UC students’ protests over tuition hikes are seriously misguided. Where have they been for the last year as California’s budget was decimated?

November 22, 2009

University of California students should be better informed. Where have they been for the last year or two as California’s economy went into the tank and the Governor and state Legislature refused to raise any taxes to balance the budget? What, exactly, do they expect UC President Yudof and the Board of Regents to do? Print money?

Students should be protesting the fact that Californians refuse any tax increases — alcohol taxes, commercial real estate taxes, and corporate income taxes to name a few — that could close the yawning budget deficit and save the world’s greatest university system from this historic decline. A quarter a drink alcohol tax alone could raise $3.5 billion a year.

Students should be protesting against the people of California — including their parents and themselves — who always seem to want something for nothing. Either we raise taxes to balance the budget or we dismantle the greatest system of higher education ever created — UC, CSU and California community colleges together — along with all our other social services.

The Legislative Analyst says that California will run $20 billion deficits through 2015, at which time there will be little left of our great state. Why don’t UC students aim their protests at the people and politicians who refuse to raise taxes and save California?

1 Comment | California, California budget, Schwarzenegger, Schwarzenneger, higher education | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by jgogek

Third-world California

May 30, 2009

Proposition 13, and the whole Proposition 13 mentality, is finally comingCalifornia motto home to roost in California. The arrogant and foolish California idea that we could have whatever we wanted without taxing ourselves to pay for it is the same kind of heedless thinking that brought America the banking and mortgage crisis.  Californians actually believe that they are overtaxed, that state government is hoarding cash or wasting it through fraud, abuse and avariciousness. But the populist idea that if we just cut waste out of government, everything would be fine is finally being proven false.

Coping with a $20 billion to $40 billion budget deficit without raising taxes means that we will lose our state parks. We will lose the safety net for the poor and disabled. People — including children — will die because they can’t afford health care and the state won’t have the money to provide it. Hospital emergency rooms will be so overcrowded that they’ll shut down. Our schools will see widespread teacher layoffs and staff layoffs.  Local governments will find their property taxes siphoned off from the state, resulting in cuts to police, fire, libraries, local parks and rec. Higher ed will be deeply cut; California’s world-leading university systems will be degraded. And on and on.

Why? Because Californians would not raise their own taxes. For the cost of a few dollars, we will turn the Golden State into a third-world country, destroy our parks and schools,  and turn the poor and disabled — including the children — out into the streets. Nice work, people of California.

1 Comment | California, Schwarzenegger | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by jgogek

Could California finally end its budget madness?

February 23, 2009

Have we had enough insanity yet? I don’t think most people in California 19budget480realize it, but the Golden State just dodged a self-created economic depression by finally passing a budget. The world’s 7th (or whatever) largest economy almost committed suicide when a legion of state employees faced layoffs, which would have led to skyrocketing home foreclosures, vital services grinding to a halt, etc.

Even with the new budget, education will be slashed, which will severely harm our state’s future economy. Anyway, the tyranny of minority rule by extremists that brought California this craziness can be stopped with three public policy changes now in the works. The good news is that any one of these policies may be profoundly beneficial. The bad news is that they each depend on ballot initiatives, which means, even if they pass, they may be subject to the law of unintended consequences.

Policy 1: A movement is afoot to get rid of the ridiculous two-thirds vote requirement to pass a budget, something California shares only with those notably progressive states of Arkansas and Rhode Island. This mandate not only allows minority rule, but it has given a platform to ideologues to hold up the state budget so they can fulfill senseless campaign pledges. In this case, Republican extremists who had foolishly pledged “no new taxes” during the worst recession in 70 years were allowed to almost turn a recession into a depression because of two-thirds vote. The California Budget Responsibility Act would amend the State Constitution from a two-thirds mandate to 55 percent (which still doesn’t make sense to me because democracy is 50 percent plus one, right? But, oh well…) This policy change attacks the budget stalemate problem head-on.

Policy 2: State Sen. Abel Maldonado, one of the few moderate Republicans in Sacramento, forced the state Legislature, in exchange for his yes-vote on the budget, to place on the ballot a constitutional amendment mandating open primaries. Under our current primary system, with our gerrymandered districts, extremists have an easy time of it because they can always get the faithful Kool-Aid drinkers out to vote in the primaries. Open primaries will allow the two top vote-getters to make it to the general election, no matter what their party. Candidates will have to appeal a much more diverse electorate, and that means moving toward the center. The result – fewer zealots in general elections. (Both the Republican Democratic parties oppose open primaries, which means they are a good idea.)

