Arnold Schwarzenegger’s address to the legislature was notable only for its fatuousness. He demands the destruction of the social safety net in California and pleads that we have “no choice,” while hiding the decisions he made which brought us to this point. He claims that his budget is not “just about cuts,” then offers the same reforms that the voters have time and again rejected, or half-measures like firing groundskeepers (to privatize school responsibilities to low-wage contractors, incidentally). Evidently, the May 19 special election, which has been massively over-interpreted and interpreted wrongly by the Governor, was supposedly a call to arms against tax increases, but a spending cap and rainy day fund, which were on the ballot and voted down by 66% of the electorate, are still viable ideas. He drew a line in the sand by calling for the dissolution of the Integrated Waste Management Board, an organization that IS NOT FUNDED WITH ONE PENNY FROM THE GENERAL FUND but instead with fees on garbage collectors. He talked about spending less per inmate on the prison population but his budget seeks only to get rid of precisely the services, rehabilitation, drug treatment and vocational training, that would lower recidivism rates, unstuff the prisons, and allow us to spend less on their management. He admitted that money from the sale of surplus property cannot go toward the General Fund, in a fleeting moment of truth, but claims it would lower our debt payments, which is true, but precisely what Arnold has been increases with borrow and spend policies for the last six years.
Of course, Arnold urged swift passage of all his Shock Doctrine proposals, because that’s how it works. The goal is to give nobody time to think, only to acquiesce in the face of crisis. Some, like Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, will not put her brain on autopilot, mindful of the Depression that would ensue from an all-cuts budget and the drastic consequences for our economy.
“The Governor’s opening statement that the voters in rejecting the special election measures said, “don’t ask us to solve complex budget issues, that’s your job,” is right,” she said. “He was wrong however in his assertion that Californians want an all cuts solution …We have choices. For instance, restoring the top income tax rate on high wealth incomes of $250,000 and above in place under Republican Governors Pete Wilson and Ronald Reagan would allow us to avoid $4 billion of these cuts. Enacting an oil severance fee on oil drilled in California, revenue collected by every state and country in the world that produces significant amounts of oil, could avoid another $1 billion in cuts.
“The Governor talked of us acting courageously. Acting courageously is looking at all alternatives and making smart, rational choices that lessen the cuts with some sensible new revenues,” she said.
Noreen Evans, similarly, has stepped up, at least rhetorically, to offer a counter-weight to the Governor’s Shock Doctrine tactics:
SACRAMENTO – Santa Rosa Assemblywoman Noreen Evans is emerging as one of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s fiercest critics, a noteworthy development given her prominent role in the high-stakes back-and-forth over the state budget crisis […]
“I don’t know what the point of that exercise was, really,” the Democrat said immediately after the speech as she stood outside the Assembly chambers.
Schwarzenegger told Assembly and Senate lawmakers that he has “faith in our ability to once again come together for the good of the state.”
But Evans said the governor was not helpful “at all” in bridging the divide between Republican and Democrat lawmakers. Rather, she labeled Schwarzenegger’s approach to budget matters as one of “shock and awe.”
“It’s working because it’s shocking, and it’s awesome, and it’s terrible,” she said.
While there are some voices in the Legislature creating pushback, my experience is that the Democrats fall in line with their leadership (same with the Yacht Party, actually; it’s practically a Parliamentary system). And given the clear signs from Bass and Steinberg to bend over backwards to enable Arnold’s proposals and get it done quickly, I think the only way to halt this forward march would be to mass support inside the Capitol around specific proposals. For instance, the California Budget Project today released a report about the $2.5 billion corporate tax cuts included in recent budgets in September 2008 and February 2009, cuts we certainly cannot afford in this economic climate. If everyone must share in the pain, as the Governor said, that must mean something. And so these $2.5 billion in corporate giveaways ought to be repealed. Period. Full stop. Here are some of the gems from these tax breaks:
Nine corporations, dubbed the “lucky nine” in the CBP’s analysis, will receive tax cuts averaging $33.1 million each in 2013-14 due to the adoption of the elective single sales factor apportionment, according to estimates by the Franchise Tax Board.
Eighty percent of the benefits of elective single sales factor apportionment will go to the 0.1 percent of California corporations with gross incomes over $1 billion.
Six corporations will receive tax cuts averaging $23.5 million each in 2013-14 from the adoption of credit sharing.
Eighty-seven percent of the benefits of credit sharing will go to the 0.03 percent of California corporations with gross incomes over $1 billion.
