Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed eliminating or severely cutting spending for non-federally mandated social programs for the poor, elderly and disabled. These are among the proposals that would have the most profound effects:

_ Eliminating California’s version of the welfare-to-work program known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. The move would save the state $1.3 billion in the coming fiscal year by taking away cash assistance and job training for 546,000 families.

_ Ending Healthy Families, California’s version of the federal government’s State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which is designed for children from families with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid but too low to afford private insurance. An estimated 1 million children would be affected. The Schwarzenegger administration says ending the program will save California more than $300 million in the new fiscal year.

_ Eliminating home care for 404,000 elderly and disabled residents, maintaining care for only 60,000 of the most frail under the In-Home Supportive Services program. The Schwarzenegger administration estimated a savings of $537 million.

_ Lowering the maximum amount the state is willing to contribute to its share of caregiver wages from $10.10 an hour to $8.60 under the In-Home Supportive Services program, to save $124 million. Wages are paid using a combination of local, state and federal money and vary by county. Counties can continue paying caretakers above the $8.60 rate by using local and federal money.

About 60 percent of caregivers are relatives of recipients, according to the state Department of Social Services.

_ Reducing child welfare services by 10 percent for a $70 million savings. The state has about 77,000 foster children, some placed with relatives and some with foster family agencies or group homes. The state would target foster family agencies and group homes for the cuts.

_ Reducing the contribution to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, which provides treatment and prevention for those with HIV/AIDS, by $55.5 million.

_ Phasing out college-fee assistance for a $173 million savings.

This is what happens when anti-tax dogma takes hold. Prop 13 and the effective veto held by the small Republican minority in the state house are choking this state, and the ones feeling the pain first are the young, poor, and weak. That’s what passes for civilization in modern-day California.

Needs no comment from me. Jason’s introduction is teaser-trailer enough:

But if you haven’t gotten to read Gail Collins‘ wonderful op-ed on the matter, please do. It’s an entertaining rundown of parliamentary dysfunction, from coast-to-coast. It’s got it all: broccoli farming, Al Franken, “mind-altering demons,” and jealousy over fancy office furniture. Best of all, the whole thing hangs on a reference to the much-beloved teevee series, Kolchak: The Night Stalker. And really, you can’t beat that.

Just click on the link, and enjoy!

Since Obama is now in charge, let’s go with “No Bananas.”

We are out of whack every one of the next few years by $10 (billion) to $12 billion.

Someone must have let the state out on one hell of a bender last weekend:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says California could face a budget deficit that approaches a dizzying $20 billion through June 2009.
[...]
Schwarzenegger announced his latest deficit figure on Monday during an address to business and civic leaders in Orange County.
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Just last week, the governor said the state would face a potential $10 billion deficit in the next fiscal year. His spokesman, Matt David, said Schwarzenegger misspoke at that time.

Someone needs to figure out if Matt David is related to Larry David, because it sounds an awful lot like he just “yada yada-ed” $10 billion.

Believe me, back in 2003 I’d have promised to donate to, work for, and vote for anyone running against Schwarzenegger. If Angelides can’t run a better campaign than this, he doesn’t deserve my vote, and unless something drastic happens, he won’t get it.

Since then, I’ve made it a point to follow the dynamics of the campaign in the hope that Angelides would give me a reason to reconsider. A unified message, stark reminders of the misguided and wasteful special election of 2005, effective advertising and communications that played to California’s Democratic majority, anything at all that indicated Angelides was acting like someone who wanted, and more importantly was deserving of, the job of running the nation’s richest and most populous state.

Quite simply, he’s done nothing of the kind. His first major TV ad buy was in support of this:

This little “meet Phil” piece may as well be a black screen with generic white type reading “typical bland bio ad” for all it was worth. It certainly would have freed up some money to run it more often. The ad is so inept that Angelides even manages to damn himself with faint praise by using this line written about him in the Sacramento Bee:

“…the most effective and dynamic state treasurer in a generation…”

I’ll bet he was also the biggest hunk in the A/V club too. Bad ads can be chalked up to inept advisors, but even giving Angelides the benefit of the doubt there, he still blew his biggest opportunity to turn the race around when he was granted an hour of quality time at the San Francisco Chronicle:

Democrat Phil Angelides blamed his struggling campaign for governor on a “record amount of negative ads” put out by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in an interview Monday with The Chronicle editorial board.

