Well, this is it.  After three months of argument, threats, projections, facts and figures, the special election on the budget has finally arrived.  Voters now get to decide the fate of six ballot measures that will impact the near-term budget deficit and the long-term manner of budgeting in the state.  Well, a FEW of the voters get to decide.  I popped by my local polling place just to see the crowd size – I already voted absentee – and let’s just say that the traffic was, er, light.  

So here are a few lessons as we watch the results tonight:

• Money Isn’t Everything – This race may finally put to rest that axiom of California politics about cash being king.  The No side – and mind you, groups only raised money opposing for certain ballot measures – raised about $4.5 million dollars, all told.  The Yes side raised over $26 million.  Despite this 6.5:1 advantage, most polls show the first five measures on the ballot, the ones that actually affect the budget, going down to defeat.  Prop. 1C, which had NO money against it and the state Democratic Party along with millions from G Tech (the makers of lottery machines) behind it, has consistently polled the worst among all measures.  The No on 1A folks used a strategy that conserved dollars but did get out the message, in particular through Web and Google ads.  But they were obliterated on the air and through mailers, and based on the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger skipped town and Budget Reform Now doesn’t even have a headquarters tonight, it appeared not to matter.

• No Credible Messengers – The main reason these ballot measures are poised to fail is that, in general terms, absolutely no politician in this state has the trust of the people.  Nobody could sell the message on the Yes side because nobody could even sell themselves.  I’ve heard about internal polls with the legislature in single digits and the Governor below 30%.  We have a crisis of confidence in California, and that stands to reason, considering the extent to which process has overwhelmed personality, making the state largely ungovernable without major revisions to that process.

• Take The Message You Want – The Yacht Party will certainly try to paint this as a victory for their anti-tax jihad, and it’s highly likely that the dwindling state political media, and even possibly the Democratic leadership, will believe them.  However, regardless of conservatives being “emboldened,” the fact is that progressives opposed the special election for very specific reasons, and Democratic leaders must reconcile with that as well.  The constraints on governance here in California are undeniable.  And yet the time has come to stop finding ways around the mountain of structural problems and pick up the shovel and start digging through the mountain.  It won’t take overnight, and in the meantime there are solutions – some painful, some creative – that the leadership will have to take.  But the message from the electorate, including those that sat this race out in anger or frustration, is that people don’t want gimmicks and spending caps and service cuts.  They want a functioning government and they don’t see one, and they will continue to punish these people who call themselves leaders until they start acting like it.

• Musical Chairs – Curren Price will win election to SD-26 today, shrinking the need for Republican votes to reach the 2/3 threshold in the Senate to 2.  At the same time, this will increase the need for Republican votes to reach the 2/3 threshold in the Assembly to 4.  There are more targeted seats in the Assembly, so in the short term this is a slight net win.  But it’s obviously not optimal, and that Assembly seat may not get filled, if the SD-26 odyssey is any guide, until late fall.

I think the sand has come out of the eyes of most everyone in Sacramento, and seeing their May 19 solutions sinking, the legislative leadership has returned to the drawing board, where a deficit somewhere between $14-$16 billion dollars for FY 2010 must be wrestled with.  Unsurprisingly, conservative lawmakers and the media have foregrounded cuts as the first among all other options.

So where might they look?

For starters, the state would spend down its $2 billion reserve, Steinberg said.

State leaders are eyeing a possible $5 billion reduction in school spending allowable under the state’s constitutional education guarantee when revenue drops. Education groups say that could threaten valuable programs and prevent schools from rescinding layoff notices they issued this spring.

“Schools would have to look at extracurricular programs, library hours, transportation,” said Scott Plotkin, executive director of the California School Boards Association. “An awful lot of things not required by the law that are desirable are going to start falling by the wayside.” […]

Schwarzenegger aides have warned public safety groups he may propose an early release of up to 38,000 prisoners, split between 19,000 undocumented immigrants and 19,000 low-level offenders. The governor may also seek to house those who commit “wobbler” crimes in county jails rather than in state prisons.

The plan would save an estimated $335 million in 2009-10 and $849 million in 2010-11.

