Getting Ready Ahead Of Time

Posted on April 7, 2009 by Dave

Right now the Republicans are laying the groundwork for the next budget
fight. That fight might come if the
propositions fail on May 19, or it might come next year. Whenever it is, they are working now to get
the public to support their side when
it comes.

For example, the extremist right is having “tea party” rallies, claiming “taxes are theft” and any government spending is too much. Their radio stations are saying California is the state with the highest taxes (false). Etc., etc.

Now, most people really don’t pay much in taxes, but have
been led to believe they do. And most
people don’t understand that government spending is spent on them. This is especially true among those who listen to extremist-right radio or read their op-eds.

All of this amounts to getting ahead of things now, before any next battle even begins. They are making it that much harder to get a needed tax increase passed, or to spend enough on our schools to properly educate kids so they can drive the economy of the next generation, or to invest in the transportation, energy, water conservation, and other technologies that will help us grow the economy in the future. No, they want to “save” that money and pass it along to the wealthy today.

But people should learn from history. The real tea party was not a public uprising against taxes at all. It was an action against
corporate cronyism and taxes set without democratic processes. The roots of our country come from another time when favoritism and cronyism and special breaks for the rich ran rampant. The public figured it out then, and a revolution resulted. Our democracy was the result, and our democracy will recover and reinvigorate itself once again.

Of course, it would help if the public didn’t have to figure these things out entirely for themselves. The Republicans are out there reaching the public-at-large, making their case. We should be, too.

Teachers Fired To Pay For Huge Corporate Tax Cut — Why?

Posted on March 31, 2009 by Dave

I’ve been asking around and it seems that most Californians don’t know that the budget deal that fires so many teachers also has a huge tax cut just for big, multi-state and multi-national corporations.
But it’s true. Last month’s budget deal that fires teachers, cuts essential government services, and guts the investments that bring future economic benefits also has a huge tax cut for the largest of corporations. While this part of the deal has been kept pretty quiet, the LA Times had a story, Business the big winner in California budget plan. From the story,

The average Californian’s taxes would shoot up five different ways in the state budget blueprint that lawmakers hope to vote on this weekend. But the bipartisan plan for wiping out the state’s giant deficit isn’t so bad for large corporations, many of which would receive a permanent windfall.
About $1 billion in corporate tax breaks — directed mostly at multi-state and multinational companies — is tucked into the proposal.

But wait, won’t a big corporate tax cut cause companies to come to California, creating jobs? No, they are already here and it will drive them away, because it is paid for by firing teachers.

A study by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, released in 2005, found that most companies decide where to locate based not on tax breaks but on factors such as the availability of a highly educated workforce. California’s proposed plan would cut spending on higher education by hundreds of millions of dollars.

So how did this happen? This was part of the deal to get a few Republican votes. And why did the Republicans want this so bad? Because they understood who really elected them.
If you look at the independent expenditure reports for the 2008 California election you’ll see a massive amount of last-minute money. For example, in the 19th Senate District, a political action committee (PAC) named “Californians for Jobs and Education” put almost $1 million into just one race: $570,653 into defeating Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson, and another $373,778 to help elect her opponent, Republican Tony Strickland. When you look this group up on ElectionTrack you learn that this money came from corporations like Arkansas’ Wal-Mart, Blue Cross of Ohio (Ohio?), Reliant Energy, major real estate companies, and from other PACs.
Now it gets interesting. Many of the contributions to that PAC came from other PACs, especially one called Jobs Pac. When you track down Jobs PAC you find that it is a conduit for huge, huge amounts of money coming from large corporations like Philip Morris, ATT, Chevron, Safeway, Sempra Energy, Verizon, big insurance companies, big pharmaceutical companies, big real estate companies … and other conduits like the Chamber of Commerce.
Why did these huge corporations put so much money into California state elections? Because we let them, and because of the return on investment they receive from tax cuts like the one that is forcing us to fire so many of our teachers.
There is a key lesson to learn from this. When it comes time to choose, that is when you can really see who is for or against something — where their priorities really are. And in this case, when push came to shove, in the end who did the conservatives come through for? The large corporations. They danced with the ones that brung them.

None For You

Posted on March 27, 2009 by Dave

There was a positive response to the idea from last week’s post, No Schools For You, that suggested,

“If an Assembly or Senate representative demanded cuts to schools, fire, etc. then the schools, fire, etc. in that representative’s district receive
the entire cut! This would be an honest application of representative
democracy, allowing the citizens of an area to be governed according to
their wishes without it affecting all of the citizens in the state.”

Seriously, the leaders of the Assembly and Senate should make the few Republican holdouts an offer: if they think government services to the state’s citizens are such a bad idea they should stop insisting on so much spending in their districts! They say that government spending is a problem, why can’t they take those Republican governors who are refusing to accept any stimulus money as role models and refuse any state spending in their districts. Their constituents can then show their overwhelming support for the anti-government ideology that their elected representatives espouse.

