California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is accomplishing right now what he failed to do in 2005 when he tried to put the state's major labor unions out of business and downsize the state government. At that time there was no economic catastrophe to point to as an excuse to shred the social safety net. But today, thanks to an economic crisis his good friend George W. Bush gave us, he's launching a frontal assault against virtually all of the state's public sector institutions. California Republicans have always hated social programs they believed mirrored Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and they've tried in good times and in bad to dismantle them. Now they're seizing the current crisis to enact their wildest free-market fantasies.
"No matter the nationality, no matter the religion, no matter the ethnic background," Schwarzenegger told an adoring crowd at the 2004 Republican National Convention, "America brings out the best in people. And as governor of the great state of California, I see the best in Americans every day -- our police, our firefighters, our nurses, doctors, and teachers, our parents."
And now he's proudly sticking it to those same people he praised so fulsomely five years ago when it was politically expedient for him to do so.
History is always full of surprises. In the 1930s, this nation responded to a similar economic collapse with sweeping New Deal reforms that created for the first time at the federal level a social safety net to provide security and relief to the most vulnerable Americans. Today, in California at least, Schwarzenegger and his right-wing Republican allies are "responding" to the current economic collapse by dismantling those same kind of institutions that are designed to provide minimal security for the most vulnerable Californians, even including (since Saturday anyway) the state's pension plan. If Schwarzenegger can shrink the state government by about 15 or 20 percent and eliminate Democratic programs -- no matter the terrible social consequences of rising crime, homelessness, illness and despair -- he'll be a hero among the right-wing corporate elites he serves so well. And that's all he seems to care about: His next elective office?
Hopefully, what we're seeing today in California is the last-gasp of the Bush era -- something akin to those dark days in the summer of 1932 when General Douglas MacArthur's troops tear-gassed and clubbed desperately poor WWI veterans who had marched to Washington to demand their service bonuses. Or perhaps (less hopefully) this sadistic assault on California's public sector is a new blueprint for dealing with economic crises. The captains of industry are using their political tools like Schwarzenegger to inflict pain on an already hurting population through rolling back public institutions that might have softened the blow for millions of people during this wholly avoidable, yet prolonged economic meltdown.
Newspapers are falling by the wayside and there's very little coverage of state government aside from some good reporting in the Sacramento Bee, Los Angeles Times,and San Francisco Chronicle. Few Californians are paying attention to the kind of reckless brinkmanship Schwarzenegger and his Republican allies are playing in Sacramento. And this lack of attention doesn't mean what's happening is not going to change the social climate of the state. Normally, with divided government a legislature throws bills on to the executive's desk and sends the ball into the governor's court to veto them and take the political heat. But in California the two-thirds rule in the legislature means the Republican minority can kill any bill before it reaches the governor's desk thereby shielding the Terminator from being the focus of the voters' wrath.
Schwarzenegger can sit back and point fingers at the Democrats without suffering the political consequences that his authoritarian demands and cruel budget cuts would elicit if the public could see what he's doing. A strange sadism has surfaced as Schwarzenegger reaches the waning period of his first venture into politics. The sooner the state is rid of this man the better. The correctional officers' union last fall had the right idea when they launched a short-lived effort to recall Schwarzenegger. I wish the rest of the labor unions in the state had had enough sense to join them.
Schwarzenegger's budget cuts are going to be devastating to the city of Sacramento because there are over 80,000 state workers in this region. At a social gathering this past weekend I spoke to a California Highway Patrol officer who is worried about the local layoffs of sheriffs and police and how they are going to increase his work load. Another person I spoke with is a probation officer and he told me his work load is going up from about 105 cases to 180, and most of those are just going to be more paperwork without any real outreach because he has to spend the bulk of his time tracking sex offenders. I met two other people who are "furloughed" from their state jobs and since they're a couple their family has been hit with about a 25 percent cut in pay (and Arnold is threatening even more furlough days for state workers). It's a Republican wet dream in the Golden State and they're not even in the majority!
In Sacramento they had to close a local 110-bed facility, the Warren E. Thornton Youth Center, that helped juveniles stay out of the criminal justice system that had operated without a hitch for forty-one years, just to save a measly $8.9 million a year. Now the boys, age 13 to 16, and the girls 13 to 18, are being farmed out to juvenile halls and foster homes, which also have taken huge budget cuts.
Given the cut-backs on sheriffs and police officers, the economic depression, and the lack of social services for people falling through the cracks, California over the next eighteen months is going to begin to experience levels of poverty, crime, and homelessness the likes of which the state has not seen since the Great Depression. If Schwarzenegger gets his way -- and all indications are that he will -- kids are going to die due to a lack of adequate Child Protective Services staff, probation officers or going to lose track of their violent charges, people are going to be thrown off welfare and food stamps, and there's going to be an overload of new cases in an already strained prison system. It seems like Schwarzenegger is following George W. Bush's model during his last eighteen months in office: Make the biggest mess you can on the way out so your Democratic successors will be occupied for years cleaning it up instead of passing their agenda.
As this goes to print, Schwarzenegger and the Republicans in the legislature not only refuse to compromise one iota from their maximal demands but have added new demands as the hours tick away to IOU time. What Schwarzenegger means when he talks about a "full budget solution" is getting EVERYTHING he wants without compromise. Schwarzenegger and the Republicans have given the legislature a set of all-or-nothing demands. And then they throw out a few crumbs here and there to give the appearance that they're negotiating in "good faith." "Good faith" it is not.
