Dear Senator,
Neither you nor I have a Nobel Prize in economics. But Paul Krugman does. And he says you are wrong about the stimulus. Not just wrong, but dangerously wrong.
You may think both Krugman and I are dangerous commie pinkos. But both of us have been right about the economy. You have not.
If you had been right that tax cuts and the free market can cure all ills, we would not be in the situation we're in right now. You got your chance to prove your ideas. And they failed. We have all paid for their failure.
Now we are poised to pay again for your stubbornness and stupidity.
With Senate Democrats continuing to allow the 60 vote rule to control debate, the fate of every state in the nation rests on the whims of a few moderate Senators from states like Maine and Nebraska, who insisted that 40 billion dollars worth of state stabilization funds for struggling states be excised from the stimulus package, along with education funding that would have benefited small states.
For California, this wouldn't come anywhere close to solving the budget crisis, but would help prevent the massive lay-offs and suspended capital projects.
Instead they have substituted more tax cuts that are absurdly expensive, won't address the problems they are designed to ameliorate, and have far less immediate impact and less bang for the buck.
The total population of Maine's five largest cities would create a municipality equivalent to California's 26th largest city, right between Santa Clarita and Rancho Cucomonga.
It's a pretty brazen suggestion even for the Yacht Party, which has already made clear that it wants to force California into an economic depression - Sacramento Republicans want to divert the federal stimulus into a "rainy day fund." This would accomplish two of their goals - one, preventing California from protecting such vital services as schools and health care; and two, preventing a stabilization of the state budget that might frustrate their goal of using this crisis to impose far-right policies for good.
While many of the funds pegged for California would immediately help children, the poor and commuters, some Republican state lawmakers argue that the state should sock away some of the money for hard times in the future.
Democratic lawmakers say the federal funds should be spent sooner rather than later for whatever purposes the federal government requires.
Matthew Yi's article is biased in favor of the Republicans - we're already in hard times and the stimulus money is intended to be spent right now to reverse those hard times - but he does convey the core point, which is that the Yacht Party wants to destroy California's ability to help ease the pain:
Villines agreed that avoiding costly borrowing would be prudent. But he had other ideas about using federal funds. Any federal money that "we might get should basically be put away into a ... rainy-day fund for any potential future deficits if the economy continues to get worse," he said, "as opposed to any budget factoring now."
What Villines is saying here is that "we should hijack the stimulus money for our own radical agenda, instead of using it to help people who need help right now." Chuck DeVore makes the point explicit:
"This is why the park service doesn't want you to feed the bears in Yosemite," said Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine. "All it's going to do is to prevent them from being able to fend for themselves in the wilderness. This money is not the sort of tough love that we need ... for us to have serious reforms that we need."
To people like Chuck DeVore, Californians are the equivalent of Yogi Bear - people who don't deserve help in an economic crisis, and who certainly shouldn't be allowed to stand in the way of long-held wingnut dreams like a hard spending cap.
The fact is that the Republicans are way out on a limb here. If California progressives can move beyond the single-issue silos and unite, they will have a very good chance at turning the public against this kind of insanity. Even the LA Times is starting to get it - that the Yacht Party isn't trying to help the budget or the economy, but merely wants to settle old scores. Unfortunately, too many people are not willing to actually listen to what Republicans are saying and still want to see this as some sort of bipartisan crisis:
[Sac State poli sci prof Barbara] O'Connor said all sides in the talks "are going to have to give up stuff they don't want to give up." Meanwhile, she said, the general public is finding it hard to understand why Republicans and Democrats can't sit down, hash it out and "come up with the best bad solution."
The general public is "finding it hard to understand" because that's NOT what's actually happening. The Yacht Party is hellbent on destroying California's ability to recover from this economic crisis. It is that simple, and anyone who even listens to what Republicans are saying can understand that.
The only thing standing between the Yacht Party and total oblivion is the 2/3 rule and a public that, until now, has been resigned to fatalism regarding state politics. But when those Republicans start monkeying around with the core economic policy of the president over 60% of Californians supported, they are proving to us all that they are overexposed and overreaching. It's time for progressives to unite to take them down.
As the Congressional battle over Obama's stimulus heats up, so too is progressive activism over the deliberate underfunding of mass transit. Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat, is leading the charge to redress the problem, as shown in this important discussion with policy geek Rachel Maddow:
DeFazio isn't just complaining on TV - he is offering an amendment to provide $2 billion in direct aid to local transit agencies that have had to cut service or raise fares - or both - as a result of the economic downturn and state budget problems.
