Field poll suggests Brown has done a good job engaging Californians
The big news in this week’s Field Poll was that 40 percent of California Republicans favor a mix of spending cuts and tax increases to erase the state’s $26 billion shortfall. So far, none of those Republicans seems to be serving in the Legislature, but the results certainly suggest that legislative Republicans can at least vote to place a tax measure on the ballot without fear of being rejected by their base as traitors to the cause.
An even larger group of Republicans — 44 percent — say they support Jerry Brown’s proposal to extend temporary taxes due to expire this year. Fifty-five percent of Republicans oppose the idea. Overall, Brown’s proposal is leading in the poll by a margin of 61 percent to 37 percent, with nearly 7 in 10 Democrats and independents supporting the idea.
The poll suggests that Brown has done a good job engaging Californians in the discussion about the state’s fiscal predicament. Two years ago, when then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and a bipartisan group of legislative leaders took a series of budget measures to the voters, they were soundly rejected. One big reason was that the public employee unions spent heavily against the slate of measures because the unions did not like the spending limit and rainy day fund that was part of the package. But the voters were leaning that way before the unions nudged them into a landslide.
Not All Hope Is Lost: Latinos & California Republicans
The growth of the Latino vote in California should compel the
state’s Republican candidates to learn more about this growing demographic
whose share of the statewide vote has consistently grown. In the case of the 2010 election, Latino
voters cast 1.7 million votes statewide, an increase of 300,000 votes from the
2008 presidential election.
To better understand this growing constituency we completed a
survey of 400 likely California Latino voters this week to gain a clearer
picture of their attitudes on key issues and toward the Republican Party. The survey was conducted by Moore
Information, Inc. with an assist by Marty Wilson and its purpose was to begin
the process of understanding both the challenges as well as the opportunities
for future Republican candidates in gaining a greater share of the Latino
vote.
First, let’s get to the challenges that face the Republican Party
and its candidates with California Latinos by looking at the data:
Who is in Charge of All That Money?
With more than $230 billion in assets to manage and the responsibility to buy health care benefits for 1.3 million people, the taxpayers of California have a tremendous amount of money riding on the people who govern and operate the California Public Employee Retirement System (CalPERS). This week, two events at CalPERS provide taxpayers good reasons to secure their wallets and demand change.
First, the CalPERS board received an investigative report detailing the shameful, corrupt conduct of its former CEO, board members and senior staff. In concert with outside investors and middlemen, these CalPERS insiders rigged investment decisions to benefit friends, paid generous management fees to favored firms and tried to buy political support with pension fund money. Their fates will ultimately be decided in the courts, but voters will need to change the governance of all pension boards to protect themselves.
The report reveals that these public employees were playing in a Wall Street fast lane where $4 million is a small finder’s fee, $5 million is a gambling debt and private jets are used to close billion dollar deals. These unconscionable abuses were perpetrated by the board members, in direct conflict with their fiduciary duty under the state constitution to put the system’s beneficiaries’ and participants’ interests above their own. These were not rogue employees, these were unaccountable CalPERS leaders enriching themselves at the public expense.
Have We Achieved Budget ‘Singularity’?
Heard of singularity? In technology, it’s a hypothesis about the future. At some point, artificial intelligence will become so advanced that humans will lose control of their own destiny. In the darker visions, the machines we create will become more intelligent than us, and become our masters. They might even kill us.
I wonder if Californians have already achieved something like this when it comes to the budget.
The budget system has so many pieces and so many parts that it has become a machine, unaccountable to voters and unmanageable by elected officials. The machine is so complicated that it may be smarter than us. Admittedly, Californians know so little about how the budget works that surpassing us in budget intelligence isn’t that hard.
But seriously, who is managing that thing? The governor? No, he sounds exasperated that no one in the legislature will step forward to help him manage it. The Democrats? They can pass a budget on majority vote, but need some Republicans for taxes. Republicans? They complain that spending is beyond anyone’s control; a new program…er… spending limit is necessary.
Meanwhile, the budget machine with a mind of its own demands tribute – spending cuts, maybe new revenues – that hurt its citizens. If technological singularity is anything like California budget singularity, the Terminator movies may prove to be prophecy rather than art. Who knows if we can survive the machines?