It proposes to hand over undocumented immigrant prisoners to United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, though public safety officials questioned whether the federal government would agree to such a plan. The plan also would release 19,000 “nonserious, nonviolent, non-sex offense” inmates in the final six months of their sentences.

I don’t see ICE terribly happy with the state plopping 19,000 undocumented immigrants in their laps.

On the flip side of this, I think it’s important to recognize the solutions out there that involve no cuts, ones that must become part of the conversation immediately.  For example, federal guarantees for municipal bonds would save the state billions of dollars that could be diverted to closing the budget gap.  While it appeared that Congress was unmoved by this proposal, the Treasury Department could step in.

The Treasury, for instance, is working on a plan to help cities, school systems, hospitals and other agencies borrow money at cheaper rates. The credit crisis made it more expensive to get money for buildings, ballparks and other projects. The problem has been particularly acute for those with lower credit ratings, which require them to pay more for their bonds.

Officials are considering options including the creation of a federal agency that could back the bonds, aiding bond insurers that backstop municipal bonds or simply providing subsidies that could lower the rate for municipalities.

This is not a direct pass-through to the budget, but the savings would be felt in future scorings of overall revenue and spending.

More important, the Senate leader has started to talk about the majority vote fee increase once again.

But making deeper cuts into social services begins to run against logic, Steinberg said. With CalWorks, for instance, the federal match is “so significant,” that to cut $1 is to turn away $4 or $5 in federal dollars.

“At some point, it makes little sense to cut even deeper,” he said. “But, let’s assume we make significant and broader cuts. Then, you’re looking at corrections and public safety. … I wouldn’t take it as a complete given that the other side is really willing to vote for a cuts-only strategy.”

If Republicans don’t go along with new revenues, Steinberg said Democrats may have to resort to a simple majority vote on fees, the same tack he took last winter before Schwarzenegger vetoed the effort to force negotiations. “But we’re not going to lead with that,” Steinberg said.

They ought to go ahead and lead with it.  The problems we face in Sacramento are governance problems, which favor solutions that kick the can down the road instead of facing up to current challenges.  In such an environment, bold solutions that finally remove the structural revenue gap and end budget dysfunction are really the only step forward.  The majority-vote fee increase is a bold, albeit short-term, step, certainly preferable to counter-cyclical and counter-productive spending cuts, and the pressure on the Governor to accept it will increase as the summer marches on.  The long-term solution, of course, comes in building the rationale for restoring democracy to the legislature by ending the conservative veto over the process and returning to a simple majority to run government.

I spoke at yet another Democratic Club meeting on the May 19 propositions yesterday, against yet another member of the California Legislature, Julia Brownley (who I really like and respect).  One thing I sought to make clear to everyone is that we are going back to the drawing board on May 20 no matter what happens on May 19.  The Legislative Analyst already finds the February budget deal to be $8 billion dollars out of balance, and April tx receipts came up $1.8 billion dollars short of the budget projection.  Some of us recognize that this means alternative solutions must be gathered right now, because Democratic legislators will be stuck in the chamber with the Yacht Party on May 20 regardless.

I was heartened to hear Assmeblywoman Brownley note that a majority vote fee increase will probably be part of the solution.  When the Legislature passed this in December, they raised more money than would be sacrificed if Props. 1C, 1D and 1E failed.  An argument could be made that the majority vote fee increase combined with the passage of those props would obviate the need for almost any cuts.  I think that’s faulty reasoning, since 1D and 1E ARE cuts, to vital services that will cost the state more money in the long run.  As for 1C I find it completely unworkable and just a borrowing gimmick.

I do have to say that it would be much easier to swallow this posturing from the ballot measure supporters that they would have no choice but massive cuts on May 20 if everything failed, if they didn’t enable massive permanent corporate tax cuts in the last budget deal…

Corporate tax attorneys are chuckling over the absurd deal in the last agreement that lets multistate and multinational taxpayers decide, each year, how much income they want to report to California. Because this was negotiated in private, with no hearings and no independent expertise brought to bear, the result is a giveaway and a national embarrassment, in a state that had prided itself on a fair, successful corporation tax.