Policy 3: Last fall, California voters barely passed Proposition 11, the Voters First Act, which takes redistricting away from the state Legislature and gives it to a commission made up of five Democrats, five Republicans and four of neither party. The commissioners cannot have run for office – or have a close relative who has run for office – in the last ten years, and neither can they be lobbyists or campaign donors of more than $2,000. The multi-partisan commission will get its first chance next year. Under the current districts, state Legislative districts are gerrymandered so that incumbents win 99 percent of the time. Both Democrats and Republicans liked the gerrymandered system; even though it guaranteed a Republican minority, they supported it because it also guaranteed individuals their seats. The result of Proposition 11 should be more competitive races which means that candidates will have to campaign toward the center. The result – fewer zealots.

These measures could very well end budget stalemates, which have harmed the state’s economy and nearly destroyed our educational system.

California ranks 49th in the share of population age 25 and older that is at least a high school graduate. From 1977 and 1983, California ranked 1st among the 15 largest states on this measure.

– California Faculty Association Report, 2009

Then again, it’s hard to imagine California without a budget stalemate. The impulse for self-sabotage may just be too great.

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Posted by jgogek

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown try to shoot the messenger of California’s prison disaster

February 2, 2009

California Gov. Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown are california_prisons_1_4001
firing blanks at the messenger heralding the disaster that California prisons have become. Both the governor and attorney general asked U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson to remove J. Clark Kelso, who was appointed receiver of prison healthcare three years ago by Henderson, and return inmate medical care to state control. Schwarzenegger and Brown complain that Kelso is going to spend $8 billion to build a gold-plated health system. However, their ploy to remove Kelso probably won’t work.

Let’s set aside whether Kelso’s $8 billion plan is a good one or not and instead look at how we got into this mess and whether we’re anywhere near getting out of it. The last question is easy to answer. Judge Henderson appointed Kelso because prison healthcare in California was terrible. There’s no evidence to show that it’s improved, nor that it will any time soon, considering the state’s multibillion-dollar deficit. Why would Henderson suddenly remove the receiver when nothing has changed?

How did we get into this mess? That’s easy, too. The politicians and people of California created it by foolishly thinking that they could punish crime away — without giving any consideration to the ultimate cost and impossibility of such a plan.

With rehabilitation almost nonexistent – the public and politicians never wanted to pay for that – recidivism remains at more than 66 percent. Two out of every three people released from California prisons go back – the highest rate in the nation.  Politicians and the public thought they could scrimp on health care, drug treatment, rehabilitation, education – anything that might benefit the lives of inmates once they were released because, well, they’re inmates and they deserve only the worst. Only 7 percent of inmates receive alcohol treatment, although 42 percent have a high need for it. And only 2.5 percent of inmates who have a serious need for drug treatment actually get it. And even for those who get treatment in prison, aftercare programs when they’re on parole are wholly inadequate.

The fact is that inmates are wards of the state and the people of the state are responsible for their welfare – all 172,000 of them. The people of California have volunteered to take care of as many inmates as possible, and now they’re complaining about the cost. Maybe Californians should have thought of that before they embarked on their prison-building binge while incarcerating as many people as possible. Since 1977, about 1,000 laws have been passed increasing penalties for all sorts of crimes. California politicians run for office by touting how they got tough on crime by increasing prison sentences. And the public eats it up.

Crime rates are lower in California than they were when we started our prison building and people punishing obsession. But they are lower
everywhere, including in states that didn’t try to throw everybody behind bars. Nobody’s exactly sure why crime goes up and down.

But one thing is sure: Californians chose an impossibly expensive way to fight crime. And now, we don’t want to pay for the program we chose and we don’t have the political will to create real change. The result will be continued billions of dollars in costs for prisons (more than we pay for higher education), continued high recidivism rates and large-scale inmate releases as the system we chose collapses.

That collapse is upon us. A panel of three judges is considering whether to cap the population and release up to 52,000 inmates – with almost no rehabilitative or re-entry programs in place for them.

This whole thing is dumb public policy, folks. A child could devise a better plan.

Recommended read on prison reform on the California Progress Report.

1 Comment | Addiction, Alcohol, California, Prisons, Schwarzenegger, substance abuse | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by jgogek