I feel like the doctor breaking really bad news to the patient: Your political system is seriously ill and it may not have long to live.
The governor and state legislators for the second time in six years has spent California into such a deep hole filled with red ink that only a series of money transplants against future revenues can keep the state functioning even briefly. They are euthanizing aid to the sick, elderly and hopelessly poor. The only winners are the 27,000 convicts — 15 percent of the total — who are going to be awarded get-out-of-jail free cards.
This farce of a budget debate has gone on all year, for years actually, and now at the last minute 180 cities and many counties, including LA, are threatening at the last minute to sue to keep the tragi-comedy on stage for weeks or months longer.
At 10 a.m. Friday morning, the good mayor of LA will join the whiners we elected to public office with his own pantomime over funds for the Community Redevelopment Agency — City Hall’s second favorite cash cow after the DWP — being taken away to paper over the massive state budget deficit.
The problem, he and the City Council say, is the state Constitution’s requirement that two-thirds of the members of both houses have to agree on a budget — something that gives Republicans, with just a couple of votes more than a third of the members, the leverage to block the Democratic majority from imposing a rash of new taxes.
So they and the Democratic power structure are seeking a Constitutional Convention which they believe they can control to rewrite the budget requirement so they can swiftly get their way on taxes and spending.
There’s no question California’s taxing and spending policies are screwed up. Revenue skyrockets in boom times and they overspend; revenue drops in bust times and they borrow against the next boom.
It is a vicious circle of failure that has tarnished the Golden State and jeopardized the future of all of us.
But what kind of fools would trust the people — Democrat and Republican alike — who for so long have bickered and quarreled and keep on fighting today over old grudges and old ideas while they take money away from the schools and community colleges, let the roads decay and the infrastructure rot.
These people cannot be trusted.
The mayor and City Council can blame the state all they want, they can talk about how their “non-partisanship” avoids these intramural conflicts, how they “balanced” the city budget and approved it unanimously — but their actions speak louder than their words.
What they have done is even worse than the state. They have turned the city treasury into a bank for special interests while gutting basic services from fire protection to park programs, planning and street paving.
Is it any wonder that the 22,000 members of the city coalition of unions representing half the work force jumped at that offer the mayor and Council made them to balance the budget on paper?
Wouldn’t you like to be one of the 2,400 city workers who get to retire as young as 50 with 75 percent of your paycheck and full health care for life, $15,000 in a cash buyout and up to half your annual salary for unused vacation and sick time?
If you could keep your job, avoid wage cuts and furloughs and be guaranteed you would come out ahead financially within years, wouldn’t you jump at the deal?
Of course, city workers quickly ratified this deal and, of course, the Council and mayor will quickly give their final approval to it even though they know it doesn’t solve the problem, that cash will run out soon enough and that all the money they can steal from the DWP, CRA, harbor and airport won’t be enough to cover the bills.
Take it from Dr. Kaye, your political system is seriously ill and it may not have long to live.
You can keep hiding behind your apathy, ignorance and indifference. You can keep obsessing about the fragments of government’s failure to serve you and your own political agendas. You can keep writing letters to the politicians and pleading before them for mercy like peons before their masters.
But nothing will change until you take matters into your own hands, until you march in the streets by the thousands, until you organize and mobilize to take back the reins of power from the politicians and the special interests they serve.
If you don’t do it now when the patient might still be saved, when the time is right, it will be too late.
The damage they are doing to our city, our state, our hopes, our dreams will be so great that we may never recover.
I hope I’m wrong but that’s what I believe, what I’m working so hard to do something about, what so many are working hard to do something about it.
It’s now or never.
While we are blaming the legislature and the govenor and the city council and the mayor, lets also equally put the blame on the public employee unions, who are also responsible for distorting the system so badly.
For every comment that the UTLA or CTA makes about the horrors of larger class sizes, ask them to explain why it is better to have larger class sizes rather than to slightly increase employee contribution to their retirement (how about to the same level as the rest of us contribute to social security).
Or, why it is more important to give cadillac health care programs to part time cafeteria workers rather than to put on summer school.
Or, letting any state, county or city public employee spout nonsense about how they are underpaid compared to the private sector in pure salary terms,let alone the other benefits.
In addition to blaming politicians, lets reserve some of our wrath and demand for change for the political career staff who have gamed the system pretty well–like the staff of the state senate whose health care benefits included not one but two new pair of glasses every year.
Explain to an old sick woman that she can’t have her pain medication so we can honor Caesar Chavez being giving state workers a paid day off.
It is interesting that in some of the compromises being discussed for national health care, any conversation about taxing employee health benefits also seeks to EXCLUDE public employees from that taxation.
The poster child for bad budget decisions is not just Villarogosa; it is AJ Duffy.
Most unions are ok and its silly to blame the cities problems on working folks who generally do a good job and are payed middle class wages.
UTLA is different and as long as the LA County Fed supports them, they will lose support. Its self defeating for them to support UTLA, especially since the union workers kids are the ones going to LAUSD schools. Why the rest of the unions dont throw UTLA out, is self defeating for labor.
So KK, I disagree with much of what you say, and think its a little bit of scapegoating, but you are right on target about UTLA.
Quite frankly, I wish Ron, the NC’s and other folks who seem to be against the ‘establishment’ would aim their fire at UTLA and Duffy. And…you might find yourselves with alot of allies, even the mayor!
Ron – why haven’t the Democrats (or an aligned group) identified 3-4 districts in which they have a reasonably sized, but unlikely to grow, minority of residents and engage in a campaign to encourage them to re-register Republican just for the next campaign. The goal would be to create a do-it-yourself open primary. If enough moderate to liberal Democrats follow-through and the party identifies and pushes a moderate, sensible Republican who is not particularly beholden to the party, it could push the Republican primary away from the extremists and in the hands of some people at least willing to sit down and be adults at the negotiating table. The Republicans could do the same thing in Democrat districts and help nominate similarly-moderate leaning candidates. The end result would be to reduce the stranglehold of extremists on both sides and create a group of moderates who would hold the real power in Sacramento because they would be the swing votes. That seems to be the way out of this political stalemate.
The majority of any government budget–city, county, state, federal–goes to employee costs.
If you think it makes sense to pay public employees 41% more than their private sector equivalents while guaranteeing pensions, then, yes, in your view, I am scapegoating.
Perphaps, you think that these public workers who “generally do a good job” are doing it 41% better than the private sector?
By the way, what middle class people do you know that have the equivalent of a million dollars put away for their retirement?
Amen Ron. City employees, government workers, and municipal workers DO NOT PAY into social security. So they retire from here, get a job in the private sector for 5 years and then get to collect full social security benefits. No wonder this country is going down the tubes.
Unless and until the taxpayers get off their dead asses and rally together to make changes…well we know what is down the road. Edmund Burke said it best, “All evil needs to succeed is for good men to do nothing”
Peace
You’ll never get thousands of people marching in the street. You have no charismatic leaders. All movements must have leaders, and they’re chocked with charisma. That’s how to move people.
You want to start a movement, get Doug McIntyre, or get Bill Cosby. If you really want to start a movement, then find your charismatic leaders at the colleges. That’s were the prospective leadership lays dormant. That’s where your hidden pearl lies.
A movement will never work with the current City leadership. They have no charisma. I think back at the L.A. Times continual assertion that Villaraigosa has charisma. What a laugh.
Sorry Ron, you have the drive but you too don’t have charisma.
7:27. What a supercilious twit!