Here’s how it works. Each state typically figures out what percentage of a large company’s business is done in the state, and then taxes that percentage of income. Historically, if 10% of a multistate company’s payroll, property and sales are located in the state, then 10% of its nationwide or worldwide income is subject to tax. In the budget deal, California changed the formula to allow companies to choose to make that percentage based only on sales in California.

…and if they didn’t protect the very corporate interests who are now bankrolling their ballot measures:

The entire architecture of the ballot pact that emerged was heavily shaped by leaders’ desire to please – or at least neutralize – the state’s most powerful political players.

Now, some of those very interest groups protected in the budget deal are bankrolling the campaign to ratify it.

For the oil industry, the package omits a once-proposed 9.9 percent oil severance tax. Energy companies have given more than a million dollars to pass the plan, led by a $500,000 donation from Chevron.

For the liquor, beer and wine industry, increased alcohol taxes were shelved. Alcohol industry heavyweights, such as E. & J. Gallo Winery ($100,000) and California’s Beer and Beverage Distributors ($50,000), have all opened their checkbooks.

For the teachers union, the list of ballot measures includes a separate measure to ensure repayment of deep cuts to schools and protections for top-priority programs. The California Teachers Association has contributed $7 million to the passage of Propositions 1A and 1B.

For casino-operating Indian tribes, the state lottery measure avoids any new games that could threaten their gambling operations. Tribes, who could have been major contributors against the lottery proposition, have kept their checkbooks closed.

In the last budget deal, all the industry-specific taxes, all the service-based taxes that wouldn’t be so regressive, faded away, and the same groups protected by that fade (including practically every sports team, as sporting event-industry taxes were once on the table) ponied up for the special election.  So pardon me if I don’t believe your lament that you’ll just be forced to cut state services, when you found room for billions in tax cuts to the largest corporations in America and protected every single industry that could donate money for ads and mailers.  Let’s just say I don’t buy the image of a legislature with their hands tied.

Riffing off of Brian’s post referencing the horror show of a Field Poll, where Californians polled apparently think we can balance the budget through spending cuts but don’t want to cut anything (a sort-of companion PPIC poll basically shows the same thing, with respect to nobody wanting education cuts but nobody wanting to pay for increases), this should be a very familiar outlook to people.  It’s at the heart of the two Santa Claus theory, proposed by Jude Wanniski, a Republican economist, during the time of Ronald Reagan.  

By 1974, Jude Wanniski had had enough. The Democrats got to play Santa Claus when they passed out Social Security and Unemployment checks – both programs of the New Deal – as well as when their “big government” projects like roads, bridges, and highways were built giving a healthy union paycheck to construction workers. They kept raising taxes on businesses and rich people to pay for things, which didn’t seem to have much effect at all on working people (wages were steadily going up, in fact), and that made them seem like a party of Robin Hoods, taking from the rich to fund programs for the poor and the working class. Americans loved it. And every time Republicans railed against these programs, they lost elections […]

Wanniski decided to turn the classical world of economics – which had operated on this simple demand-driven equation for seven thousand years – on its head. In 1974 he invented a new phrase – “supply side economics” – and suggested that the reason economies grew wasn’t because people had money and wanted to buy things with it but, instead, because things were available for sale, thus tantalizing people to part with their money. The more things there were, the faster the economy would grow.

At the same time, Arthur Laffer was taking that equation a step further. Not only was supply-side a rational concept, Laffer suggested, but as taxes went down, revenue to the government would go up!

Neither concept made any sense – and time has proven both to be colossal idiocies – but together they offered the Republican Party a way out of the wilderness […]

Democrats, (Wanniski) said, had been able to be “Santa Clauses” by giving people things from the largesse of the federal government. Republicans could do that, too – spending could actually increase. Plus, Republicans could be double Santa Clauses by cutting people’s taxes! For working people it would only be a small token – a few hundred dollars a year on average – but would be heavily marketed. And for the rich it would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts. The rich, in turn, would use that money to import or build more stuff to market, thus increasing supply and stimulating the economy. And that growth in the economy would mean that the people still paying taxes would pay more because they were earning more.

