A Governor Without Leverage?
Here’s a question, a real question, not a rhetorical question: does Jerry Brown have a hammer?
If he does, I don’t see it. As the governor pushes for his budget of cuts and tax increases and a June special election, what leverage does he have over the legislature to get what he wants?
More specifically, what can he really do to legislative Republicans who – to listen to them – are so devoted to the freedom of Californians that they dare not let Californians vote on tax increases?
Department of Hypocrisy: Card Check and the Parent Trigger
If you have a taste for hypocrisy, the controversy over the
parent trigger law is delicious.
Particularly
when considered in light of a running controversy over a similar principle in a
different context, the so-called "card check" power for union organizing.
What are
these two things?
The parent
trigger is a new California law that allows anyone who gathers signatures from
a majority of parents at a school to demand big changes in the school, including
the takeover of the school by a charter company. While the regulations remain
to be worked out, the parent trigger is at this point mostly unregulated. The
petitions are not secret, not are the signatures. Parent organizers don’t have
to inform the school district or anyone like that. (And in the first test case,
in Compton, the organizers worked secretly).
"Card check" refers to the
legislation, pursued by the labor movement, to permit the organizing of
workplaces via the signing of cards by a majority of employees in the
workplace. This would be a change from the current federal system requiring
secret ballot elections.
Mic the Bear Speaks!
"Hey, it’s Mic," growled the voice on the other end of the
phone.
"Who?" I replied, not recognizing
the voice or the 916 area code number.
"Don’t you read the papers?" came the voice.
"Mic. The Bronze Bear that sits outside the governor’s office. Remember, Arnold
bought me in Colorado back in ’09 and shipped me to the Capitol. Now I’m the
only transition story anyone cares about."
A transcript of our interview follows:
FOX & HOUNDS DAILY: Why you calling, Mic?
MIC: Every journalist in the state is writing about my
future, but they never ask me any questions, even though I’m standing right
there next to them in the hallway, whenever they stake out the governor’s
office. So I thought I’d reach out and give an interview. And I wanted to give
a scoop to a web site that loves animals enough to put a couple of friendly
species in its name.
Hey, Jerry: What Gain Do We Get For All This Pain?
In his budget unveiling Monday, Gov. Jerry Brown was very much like the doctor I hope will sit with me at my bedside when the illness is terminal: gentle, funny and honest about the fact that I only have a short-time left.
Here’s the problem: Brown’s demeanor, not to mention his budget proposal, didn’t fit California – a young place with a long future ahead of it.
He talked convincingly about all the pain ahead of us – the cuts to every program, the tax increases needed to prevent things from being worse. And he then stopped right there – and never convincingly connected the budget cuts of today to a better future.
Jerry, California stands ready to take the pain. But how will the pain get us to a better place eventually?
F&H Ballot Measure Rankings – Top 5 Picks *Updated 9/17*
Let’s Use Costa’s Bad Initiative for Good
California needs more revenues. One obvious place to get them: Washington DC. But the feds have their own problems and aren’t eager to oblige. How to get their attention?
Ted Costa’s new initiative offers a way.
Yes, this is the initiative that would alter presidential politics in favor of Republicans by switching California from a winner-take-all state (with all electoral votes going to the statewide winner) to a state in which the winner in each Congressional district would get one electoral vote. This would break the current Democratic stranglehold on the state’s 55 electoral votes and give roughly 20 of those votes to the Republicans – a sea change in presidential elections.
This is a partisan idea that’s bad policy…
And perhaps the perfect weapon to wield against the Obama administration and the Democrats in service of getting more federal money for California.
5 Head-Scratching Zen Riddles for Jerry Brown
California new governor Jerry Brown famously traveled to Japan in the 1980s to study Zen Buddhism. Asked by a public radio station last year what Zen had taught him, he replied: “Illusions are endless and our job as human beings is to cut them down.”
In that spirit, I offer Brown five head-scratching Zen riddles that we must hope he can answer one day. Zen riddles, or koans, are stories, statements or questions that can’t be understood by rational thinking.
5. The master said: “Zen is a man hanging from a tree over a cliff. He is holding on to a twig with his teeth. His hands hold no branch. His feet find no branch. Up on the cliff-edge a man shouts at him: ‘Why did you run for governor again?’”’
4. If he gives the public employees what they ask for, he is lost. If he says no, he is still lost. What must he do?
3. A state government has been cutting its budget for years. This budget consists mostly of money for local governments. If a new governor gives the local governments control over their money – and then offers them much less money – how long will it take to draft the recall petitions?
2. If a state is ungovernable, does a new governor make a sound?
1. Prop 98.
Will his failures save the state?
Originally published in the Los Angeles Times.
As he leaves office, Arnold Schwarzenegger is emphasizing his successes as governor. But it is his failures that need more public attention, because they may represent his greatest and most lasting contribution to California.
To understand this governorship, one must recognize a fundamental dichotomy. On matters in which Schwarzenegger had a healthy amount of control — orders he could execute with a pen, legislation that could pass with a simple majority of the Legislature, even ballot initiatives he could champion and pay for personally — the governor has much to brag about. He can point to landmark climate change legislation, bipartisan appointments made on merit, infrastructure bonds that represent a down payment on the rebuilding of California, workers’ compensation reform and voter-approved political reforms to the redistricting process and primary election rules.
But on fiscal and budgetary matters, Schwarzenegger suffered defeat after defeat. The state’s fiscal record after his seven years — California has the same budget deficit now as in 2003, with a much larger debt — has led commentators across the political spectrum to write him off as a failed governor. That conclusion has a factual basis — and is deeply wrong. And it obscures the most interesting and important lesson of his governorship. Put simply: The sheer number and surpassing scale of Schwarzenegger’s failures to fix the state budget constitute a grand and peculiar success, especially if Californians heed the lessons they provide.
California Office Pool 2011
The late, great New York Times columnist William Safire made a habit of writing a year-end column he called Office Pool. In it, Safire offered, multiple-choice style, a series of possible news events that could take place in the year ahead. At the column’s end, he let you know which ones he thought actually would occur.
Safire’s focus was Washington, though he delved into culture and sports too. Here we do California Office Pool, for the second year. My picks are at the end. (Last year, I picked the Ron George resignation but got very little else right). Be sure to make your predictions, and clip n’ save (or bookmark and save) so we can see how we did at the end of 2010.
1. At the end of 2011, Gov. Jerry Brown’s chief of staff will be:
A. Anne Gust Brown, unofficially with no one holding the title
B. Anne Gust Brown, officially
C. Jim Humes
D. Gray Davis
E. Susan Kennedy
F. Gavin Newsom
G. Tom Quinn
Californian of the Year 2011: Pedro Ramirez
Let’s start with the person who is not my Californian of the
year: Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. For a guy in his mid-20s who isn’t even from
California, Zuckberg has gotten too much attention already.
But that
doesn’t mean that the Californian of the Year (an august title that comes with
a cash prize of nothing) can’t be a young person, or come from the technology
world, or be an immigrant to our state. California is a place where different
people and different cultures are married together, so my four runners-up are
like a marriage gift.
– Something Old: Jerry Brown and his
(much younger) wife Anne pulled off the political feat of the year, turning
back Meg Whitman’s $160 million campaign.
– Something New: The Democratic
consultant Jude Barry and the founders of the Silicon Valley start-up Verafirma
developed and pushed an electronic signature technology that could open up
politics by making signature gathering for initiative petitions and voter
registration easier and cheaper. The state’s political elite, which doesn’t
want a more inclusive and inexpensive politics, is fighting back, particularly
its labor movement, which foolishly put on Barry on a list of the banned.