Willie Brown has been known to bring in big names, and it is really hard to say no when he asks you to come speak at one of his events, or any event really. So, as you may have guessed, everybody was at his "Breakfast Club" this morning. Arnold, all the candidates, and, well, everybody except the reclusive Meg Whitman. You'll have to forgive my camera work.
The speeches went as you would expect them. Poizner, Campbell, and Brown all gave speeches. All of which I missed, however, I did get reports from a solid (Democratic) source, who called Tom Campbell the best of the bunch. Jerry Brown's speech was just a standard stump speech, and according to Carla Marinucci, Brown has no inclination to announce his candidacy anytime soon. And Poizner, well, he was Poizner.
Everybody's gotta eat, but does Willie Brown really need to eat this badly? The former California Assembly Speaker and Mayor of San Francisco is now a private citizen and practicing attorney. Now he's representing a contractor charged with 48 felony counts, accused not only of defrauding the State of California out of over $1 million in money that would have been used for schools and public services , but even worse, she forced employees to work 60-72 hour weeks but paid them for only 10-40 hour weeks. Monica Ung cheated 19 workers out of $3.6 million!
What's up with Willie Brown?! These workers were immigrants who did not speak English, and did not know their rights!
To me, the fact that Willie L. Brown Jr., supposed Stalwart of the Democratic Party, is taking blood money to defend Ung and NOT the workers themselves, is a clear sign of how ridiculously corrupt our whole political and legal process has become. Does Willie Brown have no shame?!
Sure, everyone deserves their day in court, but the last time I checked, the Democrats were supposedly the ones standing up for the little guys, not the other way around.
If you agree with me, use this opportunity to tell Willie what you think and call his office at (415) 348-0348, or better yet, come to the Hayward Courthouse this Friday July 24, 2009, at 1:30 p.m. where Art Pulaski of the California Labor Federation will be on hand to tell Willie what real Democrats think about him and his client.
Just a précis on budget negotiations today: the Big Five leadership has met over the last couple days, with more heat than light. The Governor remains committed to adding unrelated policy changes into any budget deal, items like changing contributions to public employee pensions, and tightening eligibility and rooting out fraud in programs like in-home supportive services for the disabled, Medi-Cal and Cal-Works. These items will do nothing to affect the current budget numbers, a fact Schwarzenegger has acknowledged, but he continues to leverage the impasse to capture long-sought goals. The Governor also has taken to lying about how these issues suddenly appeared in the negotiations, claiming that "reform issues were very clear" from the start, which is true if you define "reform" as "whatever Arnold wants it to mean." Karen Bass signaled her frustration with the Governor's clear unwillingness to close a deal by inserting unrelated items, boycotting today's meeting and questioning the Governor's figures on what reducing "fraud" would actually reap in savings (and since he's been consistently wrong on this front in the past, it's a good bet). The Governor did concede that suspending the Prop. 98 education funding mechanism would not be viable, but he keeps pushing for the amorphously defined "reform", no doubt because he thinks it plays well with the public (Matier and Ross transcribe that private polls show a jump in Arnold's approval ratings). This speaks more to the Democrats' inability to clearly explain reality than anything else, though Bass gave it a try today:
But Bass said she believes talks have gotten worse, not better. And she publicly blasted the governor for comments he made in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, in which he said he explained why he doesn't go home depressed by budget woes.
"Someone else might walk out of here every day depressed, but I don't walk out of here depressed," Schwarzenegger told the Times. Whatever happens, "I will sit down in my Jacuzzi tonight," he said. "I'm going to lay back with a stogie."
"He said he's happy to just go home and sit in his Jacuzzi every night," Bass said Monday. "I'm very, very concerned about this. He doesn't seem to be concerned that people are getting IOUs, and all he has to do is go out and blame the Legislature."
With squabbling and posturing like this, you'd think I'd agree with the Calbuzz take of why this crisis has dragged on for so long.
The constitutional requirement for a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to pass a budget is clearly the single most important reason why the Capitol is in a state of near-permanent political gridlock. But the two-thirds rule has been around since the New Deal and budgets used to get passed. So what's the hang-up?