There was no way, Wanniski said, that the Democrats could ever win again. They’d have to be anti-Santas by raising taxes, or anti-Santas by cutting spending. Either one would lose them elections.

In the intervening 35 years, we have had no progressive leader in California, no Democratic leader, challenge that ridiculous theory in any meaningful way.  Instead, over and over again, Democrats must lead the charge killing off the two Santa Clauses, filling budget deficits by raising taxes or cutting spending, frequently the latter.  And while other factors have contributed to Democratic dominance in recent years, the ideological theories of Santa Claus conservatism remain.  And Democrats and Republicans alike have ingrained them into their lizard brains, either by believing in them, or believing that everyone else believes in them and there’s no way to change that.

In truth, public opinion, particularly in such a low-information state like California, is quite malleable.  But nobody has bothered to discredit the Two Santa Claus theory, the idea that we can have all the services we need and the lowest taxes possible.  Of course, the insidious dynamic of the two-thirds rule, putting Democrats both nominally in power but subject to a conservative veto, has made a Democratic message impossible, so constrained it is by the straitjacket of an ungovernable system.

Now, the out for the believers in two Santa Clauses is that government can just do more with the money they have, through better efficiency.  Nobody would argue that government is perfectly efficient – I don’t see anyone leaping to defend spending $580,000 on unused office space – but the savings from that efficiency exist on the margins, and would do little to really impact our woefully low per capita state spending on areas like K-12 education.  So we get bullshitty ideas like cutting lawmaker pay (the Governor jumped all over that one), or trashing the state’s Waste Management Board, which has become a waystation for termed-out legislators to pull in a nice salary.  These “efficiency” maneuvers would do absolutely nothing relative to the budget deficit.  And the areas that would make a dent, like a broader-based sales tax that catches everything we consume, if off-limits because of special interest lobbying:

The declining “yield” of the state’s sales tax is one cause of California’s ongoing budget deficits. Since 1960, the revenue raised by each one percent state sales tax rate has fallen by about one-third. The reasons for the decline are two-fold. First, consumers now spend a larger share of their incomes on services, which are largely untaxed, rather than goods, which are subject to the state’s sales tax. The second reason is the rise of internet sales, including purchases from out-of-state retailers, that don’t collect the tax on sales made to California consumers. Estimates suggest that California loses $2 billion to $5 billion per year from untaxed internet sales – enough to make a significant and lasting dent in the state’s chronic budget woes.

In light of this fact, one might think that a bill that attempts to narrow a loophole that provides preferential treatment for businesses located entirely outside of California would be a “no brainer.” Unfortunately, this appears not to be the case. Assemblymember Nancy Skinner’s AB 178 is similar to a recently enacted New York law, would require businesses such as Amazon.com that enter into “affiliate” relationships with California-based entities to collect California sales tax.

At a time when California faces significant budget shortfalls and California retailers face declining sales, you’d think a bill that makes it possible for the state to actually collect taxes that are legally owed and that limits an incentive for Californians to buy from businesses that don’t employ a single Californian would be greeted with open arms. Unfortunately, opposition from tech industry lobbyists has left the measure’s future in question.

Ultimately, we have a serious problem.  Our citizens get almost no public policy information from media, our state capitol is too often run by corporate interests, our Democratic leadership cowers from advocacy to disabuse citizens of false notions, and our Yacht Party is completely crazy.  This is not insurmountable but requires leadership.  We elected a President by 61% of the vote in California who was derided as a socialist.  Attitudes can be changed.  But someone has to stand up and speak.

In a last-ditch and ultimately futile attempt to get the Republicans to support the May 19 ballot measures, Yacht Party leader in the Assembly Mike Villines played the majority vote card.

One fear of GOP lawmakers surrounding the May 19 special election is that should the ballot measures fail, Democrats and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger could go around them and simply swap certain taxes for fees and raise revenues without their votes […]

“I know it’s counterintuitive, but by coming to the table and negotiating, we saved the two-thirds protection,” Villines said as the California Republican Party opposed the measures. “Mark my word, I believe that if these initiatives don’t go through, you will see a majority-vote budget, you will see it signed and you will see the defense of taxpayers in this state disappear.”

