On Sunday 11 of the Media News Group papers – including the San Jose Mercury News – published editorials on their front page criticizing the budget mess. Notably, these papers placed most of the blame where it actually belongs – on the Republicans. From the Mercury News editorial:

The governor and all 120 legislators share responsibility for this. But most of the blame for the immediate crisis falls on Republicans in the Legislature, who this past summer – to a person – signed a pledge to not raise taxes. That was before an already large deficit mushroomed, making the need for more revenue imperative. Since then, Democrats and the Republican governor have offered significant compromise, but GOP lawmakers cling to ideological purity – schools, health care and other essential responsibilities be damned.

These lawmakers constitute barely over one-third of the Legislature. But because the California Constitution requires a two-thirds vote on the budget, it enables the tyranny of a minority to trump majority rule.

This day didn’t sneak up on anyone. It’s the result of too much borrowing and too little political courage over too many years – lavish spending in good times and insufficient restraint in bad. For this, Democrats, who’ve controlled the Legislature, and the governor share responsibility. Compounding the problem are spending initiatives that bind the Legislature’s hands. Voters have themselves to blame for these.

Obviously it’s not a perfect editorial – California doesn’t really have a spending problem – but it’s good to see MNG papers, owned by a notorious right-wing union buster make such a strong case for Republican ideology being at the core of the crisis.

The Monterey Herald was even more direct in their version of the editorial:

The best hope is that the people will become angry enough to get the message across, especially to the Republicans, that they need to get the job done or get out of the way.

The stalemate is the result of the GOP’s “no new taxes” pledge. It may have made for good headlines months ago, but sustaining it to the point of budgetary chaos is irresponsible….

A huge part of the problem is the state Constitution’s requirement that budgets be approved by a two-thirds vote. It has not prevented past overspending, but it enables the minority party, Republicans for the moment, to play the spoiler role no matter the consequences.

It is time to join the majority of states without a super-majority provision. It is time to say goodbye to those who pretend to stand on principle. The no-tax pledge may have been sincere at the start, but it has become only a bargaining chip. Republicans are simply holding out for maximum impact.

Does this mean it’s now conventional wisdom that Republican ideology and the 2/3 rule are to blame? I sure hope so. These editorials should bolster the case for an aggressive push by progressives and Democrats against the Republicans and the 2/3 rule in particular. If/when there is a special election this year, eliminating the 2/3 rule must be on there.

Let’s hope these editorials will percolate around the state, especially to some of the bigger news outlets, and produce some accurate reporting on the crisis for a change – California is broke because Republicans wanted it to happen.

That someone is Peter Schrag in yesterday’s LA Times, calling the Yacht Party California’s Kamikazes – a party in terminal decline in the state but determined to take everyone else down with them:

In a state where whites have been just another minority for the better part of a decade, and where Latinos will in another generation be an absolute majority, it may not be surprising that that GOP narrowness leads to a gritty sense of besiegement and a kamikaze mentality that seems ready to take itself over the cliff, and the rest of the state with it….

But in the current crisis, the Democrats have in fact agreed to major cuts; the Republicans remain adamant on revenue. That resistance, as most people must know by now, is made possible by California’s nearly unique constitutional provision requiring a two-thirds majority in the Legislature to enact a budget or increase taxes. If five Republicans — two in the state Senate, three in the Assembly, both of which have Democratic majorities — broke ranks, there’d be no gridlock.

But that’s only part of the story. In a survey last year by the Public Policy Institute of California, 52% of the state’s Democrats identified themselves as liberals, 31% as “middle of the road” and 17% as conservative.

Republicans were far more rigidly conservative: 67% called themselves conservative, 21% called themselves middle of the road and 8% said they were liberal.

So Democrats are not quite as hard-line as the folklore suggests.

One wonders if the LA Times editorial board read Schrag’s column closely. Schrag is making many of the points we have been making here at Calitics, but he makes them especially effectively, and hopefully the rest of the state’s media will listen and stop lying to their readers that the problem in Sacramento is that legislators won’t negotiate – that instead the Yacht Party is determined to claw back some political relevance at the cost of the state’s viability.

The Republicans in California are the equivalent of a failed state. The party hasn’t been viable on a statewide basis since 1996. 2002 and 2003 saw some momentary gains but those faded, and the only Republican with meaningful statewide success – Arnold – has made distancing himself from his own party a key to his electoral victories. So they exploit the 2/3 rule to maintain a semblance of power and arrest their slide into irrelevance – the Libertarian Party with a few more votes and some actual seats.

