end 30 years of budget crisis, we have to find new revenues. The notion that any new taxes cripple economic growth is absurd – both California and the federal government hiked taxes between 1990 and 1993 and it didn’t prevent the 1990s economic boom. The investment in education and mass transit helps create more investment while saving commuters, students, and workers money; and universal health care (or even a modest expansion of government-provided care) creates significant savings for businesses and employees.

A focus on spending, however, blinds us to the structural revenue shortfall and leads Californians and their politicians to assume the only way out is to slash spending – which would make the cost of doing business in California, and the cost of living here, significantly higher.

Without solving the revenue problem, we will never cure this chronic budget crisis.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell has a post at the California Progress Report on the declining number of students in teacher credential programs in California:

Since 2001-02, the state has reduced the number of underprepared teachers in the classroom by 25,000. California, the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning reported, “…seemed to be on the right track toward building a teacher development system with the capacity to produce an adequate supply of teachers and deliver them to schools where they were needed most.”

So while we’re improving the quality of the teachers in the field, what about the supply of future teachers: those students in college today who are considering teaching as a profession? Unfortunately, the picture isn’t so bright….

For example, the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning recently looked at the number of enrollees in teacher preparation programs since the state’s last fiscal crisis in 2003. The Center reports the following: “During the 2002-03 school year, colleges enrolled 74,203 candidates in preparation programs. The next year, that number dropped to 67,595 and the following year (2004-05) the numbers declined further to 64,753, a loss of 10,000 teacher candidates in two years. Similarly, the numbers of teaching credentials awarded dropped from 27,000 in 2004 to 22,400 in 2006.”

O’Connell could be a bit clearer here on the causes of the decline. As a result of the last budget crisis, the CSU system – which handles the bulk of teacher training in California – was hit with hundreds of millions of budget cuts, and a significant increase in student fees for professional education programs. Most students entering these programs already carry significant debt loads from their undergraduate years, and the stagnant pay for California’s teachers often makes it difficult for young people to repay these loans – especially when you add in our state’s high cost of living.

O’Connell does an excellent job of explaining how the current education budget cuts might dissuade future teachers:

This year California once again faces a budget crisis with potential cuts to education of $4.8 billion dollars. Undergraduates or those students already in teacher credential programs are thinking twice about their career choice. They are aware of the 14,000 pink slips just sent to teachers to prepare them for potential layoffs. They are well aware of the “last-hired, first-fired” rule and they ask themselves, “Do I want to pursue a career that is so unstable that I will face potential layoffs year after year?”

If we don’t find a way to stabilize our funding to schools, California may soon be facing another crisis: classrooms full of students with no teachers at the head of the class.

This is already beginning to take place. Between myself and my sister, who teaches 5th grade in Orange County, we know nearly a dozen people who are in their first years of teaching or in a credential program. Many of them have expressed regret about entering the teaching profession, especially as they worry about whether or not they’ll have a job this fall. A friend of ours who came to visit on spring break a couple weeks ago, currently a substitute teacher in Santa Ana, told me she was happy she had an accounting background, and said she thought it would be better for her to pursue an accounting degree instead of a teaching credential.

Not only will the teacher firings discourage new teachers from entering the profession, but further higher ed cuts will have the same effect. The CSU system is facing another hundred million dollar budget cut, which will certainly result in higher student fees. Thanks to the global credit crunch, however, it is now becoming much more difficult to take out student loans – meaning even fewer students will be able to pursue the necessary education for a teaching career.

Californians have to ask themselves what they really care about. A state that prefers to fire 20,000 teachers and place teacher training out of the reach of interested young people is not a state that values education. Teachers have already carried much of the burden of public education for the last 30 years. But without more financial support, and without the ability to have a secure career, one of the state’s most valuable professions is in very serious jeopardy.

UPDATE by Brian: You can listen live to Which Way LA live here and then get the archives here or at iTunes. Robert’s going to be on iTunes! I’m excited to hear what Robert has to say.

I will be on Warren Olney’s show on KCRW 89.9 at 7pm tonight to discuss the latest news from the state budget front. The California Legislative Analyst, Elizabeth Hill, has announced that California now faces a $16 billion budget deficit. In her press conference, as reported by the Sacramento Bee, she sharply criticized Arnold Schwarzenegger’s approach to the budget:

In a critical look at Schwarzenegger’s spending proposal, Hill called his administration’s budget-balancing approach “flawed” because it fails to prioritize state programs.

“We recommend the Legislature reject the administration’s across-the-board (cutting) approach,” the report said.

The report lays out an alternative budget that proposes to eliminate nonessential state programs, shift programs to local control and reduce school funding by less than the $4.3 billion the governor suggested. It also recommends closing tax loopholes to add revenue in a “reasonable manner.”

As an impartial analyst, Hill cannot say what is obvious to us all – the bill for 30 years of frivolous tax cuts, such as giving wealthy yacht owners a tax break while threatening to close parks and fire teachers, has come due. Republicans insist on cutting core services of our government, preferring to make it difficult to get a decent education, kicking sick children off of health care coverage, and abandoning our natural heritage instead of making sure all Californians are paying their fair share.

As we enter what is likely to be a nasty recession, the last thing this state should be doing is destroying the kinds of public services essential to a modern society and a developed, robust economy. It is long past time for us to end the structural revenue deficit that has produced this recurring crisis, from the wasteful elimination of $5 billion in VLF revenue at the beginning of Arnold’s term to the various tax loopholes and favoritisms that have plagued us since 1978. California is at a crossroads – will we rise to the occasion, or stand by while Republicans destroy what remains of the California dream?

I’m on my way over to Salinas for the “First Presidential Primary in the Nation” (a local straw poll event), but I thought I’d share with you an op-ed I have in today’s LA Times: “Why won’t The Times talk tax hikes?”

Obviously you’ll have to go to the link to read the whole thing, but the basic point is that the Times has, in its recent reporting, been framing the budget crisis as a problem on the spending side, while not being sufficiently attentive to structural revenue deficiencies. If we’re really going to fix the state budget without using this crisis as an occasion to further gut badly needed public services, we need to understand the entirety of the problem, not just one dimension of it.