Jerry Rigged

An LA Times article makes claims about the irrelevance of California Republicans that seem unpersuasive at first, since they've apparently just killed Gov. Brown's budget balancing plan.

I do see what the reporters, Evan Halper and Michael Mishak, are driving at. As GOP registration numbers decline, Republicans are relegated t0 a seeming structural minority in the state legislature. Those wanting to do more than be obstructionists end up working with the majority, which results in centrist outcomes that conservative purists consider as bad as purely liberal ones -- worse, because they're even more likely to be enacted.

And so with the state facing the prospect of bankruptcy, a few brave Republicans were willing to talk to Brown about massive budget cuts in exchange for an agreement to continue some expiring taxes and put new taxes on the ballot. It's not that these GOP apostates were voting for new taxes. It's just that they were willing to let us do so. Given Californians' recent disinclination to raise taxes, it would've been a pretty safe bet.

But the purists won, and Brown ended negotiations this week. That's where the Times article comes in. Let's see what the GOP can accomplish in the broad public interest with 30% registration, dwindling numbers in the legislature, and no statewide office holder about the Board of Equalization. And folks, it had better be good.

UC Is Hearing The Brown Sound Again

My guarded optimism that California's new governor, Jerry Brown, would be a Nixon-breaks-the-china fiscal hawk was based on having covered him in the 1970s, when he saddled the elites at the University of California with a series of austerity budgets. Sure enough, as the LA Times reports:

Details of which programs Brown will propose to cut remain unclear. But in private discussions, he has mentioned paring back the state's welfare program, reducing what doctors and healthcare providers are paid to care for the poor, and trimming funding for the University of California and California State University systems.

The Iron Political Law Of Immigration Policy

Up to 80% of Latino voters went for Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer. As their numbers grown in California, the GOP just won't win with candidates who acquiesce in the scapegoating of illegal immigrants.

Cuomo May Go To China

The New York Times on Andrew Cuomo's opportunity:

Edmund J. McMahon, the director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy, which studies the state’s finances, said that if Mr. Cuomo could push through the introduction of a 401(k)-style pension system, “it would be a real Nixon-goes-to-China moment for him.” The first Democratic governor in the country to do so, Mr. McMahon said, “would have a real future in national politics.”

Is Jerry Brown listening, too?

Oh Oh

When Jerry Brown was newly elected as governor of California last night, I persisted in my optimism that he'd go to China -- that, as only a Democrat could (and as Andrew Cuomo vows to in New York), he'd take on entrenched interests such as public employee unions as a way of venturing a structural fix of our state's budget woes. It was a little more than wishful thinking, since, as a student journalist in the mid-1970s, when he was governor his first time, I remembered him saddling the elites at the University of California with a series of austere budgets. He also flirted with my dinner companion one time in La Jolla, but that's another story.

Then news came that Prop. 25 had passed. Deceptively advertised to voters as a way of docking the pay of state legislators who fail to pass a budget on time, its true effect is to permit them to pass budgets by a majority rather than two-thirds vote. A St. John's friend speculated weeks ago that Brown's promise -- "No new taxes without voter approval" -- was a veiled reference to Prop. 25. But I never imagined voters could be tricked into removing the only check on giving our cash-strapped state government a blank one.

In his comments today, Brown's stressing belt-tightening. But one-party rule plus a majority budget vote may well end up meaning substantial income tax increases.

* * *
Thanks to the miracle of Facebook, I've been reminded by my St. John's brother Mike Cheever that Prop. 26, which also passed, and other laws prevent legislators from raising most taxes and fees without a supermajority, irrespective of their new authority to pass a budget with a simple majority. I had assumed that Prop. 25's change in the budget rules applied to the revenue as well as the expenditure side.

Ouch

In a Matt Bai analysis that attaches way too much cosmic significance to the fact that a couple of old politicians are back in the saddle, a slap at old voters:

[Jerry] Brown was famous then for dating Linda Ronstadt. You can Google her, or just ask your mom.

Whitman Endorses Brown

Oops. But isn't that Peter Coyote doing the narration?

Andy And Jerry

Tough talk from New York's Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Andrew Cuomo, possible during a campaign only because his opponent, Carl Paladino, is unelectable. I'm wondering if California's Jerry Brown has the same gumption:

Andrew M. Cuomo will mount a presidential-style permanent political campaign to counter the well-financed labor unions he believes have bullied previous governors and lawmakers into making bad decisions. He will seek to transform the state’s weak business lobby into a more formidable ally, believing that corporate leaders in New York have virtually surrendered the field to big labor.

And even as he girds for war, Mr. Cuomo, the state attorney general and an expert practitioner of political hardball, also plans to lavish attention on individual legislators, who he says are sick of being demonized and eager for accomplishment after years of gridlock and enmity.

