Oh what joyous news we have been greeted with this week! We’re $20.7 billion short again, says The Bee. And, alas, surprise surprise, the Barbarian says he won’t fix it with taxes, according to Reuters.

Allow me to write the next headline: DEMOCRATS CAVE ON BUDGET DEMANDS, AGREE TO ANOINT SEN. MALDANADO EMPEROR FOR LIFE.

It’s sad, isn’t it? We can already write the story. The Democrats will write a budget that goes against everything they’re supposed to stand for. Hell, there won’t even be DEATH PANELS, they’ll just be throwing the old people straight into the glue factory this time. Something insane like the privatization of the community college system (University of Phoenix for all!) will be thrown in there, but the whole thing will fail because there’s a 50 cent tax on yachts.

Update: Perhaps along the lines I suggested here the last time we had this dance.

The Republicans won’t have to do anything except say ‘no’ to everything, claim that the T-100 isn’t a real part of their party and this is the Democrats’ fault.

I tried to tell people I know in the party that they needed to have it out last time, that making a faustian bargain for one more year was never going to work and you were only going to set a precedent of weakness. I’m no one of consequence, not that they would have listened to me if I were.

When are the Dems in the Legislature going to realize that while they have a majority, they are not in control of the Legislature or the Government. The Republicans control the executive branch and control an overriding bloc of the Legislature for purposes of everything except banning text messaging while driving.

I know this is a metaphor that has been worn thin over the last 10 years, but enough with the Chamberlain negotiating tactics. Let them shut down the government to protect the rich and powerful on the backs of the poor. Ask Newt fucking Gingrich how that worked out! And then realize California is a more liberal state than the US as a whole.  

Update: Maybe along the lines I suggested the last time we did this dance. No real reform = no budget.

I wake up this morning and see some sort of shock from the LA Times that the stars didn’t align themselves to create the perfect water package.  It turns out, that this stuff is hard. Who knew? Well, those who listened to the Calitics podcast, that’s who!

“It’s fear of losing water, fear of having to pay for stuff,” said Ellen Hanak of the Public Policy Institute. “It’s the same old interests,” she added, that have for decades impeded any kind of overhaul of California’s complicated and increasingly troubled water system.

The Democrats’ proposal is broad-ranging, but far from revolutionary. It takes what many water experts have characterized as modest steps in regard to groundwater, urban water conservation and state enforcement of water rights.

(LA Times 10/28/09)

The package is quite modest, a good start, but it doesn’t really solve our water issues. But to tell you the truth, nobody expected our water issues to be really resolved this year. There are too many moving parts, too many interest groups for this to all be resolved at once.  

Meanwhile the Republican “plan” is an even more modest change that, while provides for more storage, doesn’t address conservation in a suitably strict manner.

And the elephant in the room that everybody feels no compulsion to discuss? None of the plans call for any water conservation by agricultural users. Look, I’m for a healthy agriculture sector as much as the next guy, but we have to be realistic here. While urban users have dramatically cut usage, especially areas like Monterey and Sonoma Counties that have radically reduced their water usage over the past twenty years, agricultural users have barely scratched the surface.  There have been a few stories here and there of farmers using forms of hi-tech water monitoring and drip irrigation to reduce water usage, but these stories are notable because they are the exception. For the most part, farms are planting the same crops and watering the same ways.

The problem is that we have come to expect that water is an infinite resource whose price is at or near zero.  It is a model that works fine for online storage and email, but it’s just not a sustainable course in California’s water future. Until all users start treating water as the precious resource that it is, we can’t really get to a “solution.” And as much respect as I have for Steinberg and Bass, that just isn’t going to happen this year.

This year we’ll get some modest reforms and maybe some interesting storage products. But we’ll only get a real solution when water is properly valued.

We can get a portion of the way to meeting our future water needs with a bit more storage. But, quite simply, we can’t build our way out of the water crisis. No matter how much we build, we will not create additional rain or mitigate the effects that climate change will have upon the state.

