Several weeks back, during the deepest throes of the budget crisis, I wrote that the problems of the state are not a matter of personality but process, and you can reason that out to understand that a change in the personalities without a concurrent change in process will accomplish absolutely nothing on reforming the state and getting a functional government again in California.  This thought occurred to me again last night, as I sat in the press section during Gavin Newsom’s “conversation with California” as part of his tour of the southern part of the state.  Newsom’s description of the challenges the state faces – and his solutions – gear more to the idea that a different person, dedicated to solving the same problems in a new way, can overcome any obstacle, rather than the reality that no individual under the current system of rules could possibly thrive.  And while the San Francisco Mayor shows a recognition of the structural impossibility of California, his relative nonchalance about how to reform it shows he believes for more in himself to overcome the rules than the demonstrable history of the rules overcoming everyone in their path.

First, let’s be clear that Newsom is running with someone else’s platform.  The first policy mentioned last night as a reflection of his record is the Healthy San Francisco effort toward universal care for the uninsured in his city.  That is not his plan to tout, and the simultaneous description of it as a savior for the state’s residents while cutting $100 million dollars from the city’s Department of Public Health and programs aimed at the needy is nothing short of troubling.

“It’s not that Healthy San Francisco is wrong its the mayor’s obvious …” (Tom Ammiano) pauses. “Look, he’s running for governor and taking full credit for it. It’s not true. The labor community, my office, community activists, health people — some of the same people who are unhappy with him now — worked with him on this. When he goes out there and claims full credit, that pisses people off, especially people who are dealing with [health care in the city] every day. … The reaction is really based on the mayor boasting and overselling Healthy San Francisco.” […]

“Healthy San Francisco — I think people should be very proud of it. I think it’s going to meet its full potential. The rollout is going to be incremental and there’s going to be little tweaks that it needs. But, you know, that’s not the target […] Unfortunately, it’s getting tainted because of the mayor’s boasting and overselling of it.”

The neighborhood clinics at the heart of the Healthy San Francisco plan are at full capacity while funding is being slashed, and additional “woodworking” – residents coming out of the woodwork to seek services.  The revenues aren’t meeting the expenses, and the General Fund of the city, now facing a $590 million dollar shortfall (less per capita than Los Angeles’), has to make up the difference.  As the economy continues to slow and the ranks of the unemployed swell, those at the bottom of the income ladder are already seeing service cuts.  I would simply call it bad politics to put so much emphasis on a program you can barely claim ownership to and are cutting funding for at the same time as more services are desired.  And this is sadly part of a pattern of the whole story being left out.

But let’s set aside the issues for a moment.  As focused as I am on process, I awaited Newsom’s response to the inevitable questions about budget reform.  He asserted support for a 50% + 1 threshold for the budget process, using the line “You need two-thirds of the vote to pass a budget, but only a simple majority to deny civil rights,” referring to marriage equality.  It’s a good line, but he leaves out that he was shamed into changing his position after the initial proposal for a 55% threshold was slammed by just about everyone.  The first instinct was to half-ass reform.  There was also no explanation that there are two thresholds requiring two-thirds, the budget and tax increases, leaving his answer fairly vague, as it has been in the past.  

But far worse than this was his flippant approval of Prop. 1A, the draconian spending cap that would effectively eliminate what amounts to half of the state school budget within a few years, and his dishonest rendering of the initiative as “a rainy day fund,” without explaining how the rainy day fund is created.  On the other ballot measures like 1C, 1D and 1E, which would privatize the lottery and raid voter-approved funds for children’s programs and mental health, he gave a Solomonic “on the one hand, on the other hand” soliloquy and ended saying that he would be a bad spokesman for them.

This, then, is what needs to be kept in mind when Newsom urges a call for a constitutional convention.  We see by his stances on the May special election what he would reasonably be expected to get out of that convention – a constitution that includes a “rainy day fund” created by a spending cap, coming at it from a right-wing perspective and ultimately resulting in a fake reform.  This is essentially the position of Arnold Schwarzenegger, clueless media elites, bipartisan fetishists who assume without evidence the midpoint of any argument is automatically the best option, and most tellingly, the Bay Area Council, which makes perfect sense.