Are there 27 Democrats in the Assembly, or 14 in the Senate, willing to go to the mat to force the repeal of these unnecessary corporate giveaways, providing revenue that can go to the poor, the sick, the infirm, the elderly? Rank and file Democrats never think to show their power in these negotiations. In a time of crisis, they should – and force the Governor toward a more equitable solution. Richard Holober’s post, which I referenced earlier, closes with this:
It’s time to re-unite a fractured progressive movement – based on hope, not fear. We need leadership that can think beyond the imminent crisis, reach out to build a coalition, and organize for budget justice. Labor and community based activist organizations must supply the leadership.
Let’s mobilize behind broadly supported values: require corporations to pay their fair share of taxes; increase the progressivity of our tax system; and eliminate undemocratic super-majority budget and tax rules that give a handful of reactionary politicians a stranglehold over funding our schools, health and public safety services. The campaign may take years. We can win, but first we need to get out of the budget crisis bunker.
Which politicians will enable us to escape that bunker?
Harold Meyerson had a nice piece last week similar in tone and scope to my piece on Jarvisism – arguing that Prop. 13 really was the original sin that sent the state on an almost continuous downward spiral, as much a reflection of the Age of Reagan as the financial deregulation that presaged a crisis at the federal level.
By passing Howard Jarvis’ malign initiative, California voters reduced the Golden State to baser metal. Under Republican Gov. Earl Warren and Democratic Gov. Pat Brown, California epitomized the postwar American dream. Its public schools, from kindergarten through Berkeley and UCLA, were the nation’s finest; its roads and aqueducts the most efficient at moving cars and water – the state’s lifeblood – to their destinations. All this was funded by some of the nation’s highest taxes, which fell in good measure on the state’s flourishing banks and corporations.
Amid the inflation of the late 1970s, however, the California model began to crumple. As incomes and property values rose, Sacramento’s tax revenue soared – but the parsimonious Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, neither spent those funds nor rebated them. With the state sitting on a $5 billion surplus, frustrated Californians grumped to the polls and passed Proposition 13, which rolled back and limited property taxes – effectively destroying the funding base of local governments and school districts, which thereafter depended largely on Sacramento for their revenue. Ranked fifth among the states in per-pupil spending during the 1950s and ’60s, California sank to Mississippi-like levels – the mid-40s in rank – by the 1990s.
Meyerson puts together all the malign elements of Prop. 13 – the defunding of local government, where people gain their impressions of government as a whole (so defunding it serves conservative frames of government as useless); the 2/3 majority requirement for raising a tax, giving over the state to a conservative veto; the regressive nature of the tax structure that became an outgrowth of that super-majority, since the only taxes allowed by the Yacht Party affect the poor disproportionately, leading to the lower class spending a higher percentage of their incomes on taxes than the upper class; the tax-cutting troglodytes emboldened by their ability to hijack. He closes by explaining how Washington should not ignores the dysfunction of the nation’s largest state.
Because California is so much larger than any other state, and its unemployment rate is among the nation’s highest, the collapse of its capacity to spend will counteract some of the effect of the federal stimulus and retard the nation’s recovery – much as its aerospace slump retarded the recovery of the mid-1990s. The Obama administration ignores California’s plight at its own – and the nation’s – peril.
The nation’s banks are stuck with so much bad paper from California mortgages gone awry that a huge contraction in state spending would make their assets even more toxic. In the short term, the only way to avoid a further downturn may be a federal loan to the state.
A more permanent, homegrown solution to California’s woes (and it may take a state constitutional convention to get it) would require the state to eliminate the two-thirds threshold for enacting taxes, to repeal Proposition 13’s freeze on the value of commercial properties (some of which are still assessed at their 1978 levels) and to end the process of ballot-box budgeting through the initiative process, which is now more dominated by monied interests than the Legislature ever was.
Harold Meyerson showed the way forward, to such a degree that the SacBee editorial board called today for a fresh look at Prop. 13. The news peg may be San Francisco County Assessor Phillip Ting’s activism in support of a split-roll solution, assessing commercial property taxes at similar levels. But the intellectual underpinnings are all in Meyerson’s piece, which out to be memorized by progressive activists.
People generally respond to leadership. Legislature, take note.
