Governor Jerry Brown called the budget plan agreed upon by California lawmakers “unrealistic” and voted the bill on Thursday afternoon. What’s even more aggressive, though, is that he did it on YouTube, publicly demanding the legislators choose between deep spending cuts or significant tax hikes. Finance types hailed second-time democratic governor’s aggressive approach to the issue.

“Today I have vetoed the California state budget,” Brown said in a short YouTube video. “I do so reluctantly but with clear purpose. For a decade the can has been kicked down the road and debt has piled up.”

There’s been a lot of speculation around the Capitol over exactly what motivated the 30 Republican lawmakers to form a new “taxpayers caucus” last month led by state Senator Tony Strickland (R – Moorpark).  The group is dedicated to fighting Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to put taxes on a June ballot unless there’s an accompanying ballot measure that would let voters choose to lower taxes by the same amount.

Every one of those legislators had already signed the Grover Norquist “taxpayer protection pledge” where they promised to “oppose and vote against any and all efforts to increase taxes.” So why did they need another, new pledge?

This move on the part of Strickland, coupled with close ties to Meg Whitman (who was soundly rejected by Californians) and his loss in last year’s state Controller’s race, are beginning to lose him support with local & influential Republicans.

Read more in the San Francisco Chronicle –

Today, attorneys for Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg filed this complaint on the Pro Tem’s behalf against Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in San Francisco Superior Court.  The first line of the complaint says it all: “This case is about separation of powers.”

The filing outlines how exactly the Governor overstepped his constitutional authority in making almost $500 million line-item vetoes to mostly human services programs. As the Pro Tem said Friday, Californians elected a Governor, not an emperor. The filing explains that the Governor can only use line item veto authority to cut “appropriations,” and not the revised reductions in existing, previously enacted appropriations in the Legislature’s July 24 budget bill.

The filing asks the court “to order the Controller to disregard the Governor’s purported vetoes of the budget items described more fully below and to declare that the Governor’s purported vetoes are null and void.”

– excerted from Calitics, August 10, 2009

In California, smoking related costs total more than $15 billion each year. Nationwide, smoking-caused health care costs total $10.28 per pack sold in the U.S.  Shouldn’t smokers pay for the resulting cost to society?

Cigarette taxes could not only ease the enormous economic burden to existing public health programs that treat tobacco related illnesses, but with the current budget deficit, Governor Swarzenegger has announced a series of cuts that would hit children and families hardest – perhaps leaving California alone as the only state without a safety net for women and children.

For every $1 added to the tobacco tax, we could raise $1 billion in revenue. This increase could be enough to keep healthy families afloat and offset a large amount of cuts to education.  Since California’s tobacco tax has not increased in more than a decade, and 75 percent of Californians support higher tobacco taxes, now is the time to increase the cost of cigarettes to protect our kids, their education, and their health.

Excerpted, in part, from a June 23 Calitics article by Tom Torlakson

Dear Democrat,

In the coming weeks, our state legislators will face stark choices about our state budget – choices that will touch the lives of nearly all Californians.

If our legislators do as Governor Schwarzenegger asks, California will slash billions from public schools and community colleges, eliminate health care for nearly two million people (half of them children), end the grants that allow high-achieving middle-class and poor students to attend college and close more than 200 of our state parks. AIDS patients will be denied medicine. Domestic violence shelters will lose funding.

What the governor’s budget doesn’t do is ask big corporations, oil and tobacco companies or the very wealthy to share in the sacrifice. That’s just wrong. As our lawmakers make critical budget decisions to fill the shortfall, we must tell them what’s important to California’s residents and the future of our state.

The current budget year ends June 30, so we may only have a week or two to make a difference. Please take a minute right now to send a message to your legislators about the budget – before it’s too late. Tell them that we must have a budget that includes new revenue to pay for the services we all need.

As Democrats, we stand firmly against the severity of the proposed cuts. We will do everything possible to minimize the cuts and the harm they will inflict. That’s why we’re urging legislators to Protect All Californians by passing a balanced, sensible budget that includes new revenue.

