JUDGEMENT DAY™–The Return of Sanity in California
posted at 6:15 am on May 20, 2009 by Rovin
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It looks like there will be no “rainy day” fund for State Legislators or Arnold Schwarzenegger to fall back on. With 97% of the precincts in, Prop 1A went down to defeat 65.9% to 34.1% along with every other proposition with the exception of 1F, the freeze on legislator’s salaries.
Every measure except 1F was rejected by the average margin of 65% to 34%, sending the firm message from the voters that higher taxes and more borrowing is not the reason they sent their representatives to Sacramento. Ironically, 1F passed by an overwhelming margin 73.9% to 26.1%, further highlighting the voter’s displeasure with government officials actions. Even LA County and the Bay Area (SF), where their respective newspapers recommended a YES VOTE on every Prop*, all measures that were designed to raise taxes and borrowing were again defeated except 1B in San Francisco County. (*1B, the school funding measure was not endorsed by the LA Times)
Higher Education Also Rejected 1A
On Monday, May the 18th, this memo was sent out to the AAUP (American Association of University Professors):
“The Executive Board of the California Conference of AAUP (the American Association of University Professors) voted unanimously to join the opposition to Proposition 1A on the May 19 Special Election ballot. The Executive Board agrees with the California Budget Project analysis that Prop 1A would not address California’s existing structural shortfall – the gap between revenues and expenditures – that exists in all but the best budget years. In fact, Prop 1A would require contributions to the reserve in a number of years in which the state experienced a moderate deficit.”
Who says professors don’t understand economics? For the record, the California Chapter of the AAUP waited until the day before this election to send this memo. Maybe it took them this long to come up with a unanimous vote—-who knows what their motives were?
Update 2: Allahpundit has more on the California tax revolt.
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Any American that has the ability to look at factual data with any degree of honesty, open mindedness, and personal integrity, can look at California, Michigan, and New York as examples of “success or failure” with Democrats & Unions in charge…
No Liberal Democrat wants to discuss this reality, as there is no defense for the fact that every state in our country that has been under Democrat rule for a decade or longer, is suffering the results of a failed ideology.
Good for you Californians… A ray of light comes shining through.
Keemo on May 20, 2009 at 7:05 AM
More on this topic:
California is completely, totally, irreparably hosed. And not a little garden hose. Their outflow is bigger than their inflow. You can blame Republicans who won’t pass a budget, or Democrats who spend every single cent of tax money that comes in during the booms, borrow some more, and then act all surprised when revenues, in a totally unprecedented, inexplicable, and unforeseaable chain of events, fall during a recession. You can blame the initiative process, and the uneducated voters who try to vote themselves rich by picking their own pockets. Whoever is to blame, the state was bound to go broke one day, and hey, today’s that day!
There is a surprisingly sizeable blogger contingent arguing that we have to bail them out because however regrettable the events that lead here, we now have no choice. But actually, we do have a choice: we could let them go bankrupt. And we probably should.
I am not under the illusion that this will be fun. For starters, the rest of you sitting smugly out there in your snug homes, preparing to enjoy the spectacle, should prepare to enjoy the higher taxes you’re going to pay as a result. Your states and municipalities will pay higher interest on their bonds if California is allowed to default. Also, the default is going to result in a great deal of personal misery, more than a little of which is going to end up on the books of Federal unemployment insurance and other such programs.
Then there are the actual people involved. Whatever you think of, say, children who decided to be born poor, right now they are dependent on government programs, and will be put in danger if those programs are interrupted.
On the other hand, I don’t really see another way out of it. If Uncle Sugar bails out California, California will not fix its problems. Perhaps you want Obama to make it fix the problems, using the same competence, power, and can-do spirit with which he has repaired all the holes in the banking and auto manufacturing sectors. But Obma is not in a good position to do this. California Democrats are a huge part of his governing coalition. All Obama can do is shovel money into the bottomless pit of California’s political system.
Moreover, even if the administration could fix any of the core problems of California–and New York–and the banks–and the automakers–and the energy industry–they can’t fix them all. Especially given how thinly staffed Treasury is. The president and his cabinet only have so much attention, more than all of which seems to be occupied by the problems already on their plate. They don’t really have the time, knowledge, energy, or staff to take on running a whole ‘nother government.
California will go bankrupt, muni and state debt will spike, the federal government will backstop humanitarian programs and very possibly all state and local debt, and eventually, California will figure out whether it wants higher taxes or lower spending. But we will not actually make the world a better place by enabling the lunatics in Sacramento to pretend they can have both.
http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/
Keemo on May 20, 2009 at 7:13 AM
Can you believe this nonsense?
Michael Finnegan and the Times have got the New York Times spin factory manual down pat. Just once, I’d like to see these “journalist” point the “finger” where it belongs—at the failures of this state’s leadership.
Rovin on May 20, 2009 at 7:21 AM
What was the germinator doing in DC yesterday?
The governor also wants to borrow up to $6 billion, but awaits word on whether Washington would guarantee those loans. The White House has never done so for the state but is considering the action as Wall Street expresses concern that California could become a deadbeat borrower.
Watch out Californians, the germinator is trying to sell you to the Feds…
In a bid to salt those prospects, Schwarzenegger met privately Tuesday in the U.S. Capitol with members of California’s congressional delegation. “We have a major problem in California, and I think if we work together, we can make it through this crisis,” he told reporters after attending the White House announcement on tougher vehicle emission standards. “We need assistance. . . .