The hopes of receiving loan guarantees backed by the federal government to help California secure borrowing to cover short-term cash issues dissipated the moment the media started calling something that wouldn’t cost the government a dime a “bailout.” With Democrats essentially mimicking their Republican counterparts and the rhetoric of a fiscal reckoning predominant, a solution based on massive program cuts and eliminations appears inevitable to everyone in Sacramento. Only regular citizens – the same ones demonized by elites for daring to vote against what elites call “their own interests” – hold legitimate interests in stopping the drive to cut our way out of this crisis. Students in Los Angeles are holding walkouts over proposed firings of teachers. The families who would be most directly hit by canceling programs like Healthy Families (California’s SCHIP), CalWorks (serving poor families) and Cal Grants (student grants-in-aid for college) are speaking out about the real-world effects of those cuts. And a growing movement of activists from across the political spectrum are looking to the future by trying to turn this crisis into a tipping point for a Constitutional convention to get the state onto a sounder fiscal course.
The silence from the political leadership on these fronts is deafening. And yet, absolutely everyone knows the remedies to perpetual crisis and long-term dysfunction, remedies that too rarely cross the lips of leadership so that such opinions could actually make it to the minds of the electorate. Evan Halper today provides some relief in this desert with an oasis of an article, explaining in clear language exactly what steps can be taken to transform California into something other than the failed state it is. I don’t agree with all of it – Halper asserts that the richest 1% of the state contribute half of the income tax, which is simply a function of inequality and frankly irrelevant; he leaves out that the effective tax rate for the top 1% (around 7% of income) is LOWER than that for those with the state’s lowest incomes (around 11%) – but it’s still worth reading. An excerpt:
The oft-cited waste and abuse is a problem, but the deficit is bigger than the entire state bureaucracy.
California could fire every state employee — including well-paid prison guards and university professors — close every government office, stop all travel and even cease the purchase of paper clips without closing the budget gap. The government would be gone but the deficit wouldn’t […]
The runaway spending is caused largely by an ever growing group of Californians making use of basic state services as the cost of those services escalates. Since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took office, for example, the amount the state spends on Medi-Cal health insurance for the poor has grown more than 40%, from under $10 billion annually to more than $14.4 billion. Spending on community mental health services has nearly tripled, and the state’s program that provides services for the disabled leapt from a $1.6-billion annual expense to nearly $2.4 billion.
This has happened despite efforts by the state to contain costs. Primary care doctors, for example, are paid just $26 for an office visit with a Medi-Cal patient. There is no simple way to seriously limit these healthcare costs short of eliminating the benefits for hundreds of thousands of Californians.
Halper’s five steps – updating the tax structure, eliminating the 2/3 rule, reining in citizen initiatives, building a real rainy day fund and instituting a performance review – are a mixed bag IMO, but they take a legitimate, serious approach to reforming the governmental structure, coming from the position that the current system is exactly how not to run a state. Regardless of these solutions, a debate on which we can and should have, that viewpoint makes me hopeful. I believe people are starting to understand the intractable nature of the current process, a thought echoed by Jean Ross in her special election post-mortem:
So why do I believe that the May 19 results can be viewed as a triumph of hope over fear? I spent the better part of the last two and a half months traversing California, talking about the budget, the special election, and California’s future. From San Diego to the North Bay, I spoke before diverse audiences ranging from Orange County PTA activists to Silicon Valley community leaders, from philanthropists to East Bay nonprofit leaders and community organizers in Los Angeles. While California faces tremendous challenges – the worst economic downturn in the post-World War II era and budget crises that show little prospect of abating – I found a new level of interest, concern, and commitment to building a better future for all Californians.
While I am not going to argue that the thousands of individuals that I met are a representative sample, they do represent the best that the state has to offer. Parents who volunteer to improve the quality of their children’s schools and public education more broadly; nonprofit service providers who struggle in the face of tight budgets and rising demand to care for the state’s most vulnerable; and interested voters who got up early or stayed out late to learn the about the state’s finances, how we ended up in the mess we’re in, and how to get out. Almost universally, I met voters deeply dismayed by, but profoundly interested in fundamentally addressing, the state’s budget challenges […]
In the midst of all this doom and gloom, I found an underlying sense of optimism. The afterglow of the November election has brought new activists to the table and rekindled a belief that change is possible. There is also a sense of realism and an understanding that tough choices lie ahead. The ambitious federal efforts to stem the economic downturn, stabilize financial markets, and rein in the excesses of private markets are beginning to help voters see government as a solution to, rather than the cause of, economic malaise.
Our leaders have failed. Our people have not. In fact, they’re just getting started.