Several years ago, then-Senator Phil Gramm of Texas – a Republican – was one of the loudest to complain and complain about spending and “pork” and “earmarks” in the federal budget. What is called “pork” and “earmarks” are special appropriations of funds by the Congress for specific projects in specific districts: a museum, science lab, agricultural study or bridge that is badly needed is funded by our government. This is what Republicans call “pork” — government doing things that citizens need. Well the biggest, most expensive project in the country at the time was the Superconducting Super Collider, a massive physics lab being built under the ground in Texas, employing hundreds and keeping many construction businesses going. Well, when it came time to cut some spending the Congress took Senator Gramm at his word and killed the project.

So I think that it would be a very good idea to ask the Republican anti-tax ideologues to put up or shut up. Give them the opportunity to put their (take away the) money where their mouths are. If you want spending cuts, let us cut all the spending in your districts — or please shut up.

Your thoughts? Leave a comment.

No Schools For You

Posted on March 17, 2009 by Dave

Here is an idea for solving California’s budget crisis.

What if the California legislature temporarily budgeted for districts according to the wishes of the district’s legislators. If an Assembly or Senate representative demanded cuts to schools, fire, etc. then the schools, fire, etc. in that representative’s district receive the entire cut! This would be an honest application of representative democracy, allowing the citizens of an area to be governed according to their wishes without it affecting all of the citizens in the state.

Wait, you say, why should only certain districts be punished with cuts? Why should only a few citizens shoulder the burden of balancing the budget through cuts? The answer is because those are the people who elected the extremist minority who are forcing the cuts, while refusing to ask the rich to pay their fair share and actually cutting taxes for huge corporations. (Yes, the budget “solution” included a huge tax cut for the Wal-Marts and Exxons.)

With this plan the residents of Santa Clarita (the
right-wing bastion of northwest LA County) could get their wish to have no schools, police, road maintenance, firefighters, etc. while the residents of San Francisco could keep their government services. And the residents of both areas would have what they want.

Or, at least, they would have the opportunity to understand just who they elected.

California Government Is Good People But The System Is Designed To Fail

Posted on March 12, 2009 by Dave

I was in Sacramento for some meetings this week, and have a few thoughts and observations.

The first is the most important. The people in and around our government are good, dedicated people who are doing those jobs because they care and want to do the right thing. You don’t make big money in public service. In the last few decades a government job meant less pay than a comparable “private” sector job and a number of working-environment hassles, like the extra procedures (paperwork and bureaucracy) that are required in public positions to involve transparency and accountability. And, of course, they have to put up with the Republican-inspired abuse of people who work for the government. So give these people a break and assume good faith.

After decades of budget cutting our government is universally strapped
for resources and it makes for a difficult workday. The things people
went into public service to accomplish are being stripped out from
under them by the state’s structured-to-fail system (see below). I
hope the Bush years trigger some serious thinking about what things
would be like without a government, because we are getting close to
that possibility.

The state government is now structurally designed to fail — and this latest budget deal compounds the problem. This situation was created on purpose by anti-government ideologues, usually corporate-funded. Thus really is a choice between government by the people or government by a wealthy few who happen to be in control of large corporations. To them government is “in the way” of making money. Government means food and safety inspectors so people don’t get sick and workers don’t get hurt, and protecting workers and the public costs them profits. Government means regulations stopping them from dumping stuff in the water or air and properly disposing of waste costs them money. Government means regulations that make them pay back customers who are overcharges. Government means regulations requiring delivering goods and services that were promised. SO you can see why the hate government and regulation — they keep them from just taking your money and giving nothing back!

So they have used the power that comes from their access to corporate resources to set up a state system that is giving them what they want. They pay petition-gatherers to get anti-government initiatives on the ballot, and then they flood the TV and radio with lying ads that trick people into voting against their own interests — and here we are.

Here are just a few of our designed-to-fail structural problems:

Term limits mean that thinking must be short term, and encourages passing problems along instead of solving them, because then the problems will be “not on my watch.” People who are effective in their jobs are forced out, and voters who want to keep them there are prevented from doing so.
The campaign-finance system puts corporate-backed candidates in office by necessitating big money to win elections. And corporations, designed to amass resources, are perfect vehicles for pushing the interests of the few who control them.
The two-thirds budget requirement means that a few anti-government extremists are able to sabotage the process, keeping any budget from passing and shutting down the state.
The disappearance of political reporting in California media means the state’s citizens are uninformed about what is going on. The corporate-owned media concentrates on sitcoms and what Britney is wearing, and does not let the people find out what government is about.

These are just some of the structural problems, and the system is. of course, structurally designed to keep us from fixing them. The only way we are going to address this is to get lots and lots of people involved. The election of Barack Obama tells us this is possible but I despair at amount of work that will have to be done to accomplish it.

The Budget Agreement

Posted on February 19, 2009 by Dave

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.

CA’s Budget Problem Is Paragraph 10

Posted on February 16, 2009 by Dave

Today’s San Jose Mercury News front page story is about California’s budget problem: that they are still one vote short. But Californians reading the story are not told why one more vote is required, not are they told who it is required from — until the 10th paragraph. The 10th paragraph reads,

The votes were there in the
Assembly. But in the Senate, only two Republican senators were prepared
to buck party orthodoxy and vote to raise taxes. Three were needed.

