May 2009 Archives

Now that the Republican National Committee has decided to police presidential vacations, I wonder if they would like to make a statement about whether President Bush should have stayed on vacation after his August 6, 2001, intelligence briefing?

The California Progress Report reprints the letter State Controller John Chiang wrote to the governor and legislative leaders on Friday to explain the state's impending cash flow crisis -- and why he needs corrective action taken by June 15.

Our latest projections show that beginning on July 29, California will not have the cash needed to meet all of its payment obligations. On that date, the State will be in the red by $317.1 million; two days later, on July 31, our cash deficit increases to a negative $1.02 billion.

As the attached chart demonstrates, the State's cash problems will only grow in severity in the subsequent months without Legislative action. The State will reach its lowest cash balance in April 2010, when we will fall short of meeting our payment obligations by nearly $22 billion.

And California's radical conservatives get closer to the date for which they have long dreamed: when they can follow Grover Norquist's dictate and drown the rest of California's safety net in a bathtub.

Via KQED Radio John Myers' Twitter feed, I learn that the San Francisco Chronicle's Matier and Ross report sources are telling them Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will not run for governor in 2010. If true, that would leave Attorney General Jerry Brown and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom as the top two candidates remaining.

Losing two major candidates in this race (as Lt. Governor John Garamendi has decided to seek the 10th Congressional District office in an expected special election) does not make things better. Given how important it is for a Democrat to win this seat in 2010, I'd rather have more top people testing each other to strengthen the eventual primary winner for what will be a tough general election fight.

The Republican National Committee scrapes the bottom of the barrel in attacking President Obama for having a date night in New York City. As the Washington Monthly's Steve Benen writes:

First, the Obamas didn't take the usual Air Force One jet. It's a short flight, and the First Couple took a smaller plane (technically, any plane the president is on automatically becomes Air Force One, but the point is, the Obamas didn't take the Air Force One).

Second, by the RNC's reasoning, the Obamas would never be able to enjoy a nice evening out, since there's always something going on in the world. ("The president went to his daughter's soccer game in the midst of two wars? Outrageous!")

And third, isn't this whining unusually small-minded, even by RNC standards? The President took the First Lady on a date to NYC. They didn't even spend the night in the city. Is everything grounds for petty, partisan sniping?

Yes. When that's all you have left in the toolbag. Yes, it is.

Republicans against date nights. I look forward to seeing how that works out for them.

Reporting from China, James Fallows notes from his experience that only a small minority of Chinese residents know enough about what happened 20 years ago at Tiananmen Square to give June 4 any real significance.

I agree with Digby, and thank Richard Clarke for pointing out that the trauma of September 11, 2001, is no excuse for bad decisions made by government leaders. As Clarke writes:

Yet listening to Cheney and Rice, it seems that they want to be excused for the measures they authorized after the attacks on the grounds that 9/11 was traumatic. "If you were there in a position of authority and watched Americans drop out of eighty-story buildings because these murderous tyrants went after innocent people," Rice said in her recent comments, "then you were determined to do anything that you could that was legal to prevent that from happening again."

I have little sympathy for this argument. Yes, we went for days with little sleep, and we all assumed that more attacks were coming. But the decisions that Bush officials made in the following months and years -- on Iraq, on detentions, on interrogations, on wiretapping -- were not appropriate. Careful analysis could have replaced the impulse to break all the rules, even more so because the Sept. 11 attacks, though horrifying, should not have surprised senior officials. Cheney's admission that 9/11 caused him to reassess the threats to the nation only underscores how, for months, top officials had ignored warnings from the CIA and the NSC staff that urgent action was needed to preempt a major al-Qaeda attack.

Thus, when Bush's inner circle first really came to grips with the threat of terrorism, they did so in a state of shock -- a bad state in which to develop a coherent response. Fearful of new attacks, they authorized the most extreme measures available, without assessing whether they were really a good idea.

I believe this zeal stemmed in part from concerns about the 2004 presidential election. Many in the White House feared that their inaction prior to the attacks would be publicly detailed before the next vote -- which is why they resisted the 9/11 commission -- and that a second attack would eliminate any chance of a second Bush term. So they decided to leave no doubt that they had done everything imaginable.

There should be no excusing this. Nor forgiving it. And as the evidence suggests, more investigations are in order.

We must come to terms with what happened if we hope to restore our national honor.

Wow. Dan Kennedy's Media Nation has the details.

Bruce Schneier notes that four states have banned smiling on drivers' license photos. Facial recognition software cannot handle the smiling.

I feel so much safer.

Calculated Risk has a bunch of graphs of economic data released in May. There's not much good news there.

California State Assembly Budget Committee Chair Noreen Evans has put together an informative video that refutes some widely believed myths about the California budget. The video, and her new blog, California Budget Blog is worth your time to review.

Atrios has had a couple of posts about why he is pessimistic about the economy. For example, noting that the World Bank president fears the stimulus plans are not large enough and unemployment could lead to political unrest and states and local governments are broke, which will lead to cuts that depress the economy and remove services to people who need them during this economic crisis.

But let's continue focusing on green shoots. Yes, that's a happier story. For now.

Calitics' Brian Leubitz is right: it is not helpful to see U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein buy into the right wing spin about the recent special election.