Schrag recognizes that the only way this death cult’s death grip on the state will be ended is by eliminating the 2/3 rule:

The fastest way to restore responsibility all around is to rejoin the rest of the democratic world and bring back straight majority votes to enact budgets and raise taxes. That would break up the GOP cult, make both parties more responsible to the voters as a whole, force them to make the tough choices and take the heat for the consequences, and — most important — get on with the business of governing.

This is an eminently sensible conclusion. It’s a shame it’s taken weeks, if not months, for the LA Times op-ed page to start making sense on this, but they couldn’t hide from reality any longer. The Yacht Party are now the Kamikaze Party, determined to sink the ship of state out of spite and desperation.

Earlier today Brian wrote about Bill Bagley’s take on the problems with California government – which were of the typical “oh gee why isn’t there more bipartisanship?” sort. Bagley offered some specific points, but his commentary is part of a familiar refrain in this state that assumes the Legislature, the parties, and ideologues are all to blame, regardless of party.

This is simply not true, and those promoting that line of argument are doing the public a disservice by misinforming Californians about what is really going on.

Democratic legislators cannot be credibly described as unflinching ideologues who refuse to cut a deal. This statement was sent by Speaker Karen Bass yesterday before Arnold announced his budget veto. See if you can find the inflexible hard-left ideology that makes compromise impossible:

Additional changes will include:

*Even greater authority to enter into so-called “public-private-partnerships” and “design-build” arrangements for state construction projects;

*More modifications to environmental laws to speed up road construction;

*A tax incentive to keep film production in California;

*A moratorium on home foreclosures;

*Some additional budget cuts and modifications to the revenue package so that the package contains more in expenditure reductions than new revenues.

In contrast to these compromise moves – many of which were bitter pills for Democrats to swallow – Republicans spent the day joining the Howard Jarvis Association in suing to block the Dems’ budget deal.

Bagley and those who embrace his “can’t we all just get along” arguments are letting Republicans off the hook for their obstructionist tactics. New Democratic assemblymembers such as Nancy Skinner and Bill Monning have tried to reach out to their Republican colleagues, wanting to build the rapport Bagley says is missing. They were rejected in those outreach efforts.

Why? Because today’s Republican Party is fundamentally different from that Bagley remembers, and not just because of structural reasons. Term limits plays a role in enabling Republicans to become more conservative, but that ideological shift away from the kind of Republicans who would cut a deal for the good of the state, like Pete Wilson, and toward ideologues like Mike Villines mirrors a national trend.

Since the early 1990s the Republican Party around the country has become dominated by the far right, especially financially. You can’t win a Republican primary unless you swear fealty to Grover Norquist and his anti-tax agenda. If a Republican votes for a tax increase they’ll get challenged in their next primary. You can’t wine, dine, or jawbone away that reality.

When Bill Bagley and other Californians argue that the problem is a lack of bipartisanship, they wind up hiding this reality from the public. The budget crisis would have been resolved long ago if Republicans were willing to negotiate in good faith. Every time we ignore that fact, we let them get away with it, since the public gets outraged at “the legislature” or “the bums in Sacramento” rather than at the people actually responsible – the Yacht Party.

Unfortunately the “let’s ignore Republican obstruction” movement continues apace. It led to Prop 11’s passage, an unnecessary “reform” that will do nothing to change that internal dynamic within the Republican Party.

The new holy grail is open primaries. The US Supreme Court threw out California’s earlier open primary, so the only way to achieve this is through a “top two” system. Which as Washington State discovered this year, merely produces two candidates from the same party for most legislative seats. That will do nothing to change the hard-right ideology within the Yacht Party.

Bill Bagley, Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, and other reform groups that mislead the public into thinking everyone’s at fault are merely letting the Republicans get away with the destruction of the state. If they really wanted better government, they would speak the truth – that California voters need to ask why a party that claims to follow Ronald Reagan won’t embrace a tax increase as the Gipper himself did in 1967.

Until we confront the Elephant in the room, California will continue to head toward a cliff.

The latest Field Poll is out (SF Chronicle here and Field PDF here) and it shows the favorability ratings of various leading contenders for 2010 gubernatorial race in both parties. And while the Chronicle wants to make this an “omg DiFi is the favorite” and “ha ha – Newsom sucks” story, the two most important things the poll actually tells us are:

1. DiFi has very high unfavorability ratings among Democratic contenders, and

2. Nobody – and I mean nobody – knows a thing about the Yacht Party potentials, except that they don’t like them.

Let’s take this in order. First, the Dems:

Among Dems only Gavin Newsom has higher unfavorables, but not by much, and since this poll was taken right before the election – when Newsom was getting pounded in the press and on the airwaves by the Yes on 8 campaign – this may be a low point for Newsom.

