2010: Welcome To The Deficit Decade

On Friday we entered the new year and decade loading the Odyssey with the dog and kids and heading home. Having spent the week at my sister's in the hills of Marin County we ended the decade refreshed and relaxed, ready to head south and get ready for the routine of school, work, community service and recreation.


Not atypical for our annual sojourn, our journey home began under thick clouds and occasional showers as we wound through the green hills of Marin and the East Bay before connecting with the great Interstate 5 near Tracy and heading through the crops, orchards and ranches that feed California and beyond. Our ride into the new decade was bumpier than the year before due to lack of adequate road maintenance. Along the way we saw the familiar signs posted on the side of trailers and billboards put up by the farmers "Water is Food" "No Water, No Jobs = No Future" and "I Don't Water, You Don't Eat."


Very noticeable was the increase in CHP activity, leading Leslie to comment "the state needs the revenue." Also noticeable was the relative lack of traffic, the advantage of travelling on New Year's Day that falls on a Friday keeping most home at least one more day.


As we drove through the heart of the nation's state with the most population, the highest GDP, the most retail spending, the most international trade, the highest unemployment and biggest state deficit, I pondered, "What is the biggest issue we face in this decade?"


As I hit a small hole in the road driving past yet another closed state operated Rest Area (Next One Also Closed. And the One After That. And The Next One.) I knew it was money. Money, it is said, is the root of all evil; certainly true in political evil and most generally for the population at large as well. As we start the Twenty-Tens public money will be the root of future evil, and also our largest problem as a state and nation. Public finance will be central to the 2010 elections, and the 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018 elections as well as our state and national budget problems are not going away very soon.


The State of California enters the new decade with a budget deficit of over $20 Billion and growing. As employment continues to shrink, foreclosures continue to grow and the economy continues to decline, future revenues look to continue to drop. Faced with this our Legislature's majority continues to complain about lack of revenue and rather than looking for even more cuts from the budget they bloated in the last decade with a 100% increase in spending, they continue to look for more taxes they can levy on an increasingly disgruntled populace.


Similarly the United States Treasury enters the decade awash in red ink, well over One Trillion Dollars and counting. With major health care reform measures passed in the House and Senate that add several trillion more to future budgets, and therefore deficits, law makers in the majority in both houses and the White House appear prepared to ignore the laws of economics, and politics, and widen deficit even further. Like their counterparts in Sacramento, the elected majority in Washington is looking who and how much to tax to pay for their spending.


When just the "rich" are being taxed the majority of Americans are fine with the proposition. They got theirs, they should share more of it. When the definition of "rich" starts to creep further down the income scale that is when political calculations and slogans begin to fall apart. Slowly the tax creep down the income scale overcomes the political rhetoric and one day a couple looks at their finances and realizes how much more it costs to register their car, how much less is in their paychecks due to higher withholdings, how much more it costs to buy gas, and shoes, and backpacks for their kids. Reading the news they know that inflation has been mostly absent from the economy, and their receipts show this. They also show higher sales taxes.


Entering a decade with huge deficits presents not only economic and budgetary problems for government, but also political and ideological challenges for the electorate. An electorate that has just made it through a whip-lash decade that began with a recession and then a lengthy and steady period of economic growth followed by an economic crash, is a bit shell shocked. Most Americans learned many lessons about consumption, spending, budgeting and saving. As they apply those lessons to their home economics they pick up the paper and learn that the lessons they learned from the last few years of the previous decade have been completely lost on those they voted into office. While we learned to not buy the shoes just because they are on sale our politicians are passing another multi-billion dollar bond measure we will have to pay interest on, or another multi-hundred dollar spending bill that pays for intersections in some backwater Midwest town among other items.


While asking us to pay more taxes our elected officials in Sacramento and Washington continue to spend more of the taxes we are already paying. With no plan to stop the deficits from growing there certainly can be no plan to wipe out the deficits entirely, or at least bring them down to an acceptable percentage of Gross Domestic Product.


And this will be the issue of our nascent decade: Government Deficits. How to pay for them? How to shrink them? How to prevent them?


