Californians tell Ahhnuld to go terminate himself; budget mess continues

[marmar]

from the San Francisco Chronicle:



Defeat is sharp rebuke to governor, Legislature
Matthew Yi,Wyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau

Wednesday, May 20, 2009


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Sacramento -- California voters soundly rejected a package of ballot measures Tuesday that would have reduced the state's projected budget deficit of $21.3 billion to something slightly less overwhelming: $15.4 billion.

The defeat of the measures means that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state Legislature will have to consider deeper cuts to education, public safety, and health and human services, officials have said.

Propositions 1A through 1E - which would have changed the state's budgeting system, ensured money to schools in future years and generated billions of dollars of revenue for the state's general fund - fell well behind in early returns and never recovered.

The only measure that voters approved was Proposition 1F, which will freeze salaries of top state officials, including lawmakers and the governor, during tough budget years.

In a written statement Tuesday night, Schwarzenegger said that he believes Californians are simply frustrated with the state's dysfunctional budget system. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/19/MN8317LBQS.DTL&tsp=1

[pnutbutr]

1. Californians are shooting themselves in the foot here

We won't pay any more in taxes to reduce the $21.3 billion deficit but go ahead and cut hundreds and even thousands of firefighters which we rely on every year to put out our wild fires and save our lives. Lets cut the police who deal with the violent gangs and dangerous drugs like crack and heroin which always go up during recessions and hard economic times. Lets cut access to healthcare despite the healthcare crisis the entire nation is feeling right now. Lets cut the school budget despite it being severely underfunded already. Lets just make our state the shittiest in the nation even below fucking Texas.

WTF is wrong with Californians?

[comtec]

2. It's teh rethuglican't governor

he has veto'd every budget that has come across his desk.
the main problem is that IIRC, it is impossible for the legislature to over ride a veto.
That or the votes aren't there, with the minority holding just enough seats to make it impossible.

The problem is with the governor not with the legislature.

The peopel are smart enough to know that raising taxes on the rich, and re-instating property taxes, with agree ables exceptions for grannies will fix the problem.

but the gop will N O T go for it.

this is a constant and on going problem, exacerbated by the fact that the majority of the voting block is in LA, which is under educated about such things (yes i'm biased, I'm from the bay area, and our views are always pissed on in the elections. we voted overwhelmingly against ahnold, but that didn't matter because the under-educated south voted for him in enough number to get that muscle headed moron into office.... pete wilson's 3rd and 4th terms in fact!)

so that's the problem.

and the airwaves are rich with RW bullshit, and weak with liberal, or even moderate voices. The bay area has KGO, but even that station is moderate to right leaning on good days. We have green 960 but it's still one area vs the entire state!!!

[pnutbutr]

3. The people voted it down

Arnold and the legislature gave the people the option to accept the changes and the people turned it down. You can hardly blame Arnold for that. Dislike him sure but in this instance the people chose to reduce their state to a shithole in order to avoid paying additional taxes to try and correct or at the very least diminish the problem. The problem of a $21.3 billion state deficit.

[Bandit]

4. Is Property Tax a State tax in California or a municiple one?

In my state Property tax is a municiple tax and not controlled at all by the state. I take it that in California that is not the case.

[comtec]

5. I am not exactly sure, at one point it was a state tax

it varies in every state, of course.

back before prop 13, so i'm told, schools were very well funded, and Jr College was free (except for the exorbitant price of books)
and California has the highest education level of the entire country.

then we had daddy ray-gun and prop 13 and everything has gone to shit since then.

People want to blame the lottery, the thing is the lottery has been paying it's bills, it's the legislature and governors (8 years of wilson really fucked us up bad) that REMOVE that much money from the schools saying "oh the lottery paid that bill" as opposed to what it was SUPPOSED to be which is a SUPPLEMENT to the normal budget.

oh well

[tjwash]

6. dupe...

[anigbrowl]

12. That's mostly correct

But you are wrong to just blame Arnold. It's not his fault that CA can't run a deficit, or that there's a 2/3 rule for raising taxes in the legislature and for budgets, which allows the inland GOP to hold the budget hostage every year. He's a flawed governor, but this is not all his fault by any means.

[Gormy Cuss]

10. In California the property tax is assessed locally under a state cap on rates.

Prop. 13 limits the ad valorem rate to 1%. Through local measures the effective rate is between 1.25% and 1.50% for most of us. The taxes are assessed and collected by the counties. About half of that property tax is earmarked for education and is sent to the state for allocation using a formula that is intended to smooth out some of the disparity between wealthy and low income districts. Most of the other money is kept at the county level for disbursement.

Prop. 13 also made it state law that most tax increases required a two-thirds approval by voters rather than a simple majority.

[tjwash]

7. The sad truth about Cali...

...is that they have been running this state on the cheap for so long, that there is really nothing that is going to stop it from collapsing economically at this point. This goes back wayyyyy before muscle-head, before Davis, hell, even before dickhead-Dukmejian in the 80's. This goes back to crap like prop-13 in the 70's, where they froze property taxes, and introduced the rest of the country to the wonders of deficit spending.

The stupidest thing about the way that my state is ran, is that they put up just about everything up to a popular vote budget-wise. Sometimes I wonder why we bother electing politicians out here, because they really don't do a fucking thing. On the surface this is one of those "seemed like a good idea at the time when we were drafting the state constitution" deals. Unfortunately, there is a huge problem with California - it happens to be chocked full of Californians. And yes, as it has been painfully proven here, time and time again, one should never underestimate the stupidity of people in large groups, or as Gene Wilder in Blazing saddles so eloquently put--"you know; morons!"