Mike, you say that like majority rule is a bad thing.

Unfortunately I don’t share the optimism of Asm. Villines about the backbone of the Democratic Party to go ahead and fill the budget gap with a work-around fee increase.  I had the opportunity to share the stage with a couple members of the legislature this weekend to debate the special election, and in particular, Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez seemed especially pessimistic on the majority vote option.  He basically said that the lawyers advising the legislature questions the legality of the effort and that if the ballot measures fail, “we will have a cuts-only budget.”  He even went so far as to identify particular cuts that have already been discussed, all affecting the usual suspects – the elderly, the blind, the IHSS patients, kids without health care, CalWorks members, etc.  So that’s the May 20th strategy that the legislature is teeing up.

Now, maybe it’s easier to ramp up the fear by playing up this disaster scenario in the event of the failure of the ballot measures.  But I definitely expressed disappointment that the Majority Leader was foreclosing on an option which the nonpartisan Legislative Counsel found perfectly legal.  I see no need to shut down creative solutions to the budget problem, especially when they can offer a glimpse into how a working government can function in a post-two-thirds environment.  Even moderates and conservatives understand that the Yacht Party has hijacked the state and irresponsibly used their chokehold on legislative rules to force failed solutions and drive California into a fiscal ditch.  The point is that this is coming, or at least it ought to be, whether by a work-around or ballot initiative, and we can end this hostage situation that Republicans have forced upon us for the last thirty years.  To their credit, everyone in the legislature that I’ve talked to wants to move forward on repealing two-thirds.

Sen. Florez and I had a lot else to discuss in our debate (including his admission that “if you want to vote No on 1F, go ahead,” which was a bit off the reservation), including the continued debate over the state spending cap, Prop. 1A (or a spending constraint, if you prefer, but certainly not anything like the inoffensive tweak that supporters make it out to be).  In the end, the West Los Angeles Democratic Club took no position on anything but No on 1E, and PDA, where I also spoke this weekend, voted NO on all the ballot measures.

I’ve obtained a copy of the email sent to every California Democratic Party member from the Assembly Speaker and the Senate President Pro Tem, trying to scare the membership into supporting the special election ballot measures.  It’s really unconscionable for them to stretch the truth this much.  They conflate apples and oranges to make it seem like an immediate $31 billion dollar deficit is forthcoming if the measures fail, which is simply untrue.  They mostly discuss what failure would mean rather than what success would mean.  And they neglect the permanent damage that would be caused by the ballot measures in favor of the temporary tax increases.  I’ll put the whole thing on the flip, but here is the excerpt that kills me.  

There seems to be a great deal of misinformation about Proposition 1A, the spending reform measure. This is NOT a spending cap, but rather a mechanism to force savings in good years to protect funding for services when our economy sours.  If California had a rainy-day fund like most other states, $9 billion in cuts could have been avoided this year. In the long-run, Proposition 1A will stabilize state spending for critical services.

Um, actually, folks, that’s what a spending cap IS.  It caps spending and puts money into a rainy day fund.  Of course, the way this cap is structured, the rainy day fund would have to take money even in DOWN budget years, due to its stringent, restrictive nature.  The line about how $9 billion in cuts could have been avoided this year with rainy day fund money is offered without the knowledge that the money would have had to come FROM somewhere, and would have meant $9 billion in cuts in years prior.  Not to mention the fact that it would have had to be replenished almost immediately.  With this spending cap – yes, Madame Speaker and Mr. President pro Tem, sorry to burst your bubble but that’s what it is – spending will be forced $16 billion dollars below the Governor’s baseline budget next years.  That’s the ENTIRE gain of the $16 billion in temporary tax increases in just one year.  And the cap goes on and on and on.

Pathetic.  About the only good thing here is the shout-out to eliminating 2/3 for budgets and taxes.  I appreciate that, but would appreciate some honesty about the spending cap even more.

