{"id":8992,"date":"2009-05-28T16:03:28","date_gmt":"2009-05-28T16:03:28","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-05-28T16:03:28","modified_gmt":"2009-05-28T16:03:28","slug":"just-say-no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2009\/05\/28\/just-say-no\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Say No"},"content":{"rendered":"

I will be on KRXA 540 AM<\/a> at 8 this morning to talk about this and other issues in California politics<\/I><\/p>\n

I don’t know about you, but I can’t find anything in the outcome of the May 19 election that justifies, say, ending welfare entirely, or denying AIDS patients life-saving medicines, or throwing a million kids off of health care, or closing the state park system, or eliminating affordable access to higher education. Can you?<\/p>\n

In fact, even though polls show voters emphatically reject<\/strong> that kind of budgeting<\/a> Arnold Schwarzenegger has gone ahead and proposed it anyway. In his best effort to play the role of a modern-day Herbert Hoover<\/a> he has decided to interpret the election as a mandate to push through the radical attack on government he has always wanted to lead.<\/p>\n

In recent hearings in the Legislature – which in themselves prove the value of an open budget process – the scope of the cuts has become clear, and even legislators who were just last week speaking of the need for cuts are starting to have second thoughts, as Anthony Wright reported<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Some members, like Senator Denise Ducheny, asked whether some of these cuts would not create more costs, as people end up in emergency rooms or elsewhere, even within the budget year. “What makes you think this doesn’t create a cost shift?… Will people just die and we won’t have to take care of them?” she asked.<\/p>\n

Senator Mark Leno talked about how the AIDS Drug Assistance Program “literally keeps people alive,” and asked for information about the increased cost of ermegency room visits as a result of the cut. Senator Alan Lowenthal asked if there was a “longitudinal” analysis, and asked for the “long-range implications” of these cuts.<\/p>\n

Assemblywoman Noreen Evans was alarmed when she noted that dialysis would be cut for some patients, exclaiming that her father was going through such treatment, and was not optional. She also noted that some cuts, like the elimination of HIV Testing, would have public health impacts. Assemblyman Kevin DeLeon pointed out the cuts to community clinics, arguing that for many Californians, “this is the only safety-net they have.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As the Sac Bee reports, even some Republicans acknowledge that there is such a thing as a successful government program<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Assemblyman Danny Gilmore, R-Hanford, wrote an opinion piece this month for the Bakersfield Californian telling constituents how to apply to Healthy Families and touting it as a program that works “especially well.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, the Zombie Death Cult still has its adherents, like Chuck DeVore:<\/p>\n

But Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, said the state must scale back because it cannot afford the benefits it provides. DeVore asserted that overregulation and high taxes have stifled businesses and led to layoffs, while California has compounded the problem with too much public aid.<\/p>\n

“When you have an unemployment rate as high as it is in this state, it should be a signal to people to look for jobs in other states with more jobs and a lower cost of living,” DeVore said. “We have had policies subsidizing poverty in this state for years, and we can’t keep doing that.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And this freak wants to be in the US Senate! The irony is that even his own constituents disagree with him. Orange County residents don’t want their parents to lose dialysis treatment. They don’t want their kids to lose Cal Grants. They don’t want to be barred from going to the nearby beach.<\/p>\n

As we have been explaining for months now, these kinds of cuts are suicidal. They will make the budget picture worse by costing more money than the cuts would save. They will certainly make the economic crisis FAR worse by forcing consumers to pull back even further on spending in order to replace the lost state aid. Arnold Schwarzenegger is demanding a Depression.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately the legislative leadership has woefully unprepared themselves to respond. Instead of spending the months leading up to the May 19 election talking about protecting Californians against horrific cuts, the Democratic leadership instead went along with Arnold’s scare tactics and made a cuts-only budget sound inevitable – and then doubled down<\/a> the day after the election.<\/p>\n

It’s time for legislators to “just say no” to these cuts. And not say it in order to accept lesser but similarly damaging cuts, but say “no” in order to walk through the wide open door that leads out of the Jarvis nightmare scenario. We have a golden opportunity to bury 30 years of anti-tax nonsense – Californians understand that taxes are necessary to prevent people from dying and to provide economic recovery. There is widespread support for raising taxes on the wealthy, closing the loopholes<\/a>, and ending a failed prisons policy that costs us billions.<\/p>\n