Our budget ought to reflect our values – but right now, it doesn’t. California has tremendous oil reserves, yet the governor isn’t asking oil companies to pay the same extraction fees imposed in other states. Corporations reap billions from tax loopholes that are left intact. And the wealthiest Californians aren’t asked to pitch in more – in fact, the most affluent Californians currently pay a lower income tax rate than they did when Republican Pete Wilson was governor.

Adding revenue from any of those sources would help minimize some of the devastating cuts looming for education and social services. Yet Republicans so far would rather protect a few elite special interests instead of millions of average Californians. We must help them see the error of their ways! And Democratic lawmakers need our support and thanks as they strive to minimize the harm inflicted in this brutal budget year.

The only way to ensure our elected representatives make the right choices is to speak up now and to keep speaking out until the budget has been passed.

Please take a moment to send a letter to your legislators asking them to pass a budget that will Protect All Californians, not just the privileged few. We will continue to give you ways to stay involved in the budget battle in the days and weeks to come.

Please join me in standing up for our Democratic values and fighting to Protect All Californians.

Peace and friendship,
John

P.S. The budget fight is upon us and the cuts proposed by the governor would devastate millions of poor and middle-class Californians – and affect us all. If you believe as I do that California must find a balanced budget solution that includes new revenues, please take a minute to send that message to your legislators today. Go to www.cadem.org/ltl-budget.

For all the complaints about the extreme difficulty in getting Californians to pay attention to budget battles, and all the money spent on attempting to convince a generally apathetic voting public that the crisis is real, very little seems to break through. Many legislators seem resigned to the idea that huge, painful cuts may be necessary to shock voters out of their complacency.

With any luck, though, a not-so-painful but very prominent cut may be able to get a bunch of usually apolitical types out of their armchairs, because it appears that the city of L.A. won’t be able to afford a parade for the victorious Los Angeles Lakers. From a Reuters article written prior to tonight’s game:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Los Angeles Lakers need only one more win to capture a 15th National Basketball Association Championship, but some city officials are already saying they can’t afford to throw the team a victory party.

The Lakers have taken a 3-1 lead in their best-of-seven series against the Orlando Magic and will clinch the championship if they win again on Sunday night, setting the stage for a triumphal parade through downtown Los Angeles as early as Tuesday.

But such a celebration could cost the city $1 million or more at a time when city leaders, faced with a deep budget deficit, were contemplating worker layoffs and cuts in services.

“We can’t afford to cover the costs,” City Councilwoman Jan Perry told the Los Angeles Times. “How could we make a decision about people’s jobs and then sponsor the parade?”

Barbara Maynard, a spokeswoman for the city’s employee unions, agreed, telling the paper: “We do not believe its appropriate in this economic climate for taxpayers to be funding a parade.”

But Councilman Bernard Parks said he expected the city to throw the parade and pick up the tab.

“There’s going to be a major celebration in the city and the likelihood is the city is going to absorb the bulk of those costs,” he said. “The city isn’t going to have time over the next few hours to negotiate a contract with the Lakers or anyone else.”

So even as Calitics.com’s own David Dayen will be attempting to navigate downtown Pittsburgh in the middle of a Penguins parade tomorrow, visitors to Los Angeles needn’t worry, because the Lakers may not even be having a parade. B-baller and supposed Lakers fan Tony Strickland doubtless won’t care, as there’s no cigarette or oil money involved. Big surprise.

The important question, though, is whether Angelenos will show some Iranian-style civil disobedience over government failures costing them the ability to even hold a parade for their hometown heroes, or whether this too will pass silently into the morass of collective apathy with barely a shrug.

The nation watched in amusement this week as Republicans laid out their plans promised an April Fool’s Day Budget complete with incomprehensible Kindergarten garbage they call charts. Some of us laughed. I hope that some of us cried; certainly, were I a conservative Republican, tears would be my reaction at the ineptitude of my so-called “leadership”.