Meantime, the Schwarzenegger-sponsored political campaign in support of the six measures announced today an endorsement from the Bay Area Council, the business-centric public policy organization that is the impetus behind calls for a constitutional convention. Last week, Schwarzenegger made it quite clear that he supports the first convening of a state constitutional convention in some 150 years… a way to focus on multiple ideas for government reform at one time.

These two announcements certainly play to the idea of another “business vs. labor” narrative in California politics. Another possible fuel for that storyline comes in a $250,000 donation to the pro-budget measure committee on Friday by wealthy Orange County developer Henry Segerstrom. The donation from one of his companies is easily his largest campaign contribution in recent years, which saw smaller checks written to both the guv’s 2006 reelection efforts and to the California Republican Party.

I support a Constitutional convention because I know what my principles are.  I don’t support mealy-mouthed calls for “reform” that are essentially corporate-friendly back doors to advance the interests of the powerful over the people.

Ultimately, Randy Shaw has this right – the people of California could elect Noam Chomsky, Warren Buffett or Howard Jarvis, and nothing would fundamentally change until the structures that restrict anyone in Sacramento from doing their jobs are released.  And our assessment of who would be best to lead that reform should be based on deeds and not words.

If California’s future is measured by our education system, we are in deep trouble. And we are in this difficulty because the state’s Democratic Party and progressive activists have allowed right-wing Republicans to exert major control over the state’s budget.

I say “allowed” because there is no other explanation for elected officials and activists failing to put a measure on the November 2008 ballot removing the 2/3 vote requirement to pass a budget. Although state Republicans made their opposition to new taxes clear, progressives passed up a large turnout ballot whose voters would have approved such a reform. Passage of such an initiative would have avoided the billions of dollars in cuts we went on to face, with more cuts slated for future years […]

If we have learned anything from the past months, it should be that putting money into state candidates will accomplish less than passing the budgetary reforms and tax hikes needed to return California to its leadership in education and other areas […]

It’s time for the people to say “Yes We Can” to a new progressive future for California. Once the people lead, the politicians — particularly those seeking their votes — will follow.

It is senseless to discuss candidates for a race into a straitjacket, which is the current dress code for Sacramento.  Anything less than fundamental reform will not solve the enormous set of problems the state faces – and it will take more than charisma, but an actual commitment, to make it happen.

Since it’s Don’t Curse Week here in LA County, I will be forced to be brief.  Last night a group of grassroots activists, including remnants of the Obama organizers in California, various progressive advocacy groups, and Democratic Club leaders, discussed a potential citizen-led ballot initiative to reform the California budget process.  Nobody disputes that something drastic must be done to permanently end the conservative veto and restore democracy to the process.  If you ask 100 activists what needs to be done you will get 105 answers.  Arriving at the conclusion that offers the best opportunity for success, both in being adopted as a reform by the voters and as a practical matter for the legislature, ought to be opened to a vigorous debate and a deliberative process.

That is the direct opposite of what happened yesterday, when a group of self-appointed leaders tried to dictate the form in which the reform will take, and sought to invite the remainder of the group to join their already-decided-upon course of action.  So the fight to restore democracy has begun with an undemocratic edict, from the grassroots no less, that is based in the same kind of mushy, don’t-make-waves approach that has devastated the state for decades upon decades.  If it sounds topsy-turvy, you’re not alone.

In short, the self-appointed leadership has decided to put up a website to “eliminate the two-thirds rule” and “restore majority rule” to the budget process.  This is a very tightly controlled statement based on, essentially, the fiction that eliminating the two-thirds rule is what these folks are seeking to do.  They are not.  As you may know, there is a 2/3 rule for passing a budget, and a 2/3 rule for any changes in the tax code that involve increasing revenue.  To the layman, this might seem like two discrete parts, but that’s really not true.  A budget includes taxes, spending, and a few other priorities.  Changing one without the other does actually nothing to overcome the conservative veto.  And yet this is what the self-appointed grassroots leadership’s proposal would do, only covering the repeal of 2/3 for passing a budget and not for taxation.