Power: Nobody's got it.
The governor and the Legislature fulminate and flounder simply because no one in the Capitol in 2009 has the stature, clout or influence to cut a deal like Ronnie and Jesse or Pete and Willie once did.
Actually, the budget has ALREADY been passed once this year, closing a $42 billion dollar deficit. The new $26 billion dollar problem points to the unique nature of the current deep recession. I'd like to see good ol' Ronnie and Jesse and Pete and Willie deal with a $68 billion shortfall in the space of six months.
But beyond that, what is also missing from this analysis is the lengths to which the "big bully" theory of how to manage California government, where Democrats and Republicans get together and "cut a deal," is in a real sense RESPONSIBLE for the problem we now face. Take the assessment of the 1992 budget in the midst of a recession:
Contrast this year's with the budget meltdown of 1992, the last time California issued IOUs. Although many of the same conditions applied, the big difference was that both Gov. Pete Wilson and Speaker Willie Brown wielded enough political authority to sit down in a room and cut a deal: Wilson took responsibility for rounding up Republican votes for tax increases and Brown for putting a lid on Democratic caterwauling over program cuts.
Somehow the inability of these major players to avoid a situation where IOUs had to be issued gets put to the side. But what Willie Brown did not use that clout to do, what no Democrat has done since 1978's Prop. 13 opened the structural revenue gap enforced by the 2/3 requirement for budgets and taxes, is actually solve the real problem. Instead he cut a deal, relying on a future asset bubble to bail him out again and again, and setting the table for today's crisis.
The 1980s saw the construction of the model. Sprawl was used to provide affordable housing. Special tax systems were set up to pay for suburban schools - the 1982 Mello-Roos Act - which were funded as long as there was enough credit to sustain sprawl. The loss of property tax revenue led cities to shift toward retail, further promoting sprawl (big box stores, malls). The jobs and spending created by sprawl provided enough prosperity to keep voters happy and the politicians in power. For those who were left behind - those living in the city centers, people of color, and the poor - 1978 had been partly about their political and economic marginalization, and the majority of Californians embraced it as part of the deal.
The ideal feature of the centrist system, from the view of its practitioners, is that it apparently neutralized the right-wing revolt of 1978. Low taxes could be paired with preservation of core services, albeit at a slightly reduced level, and thereby avoided another Jarvisite outburst. Well-paid consultants could run statewide TV campaigns to force the public to accept the consensus, without having to do the messy work of engaging a grassroots that would challenge the centrist status quo.
When the system came crashing down in 1991-92, the centrists found it possible to cut a deal to keep things going. Pete Wilson and Willie Brown had much in common, and were able to hammer out a package of tax increases and spending cuts that got a 2/3 majority. I don't romanticize that deal, but instead use it to show that it confirmed to the centrists that the system they'd built in 1980s could withstand crisis as long as everyone was willing to sit down and make a deal, damn the consequences.
However, the right-wing wasn't sleeping. In 1990 they managed to convince a bare majority of voters to approve Prop 140, a radical term limits measure that should have fallen afoul of the "revision" rule. But the real moment of change came in 1994, when the far-right in the Republican Party grabbed control of the agenda and launched a massive attack on Latino Californians. Pete Wilson wholeheartedly embraced the attack, and although it brought Republicans gains that year, it was a victory to make Pyrrhus jealous. Latinos registered for citizenship and to vote in massive numbers, and beginning in 1996 what had once been a state whose politics were fairly balanced shifted massively to the Democrats.
As long as Republicans stood a reasonable chance of winning control of California's legislature or its electoral votes, Democratic deal-cutting with Republicans could be sold to the base as a necessary move to stave off the Jarvisite hordes. But after 1996 this became less and less plausible. The California Republican Party became a captive of the extreme right, even more than usual, and in one of its last acts before leaving power in 1998, pushed through a massive and reckless series of tax cuts.