Especially since that analysis completely ignores what people are telling the pollsters.

...the special election voters were not a representative group of Californians. Their vote choices cannot be relied upon as accurate indicators of the fiscal preferences of all of the people. -- Mark Baldassare, president and CEO, Public Policy Institute of California

The California Majority Report's Robin Swanson posts a tally of budget cuts to the state's public education system: an astounding $17.4 billion.

We were 47th in the nation in per pupil spending before.

Randy Bayne notes the pollsters have noticed a different message from last week's special election than the one being peddled by Governor Schwarzenegger and others who demand that only program cuts can be considered to resolve the California budget crisis.

...the special election voters were not a representative group of Californians. Their vote choices cannot be relied upon as accurate indicators of the fiscal preferences of all of the people. -- Mark Baldassare, president and CEO, Public Policy Institute of California

As Bayne notes, that is "plain and simple." Alas, it is also not likely to be the spin which wins the day.

Capital Games and Gains' Stan Collender explains the strong incentives the federal government has for providing loan guarantees to California.

That's the real lesson here: The state of California may be a government with an economy larger than most countries, but since 1850 it has been part of the U.S. A default in California will have disastrous effects not just there and in the other 49 states, but also for every county and municipal government that borrows and, inevitably, for the United States itself. Some governments will be unable to borrow at all. Those that are able to borrow will be required to pay much higher interest rates for the privilege.

Indeed, the uncertainty surrounding the California situation has likely already affected interest rates for all municipal bonds.

This problem will not be confined to the states: the federal government's credit rating will also be affected. That could make Bill Gross's otherwise outlandish prediction that the U.S. could lose it's AAA credit rating come true.

In other words, whether you call it a bailout or something else, for financial reasons alone the federal government really has no choice but to prevent Calfironia from defaulting and to ride to the rescue.

What will the price be? What kind of political theater shall be required to reach this sensible conclusion?

Over at the California Progress Report, the California Disability Community Action Network's Marty D. Omoto describes the new list of proposed budget cuts outlined by Governor Schwarzenegger yesterday--including proposals to completely eliminate programs basic to the state's social safety net.

I'm not sure why it makes sense that the poor and children should take the hit for an economic crisis created by the housing bubble and financial speculators. Alas, far too many in our government have decided that's a better solution than discussing our state's insane two-thirds vote requirement to pass a budget or restore some of the tax cuts passed during those bubble years.

For a short period of time yesterday, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger actually appeared to act like a leader. Alas, his press secretary soon walked the governor back into the leadership vacuum in which he has resided since his recall election victory.

In a speech to those attending California Small Business Day ceremonies, the Governor listed the "self-inflicted" problems that have created the state's fiscal crisis. It was quite a list, as Sacramento Bee Capitol Alert's Kevin Yamamura reported:

"California hasn't had a responsible fiscal system since Earl Warren in the late '40s and early '50s," he said.

The governor ticked off a number of complaints about the system this morning:

-- The state relies too much on personal-income and capital gains taxes.
-- The state doesn't have a spending cap, nor a "rainy-day fund" (the latter point is questionable given that Schwarzenegger asked voters to establish a "rainy-day" reserve in 2004, albeit one with weak restrictions).
-- Federal judges tell California how to run its prison health-care system.
-- Federal stimulus rules restrict how California can cut from its budget.
-- California requires a two-thirds vote to approve the budget.
-- An "endless list" of ballot-box budgeting requirements, including Propositions 13, 42, 49 and 1A, all of which he has championed in the past.

"Until we fix our system, nothing will ever change," Schwarzenegger said. "This is no way, of course, to run a state."

As Yamamura notes, those last two items are especially interesting--and any sober assessment of California's current problems must include a discussion of the insane two-thirds vote requirement and our broken initiative system.

Alas, the walk-back on those remarks happened quickly. The governor's press secretary assures us that Schwarzenegger does not actually support eliminating the two-thirds requirement.

As David Dayen notes in this post at Calitics, the quick retraction indicates that the governor committed a Kinsley gaffe: he inadvertently told the truth.

A pity. That leadership thing from the governor was nice for those fleeting few minutes.

Why do big-time newspapers have such problems giving credit to reporters from other papers? Is it really so difficult to give credit to people for the work they've done?

As BayNewser reports, the latest Times' victims are the San Francisco Chronicle's Matier and Ross, who will forever be known as "reporters in California."

(Blogger's Note: I wrote this for the May 2009 issue of the Lamorinda Democratic Club's newsletter.)

Whether or not the ballot measures on the May 19 special election pass or fail, eliminating the insane two-thirds vote requirement to pass a state budget or raise revenues is the long-term key to ending California's state budget problems.

As we saw in February, the two-thirds vote requirement allows a minority of the legislature (or even one legislator) to hold the entire state hostage while concessions are extracted from the Democratic majority. It is time to return democracy to the budget process.

Our club has been supportive of ending the two-thirds vote requirement, but we have more work to do to convince Californians in advance of a possible June 2010 ballot measure to force this change.

The March PPIC poll showed that support for this necessary reform dropping to 43 percent. A Field Poll released at the end of April showed that only 27 percent support for this change.

So, the time is now to start educating our friends, neighbors, family, and other associates around California about what the two-thirds vote requirement has done to the state, and why we believe it needs to be changed.