John Laird kicks a little Republican tail on the budget.  The backstory here is that the Reeps have been demanding a vote on the Democratic proposal despite their leadership offering other options in secret.  In addition, the Republicans have consistently opposed the budget without marking out what their alternative would be.  Here’s Laird:

“One of the great joys in serving in this body is when some of my colleagues take firm stands on both sides of an issue.

“We stood here on this floor just a couple of months ago and we wanted to take just an itty-bitty portion of windfall profits from the oil companies-where last week they reported $11 billion in profits-and use it to keep from laying off teachers. And speaker after speaker on this floor said, “Don’t waste our time with a drill. We’re against drills. Debates with foregone conclusions are of no value.” Now from the same quarter it’s “We demand a drill.”

“If I had gone 7 months into the budget process and not made a public proposal, not shared what my point of view for balancing the budget was with the people of California, I might want to change the subject as well.

“We have a situation where the voters of California have been taken hostage but we can’t get a ransom note.

“Because it’s been said on this floor today, people are having a tough time with gas prices. Well, if you are going to take their public transit away, they have to know. People have to have the courage to tell them.

“People are struggling with education. Well, if we’re going to take their retraining away at a time of economic downturn, we should tell them.

“People are having trouble making ends meet. Well, if their health care is going out the door, shouldn’t we tell them?

“Because the governor-it’s interesting people were making comments against the sale tax on the floor. Well, that is not in the conference report. That is the Governor’s proposal. And the reason the Governor has make the proposal is he originally said you can’t just do cuts. He says you have to have revenue. He had $7 billion of revenues in his proposed budget, and with $7 billion of revenue he still wanted to close 48 parks. He still wanted to cut health care by 10%. He still wanted to take the overwhelming majority [sic] from transit. He wanted to cut schools by $79 per student in California and what’s been demanded on the floor is that we have cuts that are higher than that because we won’t have revenue.

“Because if that’s the case, of course, there wouldn’t be a public budget. You have to level with the public. It’s time to have a budget in public. You can’t compromise with nothing.

“And we want to drive this down the middle. We want to get it done. We want the people to know what the issues are.”

They’re complete cowards.  They don’t want to explain their scheme to hurt struggling and vulnerable Californians and make them suffer.  So they play these games every year.  The 2/3 requirement must be demolished so we have a legislature that’s slightly more mature than the average elementary school playground.

As the news comes in on the indictment of Series of Tubes Ted Stevens, it’s instructive to take a look back at who the Yacht Party in California allows to speak for them as “leaders”.  First we have Sheriff Michael Carona, “America’s Sheriff,” who is apparently more than just a run-of-the-mill corrupt public official, but actually deeply vulgar, venal and unethical, even by the standards of the GOP – but also weirdly representative of a certain level of corruption in the OC.

His attorneys are asking a federal judge to prevent a future jury from hearing secretly recorded tapes of Carona snarling racial epithets, referring vulgarly to women and boasting of both sexual and political prowess.

“I mean, I’ve met millionaires, billionaires, and I’ve traveled on personal airplanes . . . drank great wine and, you know, had great booze and had some, you know, phenomenal [sex] along the way,” Carona told his longtime patron, an auto auction magnate who was wearing a wire. “I’m the most lethal [expletive] in politics in Orange County.”

The revelations have disappointed but not quite shocked Orange County, where the sensibility enshrined at Anaheim’s Disneyland long has informed local politics, as well. Each invests heavily in an idealized, lavishly financed and fervently polished vision of Americana that few appear to accept as entirely real in the first place […]

Before Carona’s public disgrace, a superior court judge last year was sentenced to 27 months for possession of child pornography. The founder of the Trinity Broadcasting Network, located behind white wrought-iron curlicues in Costa Mesa, paid $425,000 to suppress an account of an alleged homosexual encounter. The Orange County Register reported that the Justice Department is investigating the county treasurer for allegedly diverting funds from a bankrupt trucking company to pay for Botox.

(the party affiliations of these officials have been strangely expunged.  Thanks Washington Post!)

And this behavior is not limited to Orange County (flip it)…

In San Bernardino, Bill Postmus was a young chair of the GOP who delivered a string of victories in the early part of the decade.  Now he’s taking a conveniently timed leave of absence:

Last week, Postmus announced that he’s taking a leave of absence from his elected post as county assessor because of unspecified medical problems.

He’s been under scrutiny lately. A former top aide faces six felony charges, and a district attorney’s investigation is ongoing. The assessor’s office also was the subject of a critical grand jury report released last month.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party, which as recently as two years ago held a five-figure registration advantage over Democrats in San Bernardino County, is clinging to a one-half percentage point lead.

Leaders are working to distance themselves from the party as it was under Postmus — one critic said he ran it like a personal fiefdom focused on his own political goals. Fundraising, which slowed at the end of Postmus’ three-year stint, has flatlined.

From what I hear, the indictment is imminent.