This is really the final blow in what was a long slide away from progressive leadership at the grassroots level.  I’ve heard a lot of justifications and rationales for not including fully half of the equation of settling a budget in the process of reforming the budget, most of them so twisted with pretzel logic as to be indecipherable.  Some say that there’s no way tax changes could pass in the current environment, so we should strive to make whatever progress we can.  That’s the kind of tissue-soft, gutless, out-of-touch-with-where-America-is-right-now statement that has made California a political basket case.  Those who bow down to the keepers of the tax revolt are usually the same people that are saying a spending cap that includes tax increases is destined to pass, or the same people saying a constitutional convention will take care of the tax problem even though it, too, is subject to a vote of the people.  It doesn’t make any sense.  There’s an argument that the polling shows any tax issues are a loser.  That’s just not true.  The latest PPIC poll shows very little difference between repealing two-thirds for the budget and for taxes – within the margin of error.

The other argument is that California lawmakers, given a majority vote on the budget, will have powerful leverage to bend the Yacht Party to their will on tax issues, or go directly to the people with tax solutions.  These are the same people who spend every day of their lives lamenting the terrible negotiating skills of Democrats in the legislature, and laughing at those who claim the Yacht Party is surely just a little bit more pressure away from folding.

I’ve made my position on this well-known, and I’ll repeat it here.

Changing the (repeal of 2/3 for the) budget but not taxes is TOM MCCLINTOCK’S view of things.  It makes Democrats own a budget that can only be modified with expenditure cuts.  In the event of a deficit, Democrats would have to either cave and cut services or hold out with the exact same dynamic that we saw this year.  And it will not allow the legislature to tackle the structural revenue gap that comes from a tax system too closely tied to boom-and-bust budget cycles.  This is perverse consultant-class thinking that is dangerously outdated, constantly compromising, and believes in political reality as static rather than lifting a finger to change that reality.  Thinking that March 2004 and June 2010 are the same is just ridiculous, and thinking that no argument can be made to the public, after the longest and most self-evidently absurd budget process in decades, that the system is fundamentally broken and has to be changed to allow the majority to do their job, is in many ways why we’re in this position to begin with.

And this is where the self-appointed grassroots leadership will take us.  This was carried out through perhaps a deliberative internal process (“Several hours!” we were told), but with no input from the broader grassroots.  The website set up has no ability for public comment, no discussion of why the position was taken, and, most crucially, no explanation that “restoring majority rule” as conceived by the proposed ballot initiative does not restore majority rule.  You can call that a lot of things, but the most accurate would be “a lie.”  It is a lie to suggest that this proposal would repeal 2/3.  It does not.  And it is being carried out in a top-down process that reminds one of the worst aspects of the Sacramento consultocracy rather than progressive leadership in the grassroots.

The working theory is that everything is on the table and this effort is initially to gauge support in the process.  That it is being done through misleading means really doesn’t inspire confidence in how open the process will be.  They can go down that road, and I actually support signing on to the site as a show of support.  But caveat emptor.  And if you do sign, maybe contact the leaders and ask them why they aren’t being truthful about their intentions or transparent about the decision-making process.

With the unemployment rate soaring to double digits and less revenue flowing to the state, it was clear that some taxes would have to be raised in the last budget.  To the extent I have criticized those taxes, it’s because they are flat or regressive, increasing burdens on those with the least ability to pay.  Via California Budget Bites, it turns out that it’s even worse than I thought:

One of the last-minute changes to the budget agreement substituted a 0.25 percentage point increase in each of the state’s basic income tax rates in place of a 5.0 percent income tax surtax. The enacted change would increase each of the tax rates for two or four years, depending on whether the spending cap that will appear on the May special election ballot is approved by the voters. For example, the 4 percent tax rate would be 4.25 percent under the new law and the 9.3 percent rate would go to 9.55 percent. As discussed in yesterday’s blog post, the increase would be cut in half – to 0.125 percentage points – if the Treasurer and Director of Finance certify that the state will receive at least $10.0 billion in “flexible” funds from the federal economic recovery bill. In contrast, the proposal under consideration until the final night of budget negotiations would have required all personal income taxpayers to add an amount equal to 5.0 percent of their tax liability for the two- or four-year period.

