If You’re Going to Appoint a Placeholder…

In the past week, state pols have been speculating about the next big job that could be open in California: lieutenant governor.

Assuming John Garamendi wins a seat in Congress, all sorts of potential replacements have been discussed. Bob Hertzberg. Abel Maldonado. Dean Florez. Tom Campbell. But all of those folks have political futures – or think they do. The legislature might stand in the way of giving the job to someone with ambitions. Instead, the governor is seen as likely to appoint someone without future political ambitions. A placeholder.

I’m all for that. The governor also might leave the chair open, as a way of making a statement. It’s not at all clear the state needs a lieutenant governor. In fact, the state’s division of executive authority among various elected officials – lt. gov, attorney general, treasurer, controller, insurance commissioner, superintendent of public instruction – has been something less than a success. This division of authority creates conflict and undermines accountability. As in so many areas of California government, it’s often not clear who has the executive authority on a particular issue. (See the recent dispute between the controller and governor over furloughs).

Why the People Should Rewrite the Constitution

There’s been a lot of talk recently about how delegates might be selected to a constitutional convention.

The state constitution provides a method: elections. "Delegates to a constitutional convention shall be voters elected from districts as nearly equal in population as may be practicable."

The last constitutional convention, in 1878 and 1879, offered elections with a twist. 120 of the 152 delegates were elected from districts (representing counties). The other 32 were elected at large. When the then-governor showed up, several delegates yelled at him, claiming that they had a popular mandate to be there and he had none. (The governor quickly left his post as chair).

Recently, several folks (including Steve Hill of the New America Foundation, which employs me) have suggested that the constitutional convention delegates be selected, wholly or in part, randomly from the citizenry.

Death and Insanity

I’ve been starting to dig into the primary sources on California’s last constitutional convention in 1879. First impression: If past is prologue, expect our next convention to be long and difficult.

Another lesson: you don’t necessarily end a convention with the same delegates you start with. Four delegates to the 1879 convention died between the election establishing the convention and the conclusion of the convention. Another delegate, Jehu Berry, a Democrat from Siskiyou and Modoc counties, had to replaced because of "insanity."

A few other highlights:

  • The delegates – there were (120 elected to represent counties, the rest elected at large from the state’s four Congressional districts – we were a bit smaller then) – were paid mileage and per diem for 100 days, under the rules of the convention. But the convention went 127 days anyway.

We Already Have a Business Model for News: The Casino

Rupert Murdoch said last week that his newspapers are going to start charging for on-line content. Good luck with that.

Yes, the Wall Street Journal, which is part of his News Corp, has some of its content behind a pay wall. That works because the Journal provides financial information that people have to have – and that they can’t get elsewhere.

In other words, if you’re going to charge for content on the web, you need to have people who need their fix of what you’re selling. You need addicts. The successful media organization in such a world is like an entity that sells drugs or gambling. You want to be a casino.

The casino analogy applies in another way.

Arnold’s Debt to Eunice

Originally published in the Daily Beast

Eunice Kennedy Shriver is likely to be most remembered for her blood relations, especially her politician brothers John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Teddy Kennedy.

In California, she has a lesser-known but crucial role: as the state’s most important mother-in-law.

Eunice’s son-in-law, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, has described her as his mentor and strongest political supporter. He’s not exaggerating. Without her, there never would have been an Arnold governorship.

Why Do California Conservatives Ignore Uncle Milton?

The late economist Milton Friedman was fond of saying: “The property tax is one of the least bad taxes, because it’s levied on something that cannot be produced — that part that is levied on the land.”

He said almost those exact same words to me four years ago during an interview about his relationship with Gov. Schwarzenegger – and about his history with California ballot initiatives.

When the subject turned to Prop 13, which he had strongly supported in 1978, Friedman said he thought the measure had proven to be “a mixed bag.” He did not regret his vote for Prop 13 because it had sent a tax-cutting message that was important for that time.

“You’re probably too young to realize it,” he told me (he was right — I was 5 in June 1978), “but in those days, government was the answer to every problem. Very few people think that now.”

Whitman’s Long War

Steve Poizner and Tom Campbell each ramped up their gubernatorial campaigns before Meg Whitman. Their calculation seemed to be that getting in early, they could gain an important edge.

Last week’s financial reports cast doubt on that strategy. By starting early, the Republican contenders turned the nomination contest into a long war. Such fights often are won by the army with more resources, and that army belongs to Whitman. The former eBay chief raised $6.7 million between Feb. 9 and June 30 – on top of millions of her own contributions.

Poizner and Campbell still should be able to compete. But the length of the campaign may work against them. They may have to devote more time to fundraising just to remain in the game, while Whitman, with a huge financial advantage, is free to focus on rounding up endorsements and rolling out policy proposals. One potential opportunity for Poizner and Campbell is high-volume, small-donor fundraising via Internet and social networks. Whitman hasn’t done much of this yet – her average contribution was about $5,900.

Wouldn’t It Be Nice to Have Prop 65 Now?

In 2004, California’s local governments were well on their way to protecting their tax dollars from state raids. They’d work for years to write and qualify a ballot initiative of their own, Prop 65, that would have forced legislative leaders to win voter approval before taking or borrowing major local tax revenues for state purposes. It also had tough language limiting the state’s ability to impose mandates on local governments without reimbursements.

By my reading, Prop 65 would have made the local government piece of the current budget deal virtually impossible. But Prop 65 lost.

Why? Local governments never campaigned against their own measure. Instead, the locals struck a deal with the governor and legislature on a compromise measure, Prop 1A that appeared on the ballot alongside Prop 65. The locals promised as part of the deal to tell voters to go no on 65, and yes on 1A.

Lamar Odom: The New Poster Child for Tax Reform?

Is California’s tax system about to cost the Los Angeles Lakers a star player?

Perhaps.
There’s long been a dispute about why high-income people leave California. Some say that high taxation and regulation drive businesses and rich people out of the state. Others pour cold water on such claims, and note that poor people leave California at a much faster rate than do the rich. The controversy isn’t settled in part because there’s little objective data on why people leave California. The state doesn’t conduct a census of ex-Californians.

So we’re left to the world of anecdote, which brings us to Lamar Odom.

Reading Arnold’s Mind Again

After months of waiting for another chance to use the New America Foundation’s mind-reading machine (the boys back at DC headquarters have been hogging it for use on Ahmadinejad), I finally got some time with it last week, and pointed it in the direction of the governor’s head.

Here’s what the machine spit out:

“It’s kind of nice being a Republican again.

I almost left the party, you know. Some of my genius advisors wanted me to do that before the special election—they thought it’d be easier to sell the measures if I were a decline to state. Maybe they were right. The GOP is in a bad place. But what I’ve learned in my second term is that the only thing worse than being a Republican these days is being a Democrat.

My personality and celebrity is so big that the media, or what’s left of it, is missing the real story.

Here’s the tale in a nutshell: I tried to give Democrats what they say they want– universal health care and higher taxes. I did this at huge political cost to myself.

And they said no.