Take It Like A Whitman

Joanna Weiss is surprised that Meg Whitman, California's GOP gubernatorial candidate, made such a big deal about a Jerry Brown aide's vulgarity:

The notion that the billionaire head of a Fortune 500 company would be crushed — or even surprised — at a little trash talk is absurd. And if she’s somehow deeply wounded by an aide on a cellphone, how would she handle a rambunctious State Assembly? The fact that she can slough off slurs should be a badge of honor — and a model for women who want to play the game.

Not-So-Poor Poor Meg

More from John Judis's Jerry Brown profile. First, a modern-day iteration of Harry Truman's famous "Poor Ike -- it won't be a bit like the Army" comment about the circumscribed civilian elected executive:

Daniel Zingale, who was deputy chief of staff for former governor Gray Davis and a senior adviser to Schwarzenegger, draws a sharp contrast between the two candidates. Brown, he says, “should know what he is getting into. He has always been someone who liked to rock the boat, and I think that fits the time.” Whitman, he says, “does not have any idea what the job is like ... For a CEOer like her, who is used to telling the comptroller what to do, it would be a rude awakening to discover that the comptroller is going to be running against you in the next election. She doesn’t know how powerless she is going to be.”

And Judis's conclusion:

If Whitman’s money prevails, the legislature will quickly disabuse her of her plans, and if she is smart, she will decide, as Schwarzenegger finally did, to govern from the center and not the right. But if Brown can win in spite of his shoestring campaign, he won’t have to endure a similar initiation—he knows how Sacramento works. He stands a much better chance than Whitman of breaking the fiscal deadlock, and his cleanenergy program could restore California’s place as a vanguard of American industry. And if that’s not enough, there’s another consideration: A Brown administration, whatever its faults, would be infinitely more entertaining.

The Cover-Up Continues

I've always liked Jerry Brown, Democratic candidate for governor of California, as has John Judis at the "New Republic." But as I read along dreamily in Judis's new profile of the candidate, this brought me up short:

[In 1992 Brown] sold [his] mansion, moved to Oakland, and installed himself as the aging leader of a commune, describing himself as a “recovering politician.” He also had a regular radio show on Berkeley’s KPFA, where he aired opinions on capitalism and globalization that would not have been out of place on the World Socialist Web Site. He once referred to President Bill Clinton and Congress as “criminals” who “continue to destroy this country and the world itself.” (Most transcripts of the broadcasts have recently been removed from the Web.)

Uh, why, by whom, and at whose suggestion?

"The War On Jobs"

Meg Whitman certainly mastered this moment in tonight's debate with Jerry Brown, as reported by the LA Times:

During a discussion of the candidates' prescriptions for curing the economy, Brown jumped on Whitman's proposal to cut the capital gains tax, saying the beneficiaries would largely be wealthy people, including those who have donated $30 million to her campaign.

"How much money will you save if the tax breaks were in effect this year or last year?" Brown asked Whitman.

Whitman demurred but said, "I'm an investor, and investors will benefit from this. So will job creators, and I was a job creator. We have got to get someone in office who knows what the conditions are for small businesses to grow and thrive," she said. "Your business is politics. You've been doing this 40 years and you have been part of the war on jobs in this state for 40 years."

Jerry Brown's Empty Blackboard

The Tea Party notwithstanding, Jerry Brown may be the year's true revolutionary. His moderate Republican opponent, Meg Whitman, is spending a large fortune on elaborate plans and advance men with ear plugs without offering any real hope of being able to do anything to fix California's broken government that wasn't available to the moderate Republican incumbent. According to this Joe Hagan account in "New York" magazine, Brown improvises, stumbles, and promises almost nothing. No more likely to fix the state, probably, but his no-plan plan is somehow refreshing:

Brown’s campaign strategy appears to be, let Whitman spend all her money while Brown leans back and declares her a spendthrift and a dilettante.

Kevin Starr, the USC historian, who went to high school with Brown, calls Brown’s non-efforts a “Zen campaign,” which seems to acknowledge that politics itself, the function and purpose of it, has “been erased in California.” Or, put another way, why have a plan if plans aren’t going to work?

“It’s an empty blackboard,” Starr says.

Ecclesiastes 1:6-7

And so the chill, just winds of politics blow. Last week, Jerry Brown supporter Gloria Allred manufactured a crisis for Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman to try to weaken her standing with Latino voters. Today, misogynist-sounding talk by Brown and his aides could weaken his standing with women.

Republicans should note well, however, that the gist of the inadvertently taped conversation among Brown and his boys is that he may be tougher on public employee unions that Whitman.

