Why the budget deal really sucksBy Tim Redmond
Calitics, which has done an outstanding job covering the state budget mess from the beginning, has the best line on the rotten deal that the Big Five reached yesterday:
Whoever cares the least about the outcome wins.If you don't care whether children get health care, whether the elderly, blind and disabled die in their homes, whether prisoners rot in modified Public Storage units, whether students get educated... you have a very good chance of getting a budget that reflects that.
If on the other hand you claim to care, you will concede and concede and concede so you can at least play the responsible part and say at the end that you didn't completely eliminate the social safety net, though what you did get in return will be totally unclear.
And you will do it every single time.
On Forum this morning, the talk of course was all about the budget, and of course some of the callers were curious about the prospects for a state Constitutional Convention to rewrite the rules for approving a budget. The California Democratic Party is already on board with eliminating the two-thirds requirement, which is a fine thing and may wind up on the ballot soon. The Constitutional Convention is a bit more tricky.
See, the problem is how you decide who gets to be in the room; who will be the delegates to this convention? And one of the very bad ideas out there is to choose the delegates more or less at random, the same way we choose jurors.
What you will wind up with, I guarantee, is a majority of people who don't want to raise taxes.
A large part of what has to happen in California is the education of the population, and that's where the Democratic Party and the other stakeholders ought to be taking the lead. Perhaps the candidates for governor and the senior elected officials can all help raise money for a major statewide campaign explaining to people how the cut of the vehicle license fee, the lack of an oil-severance tax, the corporate loopholes and Prop. 13 have led directly to the cuts that are preventing qualified kids from getting a college education, preventing sick people from getting care, destroying public schools and the like.
Ever few years the Dems, the unions and the other activists have to raise big chunks of money to fight some ballot measure or another. How about, say, $50 million now to try to show the voters what's really going on, so we don't have to keep doing this dance over and over and over?
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Comments (2)
Yep, any effort to change the 2/3 budget rule (or repeal Prop 8 for that matter) will require a two-part campaign where the first year is a grassroots campaign dedicated to awareness and education with the second year as the electoral campaign.
-marc
Posted by marcos | July 21, 2009 01:35 PM
Nice quick sketch Tim. There is so much more. I read the California Supreme Court Prop 8 ruling of June 11 2009. That 134 page decision delved deeply into the history of the California Constitution. I used that work as a guide for the two Proposed Articles 36 and 37 that I filed with the California Attorney General to start the Initiatives Process in motion. My Proposed Article 36 empowers California's Voters to call a Constitutional Convention. My Proposed Article 37 Calls the Convention and sets up all the protocols, scope, and location - for the big event. I am confident we will win on November 2nd, 2010 and the protocols will kick into gear immediately. We should see the historic event begin when our Elected Delegates convene sometime around the beginning of - to mid March of 2011 at the Asilomar Conference Center.
At the Executive Board Meeting of the California Democratic Party, held last weekend in Burlingame, a Panel addressed the coming Convention. Senator Loni Hancock (Chair of the Senate Constitutional Amendment Committee, a Spokesperson for the Courage Campaign (who supports the Bay Area Councils efforts to appoint delegates), and the BAC Member and past Cabinet Member to Governor Schwarzenegger, Sunne McPeak all focused on the structural dysfunction of our Constitution as is.
As the Author of the two Initiatives posted on our fledgling campaign website, I recommend we all start to get acquainted with the task we have at hand. California as a State Government will not fix it's self. That task is structurally impossible. I listened to the NPR program this morning, as well. The end - where one Legislator commented that the Legislature was going to call their own Constitutional Convention was pure fantasy. When you look at the Budget - could the Legislature damage our State more thoroughly? No. This one is up to all of us. I need to get back to work with the team of organizers who are putting our practical campaign into motion now. We will qualify for the November 2010 Ballot. We are the only team with anything filed and pending certification by our Secretary of State for signature gathering. The URL posted as a link is our website. Our Facebook Group is small now - but we are creating 80 FB Groups in each Assembly District now. The feeling among the Students of our Community Colleges, State University Campuses and within our UC System is - when do we get to work on signatures. Our motto is "Catch the Wave ! ! !" Why? Because a tidal wave is about to wash over California so we can start anew. This is not about fear and loathing of what is, rather it is about HOPE and what we will build together.
The California Dream is alive and well. The lame duck California State Government is simply going thru the dying process. We have had a Constitution now from 1879 to now. It will cease totally around the end of 2011 or early 2012. That is when we get the New Government based on our New Constitution - after we have ratified the new structure. What will we get? We will get what we design it to be - all of us. My hope is to end the Prohibition, secure Personal Liberty, restore Majority Rule and Political Equality, and much much more. There is more to California than the illusion presented by the Radical Right Wing that controls the California Republican Party. We are a great State. Now is the time for all of us to rise to restore our direction, responsibility for and accountability for our State. California belongs to all of us. What I propose is to open all the current Constitution up, all of it, all 35 Articles - and start with a clean sheet of paper - and design a true Democratic Representative Republic from scratch. We can do this. We must do this. When you take the time to read the book - we call our State Constitution - you will see that everything is intertwined like spaghetti. There is no way to limit the scope and be effective. Since we have to do this, lets do it right.
My two propositions are posted at the Attorney Generals Website, and the links are at http://CaliforniaActionNetwork.com
Take strength. It is always darkest before dawn.
Posted by Paul Currier | July 22, 2009 05:05 PM