Virtually the entire political leadership in Sacramento took without questioning the view that the overwhelming loss of the special election is somehow a mandate for “living within our means” and deep, drastic cuts to the budget. The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times (in multiple venues) and most other publications provided uncritical coverage of the Governor and even leading Democrats, parroting this theory that “the voters spoke” and the message was that only cuts would be allowable from this point forward.
Beware of any sentence that starts with the words “What the voters told us was…” Far too often in our politics, dishonest lawmakers decide that voters mandate their particular ideologies and preferred policy decisions regardless of the facts. Perhaps the only real message delivered from the voters to lawmakers was that the former doesn’t particularly like or trust the latter. But there are other possibilities. A new polling memo by David Binder Research details why Prop. 1A in particular failed, and the results do not match the Governor’s ramblings.
Contrary to what the Governor is saying after the defeat of his proposals, Prop 1A did not fail because voters delivered a message to “go all out” in cutting government spending. The all-time record low turnout for a statewide special election clearly demonstrates the lack of depth to that argument. Prop 1A did not
generate a spike in turnout and taxes were not cited as the main reason why voters overwhelmingly rejected Prop 1A. Support for a state budget that relies solely on spending cuts is very limited – even among those voting no on Prop 1a.
Voters in this election were more likely to be Republicans and less likely to be Independents, whereas Democratic voters came out in proportions consistent with past turnout. Of those that voted in this election, 43% were Democrats, 42% were Republicans and 15% were Independents or minor party voters. This past November, the electorate consisted of 46% Democrats, 32% Republicans and 22% Independents or minor party voters.
In November 2010, the electorate will be a group that is more supportive of the revenue options tested in the survey, and more strongly opposed to only using cuts to balance the state budget. While only 36% of voters that turned out for the May 19th election supported using entirely budget cuts to balance the budget, even fewer – only 24% — of non-voters felt the same way […]
Voters simply do not trust the leadership in Sacramento, and recognize that the failed special election was just another example of the inability to bring real solutions to voters. When given two choices, four out of five voters – even among those who voted ‘Yes’ on 1A – agreed that the special election was just another example of the failure of the Governor and Legislature, who should make the hard decisions necessary to really fix the budget. Only 20% agreed the special election was a sincere effort to fix the state’s budget mess.
I would argue that the voters feel no trust in the legislature because they see time and again policy solutions that stick the average Californian with the bill that the wealthy and well-connected don’t pay. The fact that the only permanent tax issue in the February budget was a $1 billion dollar tax cut for the largest corporations in America is a perfect example.
The polling memo also shows broad support for tax increases in a variety of areas, including wiping out this massive corporate tax cut:
75% support increasing taxes on alcoholic beverages (62% support among ‘No’ voters)
74% support increasing taxes on tobacco (62% support among ‘No’ voters)
73% support imposing an oil extraction tax on oil companies just like every other oil producing
state (60% support among ‘No’ voters)
63% support closing the loophole that allows corporations to avoid reassessment of the value of
new property they purchase (58% support among ‘No’ voters)
63% support increasing the top bracket of the state income tax from nine point three percent to
10 percent for families with taxable income over $272,000 a year and to eleven percent for
families with taxable incomes over $544,000 a year (51% support among ‘No’ voters)
59% support prohibiting corporations from using tax credits to offset more than fifty percent of the
taxes they owe (55% support among ‘No’ voters)
In addition, voters oppose the kind of spending cuts outlined by the Governor.
Now, I’m sure I’ll hear “eat it, you pipe dream librul hippie” because of the structural issues that prohibit these kind of tax solutions. But the reason that the legislature has such desperately low esteem right now is that they fail to publicly even advocate for the solutions Californians plainly want, or the breakage of the structural barriers that would provide it. This failure caused the May 19 debacle and will cause further problems for the Democrats in the state if they are not careful. A political party seen as devoid of principle will not be a successful political party forever. What Californians desire, essentially, is leadership. And they will punish those who refuse to give it to them.
UPDATE by Brian: I’ve posted the slides for the Binder Research presentation over the flip.
George Lakoff writes today that this could be a moment of freedom for California Democrats. Their compromised ballot measured having gone down in flames, they can now focus on the only solution to what ails the state: democracy. They can include in every public utterance until the moment the 2/3 rule is repealed the theme that California’s democracy is broken, and that we must restore it with a majority vote for budget and revenue matters. The time for half-steps and non-fixes must be over.