Keemo on May 20, 2009 at 7:24 AM
Over at PowerLine, their calling him the TAXINATOR…
Good one…
Keemo on May 20, 2009 at 7:29 AM
Can you imagine running a business that is losing millions of dollars every month, and having that business blame it’s customers for what is so obviously the mistakes made by the political establishment.
Talk about stabbing the very people a business must have to survive… Liberalism, a mental disorder…
Keemo on May 20, 2009 at 7:35 AM
The LA Times was correct to state the voters are responsible and they hit on it here but didn’t explain it.
What they are talking about is our “bond debt” that the voters in this state have run up with ballot initiatives. The politicians in the last 10 years used bond measure to get around the 2/3 spending approval requirement by using these ballot measures that only required 1/2 approval.
The voters seem to have no clue that our politicians were not cutting other programs to fund these bonds and the bond debt is up to $10 billion this year. If all bonds get funded this goes up to over $15 billion a year and unless CA puts an immediate freeze on all new bond debt we are going to continue to have out of control spending with no funding.
The voters of this state are also repsonible for voting the same idiots back into office time and again even after they have been shown to be incompetent.
Yes, I agree with the LA Times that ignorant voters are also responsible for the problems we have in our state.
JeffinSac on May 20, 2009 at 7:38 AM
JeffinSac on May 20, 2009 at 7:38 AM
Of coarse you are correct Jeff; however, the dynamics are much larger than that of the just the voters.
Corruption and Unions go hand in hand. Indian gambling, the state lottery, the Teachers Union, the AFL-CIO Unions…
Remember when the lottery was voted on? The pitch was all about how the lottery was going to feed the Ca. school system with the funds needed to make this system the role model for the entire country. Is there any proof that a single penny of the billions raised by the lottery has actually gone to the education of our children? Does anybody in Ca. have any answers (accountability) as to where these funds have gone, and or are going?
The media was supposed to be the watch dog. Have they asked any of these questions? Have they done any form of investigative reporting as to what-when-where-how California has managed to become bankrupt? Why businesses have left California by the thousands?
Keemo on May 20, 2009 at 7:50 AM
Hey Jeff,
Thanks for the input. I too agree there’s a portion of blame that can be put squarely on the voters, but it’s also the “same idiots” that show no fiscal responsibility that should get to boot, (including our governor). Not sure if you remember, but Reagan was hated by the unions, schools, and tons of the public job sector when he first went into the state budget. Results, the state had a surplus soon after for the first time in a decade. But with a liberal democrat legislature, he took his measures to the people, (voters), that rejected the special intrest folks and forced their representatives to either go along or get out.
This state is ripe for another Reagan that will also be hated and then loved for putting fiscal discipline back into the process.
Rovin on May 20, 2009 at 8:03 AM
Rovin,
Could that person be Duncan Hunter?
Keemo on May 20, 2009 at 8:08 AM
BTW: Rovin
The California State Lottery could provide for a great topic. The pitch…
The vote…
The accountability (lack there of) that was promised…
The results…
The corruption…
The cover-up…
Just a thought since you’re our Ca. guy.
Keemo on May 20, 2009 at 8:12 AM
This state’s media is the same as our national media that’s providing an ideology that it’s the governments responsibility to supply every whim and need—feeding the beast of socialism and dependency. It’s the same welfare state of mind that Carter embraced and now Obama and Pelosi, et all, are promoting. I don’t expect our news media to understand the taxpayer revolt that occured yesterday or anytime in the near future.
(I miss the Sacramento Union that used to rival the Bee and have a counter voice to the liberal rag.)
Rovin on May 20, 2009 at 8:16 AM
I would prefer Duncan Hunter, but what sane Republican would want to enter a statehouse that’s fraught with special interest corruption, massive union control, and the same liberal minded legislature that’s put this state in fiscal ruin?
If California wants to fix the proposition issue that many blame, the legislature could write a simple law, (constitutional) that states: “All funding props must be written with a balance of zero to the taxpayer”. End of problem.
Rovin on May 20, 2009 at 8:47 AM
Where did you get this notion???
Rovin on May 20, 2009 at 8:19 AM
“An aside. There is an incredible headline in the Lost Angeles Times: California Voters Exercise Their Power–And That’s The Problem. No liberal media bias there, right? No wonder the paper is dying, spitting in the eye of an electorate that just shouted at the top of its voices “We can’t pay any more taxes!” Big government liberals with keypads and editors who tut-tut the middle class’s tax burden continue to misreport the California collapse and the voters’ reaction to it, and newspaper circulation continues to decline. The huge vote against taxes and the entrenched special interests that dominate Sacramento, especially the public employee unions, is a huge story and the nearly dead and desperate hard left remnant at the Times simply refuses to cover the story. Amazing. If a new owner returns to actual journalism and especially to that part about making the powerful uncomfortable, circulation will soar. But there’s no sense subscribing to a tip sheet for the Sacramento elite.”….Hugh Hewitt
Thanks Hugh
Rovin on May 20, 2009 at 10:18 AM
http://coldfury.com/?p=14955
Thought you might enjoy this article Rovin…
Keemo on May 21, 2009 at 7:26 AM
We can hope. I pulled for him in the Rep Primary. He just is not an eloquent speaker, but can get a point across. On the other hand I don’t give a da*n about elequence, just substance.
N4646W on May 22, 2009 at 11:42 PM