It’s time for legislators to move beyond outrage and to start showing real leadership against this madness. If they want to restore their reputations with voters, the best way to do so is to show that the Legislature still understands common sense and can give the people what they want – a fair tax system that will stop these cuts in their entirety.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I will be on KRXA 540 AM<\/a> at 8 this morning to talk about this and other issues in California politics<\/I><\/p>\n

I don’t know about you, but I can’t find anything in the outcome of the May 19 election that justifies, say, ending welfare entirely, or denying AIDS patients life-saving medicines, or throwing a million kids off of health care, or closing the state park system, or eliminating affordable access to higher education. Can you?<\/p>\n

In fact, even though polls show voters emphatically reject<\/strong> that kind of budgeting<\/a> Arnold Schwarzenegger has gone ahead and proposed it anyway. In his best effort to play the role of a modern-day Herbert Hoover<\/a> he has decided to interpret the election as a mandate to push through the radical attack on government he has always wanted to lead.<\/p>\n

In recent hearings in the Legislature – which in themselves prove the value of an open budget process – the scope of the cuts has become clear, and even legislators who were just last week speaking of the need for cuts are starting to have second thoughts, as Anthony Wright reported<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Some members, like Senator Denise Ducheny, asked whether some of these cuts would not create more costs, as people end up in emergency rooms or elsewhere, even within the budget year. “What makes you think this doesn’t create a cost shift?… Will people just die and we won’t have to take care of them?” she asked.<\/p>\n

Senator Mark Leno talked about how the AIDS Drug Assistance Program “literally keeps people alive,” and asked for information about the increased cost of ermegency room visits as a result of the cut. Senator Alan Lowenthal asked if there was a “longitudinal” analysis, and asked for the “long-range implications” of these cuts.<\/p>\n

Assemblywoman Noreen Evans was alarmed when she noted that dialysis would be cut for some patients, exclaiming that her father was going through such treatment, and was not optional. She also noted that some cuts, like the elimination of HIV Testing, would have public health impacts. Assemblyman Kevin DeLeon pointed out the cuts to community clinics, arguing that for many Californians, “this is the only safety-net they have.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As the Sac Bee reports, even some Republicans acknowledge that there is such a thing as a successful government program<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Assemblyman Danny Gilmore, R-Hanford, wrote an opinion piece this month for the Bakersfield Californian telling constituents how to apply to Healthy Families and touting it as a program that works “especially well.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, the Zombie Death Cult still has its adherents, like Chuck DeVore:<\/p>\n

But Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, said the state must scale back because it cannot afford the benefits it provides. DeVore asserted that overregulation and high taxes have stifled businesses and led to layoffs, while California has compounded the problem with too much public aid.<\/p>\n

“When you have an unemployment rate as high as it is in this state, it should be a signal to people to look for jobs in other states with more jobs and a lower cost of living,” DeVore said. “We have had policies subsidizing poverty in this state for years, and we can’t keep doing that.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And this freak wants to be in the US Senate! The irony is that even his own constituents disagree with him. Orange County residents don’t want their parents to lose dialysis treatment. They don’t want their kids to lose Cal Grants. They don’t want to be barred from going to the nearby beach.<\/p>\n

As we have been explaining for months now, these kinds of cuts are suicidal. They will make the budget picture worse by costing more money than the cuts would save. They will certainly make the economic crisis FAR worse by forcing consumers to pull back even further on spending in order to replace the lost state aid. Arnold Schwarzenegger is demanding a Depression.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately the legislative leadership has woefully unprepared themselves to respond. Instead of spending the months leading up to the May 19 election talking about protecting Californians against horrific cuts, the Democratic leadership instead went along with Arnold’s scare tactics and made a cuts-only budget sound inevitable – and then doubled down<\/a> the day after the election.<\/p>\n

It’s time for legislators to “just say no” to these cuts. And not say it in order to accept lesser but similarly damaging cuts, but say “no” in order to walk through the wide open door that leads out of the Jarvis nightmare scenario. We have a golden opportunity to bury 30 years of anti-tax nonsense – Californians understand that taxes are necessary to prevent people from dying and to provide economic recovery. There is widespread support for raising taxes on the wealthy, closing the loopholes<\/a>, and ending a failed prisons policy that costs us billions.<\/p>\n

It’s time for legislators to move beyond outrage and to start showing real leadership against this madness. If they want to restore their reputations with voters, the best way to do so is to show that the Legislature still understands common sense and can give the people what they want – a fair tax system that will stop these cuts in their entirety.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-117"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2l2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8992\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}