Up to now, Democrats have been acting like sheep being herded by the Republican minority. They need to show courage and stand up for what they believe. That’s what the voters are waiting for […]
Get rid of the 55% proposals. People understand that majority rule means democracy. 55% means nothing.
Even if you don’t address taxes and just address the budget process, the Republicans will still say you’re going to raise taxes. You may as well go for real democracy.
And finally, get a unified message that can be supported by the grassroots. Do grassroots organizing for 2010, starting now. Organize spokespeople to get that message out. Organize bookers to book your spokespeople in the media. You Democrats are a majority. Act like it. The public will respect you for it.
Unfortunately, Darrell Steinberg and Karen Bass failed the first test, stuck in a mindset that will bring the state to ruin. First, Steinberg.
“The voters have spoken and they are telling us that government should do the best it can with the money it has. We will immediately and responsibly get to work to balance the budget and head off a cash crisis in July. Delay is not an option. The necessary decisions we must make will only get harder with time.”
That is not what voters are telling you. As I said yesterday, you cannot reconcile the supposed anti-tax fervor with the passage of a transient occupancy tax in conservative Palmdale with 64% of the vote. California is a big state and no one message from a statewide election can predominate, but the mass boycott of the polls certainly suggests that we don’t want to do your job anymore. I know it’s been so long since Democrats exercised their Democratic muscles and principles in Sacramento, but this election called out the political leadership for failed governance. And everyone who has studied this for half a second understands that the failure will continue until the structural barriers are removed. And so making this absurd and vindictive statement about voter intentions both misses an opportunity to refocus the discussion and angers the grassroots further.
Here’s Bass:
“There are many difficult choices and a lot of hard work ahead of us. We now have to responsibly fill the budget hole that has been caused by the national recession and deepened by the failure of today’s ballot propositions. I hope the bipartisan cooperation between the Legislature and the Governor that went into this effort will continue as we move forward – the people of California clearly expect us to work together to get the job done. And we will.
The people of California could give a rat’s ass who works together with who. They don’t want to see this level of dysfunction anymore. Bipartisan cooperation was clearly rejected last night, because inevitably that gives leverage to the minority and provides unworkable non-solutions.
Where is the argument for DEMOCRACY in these statements? Since 1978 that democracy has crumbled and needs to be completely rebuilt. Everyone knows this but refuses to say it out loud. This is why the legislature and the Governor have historically low approval ratings. People are starved for actual leadership and see none. Only democracy will save us. This failed experiment with conservative Two Santa Claus Theories has now become deeply destructive. Because the democrats have provided no leadership and ceded the rhetorical ground, California public opinion holds the contradictory beliefs that the state should not raise taxes and also not cut spending. And if it persists without leadership and advocacy to the contrary, nothing will change.
“The Governor can’t manufacture money” is what one person said after I described how his cutbacks will harm our schools. I replied, “Yes, but he can manufacture leadership.”
The preceding is from an Op Ed I wrote for my local paper recently. I serve on a school board in San Leandro, California. All Californians need to speak out against the Governor’s proposed budget cuts. We need to pressure him and the Legislature to develop solutions to the revenue shortfall that do not harm our children and the most vulnerable of our society.
Here is my Op Ed on the 2008 State Budget Crisis:
My oldest daughter will start Kindergarten in public school in San Leandro next August. I know she will receive excellent instruction from dedicated and caring teachers. Her education, however, will not be shaped solely by my wife and me, her teachers, principal, other involved parents and school board.
The federal government has intruded in education through the No Child Left Behind Act. NCLB establishes wholly unrealistic standards of performance for our public schools. When schools do not meet these standards, they are labeled failures, triggering a set of escalating sanctions ending in the conversion of our public schools into charter schools.
Congress is debating whether to reauthorize NCLB. If Congress applied the same performance measurements to itself, Congress would receive an “F.” The federal government should offer a helping hand to schools in need, not punitive sanctions.
Decisions made in Sacramento in the coming months will also greatly impact our schools. California has a centralized system for funding public education. The Governor and Legislature, not local school boards, determine the amount of property taxes and state aid each school district receives. This is why even when property tax receipts increase, our schools do not necessarily benefit.
Sacramento deserves an “F” in the category of school finance. According to Education Week, California ranks 47th in the nation in spending per student when accounting for regional cost differences, spending $1,900 less per student than the national average. West Virginia, Louisiana and Mississippi all outrank California.
What do these statistics mean? The 6.3 million children in California public schools attend some of the most crowded classrooms and have the fewest counselors and librarians in the nation.