Politically the question in California becomes when will the electorate change its voting habits and patterns to ensure these questions will be answered by our Legislature. Will the voters determine this issue of budget deficits is significant enough when it comes time to vote for Governor? When it is time to re-elect their current members of Assembly or Senate? Is there any chance the electorate will wake up to its collective responsibility and realize the size of government in Sacramento is way too large, spends way too much and is way to complacent in giving tax money to the public employees that control most elections? At what point does the California voter realize his/her vote has consequences and repercussions and we are living those today from votes s/he made over the past decade?


Our state is on the verge of bankruptcy. Our nation is heading to financial insolvency based on the current deficits and spending bills passed or in the legislative pipeline. The amounts of money and percentages of the overall economy tied up in debt and debt service is staggering. Like the economy as a whole that became over leveraged on a real estate pricing bubble, our state and national debt has become over leveraged on tax revenue bubbles that grew tremendously in the previous decade. What happens when that bubble pops? It is already leaking air, and we are seeing the initial reactions of our elected officials: pump in more air in the form of taxing more.


The Deficit Decade is upon us. With the public at large already showing signs of reducing spending on consumer goods, paying down their debt and increasing their savings, how long before their personal changes in habits will trickle into the ballot box?


Happy New Year.

Political Fearmongering

This past weekend our church hosted Dr. Terry Cole-Whittaker, new thought guru, inspirational speaker, motivator and someone who just has her head on right. She conducted a few workshops and on Sunday gave the sermon to the congregation. Dr. Terry's main message is that we are trapped in thought and because we are trapped in thought our potential is limited to the thoughts that trap us. Freeing ourselves from negative thoughts and thinking frees us to attain what we desire in life and gives us the freedom to be ourselves and be truly happy.

Advertising and marketing are created and presented to capture our thoughts and evoke emotional responses that in turn cause us to purchase products and services or what we think of someone or something. Hum a jingle, re-use a slogan, repeat what is now known as a "talking point" and the marketers and advertisers have done their job. Punch a certain hole in a ballot and the marketers and advertisers have done their job; always punch the same or similar hole in a ballot and they have really done their job as they have hooked you on a party the same way Phillip Morris hooks others on cigarettes.

Dr. Terry spoke about the fearmongering that surrounds us. Creating a sense of doom and failure if certain events happen or do not happen, many of which are far exaggerated to create false power for those creating the fear. Politicians, especially in California state politics where there is no competition for the elected officials, excel at fearmongering and delivering the message of fear. Their purpose is to get you to trust them to protect and save you from the evil that awaits if you do not react as they wish.

Paramount in the fearmongering process is the budget process that consumes our state every year. Every year members of the California Legislature majority, aided by their friends in the major media in the state, tell us all that we will lose in this state if they are not allowed to spend more money. Eventually a few members of the minority cave in to the pressure and pass a budget that increases spending in California and because the spending was not cut enough services are not expanded enough, and the following year we must spend even more money.

This year we finally have arrived at a breaking point. After a decade of increasing spending against increasing revenue elected officials are finally faced with declining revenue. Incredibly their first reaction is to raise taxes on citizens struggling in a declining economy. They hammered us with fearful messages of taking away funding for education, health care and public safety. With a payroll that has ballooned to 235,000 employees in the state we are told to pay even higher taxes so each of them can keep their jobs, providing fewer services than a decade ago when the state payroll barely reached 150,000 employees.

As the June 30th fiscal year end rapidly approaches and a budget is one again ready to be debated and deadlines missed, and payments from the state to hospitals and local school districts are withheld, we can count on more fearful messages eminating from Sacramento. Messages that we must raise taxes or we will see funding for hospitals cut, but no state employees, funding for schoold districts cut, but no state employees. To protect their greatest financial supporters the majority in the Legislature, aided by the media and the Governor, will give us messages of fear and hope we support their protecting the employment of many in a wasteful beauracracy.

