It’s hard to respond when someone misreads you as thoroughly
as Joel
Fox did in attacking a piece
my California Crackup co-author Mark Paul and I wrote for the Sacramento
Bee. You’re forced to restate all your points one-by-one. So you might be
better off saying – read my piece. Or better yet, read my book.
So I’ll say those things. But I’ll also say this: Fox’s
attack proved our overarching point: that everyone in California – across the
political spectrum – has become myopic and obsessed with defending their little
piece of the governing system, even though the governing system works against
the things they say they care most about.
Let’s look at some of the biggest howlers in Fox’s piece:
-Fox says our piece
described "Proposition 13 as the cause for all the ills that befall
California."
-Nonsense. Unfortunately a thoughtless editor at the Bee put
a headline on the story that said that. But we didn’t write the headline (nor
see it before publication-my first thought was, Boy, is that a terrible
headline?). And the piece doesn’t say that.
Fox wants to pigeonhole us as Prop 13 haters who love taxes.
That’s an easy way to dismiss people. But that’s not what we’re saying at all.
Our message: Prop 13 is the base of a system – constructed
by the left, the right, the center, by spending lobbies and anti-tax lobbies
and environmental lobbies and unions – that frustrates any sort of democratic
accountability. Among the key whips and chains are Prop 98, the education
lobby’s spending measure, and a host of other spending mandates and other
fiscal rules approved by voters.
The key point: while different people fight over different
spoils within the system, no one is really working to change the system. And
that’s tragic. The system is so complicated and puts so many restrictions on
governance that it doesn’t much matter who you vote for anymore. All the big
fiscal decisions have already been made.
-Fox accuses us of
omitting things that we didn’t omit.
. Fox says we didn’t mention the Serrano decisions, school
equalization court decisions that liberals applauded in the ‘70s (and have been
a cause of the centralization). In fact, we referred to those decisions (though
not by name) in talking about how liberals embrace this system because of
equalization.
He says we ignore the role the legislature and others played
in their response to Prop 13. Total nonsense. Our whole piece is how everybody
has built a centralized system on Prop 13. It is the response to 13, and the
system we built on that (and the pre-13 structure) that is the core of our
piece.
-Fox suggests we’re
blaming Jarvis and Gann for everything.
Joel, is your response here Pavlovian? Re-read the piece. We
blame everybody. Left, right, center. Interest groups. Lobbyists, consultants,
reporters. (I include myself in that). Voters are responsible too. We are all
authors of this system. And we all cling to pieces of it, even though it
doesn’t work.
-Fox writes: To the
claim that public employee unions’ increased power and benefits can be laid at
the feet of Proposition 13, I would just say look to Wisconsin. No Proposition
13 there where a big fight is playing out over public union power. Look to New
Jersey and Governor Chris Christie’s clash with the public employee unions. No
Proposition 13 there. The same can be said in a number of states.
Fox’s thinking here is exactly backwards. Wisconsin and New
Jersey make our point, not his.
In those two states, voters installed elected officials who
wanted to take on the unions. Those governors were able to take on the unions
and win. Collective bargaining was eliminated in Wisconsin. Teachers’ unions
were brought to heel in New Jersey.
That kind of democratic change is simply not possible in
California. The unions simply have too much power here. The source of that
power is our centralized system that allows them to dominate local government
and to frustrate any statewide elected official who would dare take on their
power. We could elect a Walker or a Christie here, and nothing would change.
Wisconsin and New Jersey are different precisely because
they don’t have our system.
-Fox accuses us of
wanting to go back to the ‘good’ old days before Prop 13. "Mathews and Paul say
let’s go back to those "good" old days? I don’t think so."
Here, Fox is absolutely right. What were we thinking? I mean, who would want
to go back to those bad old days of the 1950s and 60s, when California’s
economy grew and we built terrific infrastructure and educated generations of
college students cheaply?
Everyone knows that today is the best of days in California.
The fact that someone as smart as Joel Fox could argue that
we are better off now governmentally than we were 50 years ago speaks volume
about the profound confusion and self-delusion in the minds of California
elites.