Last August, Governor Schwarzenegger signed a budget that he called responsible, noting it limited “spending growth to less than 1 percent.” Since then there has been a meltdown in the housing market. State revenues have dropped precipitously. Nevertheless, Governor Schwarzenegger claims state expenditures are excessive. He proposes cutting billions from K-12 education to balance the budget.
“The Governor can’t manufacture money” is what one person said after I described how his cutbacks will harm our schools. I replied, “Yes, but he can manufacture leadership.” Upon taking office, Governor Schwarzenegger reduced the vehicle license fee. That created an annual $4 billion hole in the budget, about the same amount he now seeks to slash from education.
Governor Schwarzenegger once promised voters he would “protect California’s commitment to education funding.” Our public schools are the only state-funded agency that depends upon car washes, bake sales and magazine subscription drives to function. Yet, the Governor rules out any tax increases to address the revenue shortfall. His call for 2008 to be the Year of Education has become a cruel joke.
Leadership is ultimately by example. The Schwarzenegger household will be unaffected by the budget cuts. His children attend a private school that charges over $25,000 a year in tuition. In San Leandro, spending per student in 2006 was $6,916.
Our society will not flourish if only the children of the rich attend schools that offer quality teaching in small classrooms, music and arts education, foreign languages, sports, access to technology and well-stocked libraries. California’s future depends on our public schools receiving the resources necessary to succeed.
Please note, I am speaking for myself, not the San Leandro School Board.
A famous US patriot once said “These are the times that try men’s souls.” At the time, he spoke of the events and circumstances surrounding the birth of a nation destined to be defined by the rights and freedoms of the people; a nation led by government of the People, by the People and for the People, where leaders could inspire the People to stand united in spite of differing opinions or particular religious influence.
The advent of the twenty-first century has marked the most severe departure from our founding principles than ever before. We stand on the brink of self-immolation, leaderless and adrift, while selfish, arrogant hypocrites steer our ship of state toward the shoals.
Should we fail now to grow resolute and united in our determination to right this ship, we fail not only ourselves but our children, and their children’s children.
It is time to look to those children for inspiration and a reminder of what we, as adults, are tasked with as parents and guardians: to create and foster an environment where children can grow to adulthood, secure in the knowledge that we have passed along the best models for ethical leadership and responsible stewardship of this nation that we know how.
And a little child shall lead them
On Tuesday, September 6, 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, an article appeared in the New York Times about a curious band of refugees that walked into a Baton Rouge evacuation point: six children, comprised of five toddlers following a six year old boy carrying a five month old child:
They were holding hands. Three of the children were about 2 years old. A 3-year-old girl, who wore colorful barrettes on the ends of her braids, had her 14-month-old brother in tow. The 6-year-old spoke for all of them, and he told rescuers his name was Deamonte Love.
Leadership, in action, during a time where the adult leadership of the nation was focused on trying not to appear wholly incompetent.
They failed.
In times of crisis, a nation needs to have faith in the capacity of its appointed leaders to step in and guide them safely through. Taken in that context, our “leaders” have not simply failed — they have failed miserably, to the point where we can no longer think of them as “leaders” at all: that was the turning point where a more critical, if jaundiced, eye was cast upon their actions, and their carefully-constructed façade began to crumble to dust around them.
They were brutally upstaged by the simple competence of a small child.1
Those self-same leaders, who proclaim their compassion for fellow citizens and their love for children, ardently oppose abortion rights for women — and equally oppose providing insurance for millions of uninsured children. They claim to support scientific research, but stand firm against fully embracing stem cell research while hypocritically claiming successful justification of their idiocy by pointing at the work of foreign scientists — scientists who are forging ahead in the field, while our own endeavors flounder here at home.2
Where have all the (adult) leaders gone?
In the year 2007, that question has been asked repeatedly, with growing emphasis. An eighty-two years old businessman by the name of Lee Iacocca even wrote a book with a very similar title: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?3 In order to find out where to look for leadership, and how to recognize it, we should take a peek inside the cover. The opening passages of the book alone should have sounded a clarion call to the would-be and wanna-be leaders of today:
I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies.
Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don’t need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we’re fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions.
Iacocca shouts out that he’d love to sit back and let the youth lead the charge against the encroaching apathy and ongoing destruction of our nation, but the youth is currently distracted and disillusioned. Our children and our young adults — by far one of the bigger factions of the public — don’t trust our politicians to represent their interests; he doesn’t blame them for this, but wants them to wake up and realize that only by standing up and participating in the system can they hope to change it for the better. He laments that we have created “a hell of a mess” and must all pitch in to clean it up.