UPDATE: Funny, Steinberg and Bass’ pal Mike Villines, who has been going around the state with them promoting 1A, has some different thoughts about what the measure would do:

Proposition 1A represents a significant victory for taxpayers at a time when our state needs it most. Proposition 1A ties the hands of legislative liberals, and it forces our budget into a fixed formula and a hard spending cap. That means, for the first time in decades, that liberals will have to make tough spending choices and cut their pet projects.

It also means the taxpayers will no longer be treated like a giant ATM machine. Consider this fact: if we had Prop 1A in place today, our state would not be $31 billion in the red. Instead, our state would have a much more manageable $5.4 billion budget gap. That means that during the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, Proposition 1A would have ensured that our budget gap was manageable. That’s the proof that Proposition 1A protects taxpayers.

Villines is wrong about this being a good idea, but he happens to be right on the numbers.  With a spending cap, approximately $27 billion MORE would have had to been cut in the years leading up to the current budget.  That’s more than half of the entire education budget.

Did you guys think we wouldn’t notice the diametrically opposed arguments, depending on the constituency?

Dear Fellow California Democratic Party Member:

At this month’s California Democratic Party Convention in Sacramento, you will be asked to take a position on Propositions 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, 1E and 1F that will appear on a special statewide election May 19.  We strongly urge you to support this package to provide California the short-term revenues to get through these difficult economic times, as well as the long-term reforms to stabilize our budget process and protect funding for vital services.    After months of difficult negotiations, we made some of the toughest decisions elected officials could ever make.  We closed a $42 billion budget shortfall that threatened to send California into fiscal collapse – halting thousands of jobs, devastating critical education, health, children’s and senior services, and plunging our economy into deeper meltdown.

The tough choices we made will begin the long process of getting California back on track and providing long-term stability to the programs and services we all value.

Make no mistake: the final budget agreement contains important victories that hold true to our shared Democratic principles.  In particular, we negotiated four years of desperately needed revenue increases, worth $12.5 billion this year alone.  We cannot overstate the significance of this achievement.  By doing so, we were able to protect education, health care and safety net services from even deeper cuts.

We were also able to stave off Republican demands to roll back hard-fought environmental and worker protections.  And, through Proposition 1B, we will ensure that schools are repaid over time for the painful cuts they have endured because of this budget crisis.

But the package and revenues we negotiated will all be for naught if we don’t pass Propositions 1A-1F in May. Unless Prop. 1A is approved, California will lose $16 billion in revenues from the sales, vehicle license and income taxes beginning in Fiscal Years 2011-2013.  Prop. 1A also provides the mechanism to restore $9.3 billion in funds to schools.  And without Propositions 1C, 1D, and 1E, we will lose another $7 billion in funding.

Losing $23 billion in revenues, on top of the $8 billion deficit projected by the Legislative Analyst, will result in renewed demands for catastrophically deep cuts to schools, hospitals, essential children’s services and senior programs for the foreseeable future.

There seems to be a great deal of misinformation about Proposition 1A, the spending reform measure. This is NOT a spending cap, but rather a mechanism to force savings in good years to protect funding for services when our economy sours.  If California had a rainy-day fund like most other states, $9 billion in cuts could have been avoided this year. In the long-run, Proposition 1A will stabilize state spending for critical services.

Passing Propositions 1A-1F is the first step in restoring our state’s fiscal health and voter confidence in state government.  This is essential for us to move forward with our shared priorities such as expanding healthcare to all Californians, further reforming the budget process to eliminate the destructive 2/3 requirement for budgets and taxes, protecting against climate change, and ensuring necessary education, health and social services for the people of California.

We hope you will join us in supporting Propositions 1A-1F.

Jerry Brown’s long interview with Roberts and Trounstine at CalBuzz sums up so much of what is wrong with establishment Sacramento Democrats, I hardly know where to begin.  Essentially he values the need for “practical management” instead of “new ideas” at a time when the old ideas and the old ways of doing business have led us to the worst sustained budget crisis in the state’s history and an unmatched crisis of confidence among the state’s citizens.  But Brown, adopting the high Broderist tone that has failed the state so often of late, thinks that the real problems in Sacramento can be solved through good hard common sense.