But if you were like me, the presentation of such pre-adolescent tomfoolery was deeply offensive in a way that seemed to elude immediate articulation. Offensive in such a way that even outright mockery seemed insufficient in response.

After a day’s contemplation, I think I understand. The offense lies in the juvenility of the response; the utter rejection of seriousness as even a pretended modus operandi for one of our two great political parties; the seeming abdication of any real responsibility for actual participation in the purported governance of our great nation.

But more even than that, it lies in the brazenness of the GOP’s assumption that anyone with a sensible eye toward policy outcomes is even interested in their ideas or “solutions” at this point.

The GOP has been grounded. They trashed the American house, flooded the basement, broke nearly every piece of furniture we own, went on a spending spree with the parents’ credit card pretty much forcing us into bankruptcy while handing out party favors to their friends , and should by all rights be locked up in Juvie for assorted crimes petty and great.

And the American People said Enough. You’re grounded. Go to your room and don’t come out until you think about what you’ve done. Oh, and while you’re at it you can start by cleaning your room.

Because these proud ignoramuses can’t even get their own act together. Their own leader pwns himself on national television again and again, then says it was all part of some secret diabolical plan on his own part. The Republican Idol is a drug-addicted legend-in-his-own-mind radio star with an approval rating lower than dirt. Someone should seriously ask the GOP whether, if all their friends went out and jumped off a cliff, they would, too. Heck, these are people so emotionally stunted they’ve got posters of Chuck Freaking Norris hanging over their beds and Ayn Rand drivel on their bookshelves to make them feel tougher than their real emo, weepy, tantrum-throwing selves. The rest of us grew out of that phase when we turned 14. They can’t even manage to clean up their own backyard. And don’t even get me started on your girlfriend Sarah. The only person who sees starbursts when they look at her is you. It’s just…pathetic.

And these punks think anyone wants to hear anything they have to say? Why? As any responsible parent knows, respect is earned. And these two-bit jokers haven’t earned a shred of it. I mean, seriously now…Joe the Plumber? Dungeons and Dragons nerds live in a fantasy world more realistic than that.

The sheer notion that these delinquent ne’er-do-wells would interrupt adults attempting to fix the messes they created to take a gander at their cartoon drawings isn’t risible. It’s infuriating.

Just…go to your room, GOP. Don’t come out until you’ve had a chance to put on that dunce cap that suits you so well, think about all the damage you’ve done, and atone for it. You might want to try cleaning yourself up a bit and straightening your own room while you’re at it.

The nation watched in amusement this week as Republicans laid out their plans promised an April Fool’s Day Budget complete with incomprehensible Kindergarten garbage they call charts. Some of us laughed. I hope that some of us cried; certainly, were I a conservative Republican, tears would be my reaction at the ineptitude of my so-called “leadership”.

But if you were like me, the presentation of such pre-adolescent tomfoolery was deeply offensive in a way that seemed to elude immediate articulation. Offensive in such a way that even outright mockery seemed insufficient in response.

After a day’s contemplation, I think I understand. The offense lies in the juvenility of the response; the utter rejection of seriousness as even a pretended modus operandi for one of our two great political parties; the seeming abdication of any real responsibility for actual participation in the purported governance of our great nation.

But more even than that, it lies in the brazenness of the GOP’s assumption that anyone with a sensible eye toward policy outcomes is even interested in their ideas or “solutions” at this point.

The GOP has been grounded. They trashed the American house, flooded the basement, broke nearly every piece of furniture we own, went on a spending spree with the parents’ credit card pretty much forcing us into bankruptcy while handing out party favors to their friends , and should by all rights be locked up in Juvie for assorted crimes petty and great.

And the American People said Enough. You’re grounded. Go to your room and don’t come out until you think about what you’ve done. Oh, and while you’re at it you can start by cleaning your room.