So here’s where we stand. We’re immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We’re running the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We’re losing the manufacturing edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry out for leadership.
But when you look around, you’ve got to ask: “Where have all the leaders gone?” Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, competence, and common sense?
Those people are the ones who appear to be missing in action. Our Congress holds the responsibility to bring oversight and accountability to the workings of the government, particularly the Executive Branch;
I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn’t elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid of? That some bobblehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don’t you guys show some spine for a change?
[…snip…]
You don’t get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether it’s building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play.
We all have a role to play. We need our Congress to play its role and to actively put the wayward Executive Branch back on track. We ourselves need to drop the veil of false civility and inject the righteous anger and frustration of our national plight into the public discourse — it is no longer time for political correctness, it’s time for political correction.
A Child’s Lead and a Childish Leader: Political Correction vs. “Politically Correct”
The legacy of the Republican Party of this day and age can be summed up in the person of their de facto creation: George W. Bush, and the malAdministration that he leads. Juxtaposed against pretty words carefully calculated to say one thing while supporting the opposite, the legacy of Bush Republicans is one of malignant deceit. They claim support of science, yet undermine any research that doesn’t support their politics in spite of the harm to the public or to national security. They claim to be strong on national security, yet gut the programs that would most help the nation and provide true security in order to prop up failed adventures as “successful” — all the while causing more harm than good. They loudly insist that they have created a better, stronger system for education while creating a system where states and schools are practically encouraged to misreport statistics in order to continue receiving funds. Is are children learning became a national embarrassment, along with the memorable phrase Childrens do learn,4 both brought to the forefront of national discourse by the ignoble head of the Republican Party and purported “leader” of the free world. Bush Republicans also support and extol the virtues of misnamed national policies like The Clean Air Act or Healthy Forests. These morally bankrupt hypocrites claim their support of severe restrictions on embryonic stem cell research helps children and credit research by others in another nation as evidence of their argument, and they aggressively push for war in the name of peace.5
It is a legacy of deceit, denial and dissembly.
It’s time we stood tall and dropped the false cover that political correctness provides to those who excel in prevarication. We need to be direct. We need to be forceful. We need to be blunt.
The child appeared to be imitating something she had seen — probably more than once — when associated with the man standing in front of her. But unlike the parent who quickly and gently hid her action from view, the child’s gesture demonstrated exactly the type of blunt, direct and peaceful confrontation that our adult selves have been sorely deficient in. Fortunately, it is a deficiency that is not complete.
Indeed, some Americans have already figured out that the best way to confront the hypocrisy is to visibly challenge those most responsible for it. In this clip, Richard “Dick” Cheney has his own words from the Senate floor (June 25, 2004) quoted back to him in the aftermath of Katrina, when the Bush officials finally decided it was safe to attempt a few photo ops:
Another adult who stood up to the Bush Administration, directly confronting Bush with dignity and grace, was Harry Taylor, a man who is now running for Congress:
These occurrences are, however, too few and far between. In the interest of our national well-being and the future of both the nation and the children who have lent us the temporary custody of it, we have to do better. Congress has to do better. Our next President has to do better. The current crop of ethically challenged and fiscally irresponsible Republicans know that if they are confronted — if the people begin to stand up and demand answers, criticizing the constant stream of noxious nonsense that is being spread thickly over the landscape — then they will lose their grip on power. They know they will likely lose billions in ill-gotten gains. And some of them, if we are truly diligent in our pursuit of truth and justice, may just end up in jail. They know this, and they are striving to push back against it. They have stooped so low as to repeat and augment the Nixon-era’s challenge that “if the President does it, it’s legal” — they even attempt to quiet dissent by challenging it with the language of treason, while in actuality it is their own actions that betray the nation and her people.
We, the People of the United States of America, need to ensure that this happens. If not for ourselves, then do it for the children. They’re watching us, and will learn from our mistakes as well as our successes — but shouldn’t we try to demonstrate how much better it is to chalk up successes in the fight for freedom and democracy?
Set an example; throw the bums out, try them in accordance with the law, not in a kangaroo court, and when they are justly convicted ensure that they are justly imprisoned.
Namaste.