Our state government is filled with inefficiencies and waste. Health care delivery in local communities is severely hampered by state workers and regulations that waste billions of dollars that could, and should, be delivered to local health care providers. Instead tens of thousands of workers are supported at the state level monitoring a system they created so they can have something to monitor. Education is hampered for the same reasons with the state employing thousands of workers who having nothing to do with educating a child, but rather exist to create a beauracracy to monitor the school districts who could use those funds.

Enough with governing by telling us all the bad things that will happen. It is time for our elected officials to quit talking and start working. Instead of putting fear into the citizens of the state put the fear into the managers of all the programs and departments you have created, fear that they need to be more efficient and waste less of our tax dollars or they will lose their jobs. Instead of trying to gain our support by using fear to show why we need more spending, our politicians need to show us the positive results from their working with senior state leadership to pare spending and payroll.

Across the state businesses are making hard decisions to become more efficient and stay open. Meanwhile they are facing increasing expenses from a group of politicians in Sacramento afraid to make those same hard decisions. Unfortunately with no competition in their elections for office due to gerrymandered districts, fearmongering works. Voters always punch the hole with the (D) or (R) next to it--over 65% voting (D) in California, and keep electing the same person year after year after year. Sure the name may change but the person filling the seat is no different than the person who filled it before.

As we approach a new round of elections in 2010 California voters need to ignore the messages of "incumbent" and party affiliation and instead start looking at the person, the actual person, on the ballots. Are they participating in politics of fear? Will they continue the same failed policies and politics that have led our state to where it is today? Did you vote for "change" in 2008 but are willing the punch a ballot for "same" in 2010? Would you rather have leadership that is telling you all the bad things that can happen if they do not get their way, or a leader telling you all the good thing that will happen if you join them and elect them to office?

Dr. Terry's message is very true in a democracy, we get what we desire and what we think we desire. Our government failure is a result of voter failure to discern the facts from the messages. To reward the politics of fearmongering that has proven successful thereby perpetuating the message and the process have proven successful by the voters and therefore will continue--until voters decide to stop listening to the messages delivered by those with the most to benefit from our believing those messages.

We can attain what we want--honest governance, solid public fiscal management, safe streets and schools, quality healthcare and education. We can attain these things as soon was we as a people decide to elect those people who want the same things. We can attain these things as soon as we decide to quit electing those who enrich a few while impovershish the many, trapping them in fearful thinking and reactions.

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Why Are Millions of Dollars Spent to Protect Bad Teachers?

On Sunday (5/3/09) The Los Angeles Times had a major front page article by Jason Song detailing the job security teachers have in California once they obtain tenured status. This article is a must read for every adult in the state.

For parents the article pulls back the curtain showing some of the bureaucracy which controls your children six or seven hours a day, one hundred eighty days a year for thirteen years. It reveals the lack of control over the teachers by you a parent, and by your representatives elected to your local school board. Most basically it shows once again how important is your vote in school board elections to ensure independent members of your community are elected to represent you, the parent, and thwart any efforts by your local teachers union or the state organization to control your school district.

For elected school board members it is a wake up call to get stronger rules for dismissal in their contracts with their teachers' unions. Reading the Times article detailing case after case of incompetent, or worse borderline sexual predator, teachers retaining their jobs for years while districts go through the process to dismiss them one wonders why we even have school boards at all. If an employer cannot take measures to ensure the safety, physical and emotional, of its charges from its employees then the system is broken. School boards across the state need to restructure their contracts to eliminate most of the process needed to dismiss teachers currently being protected by their unions and they processes installed in their collective bargaining contracts.

For members of our State Legislature this article is a wake up call that the gig is up. The relationship between the teachers' unions across the state and by the huge statewide umbrella to which most of the locals tithe, the vaunted California Teachers' Association, and funds funnelled from teachers' paychecks to the Democratic Party, its candidates and propositions it supports is evident. And thanks to the Los Angeles Times article, many parents will begin to see the correlation to the candidates supported by the unions and the inept teacher who may be teaching their child. Voters will begin to connect the dots between the over-protective laws handcuffing their district administration preventing them from firing the teacher making lewd and lascivious comments and actions to their daughter. As part of the upcoming process to break down and untangle the relationships and spending mandates that have led our state to a financial abyss, pressure should also be put on the legislature to change the laws restricting the ability of bad teachers to be dismissed.