Because these proud ignoramuses can’t even get their own act together. Their own leader pwns himself on national television again and again, then says it was all part of some secret diabolical plan on his own part. The Republican Idol is a drug-addicted legend-in-his-own-mind radio star with an approval rating lower than dirt. Someone should seriously ask the GOP whether, if all their friends went out and jumped off a cliff, they would, too. Heck, these are people so emotionally stunted they’ve got posters of Chuck Freaking Norris hanging over their beds and Ayn Rand drivel on their bookshelves to make them feel tougher than their real emo, weepy, tantrum-throwing selves. The rest of us grew out of that phase when we turned 14. They can’t even manage to clean up their own backyard. And don’t even get me started on your girlfriend Sarah. The only person who sees starbursts when they look at her is you. It’s just…pathetic.

And these punks think anyone wants to hear anything they have to say? Why? As any responsible parent knows, respect is earned. And these two-bit jokers haven’t earned a shred of it. I mean, seriously now…Joe the Plumber? Dungeons and Dragons nerds live in a fantasy world more realistic than that.

The sheer notion that these delinquent ne’er-do-wells would interrupt adults attempting to fix the messes they created to take a gander at their cartoon drawings isn’t risible. It’s infuriating.

Just…go to your room, GOP. Don’t come out until you’ve had a chance to put on that dunce cap that suits you so well, think about all the damage you’ve done, and atone for it. You might want to try cleaning yourself up a bit and straightening your own room while you’re at it.

cross posted from Making Waves Blog, Ventura County Star, March 2, 2009

WHAT’S THE BEST REASON to not cut our state education funding? In the future we’ll need sharp minds to get us out of these budget messes.

I’ve been hunkered down for the past few days looking over documents and trying to make some sense of the budget package the governor just signed and how it will affect the bottom line of our schools. It’s a precarious hodgepodge of $8.4 billion in cuts offset by reforms and accounting tricks. And all of this hinges on a package of ballot measures up in May, some designed to reshuffle prior ballot measures.

This labyrinthine budget reduces Prop. 98 guaranteed school funding from now through 2010 and then adds in another ballot measure to help to help restore the lost funds in 2011. Yet another tinkers with Prop. 98 formulas because the state now needs to borrow from future lottery earnings that would’ve gone to our schools.

Several of the seven ballot measures coming up on May 19 are so complicated that one could safely predict most voters probably won’t do anything but vote no in protest, if they bother to cast a ballot at all.

AND THERE’S MORE: Categorical funding for many important programs is being slashed 20 percent between now and 2010. Included in this are programs for gifted students, college preparation, middle and high school counseling, deferred maintenance, technology, English language acquisition, summer school, ROP programs, and, of course, arts and music. In return, school districts are being given the “flexibility” to move these pots of funding around, but it’s sort of like figuring out which child doesn’t get dinner that night.

Upcoming federal money, which would help reduce state taxes, would have no effect on K-12 classroom funding this budget year, according to the California Department of Education. In the longer term, “these resources will have a minimal impact on reducing the size and magnitude of the state reductions in education funding,” according to the California Association of School Business Officials.

AS YOU CAN SURMISE, budgeting for the next school year is like playing pin the tail on the weasel. It’s a moving target which the dedicated folks who can actually figure this stuff out HAVE to wrestle with because the deadline for letting teachers know whether or not they will have jobs next year is March 13. Yet, they won’t have any answers until June. Maybe.

Here in Ventura, school officials are looking at a mighty big gap. “… It will not look like business as usual here,” said Superintendent Trudy Arriaga. “We should not be celebrating a state budget that is cutting $10 million out of a little budget like the Ventura Unified School District has.

“We should be outraged.”

Most people just pay attention to all this by how it affects them personally. If you have a child in the public schools in California, expect bigger class sizes, no new textbooks, fewer supplies and technology, less remedial help, reduced maintenance and less emphasis on programs such as arts, music and physical education. Some familiar faces in teaching, staff and administration will be gone.

“About the only thing schools won’t have less of is testing,” said Ventura Unified Educators Association President Steve Blum. “The more-and-more testing crowd made sure state testing will be untouched.

“All this together is not good. This generation’s shortsighted approach to preparing the next generation for the future is sad.”