I don't disagree at all that we currently face a lack of leadership and clout to get deals done in Sacramento. Arnold Schwarzenegger has no role inside his own party, and Bass and Steinberg preside over a dysfunctional set of rule requirements and are term-limited out of gathering political capital. My point is that such leadership has ALWAYS been lacking from the Democratic side of the aisle, at least since 1978. When prosperity waned, it was clear that California's political structure would resist responsible governance at every turn. But instead of preparing for that eventuality by changing the rules, those good old boys of the past cut deals that exacerbated the problem. They forced the current crop of non-leaders into ringing up the state credit card and enabled the right-wing faction that holds a veto over economic policies. The center did not hold - but it could never hold. And the centrists who ruled California in the years after Prop. 13, the timid types who ran away from real solutions and put the state in the position to fail, should not be lauded. They should be ashamed.
While some might say that Willie Brown was part of the system in the period where our government was functionally disabled, he does have a keen eye on these things.
It's not that the public won't go for it - the problem is that the Legislature can't put together the two-thirds vote needed to put something on the ballot.
I was up in Sacramento on Thursday, and it was clear from my meetings with Democratic lawmakers that while there may be the votes to add some new "fees," taxes just are not in the equation. (SF Chronicle 6/7/09)
This is pretty much conventional wisdom at this point. The issue, it seems, is getting beyond conventional wisdom in Sacramento. Your guess is as good as mine on how that happens...
There are some other items of note going on beyond the Democratic Party (or at least somewhat beyond the Democratic Party). Some items of note:
SEIU to endorse Prop 11? The redistricting initiative was loudly opposed at the Democratic Party e-Board, but it's going to a second ballot for SEIU. I've said it before, and I'm sure I'll say it again, but this is the wrong reform. It unfairly puts Republicans at equal footing with Democrats and can't actually accomplish much of substance.
Willie Brown testified on behalf of Julie Lee in her federal corruption trial. She was the center of the case against former SoS Kevin Shelley.
Eighth graders will be required to take Algebra I in order to comply with No Child Left Behind. State Superintendent Jack O'Connell was very, very opposed to this because he feared that it would increase dropout rates.
The delta smelt might end up on the endangered species list. This is a big, big deal as much of their habitat is affected by our water pumping projects in the Delta. How this is dealt with will affect our water supplies for years.
The high speed rail line between SF and LA will go through Pacheco Pass. HSR must happen if we are to succeed in the new economy. While the route matters, its importance is secondary to the fact that we must get Prop 1 passed.
Santa Ana City Councilman Carlos Bustamante has quietly resigned from two state commissions he was appointed to by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, after his published remarks last month suggesting that a male candidate for Orange County sheriff could've gotten the job if he had breast implants [...]
After the Orange County Board of Supervisors appointed Sandra Hutchens over Santa Ana Police Chief Paul Walters as the county's sheriff on June 10, Bustamante joked to a blogger: "I kept telling the chief [Walters]: 'Maybe we should get you some implants. Or a water bra.' "
The LA Times launched a cute little interactive primary calendar along with a presidential primary blog. Oh, and a message to Rudy. If there's a story about how you're arguing with Alan-freaking-Keyes, well, you might as well fold up shop.
Anthony Wright is one of the most astute observers of the health care industry. The dude just understands it in ways that I'm pretty sure I never will. Well, yesterday he had a great post on the topic of the individual mandate at the national level. Edwards and Clinton include one in their health care plans, and Obama has recently indicated that he'd be willing to include one. Although I suggest you mosey on over there to read the whole thing in its entirety, the post centers around the concept of a mandate as a challenge not to just the citizenry but also to the government to ensure affordability. But if the government fails, as is happening in Massachusetts, what then?
Wright sums the argument up concisely: "The mandate muddle masks the real question: how much actual help does the health plan provide people?"
For the time being, the Arnold Prison Papers are being held back from our prying eyes. The 3 judge panel stayed the order to the Governator to relase the papers pending a hearing tomorrow. These papers could be quite interesting.
You want more words from smart people? Well, Peter Schrag fits that mold. In his column today he talks about the real story behind the PPIC forum in Sacramento with Willie Brown, Pete Wilson, Jim Brulte, and Fabian Nunez. Read it. He's smart.
