Tag Archives: media

CA Voters Kept In Dark About Budget

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Today’s San Jose Mercury News has a front-page story, California leaders in no hurry to break budget impasse. From the story,

“Despite plunging tax
revenues, Wall Street’s unwillingness to loan the state money and
billions of dollars worth of IOUs hitting mailboxes, California’s
leaders are displaying a seeming lack of urgency to close the state’s
$26.3 billion deficit.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders blew past a supposedly ironclad June 30 deadline to pass a new budget…”

Blew past?  The legislature did pass a budget fix last week, but the Governor vetoed it!  This choice by the Governor led to the state needing to issue IOUs.

But readers who depend on this newspaper for information about the state budget process have no way to know this.  In fact, I have had difficulty locating any news source in the state that informed citizens that a budget fix passed and was vetoed.  (The papers did write that the Governor had threatened a veto, but — and I may be wrong – I can not find a single story explaining that he did it.)

To their credit (I guess) the San Jose paper hinted at the veto in an editorial a week ago, Governor didn’t need to push state over the edge, writing,
 

“In rejecting a stopgap fix for the budget on Tuesday, the governor and GOP leaders have accelerated a budget meltdown that pushes the state deeper into debt.“

Talking to people involved, I pick up a sense that passing a budget fix after the Governor said he would veto it was pointless, so not worth mentioning.  But isn’t that for the voters to decide?  Many would say that passing the fix, especially at the last minute after all negotiations had failed and the state was going over the cliff was the responsible thing to do, also known as governing.  This put a budget fix on the table and available for use to avoid the calamity and cost of IOUs, rating downgrades, etc.  The Governor had a clear choice at that point, and chose to take the state over the cliff.  The voters should have been told, not kept in the dark that the Governor made that choice.  

Meanwhile, the other side still refuses to offer up any plan of their own, still insisting that the Democrats fix the budget entirely with cuts to services that the public needs and take the blame for that.  They refuse to allow any plan that asks oil or tobacco companies to pitch in.  They claim the wealthy will “leave the state” if asked to pitch in an additional $40 a week.  They make up stories about companies leaving the state (but can’t name any).  But it is not reported that the Republicans refuse to offer a plan or engage in serious negotiations.  It is as if the Republicans are expected to not be serious, so it’s not worth reporting that they aren’t serious.  The voters should have been told.  

The system of democracy depends on the voters being informed so they can apply pressure as needed and remove officeholders who are not doing what the voters want them to do.  But none of this works if the citizens have no way of learning simple facts, like that the legislature did govern responsibly and pass a budget fix, which the Governor vetoed.  The voters should have been told.

CA’s Budget Problem Is Paragraph 10

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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.

Something Good On CA Budget Mess?

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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.

The Press Is Fogging The Reason For The Budget Stalemate

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Friday morning’s San Francisco Chronicle story, Legislature’s approval rating at a record low, illustrates why California’s budget impasse continues. From the article,

“Democrats and the minority Republicans have hunkered down, with neither side willing to make the compromises needed to put together a budget plan that can garner the required two-thirds support.”

The budget problem is that reporting like this keeps the public from understanding what is happening in Sacramento.
Here is what is happening with the budget:

  • The Democrats have offered plan after plan, accepting deep budget cuts, some borrowing and offering various ways to raise revenue.
  • The Governor has offered a plan, with deep budget cuts, borrowing, and a temporarysales tax increase.
  • The Republicans have refused to compromise, refusing any budget that raises any revenue at all, not even asking the extremely wealthy to pay the same sales taxes that the rest of us have to pay.

It is just that simple. The Republicans have been blocking the budget and they are getting away with it because the press refuses to report that the Republicans are blocking the budget. If the press reported this simple fact public pressure would build and the Republicans would have to yield.
Update – A comment on the possible budget “compromise”: It just kicks the can down the road by delaying dealing with our problems. It doesn’t fix anything, and cuts essential services from the people who need government most. In fact it just makes it much, much harder to solve the problem in the next budget because it steals revenue from next year.