The New York Times' Jennifer Steinhauer says the coming budget cuts could fundamentally reshape
California.
"The cuts Mr. Schwarzenegger has proposed to make up
the difference,
if enacted by the Legislature, would turn California into a place that
in some ways would be unrecognizable in modern America: poor children
would have no health insurance, prisoners would be
released by the
thousands and state parks would be closed.
"Nearly all of the
billions of dollars in cuts the administration has
proposed would
affect programs for poor Californians, although prisons
and schools
would take hits, as well.
“Government doesn’t provide services to
rich people,” Mike Genest, the state’s finance director, said on a
conference call with reporters on Friday. “It doesn’t even really
provide services to the middle class.” He added: “You have to cut where
the money is.”
As for the Democrats? Well...
"The Democratic-controlled Legislature has been uncharacteristically
silent on most of the cuts, most likely because lawmakers
know that tax
increases are not politically palatable, that huge
cuts in some form
are in the offing no matter what, and that any program
they wish to
spare will quite likely have advocates among their
ranks."
Steve Harmon reports the governor has outflanked the Democrats in setting
the agenda for the budget negotiations.
"In
striking quickly against the idea of more taxes, Schwarzenegger was
trying to take ownership of the political landscape
before opponents
could craft their own response, political observers said — and he was
laying the groundwork for upcoming negotiations as
lawmakers seek to
resolve a projected $24 billion deficit.
""Clearly, he
was interpreting the results in a way that he wants
to frame the
agenda," said Joseph Tuman, professor of political communications at
San Francisco State University.
"Picking up on the same theme were
GOP legislative leaders, anti-tax groups, and special interest power
houses such as the Chamber of Commerce, whose internal
magazine
commentary ran under the headline, "Voters say 'no' to additional
taxes; vigilance needed to make message stick."
"Democrats have
countered with a muddled response. Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los
Angeles, conceded immediately after the vote that she
saw little chance
of going back to Republicans for more tax hikes, saying,
"It's really
going to be about devastating cuts."
Dan Walters notes we haven't yet hit bottom. " Even the state's own economists don't see quick recovery. The
Schwarzenegger administration's revised 2009-10 budget assumes that
unemployment, now 11 percent, will climb to 12 percent in the months
ahead.
"It is entirely possible, however, that as gloomy as
those numbers sound, they could still be too rosy. Some economists, most notably those at the University
of California, Santa Barbara
see the recession continuing well into 2010, with unemployment approaching 14 percent."
Yikes.
George Skelton is the latest columnist to pick up on
Richie Ross's baseball-style arbitration system for the state budget.
"It's patterned after major league baseball's salary arbitration rule --
a rule, incidentally, saved by then-U.S. District Judge Sonia
Sotomayor, President Obama's new Supreme Court nominee, when she issued
an injunction ending a long players' strike in 1995.
"Under the rule, certain players are eligible for salary
arbitration if they and their team bosses cannot agree
on a contract.
Each side submits an offer and the arbitrator chooses
the one he
considers the most fair. There's no middle ground.Ross thinks California should adopt
an arbitration rule for budgeting.
Democrats and Republicans shouldn't even try to compromise, he says.
"Compromise is just another word for bartering."
"He'd require each party to propose a two-year budget. 'Republicans
never have written a complete budget, they just potshot
the Democrats'
plan,' Ross says. 'Democrats complain about Republicans not raising
taxes and hold fire drills."
"In Ross' game plan, each party's budget would be submitted to the
arbitrator. And the arbitrator would be the electorate.
Whichever
budget got the most votes would go into effect."
Did the Prop. 8 decision pave the way for a different kind of Constitutional
reform? The LAT's Maura Dolan reports, "Whereas the U.S. Constitution has been amended only
27 times,
California's top legal document has been altered more than 500 times,
often by voter initiative. The state's Constitution is the third
longest in the world, exceeded only by those of India and Alabama.
"Californians can amend their Constitution by obtaining
a simple
majority vote on an initiative. Chief Justice Ronald M. George observed
in Tuesday's ruling that many other state constitutions are more
difficult to amend. Although the court did not call for limiting the
amendment process, the majority said such a move would
be possible and
maybe even proper."
Matier and Ross look to 2010, and the complications of Gavin Newsom's path to the governor's mansion.
"Chances are that the same-sex marriage fight will be front and center in the
2010 gubernatorial race - and that has Gavin Newsom's handlers a bit nervous.
"If the Proposition 8 rematch is on the June ballot, it will probably help
San Francisco's mayor when he faces off with Jerry Brown in a very liberal Democratic primary. On the other
hand, if the fight is on the ballot for the November
general election, as most predict - and Newsom is the nominee - he
could find himself at the center of that megamillion-dollar campaign,
with the anti-same-sex marriage folks making him the centerpiece.
"Like it or not."
"The LAT's Cathleen Decker looks at Meg Whitman's gubernatorial strategy . "Declare agreeable principles -- create more jobs, control spending,
help public schools -- but add almost none of the specifics that might
alienate the blocs of voters whose support must align
perfectly for her
to succeed.
"Her campaign still shelters her from routine give-and-take;
reporters were forced to stay inside the Marconi Automotive
Museum as
she arrived and as she departed in a black Cadillac
Escalade. Her
campaign speaking style lapsed often into a monotone,
as if recounting
details from a quarterly report."
But could Whitman help remake the state party? Whitman
is unabashedly pro-choice, and at a recent campaign stop, "she also went out of her way to emphasize the contributions
of immigrants."
"We can't lose the fact that legal immigration into this country
has been a large part of our country's heritage and is an incredible
economic opportunity for California," she said. ". . . So we must
secure the borders, but we can't forget that legal immigration has made
this state great."
The LAT's Margot Roosevelt gets a junket to the North Coast , and reports on the future of forest management.
"Forests can be managed like a long-term carbon bank," said Laurie Wayburn, president of the Pacific Forest Trust, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that oversees Van Eck. Selling offsets,
she said, is like "writing checks on the account."
"For the last four years, Van Eck's foresters restricted logging,
allowing trees to do what trees do: absorb carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere. The conservation foundation that oversees
the forest then
calculated that carbon bonus and sold it for $2 million to individuals
and companies trying to offset some 185,000 metric tons of their
greenhouse gas emissions."
The CoCo Times Canan Tasci reports digital textbooks are coming to California high schools.
"At the governor's request,
Secretary of Education Glen Thomas is working with
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell and State Board of Education
President Ted Mitchell to develop a list of standards-aligned digital
textbooks in math and science.
"The time has come for California to be the leader in
promoting this effort, especially now when school districts
are
struggling to survive the current budget crisis," O'Connell said.
And finally, the preliminaries to July 4's big hot-dog eating contest in New York went down in Culver
City over the weekend. "Six-time world champion Takeru Kobayashi of Tokyo faced current No.
1 ranked Joey Chestnut of San Jose on Saturday in Culver City in what
was characterized as a chance for Kobayashi to show
he's still a
stomach to contend with.
"Kobayashi, 31, won by downing almost six
calzones in six minutes, a feat he accomplished by taking several
mouthfuls of calzone between gulps of water.
"Afterward, he posed on stage for photographers and
pretended to eat
his calzone-shaped trophy. The two rivals will meet again July
4th in
Coney Island for the annual hot dog eating contest.
All those calzones, and yet the only one who choked
over the weekend was this guy.