That makes the 39% unfavorable figure for Feinstein rather significant. Sure, she has the highest favorable rating – 50% – of anyone in the field regardless of party, but that’s not a great figure for such an established politician. As we’ve noted before, her numbers among Dems aren’t so hot either. I don’t see much basis for a DiFi inevitability argument, which the Chronicle is trying to get started.

Jerry Brown has a lot of room to grow, since much of that 32% “no opinion” are probably younger Californians who (like me) were born late in or after his previous terms as governor.

Antonio Villaraigosa has to be considered a sleeper here. At 39% “no opinion” that gives him room to grow as well. He has been building a solidly progressive reputation over the last year, coming out strong against Prop 8 and leading the fight for mass transit in LA (seriously, getting to 2/3 with a sales tax for rail in LA County is a major achievement). As Brian noted a few weeks ago, his endorsements were the closest match to our own. He is also making a high profile link with Barack Obama, serving on his economic advisory team. If you want to run for governor, it is a damn smart move to link yourself to a popular president who won CA by 24 points.

And what of the Yacht Party contenders? They have Bill Simon written all over them:

Even with enormous unknown ratings, none of them have a net favorability rating outside the margin of error, and Steve Poizner already has a significant unfavorability rating that will only grow once his links to voter registration fraud get a wider airing. The Chronicle article promotes Meg Whitman as a breakout star, but I’m not seeing it here. All California voters will need to hear is that she’s a Republican and that she was an advisor to the McCain campaign and that may be enough to torpedo her.

The only Republican who might have a snowball’s chance is Tom Campbell, the moderate Republican, but he didn’t fare well in a statewide race in 2000 (losing to DiFi). Of course it’s highly unlikely that the “down with the ship” Yacht Party primary voters will vote for a moderate like Campbell.

This goes to show that the 2010 governor’s race may well be decided in the June primary, which should be one of the most interesting primary fights we’ve seen in this state in a long, long, LONG time.

Earlier this week we told you about Arnold’s planned visit to the St. Francis Yacht Club for a party hosted by a European yacht manufacturer. This seemed pretty ironic given the successful Yacht Party ad campaign launched by the Courage Campaign (who I work for) this week, attacking the Republicans as a party favoring yacht owners over everyone else in California.

Amusingly, our cowardly governor did not even show up, as Josh Richman explains:

I waited, and waited, and waited, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger didn’t show today at the St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco’s Marina District for an event unveiling a hybrid pleasure-boat engine.

Two of his cabinet secretaries – California Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Linda Adams and California Resources Agency Secretary Mike Chrisman – were there to sign a memorandum of understanding with Austrian Consul General Martin Weiss to have the state cooperate with the governor’s native nation on environmental protection initiatives. Adams said the governor “could not be more proud that we are taking this action today;” Chrisman said the governor “certainly recognizes the importance of this relationship.”

Then the three officials joined Michael Frauscher, managing director of Austrian boatmaker Frauscher, and Steyr Motors CEO Rudolph Mandorfer for a cruise beneath the Golden Gate Bridge on a 25-foot Frauscher 757 St. Tropez motoryacht powered by the world’s first electric-diesel hybrid marine engine – California Chris-Craft will be the world’s first distributor to offer the new Frauscher hybrids – before returning to the dock for sips of chilled sparkling wine. A gloriously beautiful day on the bay, to be sure.

But although Frauscher’s public relations firm had insisted Wednesday, Thursday and through much of this morning that Schwarzenegger had been confirmed to attend – and that the event had been moved from Thursday to Friday to accommodate his schedule – there was no governor. He was in San Francisco, apparently meeting with a certain newspaper’s editorial board, but he didn’t make the yacht event (though many reporters did, with most splitting as soon as it appeared he wouldn’t show).

So – no questions about the “yacht tax” hubbub, just eco-friendly yachts.

Richman updates his post saying that while Arnold’s press officials claiming “we never were committed to doing this, we were never planning to do this,” neither did they respond to Richman’s queries about the event earlier in the week. It sounds as if they couldn’t get out of this Yacht party quickly enough.

So let’s get this straight – Arnold avoided a public appearance because the Courage Campaign, along with the California Nurses Association and Assemblymember Anthony Portantino, helped put an ad on the airwaves calling attention to the Republicans’ Yacht Party nature?