As for teachers, this article begins to crack the veneer they have ably constructed that has held them as a protected class above criticism because of the noble profession in which they engage. The connection between their unions and the buying of officials enacting laws protecting bad teachers at the expense of our children is fully exposed. Millions and millions of teachers' salaries have been collected through automatic payroll deductions and syphoned to candidates and propositions without any real input for the majority of teachers. And the results are disastrous for those in the profession as evidenced by the budget cuts throughout school districts throughout the state. Propped up by millions of dollars every election the large majority in Sacramento has spent, spent and then spent some more until we arrived at our current budget crisis. Every school district budget cut can be laid at the feet of the number one contributor to those currently in office in Sacramento: teachers' unions. Spending millions to elect anyone with (D) next to their name. Los Angeles Unified is looking at laying off perhaps a thousand teachers or more--whose fault is that? The same people whose elections to office in Sacramento were paid for by those teachers being laid off.

The average teacher when asked about their political contributions or their local union politics typically replies, "I don't get involved in that." And they don't, they just blindly tithe to the apparatus that has screwed them with budget cuts and allows bad teachers to be in the classroom next to theirs. The system is broken, and it was broken by those who are supposed to look after the best interest of all teachers and work with our communities to instruct our children. It was broken by organized labor in conjunction with their political allies who cared more about the power of the whole instead of the good of the community.

Our teachers' unions have way to much power in our state. Voters need to stand up and take back their school boards and insist their elected officials protect their children first and teachers' second. There is no excuse for a pedophile or totally incompetent teacher standing in front of your child for six hours a day--and s/he will remain there as long as the CTA and its locals retain the control they have on our state political systems.

Should a local school board hold firm in negotiations at contract time to make it easier to dismiss those teachers who clearly need dismissal you can count on the local union to spend significant amounts of funds in a public relations campaign vilifying the school board. They will spend the funds of the many, many, many quality educators who are their members to protect the few who deserve no such protection. Vocal members of the local will campaign on campuses and at meetings pulling out the "woe are we the teachers" argument, and many of those voices will be from some of those being protected.

As a parent of children in the Long Beach Unified School District I am willing to undergo some short term pain for long term gain. If the LBUSD board draws a firm line in negotiations demanding easier resolution to dismissals that save time and needed funds for the district and more quickly eliminates bad teachers I will support them. If the Teachers Association of Long Beach, the local union, makes this a strike point and threaten to walk out over the issue I say: let them. Let the union take the position of closing down the district to spare the jobs of a few teachers. Let them show the public, their members and the students they would rather every student suffer than allow a few bad teachers be eliminated from the classrooms.

It is time for parents and the voters to take back control of the education of our children and wrest as much of that control away from Sacramento where control has been usurped by the CTA. Contact your local school board representative and tell him or her: I support you, change this insidious process.

Long Beach 1st City Council District Endorsement

Some time ago I spoke with Robert Garcia and asked him if he was going to run for the 1st District Council seat in Long Beach; at the time Bonnie Lowenthal still held the seat and had made no announcement concerning her pursuing the seat she now holds in the California Assembly. Garcia, in his affable manner, gave a chuckle and said something to the effect of, "We'll see what the future holds." I knew then he would pursue the position when it became available. Not long after that Garcia contacted several friends and colleagues and indicated he would be running for the seat, either if Lowenthal (Bonnie) was elected to higher office and vacated the seat, or when she would be termed out. At that time I told Garcia I supported him.

My relationship with Garcia goes back several years to when he participated in the Leadership Long Beach program, at the time working as the assistant to my friend Gina Rushing, President of St. Anthony High School in Long Beach. As I came to know him better through the years my first impressions of Garcia were hardened, he is very bright, he is extremely friendly, he cares about Long Beach, he is a great guy and a good man. All of these are great character traits, ones we want in our friends and ideally our leaders; but when it comes to electing our policy makers good character, while important, should not be our sole determining factor.