Negative ads. I wonder if he means the kind that he ran against his primary opponent Steve Westly which precipitated one of the ugliest ad wars in recent memory, all but handing another term to Schwarzenegger. But Angelides whining wasn’t his only misstep at the Chronicle editorial board:

Angelides said he would pay for these programs with $1.5 billion in “efficiencies” in state government and cuts in low-priority spending — both items that he could not give many specifically details.

In a pathetic irony, this is exactly what Schwarzenegger was saying as he ran in the 2003 recall election. We slammed him for it then, and fair is fair. Angelides is the state’s treasurer, he knows better than anyone that “efficiencies” and streamlining never add up to the kind of money that it takes to get anything done. That’s not to say that government can’t tighten its belt from time to time, but not only isn’t it a panacea, Angelides makes himself look foolish by bringing up the subject and then not fleshing it out in what was probably a make or break setting. He didn’t, and The Chronicle ended up endorsing Schwarzenegger, an act I’m sure no one on the editorial board thought they’d be doing just a few months ago.

I take no pleasure in my decision to waive my right to vote against Schwarzenegger. As I’ve said before, he’s literally half of the the reason Jason and I started 1115 back in 2003, and since the absurd recall election that year, I have looked forward to few things as much as the opportunity to turn the scumbag out of office and send him back to making awful movies. If this was a parliamentary vote, I’d choose “no confidence” in a heartbeat and be quite happy. Unfortunately in this case, I don’t have that luxury.

One luxury I do have is granted me by Angelides’ double-digit poll deficit. This would be a hard choice had the race been closer, if the vote was really black and white. But it isn’t close, and it is the perfect time to send as big a message to Angelides and the California Democrats as I can manage. This race was lost during the primary where polls showed Westly with the ability to handily beat the incumbent, and no such likelihood for Angelides. If the Democrats can’t avoid such nasty public infighting, they will continue putting up wounded candidates who will go on to defeat every time. Were I to vote for Angelides, I would be supporting a candidate and a state party who have done nothing to earn my support and many things to squander it. And I’m certainly not alone.

“I wouldn’t urinate down his throat if his heart was on fire.” – James Carville on Nader

When Jason and I started this site in 2003, two things drove us: the Bush administration’s mis-governance and the gubernatorial recall election in California. With our state still dealing with the fallout from the 2000 energy crisis, brought on by Republican deregulation of the state’s power generation and transmission system, residents saw their rates spike as governor Gray Davis was forced to sign emergency contracts at inflated prices just to keep the lights on. Sensing an opportunity to flip the governorship of the nation’s largest (and richest) state, the President and his advisors refused to expedite Federal Energy Regulatory Commission investigations and relief in the hopes that Davis would be so weakened that he would lose his seat in the 2002 election. Owing to an exceptionally weak challenge from Republican Bill Simon in that election, Davis won a second term, but still-high power bills and an unforgiving public left him mortally wounded.

Even after California Republican Congressman Darrell Issa set the wheels in motion for a nearly unprecedented recall election, Davis was favored to hold and serve out his four-year term, one he earned just months prior. That is until Issa cried his way through a press conference announcing that he was withdrawing from the race to make way for Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Schwarzenegger, who had long toyed with a run for office but shied away from the long and arduous campaigns, now needed to mug for the cameras and play to disaffected voters for just two months. And despite being dogged by sexual harassment charges, numerous verbal gaffes and running on a platform that consisted of “I’ll figure out how to govern once I get elected,” Schwarzenegger rode his movie catch-phrases and psuedo-tough-guy bravado straight into the governor’s mansion. It was little comfort for Davis when FERC finally levied fines against Enron and others for defrauding the state out of billions.

Schwarzenegger then proceeded to bring K Street to Sacramento, taking pay-for-play to a new level. As he talked about reform out of one side of his mouth, he was soliciting huge contributions from corporations seeking to do business with the state out of the other. He launched one of the largest power grabs in American politics with his 2005 special election, costing the state and local governments millions of dollars. His rise to power and exercise thereof was not only caustic, it was embarrassing. Take Carville’s feelings toward Nader, multiply them a few times, and you’ll have a rough approximation of my view of Schwarzenegger.