Because of this seemingly minor change, lower-income households will experience a much larger tax increase than under the previously considered proposal. The tax liability of a married couple with a taxable income of $40,000 will rise by 12.9 percent under the enacted policy, as opposed to 5.0 percent under the proposal previously under consideration. In contrast, the tax liability of a married couple with a taxable income of $150,000 will rise by 4.0 percent under the final agreement, instead of 5.0 percent under the original surcharge proposal. High-income earners will experience the most significant change – their tax liability will only rise by 2.9 percent under the enacted policy.

It is somewhat likely that the stimulus trigger will be reached – we will know around April 1 when the Governor’s Finance Director and Treasurer Lockyer make the decision.  Still, this is an outrageous undermining of the public trust.  We are essentially reacting to a yawning budget gap with taxes that mostly hit the middle class and below.  That’s true of the penny increase in the sales tax (which will now reach close to 10% in LA County) and it’s true of this income tax increase.  This is the conservative veto in action, folks.  And it’s not going to change until it’s eliminated.

I don’t actually support Eric Bradley for a second term as CDP Controller.  I think Hillary Crosby would be a fresh face and give the large Progressive Caucus coalition a grassroots voice in the leadership.  But I have to applaud Bradley, an occasional commenter here, supporting a majority vote to restore democracy to the state.

I look forward to working with all of you in building a stronger California Democratic Party-one that is ready for the challenges ahead, filled with energy and enthusiasm to elect a Democrat as Governor in 2010, to pass an initiative that reduces the threshold for the state budget to a simple majority, to defeat the destructive Louisiana Style Open Primary initiative proposed by Arnold Schwarzenegger and to maintain our majorities in the State Legislature.

This is a Party Controller candidate.  If he can advocate for majority vote, anybody can.  That’s why it’s truly disappointing to see Jerry Brown mute on this issue, letting everyone else in the state lead while the issue is in the forefront while he calibrates his position.  It’s a cowardly stance, and nobody running for Governor should be silent on the only issue that will allow them to actually govern.  Some have said that it is better to say nothing than to be counter-productive in calling for something arbitrary like a 55% standard.  There’s a slogan for you: “Brown ’10 – Not Being Counter-Productive.”  Inspiring!

One thing that Bradley and many other Democrats leave aside is an explanation that we have not one 2/3 requirement, but two.  There is the 2/3 vote needed to pass a budget, and the 2/3 vote needed to raise taxes.  Bill Cavala, who ably represents warmed-over consultocracy CW in Sacramento, argues that Democrats should only attempt to change the budget requirement due to political expediency:

Here’s the good news: voters do agree that a budget should be passed by majority vote. They would, albeit somewhat narrowly, support such a ballot measure.

Now here’s the bad news: they will not support changing the requirement that demands a two-thirds vote to raise taxes. Combine the two measures, and both would be defeated.

Convinced by media coverage of government that yearly exposes a few million dollars in obvious waste or egregious prerequisites for politicians, voters believe in most circumstances new taxes are not needed. Cut the ‘waste’ instead. But even voters got the word that lopping the pay raises of the 20% of the Legislature’s staff that received them wouldn’t cover a $42,000,000,000 revenue shortfall […]

While it would be nice to exclude Republicans from tax decisions, we are unlikely to be able to do so anytime soon. By combining the 2/3 tax hike requirement with the 2/3 budget requirement we risk losing both – as labor found out when they put this package on the ballot a few years ago, spent millions, and lost big.

By taking the half a loaf we can get – the reduction of votes needed to pass a budget to a majority – we still gain a great deal. Republican lawmakers are certainly now aware that Democrats will pay a high price to keep the State solvent. The sidebar deals needed to raise taxes get some progressive praise now – but what sidebars will be demanded to pass a spending plan (without new taxes) in the future? And what makes anyone think the Democrats in the Legislature wouldn’t pony up?

