Minority Rule It is Not
In an effort to undercut the two-thirds vote requirement to pass a state budget and to raise taxes, opponents are attempting to change the language of the debate. Instead of the two-thirds vote being called a “supermajority” the opponents want to emphasize that “minority rule” runs California’s government.
Minority rule it is not. The rule to pass the budget and raise taxes was established by a majority vote of the people and can be changed by a majority vote of the people.
UC Berkeley linguistics professor George Lakoff filed an initiative to reduce the two-thirds legislative vote on the budget and taxes to a majority vote. In declaring that California is run by “minority rule,” he told the New York Times “It’s not about raising or lowering taxes; it’s about democracy and letting the people decide.”
The Crazy Glue Governor, And The Real Shame of California
Good news. We finally have a bipartisan consensus on what
ails California. Everything, absolutely everything, is Gov. Schwarzenegger’s
fault.
Even
when the governor is right.
His current effort to extract more
money from Washington DC – a righteous cause that has gone over like a lead
Goodyear Blimp – has brought the crazy glue governor’s problem (everything
sticks to him) into sharp relief.
Exhibit 1 of the problem: The folks
at the progressive Calitics blog, in a post denouncing Arnold as the "worst governor ever," agree with him: that
California, not to mention other states, need more money from the feds. Now to
be fair, they don’t like the way Arnold has gone about seeking the money, which
involves the radically straightforward strategy of pressuring our
representatives in Congress to come up with more money.
California Job Recovery: Still Waiting
The California jobs picture remains discouraging. Data released on Friday showed that the unemployment rate for December remained at 12.4%, hovering around this same level for about five months. But nearly 40,000 jobs were lost last month, bringing California’s overall employment to a level not seen in more than a decade. California has shed more than a million jobs since the beginning of the recession, losing nearly seven percent of its employment base.
Job losses for this recession are still outpacing the last two California downturns, and we probably have not yet hit bottom. We’re two years into this recession: recovery from the 1991 defense realignment recession didn’t begin until the 34th month; job losses from the 1990 recession after the tech bubble didn’t bottom out until 28 months into the downturn.
Legislature Struggles For Agreement on Package of ‘Reforms’
State lawmakers are struggling to find consensus on a package of changes, such as switching to a two-year budget cycle, which they hope will improve the operation of the Legislature and the state as a whole, burnishing their tarnished image in the process.
The laundry list, presented on an internal PowerPoint obtained by California’s Capitol, includes increasing oversight of state agencies and departments, switching to performance-based budgeting to measure program success and requiring initiatives to include new revenue to cover their costs.
A hearing of the Senate and Assembly Select Committees on Improving State Government to discuss the proposals was canceled January 19, apparently because of a lack of agreement over items on the list.
The committees were created in 2009 to conduct hearings and propose changes to make government at all levels more efficient.