We wanted to interview Brown to ask his views on seven key questions we posed to all the candidates in one of our first posts. In his own fashion, he addressed most of them. However, Brown staunchly refused to specify what combination of cuts and tax hikes he would support to deal with chronic deficits, beyond stressing his view that California is a “very high tax” state and dismissing as politically impractical the proposal to amend Proposition 13 by taxing commercial and industrial property at higher rates than residential property.

“Anyone who answers that (tax and cuts question) will never have a chance to be governor,” he said. “It’s very hard to discuss with particularity anything that can be turned into (campaign) fodder.”

Moreover, he added, “dictating from the corner office does not work . . . If eliminating the structural problems in the California budget were easy, Wilson, Davis and Schwarzenegger would have done it.”

How would he deal with fiercely ideological legislators on the left and the right?

“I’m going to become an apostle of common sense,” he said. “I will disabuse them of their ill-conceived predilections.”

“There’s an embedded partisanship that has to become disembedded,” he said. “In my bones, I’m not that partisan. I’m an independent thinker. That’s my tradition. I’ve been wary of ideology since I left the Sacred Heart Novitiate (in 1960).”

So the guy who wants to lead the state thinks that he can show that leadership by avoiding specifics for two years.  Granted, this worked for the current occupant of the Governor’s office, but it’s deeply cynical and the opposite of courage.  In this defensive crouch, Brown shows his fear of the dwindling anti-tax forces in California, and how he still views the state from the lens of Prop. 13 in 1978.  The statement that Pete Wilson, Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger would have eliminated the structural problems in the budget if they could, because they’re such a bold crew of reformers, is self-evidently ridiculous.  And I don’t even know what to say about the “apostle of common sense” comment.  He must have shut his eyes for the past decade as the Yacht Party grew more and more ideologically rigid and oriented themselves like a crime family of hijackers and loansharks instead of a political party.  Appeals to common sense to a group that actually favored letting the state fall into bankruptcy makes no sense at all.  Brown huffed that such a “kind of subversive attitude is unacceptable.”  You hear?  Unacceptable!  Or no tea for anyone!

Then there’s this incredible passage:

We asked Brown this key question: What do you want to do as governor?

He quickly ticked off four key concerns with specific ideas in each area: Renewable energy; prison reform; education reform; water policy (we’ll report details on these in future posts).

Prison reform???!?  Jerry Brown has been the poster child for furthering the tough on crime pose in Sacramento, trying to throw out the federal receiver who has been guaranteeing the constitutional right of prisoners to receive health care.  He opposed Prop. 5 last year at the behest of the prison guards who didn’t want to see the nonviolent offenders who overflow our prisons re-routed into treatment.  This post tells you everything you need to know about where Jerry Brown stands on “prison reform.”

Since I am a co-author of Prop. 5, Jerry contacted me a couple of weeks back. Said he wanted to talk about Proposition 5. He called me on my cell phone while I was participating in a panel discussion about California’s prison crisis sponsored by U.C. Berkeley. I decided to duck out of the symposium. Months earlier, I had reached out to Jerry to discuss the details of Prop. 5, but those calls went unreturned. I figured that, if Jerry Brown was now ready to talk about Prop. 5, that would be a good use of my time.

“OK,” I say, “let’s talk.” Turns out, Jerry doesn’t want to chat about public policy. He wants to vent. He lectures me for five minutes about how, when he’s governor, he’ll solve the state’s decades-old prison crisis in his first month in office. He neglects to mention that the roots of the prison crisis date back to his first stint as governor.

Jerry pounces: “Prop. 5 is anti-democratic,” he complains. I tell him that that’s an odd attack, particularly when Prop. 5 creates an independent citizen’s oversight commission, appointed by the legislature and governor, to bring transparency and change to the state’s prison system. And what could be more democratic than a voter initiative?

