tinyurl.com/qfzdpn -> egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/california-will-survive-its-crackup/
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Timothy Egan - A New York Times Blog May 20, 2009, 10:00 pm California Will Survive Its Crackup SACRAMENTO, Calif. The prison guard union, having swelled its well-paid ranks after voter mandates helped to produce a system where 750,000 Californians are either locked up, on parole or on probation, was upset at Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for balking at their demands. The union trolled a billboard around town of a nearly naked and decidedly unbuff Governator in a thong. Every year, enough people to fill three Dodger Stadiums apply for jobs in California incarceration, the fastest-growing public expense. This spring, trying to keep the prison guards and other state workers from taking to the streets with cuts from a $21 billion deficit, the governor said voters had to pass emergency budget measures or the state would become "a poster child for dysfunction." And so an extraordinarily small number of voters showed up Tuesday to add to the mess. The vote, the electoral equivalent of a "Braveheart" bum flash, gave all sides something to sneer at. But the rejection of those ballot measures should not be read as another California death notice. Such obituaries have been around at least since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and they've always been wrong. Chaos from the natural world (wildfires, earthquakes, droughts) and from the political system are background noise, the camouflage of California. The reason one in eight Americans live here -- up from 1in 11 in 1960 -- has nothing to do with what happens in Sacramento. The other states may hate California, and as a native Pacific Northwesterner I was raised to despise the "sunbaked barbarians," as Seattle columnist Emmett Watson called them. Over the last half-century the share of Americans who live in California has increased by nearly 30 percent. The Golden State still grows by 420,000 people a year -- to 38 million now -- despite decades of Armageddon prophecies. It's a wonderful state, from the High Sierra to Death Valley, from the redwoods of the rain forest to the Joshua trees of the desert. The legislators, term-limited yet complacent, long ago threw in the towel. Now the citizens have had enough, expressing a pox-on-both-houses rejection Tuesday of every major ballot measure except the one that limited pay raises for politicians. Think of Italy -- which reminds me of California in so many ways -- and its chronic inability to form a government. That's California, with even better food and no parliamentary system. l can't blame the special interests: teachers, prison guards, the asphalt lobby. They shackled the tax system back in 1978 with Proposition 13, limiting how much government could take from a homeowner. But then, in succeeding years, voters passed laws that packed California's prisons with criminals (many of them petty) but also mandated that the education system get a lion's share of the budget. On top of that, the voters made it nearly impossible to pass a budget. Once in a while they act as a brake to some particular act of legislative lunacy. But more often they're absentee rulers, at odds with themselves. This year, they have no easy solutions for a broken system that gets half its revenue from a state income tax. The result is like California weather -- in wet years, it's awash in green; But voters have handcuffed the politicians, and now they've told them to go away -- we hate you, both parties, don't bother us any more. Never before have polls shown the state's elected officials held in such low regard by voters. And here in the capitol, the feeling is mutual -- though no politician would dare say so. It's time to break up, start seeing new people -- and no, they can't be just friends. That billboard of the governor in sagging pecs and tiny thong is a perfect symbol of what the voters created. And those prison guards would never have grown so powerful had voters not decided to swell the penal system without a way to pay for it. It's easy to say that California is an "ungovernable state," as the oh-so-snidely-erudite Economist did in February. Or that its role as a harbinger of America's future "now has an increasingly dark urgency," as the equally erudite George Will did. But British magazines and Beltway pundits often mistake a Pacific pulse for a flat line. In 2007, California had more babies, 566,352, than Wyoming has people. If most of them are brown -- another target of end-of-days critics -- it simply shows that this state's best renewable resource is always changing colors. Remember that California's motto is "Eureka" -- I found it.
We are in a mess we Californians have created, and its not until we accept we made a huge mistake,that it will get better. We are upset and vote without thinking what the repercussions can be..... hopefully these voters didn't make it any worse, otherwise the voters will have to move into the prisons to have a place to sleep and eat.
Link When the fat years of the dot com boom and real estate bubble happened our govt overspent & hired more than it should have and eschewed an adequate rainy day fund. I do not feel sorry about letting go of those who should have never been hired for the first place. For overcrowded prisons -I suggest electronic ankle bracelets and early release for all non-violent offenders, deport all illegal prisoners and fire some guards & reduce outrageous perks. For education class size -the feds should pick up the WHOLE tab for educating any children of illegals THEY let through the border rather than taking ever more chunks out of my property while I look for another job. CA govt employees are among the highest paid in the country and that is just so wrong in this environment.
Link You are oh so right about mischief-making ballot initiatives. Government needs a sense of the big picture, and requires horsetrading. You can't just go to the ballot box and vote yes for this program, and no for the money to fund it. I grew up in California in the 60's- when it had great schools, a great univrsity system, and before it was destroyed by sprawl. If Californians hate government so much, they'll just have to suffer the alternative.
Link Maybe they should try going "democratic" all the way... Direct "Town Hall" democracy without the intermediary "professional" politician... " we can make the 21st century connected citizen with real time legislative control. If Cali is really the leading/bleeding edge maybe they'll find the way and show us (the rest of the country) how to take back our town/city halls and state houses. Maybe with enough "shock and awe" to even clean up Washington. Yeah, I know Machiavelli really didn't think the rule of the mob (in other words - a democracy) was an acceptable option, and his objections are still truly insightful and germane but as they say "in for a penny, in for a pound".
Link While many of your observations are right on, some of your facts aren't. It's possible that this many deserve to be, but this number isn't even a glimmer in our daddy's eye, as the saying goes. I also challenge your assertion that many of our state prisons are filled with "petty criminals" -- it's a myth that's been floating around for a while, but that's all that it is, a myth.
Link It's possible that having been effectively exorcised from the Republican Party, Abel Maldonado and the other "moderates" will be on board for the painful tax increases needed to balance California's budget in the special session that the Governor is sure to call. But if that difficult compromise can't be reached, the state will have to endure what promises to be real chaos: up to 1/3 of the teachers fired, along with firefighters and police, and huge cuts in education, health and other social services. Californians will finally understand that government services a...
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