So, conservation is where the rubber meets the road. Consider this:

New dams would produce up to 1 million acre-feet of water annually, compared with up to 3.1 million acre-feet freed up each year by new water efficiency programs, according to the delta task force, which cited state Department of Water Resources statistics. (Fresno Bee 10/21/09)

The question then is how we create some of the efficiencies to actually conserve the water. Some conservations are fairly straightforward. For example, many cities do not yet have water meters, installing them will rapidly reduce water usage as people get an idea of how much they are using and start paying for excessive use.

The bigger question is where these conservation gains will come from, and how do hold users accountable.  There are a number of questions to look at, and this Fresno Bee article does a pretty good job taking a look at some of the bigger issues.

One issue that seems to always pop up is the question of coastal vs non-coastal. In the current negotiations, Republicans are arguing that coastal cities aren’t required to do enough for conservation. Much of that is because many coastal cities have already put in some pretty effective conservation measures. Under the current proposal, the targets for each city are generally a 20% reduction, but cities that have already made reductions have to do less.

The biggest question is enforcement.  Republicans want to give the least possible teeth to this measure by assuring that their could not be any legal ramifications of failing to meet the requirements, which Democrats already say isn’t in the bill.  However, it isn’t at all clear that without the possibility of legal challenges there will be enough teeth to actually enforce with only some grants as a carrot for compliance.  In other words, the bill is all carrot, and no stick.  If you meet the targets, you get some extra grants, if you miss them, you don’t. But the water still gets pumped either way.

If this water package is going to last for more than 5 or 10 years, it is going to need to be able to require very strict water efficiency. However, the key is getting beyond short-term political gain to do what’s best for the state. Whether that happens appears to be up to the Legislative Republicans…again.

Big news, California hates its elected leaders:

The downward trend in voter appraisals of the job performance of both Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state legislature continues.

The most recent Field Poll completed last week finds that just 27% of this state’s voters approve of the governor’s performance, the first time in his nearly six-year tenure that his job ratings have dropped below 30%.  The governor’s disapproval rating has also reached a new high – 65%.

Voter appraisal of the state legislature is even lower, with just 13% of voters approving and 78% disapproving, the lowest rating The Field Poll has ever obtained for that institution. (Field Poll 10/13/09 (PDF))

This is the biggest surprise since the Raiders lost on Sunday.

So remember the last legislative year? Well, if Arnold follows through on his latest threat, you might as well forget it.  He’s threatening to veto every bill on his desk if he doesn’t get a water deal by, um, tomorrow.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger  today affirmed a looming threat to veto a large bulk of the bills that have been sent to his desk unless lawmakers can strike a deal on a package of water bills.

“I made it very clear to the legislators and to the leaders that if this does not get done then I will veto a lot of their legislation, a lot of their bills, so that should inspire them to go and get the job done,” he said at the end of remarks to the Association of Community College Trustees’ Leadership Congress, which is meeting in San Francisco today. (CapAlert 10/08/2009)

We’ve mentioned the water issue for a long time, but there is no way to overemphasize one critical point: No matter how many projects you build, you do not get any additional water. The rush about getting water for the West Central Valley is toxic to the state government and to the environment.

The West Central Valley is a relatively dry area. The soil is fairly fertile, but right underneath it lies a layer of clay that sucks water away from the topsoil.  That means lots of tilling and lots of water.  But in order for these farmers, most of which are big corporate operations, to make any real money, water has to be very, very cheap. Unnaturally cheap.

This, of course, is why there wasn’t much agriculture done in the area by the native peoples. It was too inefficient to bring water there. But once we built a slew of pumps, it could be done. The problem is that pumps are expensive, and the farmers of the Western Central Valley don’t want to pay for it.

The Westlands Water District has been getting cheap water for a long time, but they are the bottom rung on the water priority list. They are trying to use the crisis in Sacramento and the drought to get around the contracts that they signed last year putting them at a lower priority in exchange for a lower price.