This is the stupidest argument I’ve ever heard.  Changing the budget but not taxes is TOM MCCLINTOCK’S view of things.  It makes Democrats own a budget that can only be modified with expenditure cuts.  In the event of a deficit, Democrats would have to either cave and cut services or hold out with the exact same dynamic that we saw this year.  And it will not allow the legislature to tackle the structural revenue gap that comes from a tax system too closely tied to boom-and-bust budget cycles.  This is perverse consultant-class thinking that is dangerously outdated, constantly compromising, and believes in political reality as static rather than lifting a finger to change that reality.  Thinking that March 2004 and June 2010 are the same is just ridiculous, and thinking that no argument can be made to the public, after the longest and most self-evidently absurd budget process in decades, that the system is fundamentally broken and has to be changed to allow the majority to do their job, is in many ways why we’re in this position to begin with.

So not only do we have to watch Democratic leaders to see whether or not they support repealing 2/3 with a majority vote rather than some arbitrary number, we have to watch them to see if they want to split the baby or not, either repealing both 2/3 requirements, or just dealing with the budget without taxes, which would actually put Democrats in a demonstrably worse situation.

The weekly Democratic radio address (which ought to be a YouTube address, come on guys) called for an end to the 2/3 requirement for budget and tax increases.  This is the first time in my memory that so many lawmakers are openly talking about revising 2/3.  It’s not a new problem – 28 of the last 32 budgets have been late due to legislative squabbling, with the fights becoming more protracted than ever over the past decade.  And every economic downturn, no matter how slight, sets off a crisis.  Assemblyman John Perez made it clear:

The budget would not have taken so long and would have not included non-budget related issues like an open primary if California did not have the unusual requirement of a two thirds vote for budget approval.

Reforming this two-thirds requirement should be a priority for all Californians.

Perez did not reference whether the new requirement should be the arbitrary 55% number, which is what the current initiative being circulated states, or a simple democratic majority.  We’ve learned where a number of Democrats stand this weekend:

• Darrell Steinberg decided not to mention 2/3 hardly at all in his op-ed in the Sacramento Bee.  That’s a lack of leadership.  No elected official should be speaking in public and pass up the opportunity to advocate for majority vote.  He instead opted for a Broderist call for working together and the awkward tag line “Smarter going forward.”

In comments to David Greenwald, Steinberg did call for repeal, but failed to pick a side.

“The answer in my view is to take this two-thirds supermajority requirement. We are one of three states in the country that allows a small minority of members to hold up the progress…. It doesn’t really work for California; it worked this time barely because of the magnitude of the crisis… We need to take the question this two-thirds supermajority to the ballot. I feel even stronger now than I did when I started on December 1.”

• Karen Bass is also talking about 2/3, but she is looking at the arbirtrary standard:

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, has proposed one that would allow lawmakers to approve budgets with 55 percent majorities if they do it by June 15. After that, it would take two-thirds votes.

It’s not necessarily that this kind of measure would definitely not pass because all the thrust of majority democratic rule is lost, but that’s certainly a factor.

• In that same article, Loni Hancock calls for a simple majority:

Hancock has introduced a constitutional amendment that would require only simple majorities to approve budgets.

“California needs to have a normal democracy like every other state in the nation except Rhode Island and Arkansas,” she said.

That’s a talking point.  55% is mush.

The point is that we have the Democratic leadership finally talking about the main impediment to the perpetual budget crisis.  Without two-thirds, you can fix a tax system that is too closely tied to boom-and-bust economic cycles.  Without two-thirds, you can end the virtual bribery of Yacht Party and moderate lawmakers.  Without two-thirds, you can end the Big Five process that facilitates official secrecy and backroom deals and use a deliberative process involving the committee structure and relying on the input of the entire caucus.  And without 2/3, you won’t have to hear from high Broderist windbags tinkering on the margins with proposals that make them feel good but will do absolutely nothing to solve the problem.  It’s kind of hilarious that the LAST proposal in George “Can’t We All Get Along” Skelton’s long list in today’s column is this:

* A simple majority vote for budget passage; 55% at most. Scrap the two-thirds vote requirement.

