Friday, March 12, 2010

Sure Enough...

As if to prove my point in yesterday's post about Meg Whitman limiting herself with regards to those "solutions" she's so sure she's got for California, eMeg gave (gasp!) a press conference at the California Republican Party convention today, addressing her ideas for the budget crisis. Among them? No overall spending cuts to education, $4 billion in tax cuts, and reducing state spending by $15 billion over four years through reducing inefficiencies and waste. (All of this info is courtesy of John Myers, at KQED Public Radio.)

Guess what, Meg? Education spending represents 40 percent of the general fund budget; I don't want to cut it any more than anybody else does, but good luck chipping away at a $20 billion shortfall otherwise. Cutting taxes to the tune of $4 billion - about 0.2 percent of state GDP - won't do squat to create jobs or jump-start the economy, but it will drive up the deficit by another $4 billion or so.

And as for those spending cuts - never mind the question of whether there's $15 billion in "waste" in the state budget to begin with (there isn't). Meg, my friend, sit down. The deficit is $20 billion this year alone. And unless the economy rebounds faster than one of my sinus infections, it will probably be in the $10 to $15 billion range, annually, through the middle of this decade. So $15 billion over four years ain't gonna bring us back to black, as Amy Winehouse would put it. (I tried to say "back in black" so as to make an AC/DC reference, but it just doesn't sound right, does it?)

Wait a minute, I've just run some numbers in my head (the best place to do math, I find) - if she's going to cut taxes by $4 billion per year, that comes out to $16 billion over four years. That's a billion dollars more than she's proposing to cut in spending. Which brings us right back to square one, deficit-wise. Actually, square one plus another billion dollars, give or take.

Hey, media - you wanna stop taking this lady seriously already?

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Some comments on Meg Whitman, who faithful readers know I don’t much care for. Part of it might be that I’m a state employee, and state employees have been her favorite punching bag throughout most of her campaign. (Immigrants, another favorite scapegoat for conservatives, are thus far being mercifully spared Whitman’s ire, which is more than can be said for her 50-points-down-in-the-polls “opponent” Steve Poizner.)

The notoriously press-shy Whitman – who may have made political history yesterday when she invited a group of reporters to an “open press” event and then told them, once they arrived, that they were no longer welcome – sat down for an interview with San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders. I go back and forth on Saunders; she calls herself a “San Francisco conservative,” which I guess is somehow different from a normal conservative, except that she still seems to believe climate change either isn't happening, or isn't serious enough to do much about. Good on ya.

But to her credit, she got eMeg to sit down and actually talk about the issues. Well, not so much the issues as her biography. According to Saunders, the big question about Whitman is, “Can she govern?” Never mind that there’s already an easy, one-word answer to this question (hint: it’s two letters, starts with “n,” and rhymes with “go”). Saunders falls into that age-old trap of assuming that someone with corporate management experience is somehow capable of running a government. I’m not the first one to say this, and I’m sure I won’t be the last, but it’s important for people to know that running a business and running a government are not the same thing, and someone who is good at one is not necessarily going to be even remotely good at the other.

For one thing, Whitman herself acknowledges that she has “not directly negotiated with unions” in her business experience. That alone ought to disqualify any business leader who’s running for governor of California, whose hundreds of thousands of state employees constitute one of the most powerful interest groups in the history of American politics. If you have no idea how to deal with unions, good luck trying to cut the state workforce by 30,000 jobs.

I was also more than a little dismayed by Whitman’s boast, in her co-written (read: ghostwritten) memoir The Power of Many, that she “can go into virtually any kind of business, analyze the situation and come up with an effective plan to solve problems and achieve goals.” For one thing, coming up with a plan wouldn’t be her job as governor – negotiating a plan with enough of the 120 members of the Legislature for it to pass both houses would be. That’s what Jerry Brown plans to do, anyway.

And as for that “effective plan” eMeg insists she can come up with, it doesn’t help if you purposefully wall off a number of possible solutions – or components of solutions – to the problems your business or government is facing. Pledging to oppose tax increases, promising to increase education spending – these are both costly decisions to make, especially before you’ve even been hired by the company. Can you imagine a candidate for CEO of a corporation that’s bleeding money by the billions proclaiming, before they even take office, “If you elect me CEO of this corporation, I promise I will not raise any of our products’ prices. I also promise to increase Research and Development spending.” No way; any responsible business leader has to consider every possible option “on the table,” as does a responsible political leader.

Then again, Whitman does boast of having thought up “a method to save hours of food preparation time by washing potatoes in dishwashers.” That’s what California really needs; someone who can wash our potatoes quicker. How about when Jerry Brown becomes governor, he appoints Meg Whitman as State Potato Washer? Assuming she agrees not to take a salary. Times are tight, after all.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

These Times We Live In

I know it’s been quite some time since your humble correspondent updated (what? I’ve been sick, gimme a break), and I’ll in the coming days, but this little ditty caught my eye and I just couldn’t resist commenting on it.

So, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you may have heard that a conservative Republican state legislator, Roy Ashburn, recently came out of the closet. After being caught driving drunk in Sacramento. In his state-provided vehicle. Having just left a gay bar. With an unidentified “male companion” in the car. And having spent his entire legislative career voting against every possible law that could grant even a shred of dignity or equality to gays and lesbians.

So, that’s fun. Sort of makes you think of that ancient Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”

Never mind Ashburn’s political future. He crossed the aisle to vote for tax increases last year, which means his career in the Republican Party is over, plain and simple. Coming out as an open homosexual isn’t even the nail in the coffin; the coffin’s already met its nail quota, with some left over to spare.

What I’m interested in are the reactions of Ashburn’s constituents. A brave San Francisco Chronicle writer ventured into the heart of his district, in Bakersfield, where I’m sure a Bay Area news reporter feels right at home, to ask everyday folks what they thought of their state senator. Generally, the reaction was favorable, and by “favorable,” I mean that no one particularly seemed to want to tar and feather the man.

Interviewed in a bar, 68-year-old country singer Bad Blake - err, Mel Lawrence - gave Ashburn credit for voting “more or less, along Kern County lines.” Good to hear that voting along Kern County lines means opposing same-sex marriage, civil unions, health benefits for domestic partners, and hate crimes legislation.

In the same bar – I’m guessing over a shot of Jack or a can of Pabst, but the article doesn’t specify – a 29-year-old former marine named Vince Edwards admitted that he was “just prejudiced against gays. I’m just not comfortable with them.”

All I want to know is: what’s Vince going to say to his children and grandchildren in 40 years when gays have full equality everywhere in the United States? Is he going to be the mid-21st-century equivalent of that racist old grandpa every other white family seems to have? Are his children going to read what Dad said in the newspaper (not that future generations are going to have any idea what a newspaper was) with pride? This guy couldn’t even bring himself to (lie and) say that he’s okay with gays, just not with same-sex marriage or adoption, a refrain that seems to pop up a lot in conservative areas. No, he straight up admitted to being prejudiced against them.

I appreciate your service, Vince. But it doesn't excuse your bigotry.