Archive for the ‘California Deficit’ Category

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Small Biz Group Attacks Brown in Phony ‘Issues’ Ad

Sunday, August 15th, 2010

The Small Business Action Committee, an advocacy group run by Joel Fox, proprietor of the Fox & Hounds web site, is about to unload a $1.6 million anti-Jerry Brown ad masquerading as an “issue advocacy” ad. That’s the sneaky (unethical but legal) way to take a whack at Brown without having to disclose who the donors are.

An announcer in the ad says:

Two million Californians out of work, and Attorney General Jerry Brown makes it harder to create jobs, saying he has 1,100 attorneys ready to sue over government regulations.  As a forty-year politician, he doesn’t “get” what it takes to create jobs. As governor, he grew spending, turned a surplus into a deficit and left office with 11% unemployment. And Brown’s solution to California’s deficit: more debt, which will kill jobs.  Tell Jerry Brown we need more jobs.

When we first heard about a new ad, we sent an email to Fox asking what was up. His reply was that he was in the Midwest with limited Internet access and that “SBAC is doing issue advocacy.”

That’s BS, and our friend Joel knows it. Brown campaign manager Steve Glazer is right when he told us, “The idea that small businesses have contributed $1.6 million for this ad is ludicrous on its face. The ad is being run with the single-minded purpose of defeating Jerry Brown for governor.”

So who’s financing the ad? We don’t know. Yet. Probably not the same big-money guys who financed SBAC’s actual issue ad.

The SBAC scam is just like the phony baloney issue ad the California Chamber of Commerce tried to pass off as an issue ad a while back. Except that Joel Fox is someone you wouldn’t normally expect to be behind a hide-the-ball maneuver to work as a functionary for Meg Whitman and against Jerry Brown.

In the meantime, said Glazer: “The SBAC is acting as a front group for narrow interests who know that public disclosure would severely taint their message. This is despicable gutter politics and Joel Fox should not be involved in this sleazy activity.”

We’ve asked Joel to tell us who paid for the ad and when he tells us, we’ll tell you.

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Posted in California Deficit, California Economy, California Governor's Race, California Politics, Campaign Advertising, Jerry Brown | 3 Comments »

Meyer on Hair, Hitler; the Mysterious Boothby is MIA

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

It’s been a couple days since a California candidate stepped in muck or stuffed a foot in his mouth, but the indefatigable Tom Meyer won’t let that hamper the free exercise of his constitutional rights to vicious mockery of politicians.

The far-famed, well-coiffed and handsomely recompensed political cartoonist and Calbuzzer has spent his quiet time memorializing the best gaffes from the starting line of the 2010 general election races.

Today we present Meyer’s uniquely twisted take on Hurricane Carly’s Mean Girls complex, Krusty Brown’s Third Reich fetish and the all-star Houdini act of California’s voters.

P.S. If you’d like a full-color print of one of Meyer’s cartoons to frame and hang on your wall – just in time for the holidays! – send us a note at calbuzzer@gmail.com and we’ll fix you up in a jiffy.



Paging Ron Ziegler: General Stanley McChrystal had to perform career seppuku for the brain-dead comments he and his Animal House entourage made to Rolling Stone’s Michael Hastings – but at least Canned Stan can blame his indiscretions on having been snot-flying drunk at the time.

But what about the press guy – what’s his excuse?

The big brain behind giving Hastings unlimited access to McChrystal and his guys is a somewhat shadowy figure with a limey accent named Duncan Boothby (a phony name if there ever was one), who’s described in news accounts as a “civilian senior adviser” to the general, and who previously worked in the region for Lt. General William Caldwell.

Caldwell became a proponent of using “new media” to communicate with targeted audiences, and he began collecting civilian public affairs specialists, including Boothby, to expand the work of the military’s rigid public affairs system and to maximize the “strategic impact of new media” through a program call CAC Stratcomms. “He wanted to use media as a weapon,” one officer explained.

How’s that workin’ out for you general?

Boothby (if that is in fact his name) got fired about 12 seconds after the Rolling Stone piece made its way onto the web, and appears to have escaped Afghanistan one step ahead of the posse.

But seriously, does being forced to leave Afghanistan strike you as sufficient sanction for such a felony stupid move? Shouldn’t Duncan have to answer for this bloody mess and explain, you know, WTF WERE YOU THINKING MAN?!?

Great news, sir! I’ve arranged for a Rolling Stone reporter to hang out with you and the gang for a month!

Rolling Stone? Isn’t that where Hunter Thompson worked?

No worries, sir. Completely different publication today. Plus, my sources tell me Lady GaGa and her machine-gun tatas will be the cover so no one will even read your story anyway.

But will the boys still be able to kick back when they’re off duty?

Absolutely, sir. No problem at all.

While an anxious nation awaits the big book contract and inevitable surfacing of the alleged Boothby, perhaps as a military affairs analyst for the Rachel Maddow show, we propose that the Public Relations Society of America endow an annual prize, called The Duncan, to be presented each year to the flack who screws up his boss’s career in the most hideous way.