State Superintendent for Public Instruction Jack O’Connell discusses the impact of the budget on education today, and it’s predictably negative.  After going through the particulars ($7.4 billion cut to Prop. 98 funding, additional flexibility for local control, a repayment measure on the ballot to return $9.8 billion to education under Prop. 98 in the future), he makes a strong announcement:

The painful budget process at our state and local school district level calls out for reform of California’s dysfunctional budgeting process. It is time for a sincere and frank conversation about reform. Central to this conversation is the idea of throwing out the two-thirds vote requirement to pass a budget and simply using a majority vote. Nearly every state in the nation and Congress, as well as counties, and cities use majority votes to pass their budgets. California should follow suit.

I understand that the minority party may feel that this would make them irrelevant to the process but, if anything, it would hold their majority party colleagues even more accountable.

Most importantly, a simple majority vote would protect our schools and districts from the instability they are forced to endure anytime the Legislature cannot reach a budget compromise.

It is time to bring about substantive changes to the way we do business in Sacramento – we owe the people of California this much.

Good for him, and it’s explained and framed well.  And now we have to line up our lawmakers along the fault line of a majority vote restoring democracy versus an arbitrary shift like 55%.

Majority Vote

John Burton, Jack O’Connell

55%

John Garamendi, Gavin Newsom

Every leader in the Democratic Party should be able to articulate where they stand on this crucial issue, the most important one facing the state.  Call your lawmakers and ask them what they prefer.

The California Budget Project has done a preliminary report on the “solution” (and I’m glad they put it in quotes) reached yesterday and expected to be signed by the Governor today.  They demystify the fact that this is, once again, a short-term fix that will actually worsen our budget situation in the future.  The $42 billion dollar hole from this year is a direct result of constant short-term fixes over the past several decades, pushing off the problem until the current legislators are out of office.  Even in this budget, it is balanced through $6 billion in borrowing, which might as well be magic since we have the worst bond rating in the country.

The worst part of this is the spending cap, which could cripple future budget and severely ratchet down state services well beyond demand or even the rate of inflation and population increases.  We have seen from other states how this is a hammer on the heads of the least of society and it must be fought in the May 19 special election.  But the CBP is just as perturbed about the massive tax cuts, at a time of a $42 billion dollar deficit, to large multinational corporations:

Give multi-state corporations the option to choose between two different formulas for determining how much of their income would be subject to tax in California. This provision would be in effect in tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2011 and would cost $650 million in the first full year of implementation, eventually increasing to $1.5 billion annually. This provision provides no benefit to small businesses that only operate in California.

The tax breaks for movie companies and new construction home buyers and for hiring new workers (which history has shown doesn’t end up increasing employment but increasing employer chicanery with their payrolls) are all temporary, as are the tax increases.  The only PERMANENT tax in the entire plan is this giveaway to giant corporations like Exxon.  This is why Richard Holober claims that big business is the “only winner” in this budget.

The worst of the business tax cuts is a permanent change in the formula for calculating the income tax for multi-state and multinational corporations. This produces an initial big business tax cut of about $700 million a year. The State Senate analysis estimates the recalculation will eventually yield a corporate tax reduction – and state revenue loss – of $1.5 billion a year. This is not tax fairness. Combined with the tax hikes on everyday Californians, it is redistribution of income away from workers and consumers and into the pockets of our state’s biggest businesses. And it provides no tax savings for the mom and pop businesses that we usually count on to provide the camouflage for these corporate welfare schemes.

Another major sin in this budget are the agreements secured by Republicans to essentially increase greenhouse gas emissions by relaxing environmental regulations for large diesel vehicles.  This is another example of Arnold Schwarzenegger being a complete hypocrite, running around the country painting himself as the “green governor” while ramming through a provision directly contrary to that.

Like the budget itself, AB 8 XX was not the subject of any public hearings. The measure’s scaling back of emission controls was one of many concessions sought by Republicans in order for three of them in the Assembly and three in the Senate to vote for the budget.

Since there were no public hearings on the measure, it was easy for the GOP to side with the construction industry and ignore the majority of its members who want California to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve air quality.