To give a recent example of this, the budget deficit in California is around 6 billion dollars. A little while ago, we had one of our great propositions up to a popular vote, that would have done a windfall tax on oil company profits (factoid--Cali is the 3rd largest producer of our domestic oil supplies in the U.S.), that probably would have filled that deficit gap, and this is WHILE we were being gouged at close to 5 bucks a gallon at the pump. Of course the oil companies flooded us dumb-asses out here with commercials, billboards, and bumperstickers about fear, patriotism, and the socialism of actual rich people have to pay taxes while they were gouging us, and the shithead Californians voted it down.

For people that don't already know, or have never lived here...this state is largely conservative and very far right-Christian (despite what the faux-noise machine keeps screaming), and mud-dumb as several sacks full of hammers. Woe be to anyone who ever forgets that. I've lived here all my life, and the suburbs teem with ignorant fucks who never miss a chance to vote on stuff like killing gay marriage, lower taxes, no taxes, no money for schools, no money for roads, etc. The pockets of sanity here, are so much smaller than you can even start to believe, and the only places they really exist are in the imagination.

If one had the money, time, sociopathic tendencies, and complete lack of any morals; they could theoretically put a proposition on the ballot here, that proposes a ban interracial marriage in California. Seriously. If you get 800000 verifiable signatures on a bunch of petitions, and spend the money to officially file it with the state, it would actually get put on the fucking ballot in the next election. If you are REALLY wealthy and wanted it pushed through, then we will have a "special election" for it, like yesterday for example.

Just my observations after living here for a long time.

[Johonny]

8. The thing to remember

is the penalty for your prop losing is to just stick it on the next ballot. Basically no bad idea in California ever dies it just gets voted on over and over until it passes on some low turn out off election. It's pretty clear the California voter created this mess by passing several props that hamstring the Representative Government from creating a proper tax base. And yes when California had a proper tax base it had much better schools and state run agencies. Even though Democrats have a vast majority of the legislature in California they can't pass tax raises because a prop that makes you need a super majority. So the tiny tax crank minority party basically controls the budget process. Genius! Funny enough when Arnold won his economic team told him to use his popularity to overturn the worst of the props and solidify his tax base. Arnold didn't and now is paying the price politically.

[Overseas]

9. Well said! The stupid rule that 2/3 approval be required to pass the state budget

means that Republicans who have sworn blind loyalty to the GOP's "Never Vote for a Tax Increase (on the wealthy)" can defeat any budget.

And these propositions would have locked in "temporary" regressive taxation instead of addressing the real problem of needing to increase taxes on corporations and the wealthiest taxpayers.

They would have also locked in current spending levels even as the population increases.

Some of the propositions were like shell games-- promising to give millions to mental health services, for example, while moving hundreds of millions out of Mental Health Services into the General Fund. Same thing with children's services-- calling attention to new programs giving millions to children, even though hundreds of millions would be shifted out of those services into the general fund.

The propositions were a Republican sham.

I wish we'd had a proposition to overturn the supermajority budget approval requirement.

The dwindling GOP relies on those supermajority requirements to protect their power, even as millions are leaving their party due to its destructive policies of Trickle Up Economics and War Profiteering.

[tjwash]

14. Speaking of shell games...last November prop 3, the "childrens hospital bond?"

Wrapping up a special interest group giveaway in the very popular "but it's for the children" dog-whistle?

They still had a shitload of unspent funds from the earlier Prop. 61 in 2004 still available and unused, but, instead of spending the money that the voters have already authorized, they demanded more--even though the economy is sinking like a stone, and competition for those dollars is fierce.

Of course we passed it with a 55.2% majority. Screw it...stick it on the credit card.

Unfortunately, no one takes 5 minutes to read anything before they vote here. They just decide when they are standing in the polling place, and reading the 3 sentence blurb on the ballot. That's how we end up getting all kinds of ignorant regressive crap passed.

Like I said...get rid of the fucking Californians, and California would be a decent place. <--sarcasm for the dense that may wonder, sorta.

[anigbrowl]

13. Well put, and sadly all true .nt

[jobendorfer]

15. problems on many, many levels

I was born in and grew up in California, although it's been many years since I've lived there.

There *is* a fundamental schizophrenia at work here, which you've alluded to.
The initiative process has tied the hands of both the legislature and the executive branch.

At some point, you have to make a decision:

- You periodically elect a legislature and a governor, *** give them the power to act ***, and hold them accountable for the results
OR
- You run the state government by plebscite, voting weekly or monthly on the issues du jour, and live with the consequences of your (collective decisions.

Psychologically, it seems that California is stuck somewhere in the middle. The electorate passes initiatives that limit the government's options to solve problems, then becomes enraged when it fails to do so.

Maybe "political leadership" in these circumstances is simply repeating: "These are the consequences of your actions."


J.

[hunter]

11. California is the 200 pound lead weight in the Overboard Box Escape.

The U.S.A. is doing a daring Harry Houdini stunt without Houdini.

Overboard Box Escape

Another one of Houdini's most famous publicity stunts was to escape from a nailed and roped packing crate after it had been lowered into the water. Houdini first performed the escape in New York's East River on July 7, 1912. Police forbade him from using one of the piers, so Houdini hired a tugboat and invited press on board. Houdini was locked in handcuffs and leg-irons, then nailed into the crate which was roped and weighed down with two hundred pounds of lead. The crate was the lowered into water. Houdini escaped in fifty-seven seconds. The crate was pulled to the surface and found to still be intact with the manacles inside. Houdini would perform this escape many times, and even performed a version on stage, first at Hamerstein's Roof Garden (where a 5,500-gallon tank was specially built), and later at the New York Hippodrome.