David was right – Arnold IS a coward. And the California netroots, along with progressive groups and politicians like CNA and Portantino, have the power to shame Arnold away from a good party.

Dick Ackerman, man of the people? Mmmmm not so much. Today more than 100 members of the California Partnership, a statewide coalition of community based organizations that fights poverty in California, flooded the offices of Republican leaders in California’s state Assembly and Senate to demand meetings and real solutions to California’s budget through fair tax policy.

Here’s a shot of CHP’s security officer telling everyone to buzz off.

 

Gov. Schwarzenegger is sending his May budget revise in later this week, so a last ditch effort was waged to negotiate the proposed drastic cuts to healthcare, education and California’s safety net for poor and working families. While Senate Assembly Minority Leader, Michael Villines’s chief budget negotiator met with activists for more than half an hour, Republican State Senate Leader Ackerman’s office refused to see anyone, and after two minutes of back and forth, staff called CHP officers to throw CA Partnership leaders out.

Activists from all over the state including the ACLU of So Cal brought hundreds of small plastic boats with them to symbolize the $26 million loophole created to coddle yacht owners while poor Californians risk losing vital programs that support families.

A “cuts only” approach will not work. New revenue such as a corporate property taxes and closing tax loopholes for yacht owners must be part of the solution to the budget crisis.

Thanks for nothing, Dick.

Today’s SacBee is reporting that Republicans are planning to demand gutting of business and environmental regulation as a price of their support for any budget. Among their list of demands is an end to mandatory overtime pay (because you want workers to be paid less as we enter a recession), a one-year delay in the implementation of the AB 32 goals, state assessment of the effects of regulation on business, and a yacht and safe passage to Costa Rica. (Hmm, not sure about that last one.)

Speaker Fabian Núñez provided the proper response:

“It’s unfortunate Senate Republicans are once again trying to use their budget leverage to push unrelated proposals that would dirty our air and hurt working families,” Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles, said in a statement. “They tried unsuccessfully to do that last year, and their efforts will fail again this year.”

Whereas Don Perata provided the wrong response:

“We are in such dire trouble fiscally, I am glad for anybody who wants to get into the game,” Perata said. “We have not yet come to grips with how difficult this year will be. Everything must be on the table.”

Don, the Republican proposals have absolutely nothing to do with the state’s fiscal situation and would in fact make it much worse by destroying our economy and thereby lowering collection of taxes.

In any case Democrats may have been given a gift with this. They can go to Californians and say “we have a balanced plan to balance the budget, a plan that balances public services and public taxes. The Republicans prefer to hold the state hostage so they can implement a far-right agenda.” Show voters who is really interested in solving our budget problems and who just wants to use it to ram more disaster capitalism down our throats.

Of course this all just shows the need to get rid of the 2/3 rule. Too bad nobody thought to spend some money on that one this year…

The city of Vallejo has been flirting with bankruptcy for for a few months now, but it looks like it will probably happen soon.  While the Mayor and other leaders continue to point the finger at public safety workers, the city looks set to pass its own deadline this week for some other resolution. The Chronicle:

Vallejo will inch closer to financial ruin Tuesday when the City Council lets pass its do-or-die date to avert bankruptcy.

City staff members have been unable to come up with a detailed, long-term financial plan because negotiations with the police and fire unions are still ongoing. The city is asking for steep concessions from the unions, whose members are among the highest paid in the Bay Area and whose salaries comprise about 74 percent of the city’s budget.

“We had hoped to have an agreement by April 22 to give to the council,” said Mayor Osby Davis, who has sat in on the negotiations. “But I’m optimistic. There’s always room for a resolution if people are willing to give and take.”

Davis, if you’ll remember, is the Mayor who lost the election, and then won the election on a recount.  In the end, I’m not sure there’s a winner at all here.  The unions allege that there’s some accounting tricks being used, while the City contends that the salaries are just killing them. The salaries are quite high due to mandatory overtime required by the city’s low staffing.

The Mayor and others want a “long-term solution”, but one will be increasingly difficult to find for Vallejo and cities across California as the budget continues to bleed. There is no solution – none at all – until California’s leaders and the Yacht Party obstructionists choose to look at the budget sheets from towns and cities across the state. Small, large, whatever. They are all feeling the pain of the last 30 years. Prop 13, the VLF cuts, everything is costing the cities money at a time when more and more is expected of them.

We can dally no longer. The governor needs to step up and admit that he was wrong on the VLF. Vallejo is just the first large city to tumble towards bankruptcy. It will certainly not be the last.