And Arnold is trying to help them to do just that by threatening, intimidating, and generally being a jerk.  And of course, Susan Kennedy, his “Democratic” Chief of Staff, is right there with him.  Putting a gun to the head of not only the legislature, but some very important measures.

This is no way to govern.  Arnold, You Lie!

UPDATE by Dave: I just want to add to the chorus of how appalling this is.  We’re talking about legislative blackmail.

And incredibly, Arnold has an ally in palace courtier George Skelton:

It’s ugly. But it’s an available political tool that the governor would be derelict not to use when an issue as critical as water is at stake.

This isn’t about some narrow scheme important only to a narrow interest. Nor is it merely about a governor’s pet project — other than his legacy-building, which should be encouraged as long as it helps the state. It’s about finally resolving an acute, decades-old problem that is worsening and affects practically all Californians.

Here’s another old white man with health insurance who could give a crap if women get maternity care in their health insurance plans, to just pick one bill at random.  Or who could care less if people who have insurance get dropped from it when they want to use it, to pick another.  George Skelton would actively make the lives of Californians worse because he thinks it’s sporting to see the Governor “use his power.”  That the power is illegal is of no consequence.

Then there’s this whopper:

These and other arguments — such as details of a new governing system for the delta — have raged for years. Schwarzenegger apparently doesn’t much care what the Legislature decides. He just wants it to compromise and send him a bill.

Yeah, he doesn’t care at all.  He actually invented the Latino Water Coalition, the fake-grassroots group pushing all the Republican solutions in water negotiations, but he’s really just an innocent bystander.  An innocent bystander who would destroy women’s health and allow insurance companies to kill people for profit and a host of other things, all with an asshole like George Skelton cheering him on.

Could it be that enough Democrats in the Assembly have finally had enough with the culture of blackmail and are ready to exact some real consequences?

In the Assembly, Democrats are employing tactics that seem designed to pressure the governor into signing bills. Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico, D-Newark, sent a letter to Attorney General Jerry Brown asking him to investigate whether the governor’s strategy is illegal. He cited a part of the state constitution that says it is a felony to seek to influence a legislative vote by means of “bribery, promise of reward, intimidation or other dishonest means.”

“While politicians are certainly allowed to express their disagreements in any way they find productive, they are not allowed to refuse to perform their sworn duties in order to force the legislature to accept policy positions,” Torrico wrote. “And public officials are specifically prohibited from the kind of direct ‘horse trading’ in which a government official agrees to take, or not take, a certain action in exchange for a specific vote.”

Assembly sources said some Assembly Democrats even suggested on a conference call last week that the lower house should impeach the governor if he imposes a mass veto. The constitution says the Assembly has the “sole power of impeachment” and that it can pursue it on a majority vote for unspecified “misconduct in office.” The Senate would then conduct a trial.

The idea seems to crop up every time lawmakers are frustrated with the governor, said Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco. It appears to be mostly talk for now.

“I know some members have mentioned the possibility of impeaching the governor,” Torrico said, adding, “There’s certainly a growing number of members who consider the governor’s extortion tactics to be illegal and a dereliction of duty. But (impeachment) has not been discussed formally in the caucus as an option.”

This sounds like a bluff on all counts, although the Governor’s actions certainly violate the spirit and (depending on your reading) the letter of the law about using “bribery, promise of reward, intimidation or other dishonest means” to influence a legislative vote.  I don’t expect Jerry Brown to act on it, however, because he’d probably welcome the ability to threaten the legislature in this manner were he the Governor.

And yet, if the Governor were to veto the entire legislative session because he couldn’t get his way on water (and doesn’t that represent a failure of HIS leadership, not the legislature’s?), I would say a case could be made that using extortion and running the state like a Hollywood negotiation is grounds for removal.  What’s more, while a two-thirds vote for removal in the Senate would be unlikely (though, given Schwarzenegger’s standing in the Republican Party, not completely out of the question), just saddling him with the legacy of impeachment would be a crushing blow to his ego, not to mention his efforts at putting a happy face on his astonishingly awful leadership.