If no one’s performance meets the Boothby standard of excellence, the association can present the award for outstanding historic work (What about the unnamed genius who put Michael Dukakis in the tank? Who thought it was a great idea to have Sarah Palin interviewed in front of turkeys being slaughtered? Or who told BP’s CEO, “no sweat, Tony, just relax and enjoy the yacht race”?) – or even posthumously:

“Nonsense, Mr. President, you and Mrs. Lincoln deserve a fun night out. You just have a great time at the theater.”

Next 10 California Budget Challenge: The California Budget Challenge is an online simulation that lets users make the same choices that legislators face, including issues ranging from education spending to corporate taxes. The latest edition of the Budget Challenge features the most up-to-date figures from Governor Schwarzenegger’s May Revise. Once you’re finished there’s the option to send the budget to your legislator and let them know how you think the state should be run. It’s a great way to educate readers and keep them engaged in the political process here in California.

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Posted in California Budget, California Deficit, California Governor's Race, California Politics, Jerry Brown, Meg Whitman, National Politics | 2 Comments »

Yes: Candidates Will Have to Appeal to Independents

Saturday, June 5th, 2010

By Lou Cannon
Special to Calbuzz

California’s political system is broken. Hamstrung by unbending partisanship and the requirement of a two-thirds vote to pass a budget or a tax increase, a dysfunctional Legislature has persistently failed to deal with the state’s pressing problems or its debilitating structural deficit.

Reformers have responded with grandiose proposals for change, such as a constitutional convention, which have come to naught. Since the Legislature and the major political parties resist any and all reforms, Californians who want to take back their state have no choice except to make a series of incremental changes through the initiative process.

The first useful step in this process came in 2008, when voters approved Proposition 11, which will take redistricting out of the hands of the legislators and vest it in a citizen’s commission. The new districts will be drawn after this year’s census for the 2012 election. The next step is to pass Proposition 14, opening up elections so that the top two candidates in the primary, regardless of party, would advance to the general election. This provision would apply to most state and federal elective offices but not to presidential primaries.

Proposition 11 and Proposition 14 are best understood as companion pieces. Proposition 11 was needed because legislators protect their careers at the expense of the rest of us by gerrymandering their districts to protect themselves and their parties. The cozy, one-sided districts they created assured that there would be no competition in the general election. This effectively disenfranchised independents (known as “declines-to-state” in California), most of whom do not participate in the primaries. It also tended to drive both major parties to extremes.

Liberals have a disproportionate advantage in the Democratic primaries, conservatives an even more decisive edge in most GOP primaries. Moderates in either party who might appeal to independents in the general election had so little chance in the primaries that most of them chose not to run. As a result, many Democratic officeholders tend to be reflexively liberal—or at least in thrall to the public employee unions who finance them. Many Republicans, on the other hand, are rigid conservatives who stand ready to block even the most reasonable budget if it contains a whiff of a tax hike.

For the past decade, budget compromises have occurred only when a GOP legislator broke with his party on tax issues. The occasional courageous Republican who did so incurred the wrath of his party and often the loss of his job.

Anyone old enough (as I am) to remember the creativity of the California legislature in the mid-20th Century, when it was acclaimed as the best in the nation, can’t help being appalled by the present collection of ideologues and party hacks. Proposition 14 could change this by greatly increasing the number of independent-minded moderates in the candidate pool. Every voter would receive the same ballot, putting independents on an equal footing with party regulars.

Such a ballot might also encourage the parties to forth candidates of broad appeal to assure themselves a spot on the November ballot. There is, of course, no special virtue to being a moderate. On any given issue moderates can be as wrong (or right) as liberals or conservatives. But Proposition 14 would level the playing field. Polls show that some 40 percent of the voters consider themselves to be moderates, and they are conspicuously underrepresented in Sacramento. Proposition 14 is an incremental reform that would give sensible centrists a chance.

Lou Cannon of Santa Barbara is the foremost biographer of Ronald Reagan in the world, and a former political writer for the Washington Post and the San Jose Mercury News.

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Posted in California Deficit, California Politics, Proposition 11, Proposition 14 | 9 Comments »

Meyer on Candidates’ Plans to Cut Deficit; eWhopper

Saturday, May 29th, 2010

World class editorial cartoonist and Calbuzzer Tom Meyer today portrays the blinding insights California’s would-be governors have about the state’s chronic budget deficit. Sadly, he may be giving the candidates WAY too much credit.

With California facing a $20 billion deficit this year, and seemingly for every out year through the middle of the next century, you’d think candidates campaigning to be the state’s chief executive would have developed some thoughtful, innovative, fresh ideas on the subject.

You’d be wrong, that’s for sure

Republican front-runner Meg Whitman, time traveling back to Ronald Reagan’s first race for governor in 1966, assures voters with a straight face that she can deal with the red ink in a jiffy, simply by eliminating “waste, fraud, abuse.” Yes, we heard her speak to a crowd the other day and she actually said those words.

GOP rival Steve Poizner, meanwhile, has at least put forward a plan on the budget; unfortunately, as Meyer sharply shows, the plan it defies the laws of arithmetic.