Jerry switches tack. He argues that Prop. 5 deprives him — and by “him” it is clear Jerry means the next governor of California — of too much power over prisons. I ask him whether he’s actually read Prop. 5. No response. I note that Prop. 5 in fact allows the governor to appoint two officials to head up the state’s prison and parole agency, not just the one allowed under current law. The governor also gets to appoint more than half the members of new oversight panels that, in turn, must run public hearings, take public comment and publish audits and reports on their activities. These panels provide new levels of transparency and accountability for prisons and for treatment programs statewide […]

Jerry wants off the phone. “Okay. Listen. This thing is complicated,” he says. “I need you to walk me through Prop. 5, line by line, so I can understand what you are doing here.”

Then Abramson, the co-author of Prop. 5, tried to call Brown every day for months with no response.

Here’s Jerry Brown on the reform that would make the greatest difference in Sacramento, the one that would allow elected lawmakers to do their job:

While not a fan of the two-thirds majority vote needed to pass budgets, Brown said he doesn’t think there is a “mechanical” cure to structural financial problems.

Sounding most unlike an old-school Jerry Brown Democrat, he argued repeatedly that regulations making California less competitive than surrounding states must be challenged. “We have to make sure that regulation does not curtail business,” he said, echoing the Chamber of Commerce more than the Sierra Club.

I cannot express enough how wrong it would be to put the fragile state of affairs of California into the hands of someone this afflicted with bipartisan fetishism, and so enamored of himself that he thinks he can bridge partisan divides without fixing the structural problems that exist to wall off those divides.  Jerry Brown is a duplicitous fantasist, simply put.

I’m telling you, this special election campaign resembles the Bush-Cheney “9-11 9-11 9-11 Terrist comin’ to kill you in your beds!!!!1!” 2004 campaign more with each passing day:

As he launched a radio ad campaign Tuesday for his budget measures on the May 19 ballot, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said failure to approve the package would worsen the state’s already-dire fiscal crisis.

“If they don’t pass, we will be facing a $50 billion problem,” Schwarzenegger said at a meeting with Daily News editors and reporters. “It will mean massive cuts in education, hospitals, prisons. These are things people don’t want to see cut.”

$50 billion.  How does the Governor arrive at that figure?  He includes $16 billion dollars for the two years of regressive taxes that would be washed out in 2012 and 2013 if Prop. 1A fails.  He includes an expected lawsuit from education interests to force payment of $9 billion in raided Prop. 98 funds if 1B fails.  He includes the $6 billion that would not fill budget gaps from the last budget if Prop. 1C-1E fail.  And then… I don’t know, that’s only $31 billion, I guess $50 billion sounds like a nice big number.

You can put it on posters!

This is not the first time the Governor has flat-out made up numbers to win an election.  That was his road to victory in 2006, when he lied about Phil Angelides’ tax programs.  The True Lies are back, and sadly I don’t expect a soul to call him on it.

Let’s partially accept the Governor’s premise and agree that we would have a deficit caused by cutting two years’ worth of tax increases in 2012 and 2013.  Is he suggesting that the legislature would be barred from acting on anything for 3-4 years until that future problem arises?  He might as well say we have a $200 billion dollar problem, extrapolating out to 2050.  

The “doomsday scenario” only exists if you accept the premise of the conservative veto.  Only then does California risk going over the cliff.  A responsible, functional legislature that has the ability to reflect the will of the people of the state is in no danger, which is why the only reforms anyone should be voting for are the full repeal of the 2/3 requirement for budgets and taxes.

Somehow the Governor feels that ratcheting down services and leaving behind millions of Californians is the “responsible” course.  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.  Heck, the state can’t even get people their unemployment checks in a timely fashion.  The so-called “responsible” course has utterly failed, and the Governor and his allies want to constrict this pitiful investment even more.

I will quickly tire of these nonsense efforts to scare people into backing another layer of restriction onto an already failed budget process.  Hopefully the voters feel the same way.

UPDATE: This is amazing.  Shane Goldmacher queries the Governor’s spokesman on where the hell Arnold came up with the $50 billion dollar figure, and look at the response:

“He was speaking hypothetically,” said spokesman Aaron McLear. “His point was if we don’t reform our budget system then we’ll be right back where we were with that huge budget deficit.”

I’m sure he’ll continue to “speak hypothetically” in the most hyperbolic way possible.  Some would call this manner of speaking, um, “lying.”