I don’t think this is much more than a parlor game.  But just so we know the rules, a Governor can be impeached for “misconduct in office” by a simple majority in the Assembly.  According to Article 5 of the Constitution, it seems that during impeachment – not removal but impeachment – the Lieutenant Governor becomes Governor. (“The Lieutenant Governor shall act as Governor during the impeachment, absence from the State, or other temporary disability of the Governor or of a Governor-elect who fails to take office.”)  Given that John Garamendi could be elected to Congress in four weeks, the line of succession appears to show that the President Pro Tem of the Senate would be next in line.  So if the unthinkable happens, by November 3 we could be looking at Governor Darrell Steinberg.

One reason why I didn’t particularly care for the Guardian’s Failifornia article was that it was really a human interest piece masquerading as a serious argument.   It’s not because its data was flawed or its tone insincere – though there’s some of that; the long section on Mendota neglects to mention that the city hinges entirely on agriculture and features 30% unemployment or more ANYTIME there’s a drought, unconnected to the larger structural problems in the state – but because it didn’t even try to assess the root causes of the crisis or the steps for resolution.

For example, it would be beneficial to take a look at the culture of blackmail we have here in state government (as an aside, did the writer even visit Sacramento?).  Politicians have learned over 30-plus years of dealing with onerous budget requirements that threatening blackmail is really the best way to get anything done.  Witness Arnold Schwarzenegger, threatening to veto nearly 700 bills that have passed both houses of the Legislature unless he gets his way on a water bill.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, apparently standing by a threat to veto hundreds of bills on his desk unless a deal can be reached on the state’s water problems, has suggested to Senate leader Darrell Steinberg that all legislation before the governor should be withdrawn to avoid a veto. About 700 bills are awaiting action.

Schwarzenegger did not formally request that the bills be yanked, but that was the implicit suggestion in his proposal, Capitol sources said.

The communications between Steinberg and the governor were referenced in an e-mail sent from Steinberg to Senate Democrats this week. In the internal e-mail, which was reviewed by Capitol Weekly, Steinberg said Schwarzenegger “even mentioned coming back this week to withdraw bills from his desk and hold them until after water is done.”

Arnold is absolutely ballsy enough to do this.  He has only signed 3 bills in the past four weeks since the Legislature adjourned September 11, and with six days to go and the Legislature not scheduled to return until after the deadline on October 11, I’m convinced of his sincerity to basically flush the entire legislative session down the toilet.

You just don’t see headlines like this in other states.  And that’s because the process here rewards blackmail.  Arnold knows that there are no repercussions for vetoing 700 bills.  There’s no media willing to call him out, there’s no possibility of a veto override because of some unwritten rule whereby that function doesn’t exist anymore, and there’s a high possibility of legislative Democrats simply capitulating to whatever shrieking Republican demands in order to appear “reasonable” or just move along the machinery of government.  Arnold’s just using good tactical sense because the system is set up to reward the most outlandish actions.   So he’ll probably get what amounts to a bailout of wealthy agribusiness interests at the expense of the environment and the working class.

This is truly the portrait of failure in California.  Right-wing interests have learned how to hijack so well you’d think they attended one of those Al Qaeda training camps where they practice on the monkey bars.  And the entire political class walks around as if this is perfectly normal.  It’s actually appalling.

If you want to drill down to why California is in crisis, it’s because we routinely see political leaders walk into the capital strapped with dynamite across their chests, only to be given the key to the city and a milkshake as a reward for such behavior.

…The Merced Sun-Star editorialized on this today, bashing the Governor for his inflexibility and willingness to toss out important bills on mortgage reform and health care for his own personal vanity, but also saying, “Lawmakers rarely reach closure on state budgets and complex, controversial policies unless they have a gun pointed at their heads.”  Yes, and that’s the PROBLEM, not a one-off sentence to be seen as an inexorable truism.