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Notes and Additional Video Support:
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1. Children have made headlines even more recently as enfants provocateurs (h/t Reason Online via Dawg’sBlog). From News24, an African online news source, comes this story on June 21, 2007:
Cops charge 3-year-old ‘rioter’
21/06/2007 13:44 – (SA)
Patna, India – Police in India have charged a three-year-old boy for allegedly leading a group of rioters and firing at security personnel, the toddler’s uncle said on Thursday.
[…snip…]
This news, of course, comes on the heels of a story from the previous month, detailing that charges were dropped against a six year old boy who was accused of molesting and assaulting a woman in her thirties, again in India.
Those kids in India…gotta watch ’em every minute. ;P
Mr. Spinmeister neglected to mention a few key facts in his apologetic zeal to lay the wreath of discovery at the feet of George Bush. To make a a skin cell behave like an embryonic stem cell, a couple of things go without saying: you’d have to know what an embryonic stem cell does. It would be damn helpful to have worked with human cells, particularly skin cells and embryonic stem cells. And that might be an obstacle if you happened to live in a country where having the latter is an expensive, over regulated pain in the ass specifically because of the unpopular policy of a certain unpopular President. Which may explain in part why this breakthrough occurred in Japan.
3. Iacocca, Lee and Catherine Whitney. Where Have All the Leaders Gone?; New York: Scribner, 2007. ISBN 1-416-53247-1. Citations and initial link in the piece above via Snopes.
4. This DailyKos diary by buffalo provided a most excellent and relevant YouTube video containing two key clips of education-related Bush malapropisms: George W. Bush: Childrens do learn!, posted 28 September 2007:
5. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Etc., etc. From Always Tell the Truth, posted by TileNut on April 16, 2006.
Free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don’t attack each other. Free nations don’t develop weapons of mass destruction.
So, I know the Senate President Pro Tem, Don Perata, and the Speaker of the Assembly, Fabian Nunez, are operating on a principle of confidence in their upcoming victory on term limits. But, given the budget debacle, that doesn’t seem a lock at this point.
In the most recent issue of Capitol Weekly, the best gosh-darned weekly on California politics, Anthony York takes a look at fundraising totals for clues as to who might make a run at the leadership positions in each chamber:
A look at the fundraising totals provides a pretty good clue as to who is in the top tier of contenders to replace Núñez and Perata. Leading the way is Freshman Kevin De Leon, D-Los Angeles, a close ally of Núñez and organized labor. The caucus’ second-leading fundraiser, Culver City Democrat Karen Bass, also has close labor ties. And, like De Leon, Bass is frequently mentioned as a possible successor to Núñez.
***
That’s true in the Senate, as well, where Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, showed $484,323 on hand. Steinberg’s most frequently mentioned challenger for the job, Los Angeles Sen. Alex Padilla, has $332,523. But both were eclipsed by San Francisco Sen. Leland Yee, who has $529,826 and Chino Sen. Gloria Negrete- Mcleod, who has $525,176. (CapWeekly 8/2/07)
But, that can’t be the only measure, or else, well, we are confined to being governed by and for AT&T and Chevron. So, who provides the right combination of progressivism and fundraising ability? Follow me over the flip
Well, let’s start in the Senate, Darrell Steinberg would certainly be a good start. Obviously he’s not bad at raising the dough, but he’s also been a pretty solid progressive vote, scoring a 95 on Capitol Weekly’s scorecard. Sen Padilla has at least 7 years left in office, so would be able to “reign” for quite a while. Of course, one more name should be thrown into the mix, that of the winner of SD-03. The winner in the bloody primary will likely emerge as the one of the most prolific fundraisers in state legislative history and will be able to gain some attention for that alone. And, oh, by the way, 3 of the four announced candidates in the race are progressive. Other candidates may be in the works, and some of them are unfamiliar to me. So, Mr. Kronenbourg, you want to give me a call and we can talk about whether you are a progressive or not?
Now, as for the Assembly, the obvious candidates would be the Majority Whip, Fiona Ma, and the big fundraiser Kevin De Leon. Karen Bass, the majority leader, and only non-freshman in the group that gets mentioned, made a damaging vote on the tribal compacts which might create riffs with the labor community. De Leon has a perfect progressive CW-score, and Ma is only slightly behind. As to who would actually make a progressive Speaker and work for the people, well, there are few of the people-powered variety in our legislature. And for that, we have many reasons to blame, ourselves included. You can blame our expensive media, and our campaign finance rules too. How sweet would some clean campaigning be right now?
Anyway, what do you think? Who would make a great legislative leader?
