California

cross posted at Fox & Hounds Daily.

If you haven't read this week's report by the non-partisan Legislative Analyst's Office, you must. There's plenty of bad news about the state being low on cash, but that we knew. Here's what knocked me over.

From the new report on the state's cash shortage by the non-partisan Legislative Analyst's Office:

"Without additional legislative measures to address the state’s fiscal difficulties or unprecedented amounts of borrowing from the short–term credit markets, the state will not be able to pay many of its bills on time for much of its 2009–10 fiscal year. Deterioration of the state’s economic and revenue picture (such as the $8 billion revenue shortfall we forecasted in March) or failure of measures in the May 19 special election would increase the state’s cash flow pressures substantially—potentially increasing the short–term borrowing requirement to well over $20 billion. California is likely to have difficulty borrowing anywhere close to the needed amounts from the short–term bond markets based on the state government’s own credit."

Conservatives who want to recall California Assemblyman Anthony Adams for his vote in favor of the February budget deal have begun gathering signatures, according to this report.

There's no good reason that we can't register to vote online. In California, where today is the deadline to register if you want to vote in the May 19 special election, the closest you can come to registering online is to go to this page of the Secretary of State's web site, print out a registration form (for your particular county), and mail it in. It must be postmarked by today.

It's no easy thing for Californians to figure out exactly what the six measures on the May 19 special election ballot do. For one thing, the Legislature and Governor did their best to hide the real impact of the measures by ordering up some glossy campaign-speak to decorate the titles and summaries on the ballot. It's easier to sell "budget reform" and "lottery modernization" than a tax increase (Proposition 1A) and more borrowing (Proposition 1C).

But even without the deceit, these measures do not yield to a quick study. For the first time in the nation's history voters are being asked to amend a state constitution to require the use of linear regression in determining how much the state will invest in higher education, health, and environmental protection. If it were necessary for a voter to actually explain how Proposition 1A works before being allowed to vote for it, I suspect it would get less than 1 percent of the vote.

As hard are the measures to understand, it may be harder still for them to answer the critical question: What do they mean for California? What signal will voters be sending by passing them?

I must admit that my heart skipped a beat while watching the first TV ad (above) in favor of the six measures on the California special election ballot. The ad has no policy content worth commenting upon. Politically, it takes a swipe "politicians," which you don't want to think too hard about it because you might remember that it's the state political leadership who cooked up these propositions. No, this ad is about developing a feeling and targeting a demographic.

California has announced a plan to create standards for plasma TV's, which are part of a suite of household appliances the California Energy Commission refers to as "vampires." Vampires include just about anything with a charger--cellphones, computers, cordless phones, etc--and collectively they may devour as much as 10 percent of a household's electricity consumption without actually doing anything. (Actually, they are doing something. They produce heat. It's nuts, but the best way to figure out if your appliances are sucking you dry is to walk around the house and touch the transformers. If they're hot, they're Nosferatu.)

Two thoughts.

One: The manufacturers association is fighting the standards, perhaps because they're aware that California's efficiency standards usually change norms around the world. In the 1970's, California began regulating the electricity consumption of refrigerators, which lead to the imposition of national standards. It also lead to bigger, better, cheaper fridges that use a third of the energy they did before. More importantly, those fridges proliferated around the world. In China, for example, they're saving half the electricity produced by the Three Gorges Dam.

Two: Why only plasma TV's and not the more popular LCD's, as well as all of the phone chargers and the annoyingly hot transformer on my apple laptop right here?

Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Christine Gregoire of Washington co-hosted the fifth of President Obama's health care forums in Los Angeles earlier this week.

As the Los Angeles Times wrote, "A wide array of forum participants, including hospital and insurance company executives and the mother of a teenager who died from a preventable hospital-acquired infection, gave voice to the growing desire for change." The director of New America's Health Policy Program, Len Nichols, participated in the discussion, as did representatives from Health CEOs for Health Reform.

The White House live-blogged the event, as did the California Endowment, which helped host the discussion. Video of the event will be available here soon and a partial transcript of the forum is posted here.

Former LA Mayor and state education secretary Richard Riordan is getting a lot of attention, here and elsewhere, for his screed against Gov. Schwarzenegger and the budget measures on the May 19 special election ballot. What no one seems to have noted, however, is that Riordan doesn’t seem to have a clue about California fiscal realities.

In just 777 words Riordan manages to leave no California budget canard behind.

More taxes on the rich “will be economically disastrous for California,” Riordan (“and I am one of them”) writes. It is perhaps a sign of how little taxes matter to the rich that Riordan seems not to have noticed that California has spent the last three decades lowering his taxes.

Since 1978 California has slashed property taxes. It eliminated the inheritance tax and lowered the top income tax rates on high incomes. It has lowered both the nominal and effective corporate income tax rate, and in 2011 will let multinational and multistate companies reduce their payments even more. Economists may quarrel about who bears the burden of the corporate income tax, but to the extent it falls on wealthy shareholders and owners –– and they always insist it does –– the rich now pay less.

from the Sacramento Bee, www.sacbee.com/opinion/story/1717487.html

A constitutional convention has been proposed by some California business leaders as a vehicle to fix the Golden State's deeply entrenched political and economic woes. While a convention offers the hope of a new beginning, it also inspires understandable fear that hard won rights may get trampled in the horse-trading. The state's leadership in recent years has hardly inspired confidence. Why should we imagine that it could match the brilliance of James Madison, George Washington and the other Founders, and chart a new course for our state?  

The first thing to recognize is that the Founders were not as brilliant as the mythmakers would have us believe. Their initial design of government -- the Articles of Confederation -- was a timid attempt at national governance, more dysfunctional than California's government today. To their credit, once they realized their design had faltered, they were bold enough not merely to tinker around the edges. They had the courage to fix their eyes on a new horizon, completely redesigning their existing governmental structures to create Version 2.0, which became an inspiration to the world.