Then there’s the bizarre case of Delecia Holt, a would-be challenger to Rep. Susan Davis.

(We could have a sidebar question about how Davis managed to be one of the only state Democrats to not get the Labor Fed endorsement, but snag the support of the progressive Jewish group J Street. But another time.)

Holt, who ended up not appearing on the ballot in June, may have been a phantom.  She claimed support from the powerful Lincoln Club and $200,000 in contributions.  But nothing materialized.

Holt, 46, ended up not filing to appear on the ballot. The Lincoln Club says she’s not a member in either Orange County or San Diego. The District Attorney’s Office is looking into her real estate dealings. She owes $32,000 in toll road penalties. Three nonprofits have complained about her use of their names for fundraisers in which they were not involved.

And the $216,000 she reported raising?

The Register wrote each of the 217 donors at the addresses listed on Holt’s federal financial filings, inquiring about their donations. Not a single one responded that they had supported the would-be candidate.

The Register heard back from eight of the listed donors – all said they had not given Holt money, and six said they’d never heard of her.

“We aren’t in a position to be giving money to anybody,” said Vista’s Jill Granquist, who is listed as having contributed $2,000, but whose financial straits led to losing her home to foreclosure in March. “I’ve never heard of her, but this makes me kind of curious.”

I’ll be fair and say that there are loony tune fringe candidates like this in every party.  But given the sorry state of the GOP, what’s sad is that a con artist like Holt feels right at home.  It’s almost sad to see how low these people have sunk.  Except I then consider their agenda, and it’s not sad at all.

This is a bit of a hail mary:

Now, business groups and like-minded Republicans have added relief from the meal and rest period rules to the list of things they want approved with the state budget.

California businesses, led by the California Chamber of Commerce (CalChamber), the California Taxpayers’ Association and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, have spent millions and successfully enlisted the GOP to advocate for their interests over the years.

In California, it takes a two-thirds vote of each house in the Legislature to pass a budget or a tax increase. That gives the minority-party Republicans – and the business community lining up at their doors – far more ability to influence the budget than most other legislation. GOP lawmakers have successfully blocked major legislative tax increases since 1991 because of that power.

This year, with the budget already 28 days late and the state $15.2 billion short of a balanced budget, business groups are pushing to ensure their interests are taken care of as the budget is shaped. With that push comes money.

CalChamber is indeed the most powerful advocacy group with respect to Republicans and the governor.  All of their “job killer” bills are routinely vetoed, the reward for $11.5 million dollars’ worth of lobbying since 2003.  

But I would seriously doubt that they have the juice to overturn labor rules in the budget.  When it comes to influence, labor isn’t exactly a piker. The business community should worry more about their members coping with a failing economy than any of this, but of course CalChamber reflects the opinion of their top-earning members, just as the Republican Party reflects the opinion of their richest contributors.

It’s all posturing, and so is tomorrow’s budget vote in the Senate.  What that vote could be about is beyond me.

Congratulations, California!  It’s July 1, the start of the new fiscal year, and you don’t have a budget, again.  And if Mike Villines is to be believed, you won’t have one for some time:

“We’re doing meetings, but we’re not making a ton of progress,” Villines said on the final day of the 2007-08 fiscal year.

The four legislative leaders are meeting regularly, but “a lot of it is building a rapport.”

I hope they’re playing that “trust” game where one of them falls to the ground and relies on everyone else to catch them, that’s always a good one.  Maybe they could swing a team building trip to Joshua Tree while they’re at it!

According to Villines, those mean old Democrats are just irrationally sticking to raising taxes at a time of budget deficits between $15 and $20 billion dollars!  Don’t they know they could just stop funding public schools and everyone could go home for the summer? (over…)

In part, he blamed Democrats for sticking to a plan to raise taxes – $11 billion in the Senate and $6 billion in the Assembly – for stalling talks. He called such figures “totally unfounded and out of touch with reality.”

“We understand the budget is a compromise. Being in the minority, we understand that,” Villines said. “But we’re having a difficult time getting our counterparts to really change their original premise on the budget, which is, ‘We need taxes. We need to continue spending in government and that’s the budget that we want.'”

“I keep waiting for that to end so we can get to where we are seriously negotiating,” he added. “We haven’t gotten there.”

It’s funny that Villines claims he understands the budget to be a compromise, given that there are literally dozens of members of his caucus who have never voted for a budget in their political careers.

He also said that the Big Four has agreed to flatten out the corrections budget.  Funny, of all the things both sides choose to cut is the one program which is in such a crisis that we’re going to have a trial in November that will almost certainly lead to mass releases.  The failure of leadership on the prisons continues.

I also like Villines trying to make hay out of “Democrats not naming their tax hikes,” seeing that this was exactly the strategy Republicans tried last year, not naming their budget cuts once before eventually agreeing to a deal.  The hypocrisy, it blinds!