The Illogical Twins

An LA Times editorial lets California's GOP gubernatorial candidate, Meg Whitman, off the hook for employing an undocumented worker but chides her for her illogical immigration position.

And yet as Cathleen Decker's recent Times analysis demonstrated, almost nobody's immigration position is logical, especially Republicans'. The party's whipsawed between those who want to militarize the borders and a Main St. cohort whose members depend on undocumented workers. The former seem to predominate among party elites, which is why it's a miracle Whitman got nominated after coming out against Arizona's relatively draconian law. That move may prove to the smartest of the year, since Whitman still seems to be doing far better among Latinos than Sheriff Fiorina in her U.S. Senate race against Barbara Boxer.

As for Whitman's opponent, Democrat Jerry Brown's policy on the budget is just as illogical as Whitman's on immigration. He says he wouldn't raise taxes without voter approval. Gov. Schwarzenegger tried that and got schooled. What magic formula does Brown have in mind for fixing the state's structural deficit, except breaking his promise?

Jerry Rigged

Bill Clinton was famous for helping solidify his centrist bona fides by taking what some called the "double death" position -- aggressively pro-abortion and pro-death penalty. A majority of Americans agreed, and Clinton was right there with them. It appears Jerry Brown is serving up the same cocktail in his bid to be elected governor of California:

Brown was a vocal opponent of the death penalty when he served as governor in the 1970s and '80s, once suggesting that banning capital punishment would elevate society to a "higher state of consciousness."

He vetoed the death penalty in 1977, and his chief justice appointee was removed from the bench in the 1980s for her constant overturning of death penalty convictions.

Brown has taken more moderate stances since he ran for attorney general in 2006 and vowed to carry out the laws of the state. His office has been fighting for the resumption of capital punishment and defends death penalty convictions before the state Supreme Court.

Brown remains reliably pro-choice. Clinton's already shown that double-death works politically. What would be interesting if someone, whether Democrat or Republican, ever tried double life: Anti-death penalty and in favor of an aggressive campaign to reduce the number of abortions (without taking away the legal right to choose). It's something you'd expect a principled Jesuit-trained candidate to try -- someone, for instance, like Jerry Brown.

The Clinton Restoration

Jerry Brown's eating out of his hand, and now "The Economist" reports that Middle East negotiators are reaching back to his peace formulas.

Brown Sound

California's Jesuit-trained Democratic gubernatorial candidate missteps and makes nice:

"I mean Clinton's a nice guy, but who ever said he always told the truth?" Brown told a crowd at the opening of a Democratic Party office in East Los Angeles. "You remember, right? There's that whole story there about did he or didn't he. OK, I did — I did not have taxes with this state."

The last line was an oblique play on Clinton's defense against the brewing sex scandal in early 1998. At the time, Clinton asserted, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." It was later proven that he did, and he subsequently faced impeachment proceedings.

Brown's comments were captured Sunday at an unannounced visit to the Democratic Party office. Video of his comments surfaced on a political news website on Monday. Several hours later, Brown called a news conference and apologized.

"Bill Clinton was an excellent president," Brown said in Oakland. "It was certainly wrong for me to joke about an incident from many, many years ago, and I'm sorry for that."

Boring Old Process Arguments Again

Veteran California political observer George Skelton, though an opponent of Prop. 8, says Gov. Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Brown should defend it in court since it expresses the will of the people.

What a sissy! Reminds me of people who stick up for the mosque in lower Manhattan just because freedom of religion happens to be in the Constitution.

Jerry Brown Vs. Pharmacists

It's a timeless if dispiriting ritual: An ambitious holder of a relatively minor political office grabs a piece of some notorious matter to get his mug on TV as he ramps up his next race. So there was California AG Jerry Brown, governor in the 1970s and early 1980s and, he hopes, next year, grandstanding about conspiracy charges that have been filed against two physicians and Howard Stern in connection with drugs prescribed for Anna Nichole Smith. I love how the LA Times reporter, who obviously knows what this is all about, included a colleague count:

Speaking before 14 television cameras and a dozen reporters, Brown stopped short of blaming Smith’s boyfriend, Howard K. Stern, and the doctors for the 39-year-old model’s 2007 death from an accidental overdose of prescription drugs, but he said the two-year, multi-agency investigation that led to charges uncovered behavior just as troubling as “street corner” drug dealers.

“People in white smocks in pharmacies and with their medical degrees are a growing threat,” he said.

Besides the event itself, two things are wrong with Brown's analysis. First, it isn't true that doctors over-prescribing drugs is just as troubling as the illegal street drug trade. I'd say it's a thousand times less troubling. Maybe it's ten thousand times less troubling. Second, Brown says the enemy are "people in white smocks in pharmacies..." What do pharmacists have to do with it? California pharmacists should give the attorney general something useful to do and sue him.