Yet if California’s election were held today, I would leave the box next to Schwarzenegger’s challenger, Democrat Phil Angelides, blank.

One year ago, Schwarzenegger’s approval rating was 31%, half of what it had been earlier that same year. His vanity special election was headed for a brutal defeat on all measures, thanks to staunch opposition from teachers, police, nurses and prison guards. Democratic prospects for reclaiming the governor’s office looked bright. Until the primary battle between Angelides and Steve Westly turned into the kind of fratricidal disaster that even the Swift Boat fools couldn’t hope to replicate. Radio and TV ads with wild accusations ran so often I had to cut back on media consumption. For two men who agreed on almost all issues, Westly and Angelides played mutually assured destruction better (or at least more extensively) than Saint Ronald Reagan ever did. I voted, electability in mind, for Westly, but by then it made little difference that Angelides won by a few points, the bitter primary campaign would have made it nearly impossible for either man to win the general election.

It’s one thing for me to throw in the towel on the race, something else entirely for Angelides’ own campaign to act as if they’ve done the same thing. As Schwarzenegger widens his lead, Angelides is just nowhere. He has failed to rally his base or reach out to the squishy middle. His communications game has been close to non-existent. And in the latest bit of incompetence, his aides hacked into Schwarzenegger’s server, downloaded audio files and released them to the media in an attempt to embarrass the governor – an action akin to a multi-billionaire robbing a bank.

Believe me, back in 2003 I’d have promised to donate to, work for, and vote for anyone running against Schwarzenegger. If Angelides can’t run a better campaign than this, he doesn’t deserve my vote, and unless something drastic happens, he won’t get it. One look at the polls tells me I’m not alone. Maybe I would pull out the old fire extinguisher…

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, once a critic of the GOP-led impeachment of former President Bill Clinton, has nominated one of the top Clinton prosecutors to the Orange County Superior Court bench.

Former GOP Rep. Jim Rogan, who was born and raised in San Francisco’s Mission District and represented Glendale (Los Angeles County) in the House for four years, splashed onto the national scene as one of the congressional managers — i.e., prosecutors — in the Clinton impeachment.

At the time, he called the perjury and obstruction-of-justice charges against Clinton a “slam dunk.” Instead, Rogan was the one who got dunked when he lost his seat to Democrat Adam Schiff in the next election.
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What makes the Rogan appointment all the more interesting is that in 1999, Schwarzenegger told George magazine that the uproar over the Clinton-Monica Lewinsky affair was a waste of time and energy and something “I will never forgive the Republican Party for. I was ashamed to call myself a Republican during that period.”

It seems that when it’s time to shore up his base, Schwarzenegger is just full of forgiveness. Full of something else as well.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed a prescription drug plan on Saturday that would penalize pharmaceutical companies that fail to provide big discounts to low-income Californians within five years by limiting their access to the state’s huge Medi-Cal market.

The proposal comes as the governor prepares for a health care summit to be held Monday in Los Angeles, where he is expected to outline his ideas on how the state might cover all or most of an estimated 6 million uninsured residents.

The plan, which could provide discounts to as many as 5 million people, represents a turnaround by Schwarzenegger, who in the past has opposed bills and ballot measures that attempted to force drug companies to provide cheaper drugs.

A 25 point drop in approval ratings and a bloody special election loss will do that. Now both the Democratic gubernatorial primary and my local state senate primary feature attack ads based on comparisons to Schwarzenegger. Meanwhile, it’s business as usual for the governor:

In 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger campaigned for governor as an outsider that wouldn’t be beholden to special interests. But three years later, as the now-incumbent governor runs for re-election, Schwarzenegger has raised more money from Sacramento’s downtown ZIP code–better known as special-interest central–than any other ZIP code in the state.
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“There are very few real people who live in 95814, legislative staffers and journalists excepted,” said Doug Heller, a spokesman for the Foundation for Taxpayers and Consumer Rights. “95814 is the home address of California special interests.”

In fact, Schwarzenegger’s Downtown Sacramento donors include many of the state’s leading political players, like the California Restaurant Association ($26,000), Exxon Mobil ($10,000), AT&T ($35,000) and the California Building Industry Association ($44,600).

Each of those groups has major interests pending before state government.

Way to go, tough guy.