A small minority of conservative ideologues is tying the legislature into knots with parliamentary tricks while the Republican governor demands a rubber stamp for his right-wing anti-government agenda. It's authoritarian and dangerous. They're not budging on a host of retrograde initiatives they've tried to pass in the past (but failed) to ram down our throats. These miserable proposals threaten to turn California into Mississippi. Their special targets are any institution that helps the poor, educates our children, or brings health care to the uninsured. Right now Schwarzenegger's style of governance seems as if he'd like nothing more than to dissolve the legislature and impose his "full budget solution" from a bunker in the high Sierras.
Maybe someone should ask Alan Greenspan or Grover Norquist or Arthur Laffer or Stephen Moore or Larry Kudlow or John Taylor or . . .
Or maybe we could summon the ghosts of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman and ask: "Annie, Uncle Miltie, you both said that individual greed would translate into collective prosperity. We tried the greed part. What gives?"
Thanks for proving my point. And your lame attempt at humor shows you aren't capable of actually debating a point, but content to ridicule.
People here have pointed out their own personal experiences, not blindly parroting rhetoric based on as you seem convinced of in your delusional, narrow-minded conspiracy theories.
You have too thin of a skin. Be a grown up and encourage honest discussion rather than jumping like a feral jackal on anyone who doesn't agree with you.
As for the illegals, they take way more in tax money than they contribute, they clog our hospitals causing some to shut down, and they increase our costs for medical and car insurance to cover the fact that they don't have any. As to that old tired argument "who will do the work if they weren’t here?" ....Who do you think did the jobs before the illegal alien invasion? It also harkens back to the questions the plantation owners in the South asked after slavery ended....
And don’t get me started on welfare recipients. The State has 12% of the US population and 30% of the welfare case load. We must adopt the federal welfare guidelines like every other state.
The only solution is to redo the union contracts, enforce the current laws on illegal aliens and fix the broken welfare system. It’s the only way to save the state. And taxes don't have to be raised.
Europe has a fairly strong social safety net. With the recent severe recesion, European heads of state argued that did not have to do a great deal of deficit spending to revive their economies because they have a strong social safety net in place. Their citizens are more protected from the vagaries of the economy than ours. Professor Palermo is right! During times of hardship, state and the national government should be looking at ways to strengthen the social safety net and not dismantle it.
So which is better: Democracy or plutocracy?
Democracy: the 51% leading the 49%, the worst form of government, except all the others.
Plutocracy the .1% ruling the 99.9%, with the iron corrupt fist of robber barons.
That's it. There are no other options.
Choose.
Sounds like we'll be there again in short order.
I've attempted to object to this article on-site, as have a number of other people. It has received a generally negative review from the commentators -- but all the objections that list -- I'll be careful -- r.a.c.ism as a concern are removed from the comment section, and the article stays up.
This sentence is inserted into what is otherwise an argument against the financial choices made by the California governor. There is no other mention of the governor's place of birth, no explanation or excuse offered for using his heritage as an adjective to an attributed kink for receiving pleasure from dealing out pain.
This is r.a.c.ism, pure and simple. Please let HP know that, in these times, it is not something that you will accept. News reports of r.a.c.ism, the people involved and responsible for such things, are the responsibility of any legitimate news source. But in an opinion piece, blatent hatred of a naturalized citizen -- or a foreign national, for that matter -- based on his place of birth, is not acceptable. Please help make that clear to HP.
This article should be removed from the site, and the author advised as to the reason.
In California, the police force is ratcheting up violence against the gay community. It is doing so without fear of consequence from anyone in authority. By your standards, that makes their mindset and their actions 'mean nothing.'
You are wrong, in every possible way. And in citing, tongue-in-cheek, an organization that works endlessly to achieve parity, you prove that you understand perfectly what you are doing by promoting tension directed toward other r.a.ces.
I deserted California in 2004 after all of the hatred grew, from each side.
I was told I did not believe in god because I believe in science. I was told I did not support the troops and was unpatriotic because I was opposed to the war and did not believe that Ireaq was any threat to me or my country.
I decided to take the money from the housing bubble and move where, perhaps I could afford to live out my life.
I am now living in a county area in North Carolina. Taxes are low. Wages are low, social services are low, healthcare is ok for me, on Social Security but my wife pays dearly for insurance that is nearly useless.
We have the Democratic Senator that is holding up the public heallthcare option for America.
How emberassing for us!
Shame on Kay hagan for not supporting the America People. Shame the hell out of Arnie for raping the poor and middle class of California.
Thankls for participating in the conversation Joseph. I will now become a fan.
Let me smoke my weed in peace.
Besides, wouldn't it be a monster regressive tax. Wealthy people drink cognac, the rest of us smoke the reefer.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/california-needs-a-new-co_b_207535.html
And business are moving out of California. So are the wealthy.
The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money. (Not sure who I am quoting here, but the thought isn't original with me.)
In any case, deregulation, a GOP favorite, is reponsible for much of our pain, here as elsewhere. It was certainly responsible for the housing bubble, and has certainly aided in widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Unfortunately for us, Arnold wants Main Street to pay for the greed of Wall Street. I guess taxing the rich will cause too much undue suffering for the wealthiest.
I'll only get 80% if I retire after I'm 65 after 40 years. 100% at age 50 sounds great.
Socialism, thy name is California!