Even in this 10th paragraph readers are not informed that every Democrat is voting for the budget.

Before this paragraph, readers are told that “lawmakers” cannot agree and that “the deal still was held hostage by the thinnest of margins.” But there is nothing telling them who or why.

The reason this is such a problem is that the people of California need this information, to help them play their part in the functioning of our state government. The voters need to know who to hold accountable or they will not make their wishes known through calls to their Assemblymember’s or Senator’s office. And they can’t make informed decisions at election time.

This is typical of stories about the budget impasse — across the state the major newspapers, radio and TV stations are not giving the voters the information they need in order to participate in their government. The result is that the state is becoming ungovernable — and going broke.

So let’s be clear about what is happening here. California’s elected Republicans have all signed a “no-new-taxes” pledge with Grover Norquist’s organization. (He’s the guy who says the plan is to make government small enough to “drown in a bathtub.”) So now they see the budget crisis as an opportunity to force mass layoffs of state employees and reductions in support for people who need things like state-supplied oxygen tanks. They call that “reducing government.” And even with all the budget cuts that the Democrats have all voted for, they still will not vote to pass a budget. They want more, and then more, and then they want the state government to go away.

This is ideology. They repeat an ideological mantra that will ruin the state. And they say this is their goal — to get rid of government. They say government is bad. They say government spending is bad. They say taxes are bad. They say corporations are good. Ideology.

California can not continue to fund our schools, universities, roads, public safety, firefighters, health services, services to
the poor, blind and elderly, provide funding for local government, etc.
without additional revenues. Do the Math (George Skelton, LA Times):

It’s Republican dogma in the Capitol that to vote for a tax increase is
“career-ending.” Even if true — and there’s evidence both ways — so
what?

These are folks, after all, who sermonize against making politics
a career, publicly pretend to worship term limits and preach the
virtues of private enterprise. You’d think they’d be eager to return to
the private sector. Yet, they’re afraid to risk losing out on their
next political job.

Another item not reported is that the Republicans demanded a huge tax cut for large corporations — the very kind that are killing off California’s smaller independent, job-creating businesses.

And they still won’t vote for the budget. And the public still doesn’t have a chance to learn what is going on here.

ACTION ALERT – STIMULATE CALLS SUPPORTING THE STIMULUS

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Dave

After the Presidential election we at Speak Out California were rejuvenated and renewed in the hope and expectation that the divisive politics of Republican extremism were
over. Sadly, it is clear that they are not and so we must re-commit
to our values and Speak Out loud and clear.

Please join us in our first action-alert of 2009 with as many clear
and strong voices as we can to say to our new President and the Congress:
WE WON this election, now let’s get to work putting our nation and
our state back on track!

Thanks to Rush Limbaugh, US Senators report the calls they are receiving
about the Stimulus Package are running 100 to 1 against passage. Our voice needs to be heard. And thanks to California right-wing talk radio,
Republican legislators think the public supports their sabotaging budget talks.
We
need to step up!

ACTION: Tell California’s US Senators that you support the stimulus package and tell
California Republican legislators that the Democrats have agreed to cut after cut
and they just can’t cut any more — now they need to agree to raise revenue! Details below.

The Stimulus Package

Continue reading →

Something Good On CA Budget Mess?

Posted on February 3, 2009 by Dave

There is some good news on the prospects of getting a budget in California.

Eleven
California newspapers including Sunday’s San Jose Mercury News carried a near-unprecedented
front-page editorial titled, Outrageous
budget fiasco has shamed California, calling out the Republicans for not
participating in the budget process, saying,

“… [M]ost 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. …
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.”

The reason this is good news is that this is a sign that California’s media may be beginning to explain to the public that there is indeed a bad actor in this fight. Until now the public has been hearing from the media a simplistic “they’re fighting like children in Sacramento” or “both sides refuse to compromise.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

The fact is that the Democrats have voted for cut after cut, and have tried and tried to reach a compromise. They are trying to govern the state. But every single elected Republican signed a pledge with a Washington, DC anti-government organization — the one that said they want to “drown the government in a bathtub” — promising to vote against any budget that increases state revenues in any way. They took what they call “the pledge” and have refused to budge and refused to compromise in any way.

California’s major media is finally, finally starting to bring these facts to the public, which means that the public will begin to apply the pressure that is needed in a democracy to move the Republicans and get them to participate in the budget and governing process.

And in the longer term, this information means the public will be able to decide whether they really do want to elect people who hate government — and who take vows to defund government — into positions of responsibility for managing the government.

If we cannot get an increase in revenues California’s economy will be in real trouble. On a national level Rush Limbaugh says he “wants Obama to fail” and in California the far right is driving failure as well. We need responsible information sources to reach California’s voters with honest information.

Speak Out California

Advancing progressive values to renew the California dream

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