Here in California this problem is especially acute, as Arnold is having success in his effort to defund mass transit. As a result local transit agencies have been hit hard. From the Monterey Bay and SF Bay Areas alone:
* San Benito County Express in Hollister and San Juan Bautista raised fares 33% earlier this year and will reduce service 35% effective on February 1, with some routes eliminated entirely.
* Monterey-Salinas Transit hiked fares 25% this month, though they were able to avoid service cuts. (The fare is now $2.50 per ride.)
* SamTrans in San Mateo County (the Peninsula) will raise fares 17% in February.
* Caltrain increased fares on January 1. Caltrain is the commuter rail service between San Francisco, San Jose, and Gilroy.
These cuts are especially damaging in this economy. Many Californians depend on affordable and available bus service to get to work. When routes are cut or fares increased, many can no longer get to work, and job losses merely increase.
It also makes it more difficult to build a sustainable transportation system, since these cuts can be difficult to restore. It took well over a decade for AC Transit to recover from the service cuts of the early 1990s - and even that progress may be set back without federal assistance.
Transportation for America has a map of the transit cuts being proposed or implemented across America. And they are leading the charge for restoring this funding. DeFazio's amendment will come before the House Rules Committee tomorrow, and T4America is asking folks to call Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY) to ask her to send the amendment to the House floor.
California has three Representatives on that committee, and their contact information is as follows:
David Dreier - Republican from 26th District (San Gabriel Valley foothills). Phone numbers: DC office (202) 225-2305, San Dimas office (909) 575-6226, Toll-free (888) 906-2626
Doris Matsui - Democrat from 5th District (Sacramento). Phone numbers: DC office (202) 225-7163, Sacramento office (916) 498-5600
Dennis Cardoza - Democrat from 18th District (Stockton, Modesto, Merced). Phone numbers: DC office (202) 225-6131 or (800) 356-6424, Merced office (209) 383-4455, Modesto office (209) 527-1914, Stockton office (209) 946-0361.
Seems wrong headed to me. Perhaps folks here at Calitics will email or pick up the phone and let the Obama team know that this hardly seems the right approach.
California newspapers, the LA Times excepted, have been using their editorial pages to try to convince Californians that somehow, an economic downturn caused by overdependence on oil should not be addressed by job-creating projects that would provide renewably powered transportation and enable economic growth over the long term. Most recently it's the Redding Record-Searchlight making the argument that somehow Prop 1A would hurt California's budget and economy, when in fact it is a necessary part of the solution.
It remains a key part not just of the state of California's overall water storage and provision system, but was crucial to the Redding economy during the 1930s and in the years since.
It was also a Depression-era project. Built at a time when California barely had enough money to balance its own budget. In 1933 California passed a bond measure allowing money to be spent on the dam - $170 million, a significant sum in those days. By 1935 California had secured federal funds to help begin construction on the dam. The jobs created by the dam project and the long-term value of the Central Valley Project were considerable. Redding got badly needed jobs as well as flood control. California got jobs and a base for long-term agriculture, an industry that remains significant to this day in Redding.
Had California rejected the 1933 Shasta Dam bond, chances are the dam would not have been built for a decade or two. Redding would have lost out on those crucial jobs in the depths of the Depression and California agriculture might not have had the stable water source it needed to be productive for these last 70 years.
We can go on. The Golden Gate Bridge funding fell through after the 1929 stock market crash - so voters in the North Coast counties that comprise the Golden Gate Bridge District had to approve bonds, which they did in November 1930. Similar bonds had to be sold for the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, also in the depths of the Depression. The two bridge projects not only provided jobs when they were desperately needed but enabled massive economic growth in the Bay Area after World War II.
The argument that we cannot build high speed rail because of the economic crisis or credit crunch simply doesn't hold water. The economic downturn is an argument FOR high speed rail. Worse, the Redding Record-Searchlight's reasons for not supporting Prop 1A make little sense:
An alluring investment in 21st-century transportation for a growing state? Yes. It's also $10 billion that California doesn't have.
Of course California doesn't have $10 billion - which is why we're going to borrow it. The state's nonpartisan Legislative Analyst has determined we actually can afford Prop 1A. Repayment lasts over a 40-year term. The jobs, tax revenue and economic activity created by high speed rail combined with the savings on oil consumption and carbon emissions are likely to outweigh the annual debt service cost.
If it were up to HSR deniers like the Redding Record-Searchlight we'd still be in the Depression. We wouldn't have the dams and bridges that made our late 20th century prosperity possible. And if we follow their advice we will have a hard time getting out of whatever we're going to call this economic crisis.