Last week I saw news that the union that represents approximately 4,000 of the employees of the City of Long Beach (International Association of Machinist and Aerospace Workers --IMA) was interviewing the candidates for the Long Beach 1st District Council seat for the purposes of making an endorsement. As part of the process the IMA was requiring candidates to sign a "pledge" (posted here on candidate Rick Berry's site) which among other items has the signer to pledge to support the non-democratic process of "card check" to establish unions, and to encourage and support unionization of businesses in the city. By signing the pledge an individual is aligning him- or herself with the union's ideology and practices, essentially forming an alliance with the union. Once signed it seems the union would have a right to use the pledge as an instrument at a later date to influence, or encourage, an elected individual to stand by their word and signature--whether they endorsed that individual or not. Robert Garcia signed this pledge, and therefore agreed to align with the IMA and those principles laid out in its pledge.

Because of his signing of this pledge, along with his solicitation of the IMA endorsement to accompany the endorsements he had previously received from both the Fire and Police Associations in Long Beach, I cannot support Garcia's candidacy for the 1st District seat.

The City Council is the employer for the City of Long Beach, while the office of the City Manager negotiates the contracts with the various unions and individuals, ultimately it is the City Council that approves contracts and budgets that are impacted by those agreements. As such members of council, and members of the city negotiating team(s), must have an adversarial relationship with those whom they employ to ensure they are doing their job: negotiate the best possible position for the City of Long Beach and its residents. Members of council are not there to represent and work for the employees of the city, they are not to negotiate and approve contracts that in the best interests of the employees, they are there to represent the voters and citizens of Long Beach and negotiate and approve contracts that are in the best interest of those citizens.

By accepting union funds for campaigns and pandering to them for political endorsements (which come with volunteers and free campaign mailers, phone banks and other campaign efforts) candidates are aligning with the employees and tacitly telling the citizens when it comes time to vote their interests lie with the employees not the citizens. The majority of our current council, and previous councils, have had these same endorsements, and voted for budget after budget increasing salaries and benefits that have strapped our city financially. It is time to break the cycle and not elect the candidate with the city employee union’s support.

The political history of our city shows a stepping stone of city council members creating labor-friendly legislation and votes subsequently getting support and contributions from statewide labor organizations to win their seats in Sacramento. From Lowenthals (Alan and Bonnie), to Oropeza to Richardson those who have the backing of the labor unions win elections--just ask Jenny Oropeza who lost her bid for Congress because of one vote in Sacramento that was against the unions’ wishes; they then supported Richardson with significant donations and she won the seat.

Political calculus and term limits suggest that Garcia is set up perfectly to run for Lowenthal's (Bonnie) seat in the Assembly in eight years when both are termed out, if elected, and can do so with the support of the labor unions--if he plays his cards right. With a very bright political future can Garcia not afford to keep his eye on future donations from the single biggest predictor of election victory in Long Beach, labor union support?

Long Beach, like the State of California, is facing serious financial deficits – deficits which will require cuts in programs, funding of projects and employment costs. Long Beach cannot afford more members of council who are beholden to their employees for their offices--we must have independent members of council if we are to solve our financial problems.

Because he did not sign the pledge, and also because of his views on the purpose of City government, the ideas he has to improve our fiscal standing and his relative independence from interest groups in the city, I endorse Rick Berry for Long Beach 1st Council District.
I encourage those in the 1st Council District to show the rest of the city that "change" really is what will happen in this election--vote for the candidate who is not like your previous member of council, is not beholden to the same special interests that directly benefit from the budget he will be voting on, is willing to challenge the status quo at City Hall. Vote for Rick Berry for 1st District City Council.

There are those cynics who will feel my endorsement of Berry and not Garcia is somehow connected to my leaving the Long Beach Post. Let me assure you the two are unrelated, I have had no conversations or communication with Garcia about the Long Beach Post since perhaps late November. This decision was made after, and independently of my decision to leave the Long Beach Post.