A 2006 statewide by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 62 percent of Republicans strongly support state action to ratchet down greenhouse gas emissions. So do 73 percent of Democrats and 70 percent of independent voters.

That same poll found that two-thirds of likely voters for rolling greenhouse gas emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020. That is the legislation that became AB 32.

Finally, there is $5.8 billion that will be on the ballot for voters to agree upon, including a privatization of the lottery (which assumes a $5 billion sale… who is lining up to buy the California Lottery?) that would be a net loss of revenue for the state in the long-term, and $800 billion in raids from various voter-approved funds for things like mental health treatment.  Considering how unpopular the legislature is these days, there is no guarantee that any of these will pass, which will leave another hole to fill by June.

These are just some of the details that reinforce the object lesson that major fundamental reforms, in particular repealing the 2/3 rule, are desperately needed.  None of the above measures help the state.  They were put in to placate a fanatical minority who is emboldened by a conservative veto.  Sign the pledge to repeal 2/3.

Dave Johnson, Speak Out California

California finally passed a budget.  It is a bad budget, cutting essential services, borrowing a tremendous amount, selling our lottery revenues and giving a huge tax break to big out-of-state companies.  Each of these came from demands by the very, very few Republicans who agreed to vote for the budget at all will, of course, just get us through another year while making it ever more difficult to pass future budgets.

California’s 2/3 requirement means that a few corporate-funded extremists can hold the rest of us hostage.  So they had to make a terrible deal to get the three Republican votes required by the 2/3 rule, or else lay of tens of thousands and stop paying California’s bills.  We the People of California were all held hostage to that threat.  

The resulting deal was that if We, the People want schools, police, firefighters, roads & bridges, courts, all the things our government does for us, we had to agree to tax breaks for the big multinational corporations that kick in so much money to help elect the anti-government extremists. So the big companies – the kind that come in and crush local California businesses – get a big tax break while the rest of us have our taxes raised.  Oh, and the oil companies can continue to take our oil out of the ground for free and then sell it back to us.

Here are some reactions around the California netroots:

David Dayen at Calitics,

“The cuts are going to be really, really bad: 10% across the board for education, huge cuts for public transit operations, health care, etc.  The new revenues basically fill in the loss of revenue from massive unemployment.

[. . .] The “single sales factor apportionment,” which is the massive business tax cut, doesn’t kick in until FY2011, predictably and conveniently after Gov. Schwarzenegger is out of office and it will be someone else’s problem to make up the revenue!  It’s almost like somebody planned it that way!”

Richard Holober at Consumer Federation of California,

“The deal reported today does not call on all California taxpayers to share in the sacrifice. Working Californians will face billions in higher sales tax and income tax rates. But businesses win about one billion dollars in new tax breaks.  $700 million in corporate tax cuts result from a recalculation of how California taxes the profits of big multinational corporations.   According to the Senate Analysis, the windfall to multinational corporations, and the revenue loss to California will eventually grow to $1.5 billion.”

Robert Cruickshank at the Courage Campaign blog,

“The only way out, and the first reform that we must undertake – the tree blocking the tracks, the door that opens the path to all other reforms – is eliminating the 2/3 rule that gives conservatives veto power over the state and turns the majority Democrats into a minority party on fiscal matters. It’s been talked about frequently on Calitics and in what remains of the media’s coverage of state politics. So it seemed time for an in-depth discussion of the issue and the prospects for restoring majority rule to California.”

David M. Greenwald at California Progress Report,

“Many Democrats and political observers fear that Maldonado strong-arming the legislature may set a bad precedent for future attempts at getting a budget on time.”

So here we are.  Our structural problems have enabled extremists to increase … our structural problems.  We are one more step down the road to intentional ungovernability.

Over the next several months, we who love this state must act to fix this.  We must get rid of this 2/3 budget-vote requirement that allows extremists to hold us hostage.  An initiative changing the 2/3 vote requirement is long-overdue but we’ll need the support of every forward-thinking voter to make it happen.  Let’s work together to ensure that it does.

Click through to Speak Out California