Timm Herdt was on a conference call yesterday with a top official from the Department of Corrections, and that official acknowledged that the plan due to federal judges by midnight today on prison reduction will not meet the goal:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday will submit to a panel of three federal judges a plan that would reduce the inmate population at California’s overcrowded prisons by substantially less than what the court has ordered, a move that a top prison administrator acknowledged will place state officials at risk of being held in contempt.

Although the final plan will not be submitted until late Friday, administration officials have briefed other parties involved in the court proceedings on its major elements. They said exact projections of how much the prison population will be reduced have not yet been calculated, but the reduction would not lower the population to the court’s standard of 137.5 percent of the prison system’s design capacity.

“This plan will not meet the court’s requirements,” said Lee Seale, deputy chief of staff of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, in a conference call Wednesday with legislative staff members. “I certainly don’t think this panel will be thrilled by this plan. I think we recognize we may be held in contempt.”

Under the plan the state will submit, they will get to around 27,000 prisoner reduction.  The judges want something close to 44,000.

The question is how the three-judge panel will react.  They may mandate a release of enough prisoners to get to that number, at which point the state will challenge the ruling and throw it to the US Supreme Court.  This is precisely was Tough on Crime member emeritus George Runner wants.

Sen. George Runner, R-Lancaster, who has intervened in the court case in the hope of preventing a judicial mandate to lower the prison population, believes the administration is taking exactly the right approach.

“I would like to see the state plan be as easily rejected as possible,” Runner said.

If the administration submitted a plan that came close to meeting the court’s order, Runner said, that could lead to a negotiated compromise. This way, he said, the court will be forced to propose its own plan – one that would set up a showdown before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Where Runner would pitch the “I’m right because I say so” defense.  And with this Supreme Court, who knows, that may work.

We don’t know when the appeal would come in the process.  The Governor’s office seem to think that they can appeal the initial ruling as soon as they offer their alternative plan, while others believe that they’d have to wait for the three-judge panel to issue a final order with the full reductions.  At some point, everyone agrees, an appeal is allowable.  Kevin Yamamura has more.

I don’t want to put this entirely on the Governor, though he’s clearly dragging his feet.  The Assembly forced the weak proposal you’ll see from the Governor today by scaling back the reform plan that would have come closer to the judge’s goal of reducing the population by 44,000 prisoners.  But the Governor didn’t actually have to follow the Assembly in submitting their plan.  They could have come up with one of their own making, putting pressure on the Legislature to conform it.  They chose not to stand behind their own plan and do so.  So while there’s plenty of blame to go around, I think the Governor needs to own this one, although he and everyone else want to take the blame off themselves.

By the end of the week, it will be apparent what all the posturing accomplished: nothing. That may suit lawmakers just fine — they can blame the coming prison reforms on the federal courts rather than taking heat from voters for being insufficiently hard on criminals. But the episode is further evidence that if California’s prison system is a national disgrace, its Legislature is a national laughingstock.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that, in this environment, Schwarzenegger seems to be taking on the characteristics of a dictator. On Tuesday, he rejected the Legislature’s plan to promote renewable energy and said he’d impose his own by executive fiat. He’s on surer legal ground when it comes to the prisons because his actions will be backed by the federal court. But it’s dismaying to watch the state’s democratic procedures break down so thoroughly.

As long as he now appears to be king of California, we humbly beseech our lord and Terminator to finally do the right thing by the prisons. His proposal to the court should be modeled on the one approved by the Senate and include a commission to review the unsustainable determinate sentencing system. Meanwhile, it’s time to drop the appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court of the federal court order so we can get on with the business of fixing the prisons and out of the habit of defending the indefensible.

But that’s not going to happen.  Seeing the Department of Corrections reduce the very rehabilitation programs by $250 million, that even the Assembly plan used as a means to let inmates out for completing them, show how the mission of corrections has been completely lost in this.  What the state is fighting by appealing the judge’s order is their privilege to let people die in jail needlessly in violation of the Constitution.  Today, they will continue to assert that privilege.