Somehow I forgot to mention that Warren Furutani won the special election to replace Laura Richardson in the Assembly. However he missed the 50% by 134 votes. That's actually a bigger number than it sounds as only 17507 votes were cast. That's just about 10% turnout. He'll face the American Independent Party winner and the Libertarian winner in the February 5 runoff whereupon he will become the next Assemblyman from the 55th District.
Wilson, a two-term Republican governor from 1991 to 1999, said the Legislature is dysfunctional when it gets too partisan. He blamed discord on a lack of the kind of collegiality that existed when he was in the Assembly in the late 1960s.
"It may have something to do with the fact that when John, Willie and I were all in the Assembly, there was a great deal more drinking in the Legislature," Wilson said to laughter and applause. "These guys, the teetotalers, need to lighten up a bit." (SacBee 12.05.07)
The remarks came at Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) event in Sacramento yesterday. Other speakers suggested other concepts. John Burton's was hanging out in strip clubs, or well, just collegiality in general. Term limits came up, with unsurprising results: the law makers didn't like them and remarked about the negative effects. Fabian Nunez pointed out the problems surrounding the 2/3 requirements.
All in all, an interesting read. I'm kinda bummed I missed the event. UPDATE: Here's another take on the event from the comments at the SacBee:
I was at this presentation - and as usual, this coverage is so distorted as to be meaningless. The five people in past and present leadership did, in fact, make some delicious jokes, but those were the asides, NOT the substance of the discussion. The loss of knowledge, the loss of accountability, the skewing of voter understanding (evidence here by comments), the media's lack of substantive reporting (evidenced here by this vapid story) all were seriously discussed. Were there jokes and funny zingers? Yes. And for anyone to think booze, backroom deals, and other funny things were what was recommended is wrong. You've been punked by this reporter's superficiality and lack of understanding at how important this discussion really was. If you want to understand the problems of the Legislature, do NOT turn to the Bee; talk to your legislator or, better, one who used to be there. We can fix the system, but not if we believe only the Bee's superficial point of view.
Yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle had a lengthy Ed Epstein piece on Speaker Pelosi marking 20 years in the house following her contentious special election victory over Harry Britt. Over the years, San Francisco politics have proven an effective training ground to allow the people we elect to excel. Feinstein is a powerhouse, Willie Brown was Da Speaker, the Burton brothers were titans in Sacramento and DC, Migden chairs the senate Caucus, Leno chairs Appropriations. If you can make here politically, you really can make it anywhere.
And if you want to see what I'm talking about, read Chris Daly's op-ed at the Fog City Journal on the current budget battle. Making great use of the medium with literally dozens of links (going back to 1998), the Supervisor shows how San Francisco politics is fought in the trenches. And remember, all of this is over one half of one percent of the SF budget.
June 2nd is going to be a huge day in San Francisco politics. Gavin Newsom is kicking off his signature gathering with a rally and Chris Daly is holding is "convention" to try and force somebody to make it a race. At last night's fundraiser, I heard from two very knowledgeable progressive supervisors about the state of the race. One insisted that Matt Gonzalez was going to run and make it a re-match. The other insisted that there was no way in hell Matt Gonzalez was going to run. In unrelated news, a reliable source told me that Alex Tourk was seen having dinner with former Mayor Willie Brown last night (BTW, section 3.101 of SF Code says, "There shall be no limit on the non-successive terms that a person may serve"). Could be an interesting race...
(I actually moved to CA to help get him re-elected as Mayor and if nothing else he is always a hoot - promoted by blogswarm)
This evening was my first at the Commonwealth Club of California and former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown was the guest of honor. I wasn't here for his tenure in City Hall so I can't say what kind of a mayor he was. However, he sure is a schmoozer, and a wise political hand. Anyway, he shared his take on local, state and national politics.
I'm running a bit behind, so it will be a bit short today. Teasers: Willie is for...Willie, John Chiang needs our help, A Dependent Judiciary, Prop 90, and a mock vote.