We know what the Republicans want to do.  They want to constrain spending so that it grows slower than the economy until it becomes so small they can drown it in the bathtub.  There’s nothing novel about it, it’s pure Norquistian conservatism, the same kind that we’ve seen fail the country during the Bush Administration.  As Dan Walters, believe it or not, said two weeks ago, “California’s voters, first by mandating two-thirds legislative votes on new taxes with Proposition 13 in 1978, and then guaranteeing schools a hefty share of current revenue and any new taxes with Proposition 98 in 1988, may have made it almost impossible to balance revenue and spending.”  They were sold a bill of goods by the Yacht Party’s con men, told they could have their low taxes and eat from the fruit of generous public services too.  Everyone now understands this is a sham, but snake-oil salesmen like Mike Villines are still trudging out to the fields with the bottles of “Dr. Turlingtons Balsam of Life” trying to sell it to the rubes.

And that, my friends, is why there’s no budget on July 1 again.  And this will continue to happen until the Yacht Party is made to pay at the ballot box.  Because the current laws make the state ungovernable, only a 2/3 majority that can reform the rules, so that the party in power can rise or fall on the results of the actions it is allowed to deliver, will ever provide what’s necessary for California to function and survive.

In a brilliant parliamentary maneuver, the Victor Manuel Perez for CA 80th Assembly District campaign to replace the termed out, thank God, Bonnie Garcia (R-CA), the Perez forces by one vote were able to keep Greg Pettis, Mayor Pro-Tem of Cathedral City, from retaining the California Democratic Party endorsement for Assembly.  (Perez is Vice-President of the failed school board in the Coachella Valley Unified School District.)  However, the short-term battle victory may possibly cost the Democrats not only the 80th in the November general election, but also cost them the majority that they need to ignore the demands of the recalictrant minority Republicans in the Assembly.

A major factor developing in the campaign and one of which I have been consistently blogging on mydesert.com, the online edition of The Desert Sun, is the fact that Gary Jeandron, presumptive Republican candidate for the 80th AD is a boardmember of the Palm Springs Unified School District (PSUSD).  Recently, the State of California Board of Education threatened actions and/or sanctions against 97 school boards across the state that failed to meet state academic goals and the requirements of the Federally unfunded ‘No Child Left Behind.’  As a result, California threatened sanctions against the PSUSD and the board for the academic failures in the District.  Jeandron, as boardmember, and running for the 80th cites his education background and experience as instrumental to his qualifications for the office.  However, the threatened sanctions are a major demerit and campaign issue.

This is relevant to Perez as he is Vice-President of the failed CVUSD board which according to the State, had more problems than any other school district in California this year.

More below the flip…

The state actions against the CVUSD and its board are much more severe as their failures were more significant.  The CVUSD District was threatened with state takeover but the state action only involved installation of a trustee to oversee and possibly veto any District and/or board action (State assigns trustee to CVUSD to improve test scores):

“Coachella Valley Unified School District will get a trustee and a state-approved team of independent experts to help improve student test scores, state board members decided this afternoon.

The state board named Riverside County Superintendent Kenneth Young as the district’s trustee, which will give him veto powers over superintendent and board decisions.

But Young said he will work collaboratively with the district.”

The CVUSD was the ONLY district to receive trustee oversight.  Perez as V-P and long-term boardmember bears major responsibility for the failures of the District, its teachers, and its students.  That the CVUSD is suffering such consequences for the academic failures not only raises the question of Perez’ qualifications for Assembly, especially in the area of education, but also blunts the criticism of Jeandron.

If Democrats in the 80th Assembly District choose Perez as the candidate, one of the major issues in the campaign against Jeandron is either removed from the table due to mutual assured destruction on this issue or becomes even more of an issue given the CVUSD is the only District in the state that was assigned a trustee.

Having a ‘well-spoken’ or ‘charismatic’ candidate will not soften the damage to the local Democratic campaign to re-take this seat in November 2008.  Style will not win where substance can win.  Greg Pettis, Mayor Pro-tem of Cathedral City, unlike Perez and Jeandron, is untainted by the failures of the CVUSD and PSUSD school boards and Districts.  In addition, Pettis has the endorsements of State Assemblyman Mike Eng (D-49), Member California State Assembly Committee on Education, El Centro School Board Trustee Diana Newton, and Palm Springs Unified School Board Trustee Meredy Schoenberger.

This is really kind of priceless.  So the Assembly caucuses are having their legislative retreats this week.  The Assembly Democrats are meeting at the UC Davis Medical Center.  The Assembly Republicans have booked out this hotel.  In addition to the many amenities at the Le Rivage Hotel, they offer:

Marina – Offers luxury yacht parking, long term and short term

Whether it’s welfare queen Tom McClintock grabbing $300,000 in tax-free per diem payments even though he lives a short commute from the capital, or Jeff Denham pretending to decline pay raises while accepting them a few months after everyone stops paying attention, or Assembly Republicans making sure their retreat has luxury yacht parking, the contrast between the party of the people and the party of self-enrichment is striking.  The Yacht Party detests runaway spending unless it’s spent on them.