World Problems Affect California Politics
Certain images and situations developing around the world recently directly and indirectly play on the politics in the nation-state of California.
Already involved directly in the governor’s race are the troubles of investment firm, Goldman Sachs. Meg Whitman’s stint on the Goldman Sachs board and her involvement in the financial process known as “spinning” has given fodder for the Poizner campaign to deliver sharp attacks. The Goldman Sachs saga has also touched Democratic candidate Jerry Brown for inroads the financial firm had with the City of Oakland when Brown was mayor, and Brown’s sister Kathleen’s working relationship with Goldman Sachs.
Expect to hear the name Goldman Sachs bounced around in campaign ads and mailers over the next five months.
The oil spill threatening the Gulf Coast states will undercut the effort to move forward with drilling at Tranquillon Ridge off of Santa Barbara. While Governor Schwarzenegger initially stated he would continue to pursue the goal of drilling at T-Ridge despite the spill, resistance clearly stiffened against the project because of the massive spill. The governor announced yesterday he was pulling his support for the T-Ridge project.
Draft Gross for Governor
It’s been a theme of this column that the current contest for California governor is a Seinfeld campaign. The three leading candidates – two Republicans and one Democrat – aren’t addressing the profound questions posed by the state’s fundamental and crippling governmental dysfunction. They’re offering personal attacks when they should be talking about how to rescue California from its current crisis.
So, is there a better choice out there?
Probably not. The system itself is so broken that a governor has such limited power – particularly in fiscal matters, which require two-thirds votes – that the state’s future is likely to be roughly the same no matter who wins the election.
That future is bleak: more and more waves of budget cuts that hurt important institutions such as the university system, more accounting gimmicks to paper over persistent deficits, and more borrowing. Debt service is already the fastest-rising part of the budget. The next governor, whether he or she wants to or not, will be managing debt and decline.
When you look at that unhappy reality, I can think of one person in the state best suited for that kind of job: Bill Gross.
Proposition 14 Will Not Do Much to Erode Democratic Dominance in California
Given the disgruntled mood of Californians toward Sacramento, it is no surprise that reform is in the air. Proposition 14 on the ballot in the June primary was placed there by a reluctant legislature to secure the vote of then-Senator Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria) for the 2009 budget deal. Maldonado’s idea would eliminate party primaries with the hope that political strife in California would decline if more moderate legislators were elected, assuming, of course, the effectiveness of a Proposition 14 election system to produce more centrist elected officials.
Will change result if Proposition 14 is approved by voters?
Certainly, voters would have more choice in a Proposition 14 primary, because any voter could cast a vote for any candidate, without regard to anyone’s party affiliation or lack thereof. And even in top two run offs between two members of the same party, candidates will have to appeal to voters beyond the party faithful, and far fewer races will have results that are preordained after the primary.
800,000 Californians sign to put CA’s economy first and signal ‘welcome mat’ for manufacturers
The campaign to suspend AB 32’s global warming regulations until California’s economy and unemployment recovers submitted double the signatures needed today to qualify the "California Jobs Initiative" for the November ballot.
The initiative got more than 800,000 signatures, far above the 433,971 needed. The state’s citizens understand that implementing AB 32 at the right time in the right way is not an anti-environment position. It’s a path to improve our economy first through job growth — with high wage and ‘green’ manufacturing jobs at the center of that recovery — and a way to see if the rest of the country will follow with their own global warming mandates. Today’s announcement makes clear that the California voters don’t want to go it alone on costly greenhouse gas reductions.