As for Krusty the General Brown, well, his big plan to date has been to invite legislative Democrats and Republicans over the governor’s mansion, have Ann cook up a big pot of brown rice and urge everyone to be nice to each other. Oh, wait a minute, that’s what his blackboard scribbling say in hieroglyphics.

I’m paying for the ads, I have to watch ‘em too? Kudos to Politico’s Jonathan Martin, who caught eMeg flat-ass fibbing when she tried to tell him that she wasn’t pandering on illegal immigration, as clearly evidenced by the fact that she’d never run a spot with an image of the border fence in it. Uh, what Ms. Whitman meant to say….

Meg’s also took the opportunity Friday to lie about her position on offshore oil drilling. After switching her position in an interview with Calbuzz last week  she now insists she’s ALWAYS been against offshore drilling. That would be untrue.

Oh yeah, and here’s the shot of the border fence that eMeg has never put into a commercial (taken from her ad).

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Posted in California Budget, California Deficit, California Governor's Race, California Politics, Immigration, Jerry Brown, Meg Whitman, Steve Poizner | No Comments »

Jean Ross: “The Battle for California’s Future”

Friday, May 14th, 2010

Today the Governor will release his final “May Revision” – the document that updates budget estimates and policy proposals.

Release of the May Revision traditionally signals the end of spring training and the shift of budget season into high gear. And as much as we might have hoped otherwise, we’re not surprised by Schwarzenegger flack Aaron McLear’s statement that the May Revision would include no tax increases and “absolutely terrible cuts.”

Since January, much of the smoke from the smoke and mirrors “solutions” proposed by the Governor has dissipated. The state is likely to receive $3 billion to $5 billion in federal funds – but not the $7 billion unrealistically assumed by the Governor in January.

The state has won some legal challenges to past budget-balancing actions, but lost others. Unrealistic hopes that strong April tax collections would ease pressures on the budget have also dissipated, and the harsh reality of the state’s fiscal situation has begun to emerge from the Capitol fog.

We generally try to avoid hyperbole, but this year, it is fair to say that the battle over the budget that will soon begin is nothing short of a battle for California’s future.

Our public institutions and structures are battered, some near the breaking point.

Per student spending in California’s public schools has fallen so deeply as a result of recent budget cuts that we now trail the rest of the country by a greater margin than at any point in the last 40 years. Student fees have more than doubled in less than a decade in the California State University and University of California systems and more increases are in store, while 2009-10 budget cuts closed the door to the CSU and UC for nearly 20,000 students.

Cash assistance grants have been cut to 1989 levels and purchase half what they did 20 years ago at a time when one out of every seven mothers in the labor market finds herself without work.

While a litany of budget facts can be mind-numbing, they are also informative. The state is on track to spend $18 billion less this year than it did just two years ago – yet an almost identical gap remains. Just how large is that gap? Almost exactly equal to what the state spends annually for prisons and all higher education from community colleges to the UC and CSU and student aid.

By taking revenues off the table, the Governor places California firmly on a fast track race to the bottom. The glory days of California’s past were the direct result of investments in public structures from schools to transportation and health care. The state has not, and cannot, compete in a global economy with a workforce made up of individuals who were homeless or lacked health care as children and who were turned away from college as young adults.

By taking revenues off the table, the Governor also ignores one of the two major causes of California’s current budget crisis.

While the still-pervasive impact of the economic downturn is certainly the primary source of our current fiscal woes, over the longer term, a systematic erosion of state revenues – the $10 billion plus annual cost of tax cuts enacted over the past 15 years – ensures that the state faces bad budget times even when the economy is strong.

This last point bears mentioning, since the Legislature kicked off this year’s budget battles by digging an even deeper hole, approving hundreds of millions of dollars of new tax breaks on top of the billions of dollars of tax cuts enacted as part of the 2008 and 2009 budget agreements. All of which brings to mind the cover art from an old New Yorker in which artist Edward Sorel reserves the deepest ring of hell for “politicians who promised to cut taxes and balance the budget.”

There will be no happy ending to this year’s story.

The problem is too big and the options available just too few. However, there can be a better ending than the one promised by the Governor’s spokesperson. Craft the inevitable spending cuts so that they preserve the core capacity of the structures and policies that have served California well in the past.

Start the state on the path towards doing what it should and must do right: building a healthy future and providing a safety net for those who need one when all else fails. Go back to Washington, again, hand-in-hand with governors and lawmakers from around the country to make the point that prominent economists have made: state and local budget cuts threaten to derail an already fragile economic recovery.

Finally, the Legislature should admit that it made a mistake and roll back recent dark of night tax cuts. Lawmakers should also close loopholes in the sales tax that reward businesses that don’t create a single job in California and allow resource extractors to go untaxed.

So as the battle begins, the question remains: if this is a battle for California’s future, who’s going to fight for the future?

Jean Ross is the executive director of the California Budget Project, a Sacramento-based non-profit research group.

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Posted in Arnold Schwarzenegger, California Budget, California Deficit, California Economy, California Education, California Politics | 6 Comments »

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