The Daily News editors are fed up with California’s lawmakers’ simply staggering inability to pass an interim emergency budget and, every day this week, they have pushed their readers hard to be equally fed up.
In so doing, the DN is taking a tone generally reserved for activists and advocates attempting to rouse people to action.
Good. We need action.
Over the weekend, the editors went so far as to take the unusual step of running an editorial on the subject—- not on the editorial pages, but on the front page of the paper.
It read in part:
The once great state of California today becomes a national disgrace.
While the federal government races to revive a failing economy, leaders in Sacramento wallow in finger-pointing and self-righteous bluster. Their failure to pass even an interim solution to the state’s $40billion deficit by today’s deadline exponentially deepens the fiscal crisis.
The state will stop paying some of its bills and start issuing IOUs to cities such as Los Angeles, to school districts such as LAUSD and even to you.
It will stiff people due income tax refunds, students depending on Cal Grants to stay in college and contractors who have performed work. If the days without a budget continue, economic havoc will spread like a virus, and the state’s bad faith and credit will infect every corner of the state.
Californians should be furious. We are.
They’re right. We often talk about emergencies and budgets in the same breath, but this is the real deal.
Yet, incredibly our state representatives cannot seem to do their jobs despite circumstances that become ever more dire. (Today 200,000 state employees are taking a forced and unpaid day off. I hope you had no plans to go to the DMV.)
After the weekend editorial, the paper’s editors appeared to take a page out of Barack Obama’s community organizing book: Every day this week, they have run a contact list for local lawmakers and urged the paper’s readers to pick up the phone and call the SOBs who represent them and read them the riot act for their reckless and inexcusable behavior.
(You’ll find the same list below.)
Although the paper has traditionally been conservative in its leanings, this week the DN editors have also been refreshingly unafraid to point fingers at the right. For instance they wrote:
“The governor and all 120 legislators share responsibility for this. But most of the blame for the immediate crisis falls on Republicans in the Legislature, who last summer – to a person – signed a pledge not to raise taxes. Since then, Democrats and the Republican governor have offered significant compromise, but GOP lawmakers cling to ideological purity – schools, health care and other essential responsibilities be damned.
[SNIP]
Paralysis is destroying this state. Compromise is the only answer. It must happen now.
Look. Someone has to take a stand for the state’s well being, since our lawmakers show no signs of stepping up. There are moments when activist journalism is honest journalism. This moment in California’s fiscal history qualifies.
Now the ball’s in our court.
So do what the DN asks: Call. Plead. Cajole. Threaten. (But in a nice, non-FBI-alarming way) Use your dog training voice.
The necessary call list is after the jump.
UPDATE: 2:30 p.m. Friday: Right now several members of the state assembly are holding a press conference to explain that the state’s budget debacle has either shut down or suspended $5 billion previously committed to public works projects that would have created more than 200,000 jobs for California. (These contracts had already gone out.)
PS: Most of those projects were badly needed roads and highway work.
Fun times.
STATE SENATORS
George Runner, R-17th District
Sacramento office: 916-651-4017
Local office: 661-286-1471
Tony Strickland, R-19th District
Sacramento office: 916-651-4019
Local office: 805-494-8808
Alex Padilla, D-20th District
Sacramento office: 916-651-4020
Local office: 818-901-5588
Fran Pavley, D-23rd District
Sacramento office: 916-651-4023
Local office: 310-441-9084
STATE ASSEMBLY
Audra Strickland, R-37th District
Sacramento office: 916-319-2037
Local office: 805-230-9167
Cameron Smyth, R-38th District
Sacramento office: 916-319-2038
Local office: 661-286-1565
Felipe Fuentes, D-39th District
Sacramento office: 916-319-2039
Local office: 818-838-3939
Bob Blumenfield, D-40th District
Sacramento office: 916-319-2040
Local office: 818-904-3840
Julia Brownley, D-41st District
Sacramento office: 916-319-2041
Local office: 818-596-4141
Mike Feuer, D-42nd District
Sacramento office: 916-319-2042
Local office: 310-285-5490
Paul Krekorian, D-43rd District
Sacramento office: 916-319-2043
Local office: 818-240-6330
Two solutions: Cut back on personnel and sell state assets, such as land. The state has too much of both and most of both are unproductive.
Furlough Fridays begin for Calif. state workers
You know things are pretty bad when the Daily News becomes a voice of reason. If the California Republicans want to sick to blind ideology, well, they’re on their way to becoming the west coast version of the Whigs. Greens and Libertarians get busy. You’ve got an excellent opportunity to become the number 2 party in the state.
Below is the tax burden compared to the ten most populated states in the nation. Yes we are taxed $34/person or (1.4%) less then New Jersey, but we are even or higher than most other states. The problem is Spending is out of control and the state would have to collect about $3000 per person to balance the budget.
Source – StateMaster.com
$/PERSON STATE
——— ————
$2,406.70 New Jersey:
$2,380.02 New York:
$2,377.37 Michigan:
$2,372.44 California:
$2,039.23 Pennsylvania:
$1,997.17 Illinois:
$1,960.52 Ohio:
$1,716.39 Florida:
$1,606.00 Georgia:
$1,345.23 Texas:
Celeste, would you be willing for the state to sell Topanga State Park to developers if it meant that prisons could be improved and schools upgraded or would you just rather have others sacrifice for the budget?
For starters, California needs to get more of its federal tax money back from DC and not be forced to subsidize “gimme” states run by morons like Mississippi and Alaska.
The next time that little GOPer creep Lindsey Graham wants to stand up and demagogue federal spending, he might explain to the rest of the country why his state gets back per capita more than $2K of federal tax monies than they pay.
I suggest that California leave the union and keep all of their money and problems. Then, they can also take all the poor blacks in Mississippi who are on welfare, those who drive up federal spending in that state, since Californians care so much and have the money to support them, as they do illegals.
Alaska should leave the union so that they can do all the drilling for oil that Democrats are blocking and make everyone in the state live like Arab royalty.
Dumber than dirt…
Dumb? Perhaps, in your infinite financial wisdom, you could be specific. After all, Democrats know enough to spend a trillion dollars in a weekend.
To paraphrase you, reg:
CaliforniaThe middle and upper classes needsto get more ofitstheir federal tax money back from DC and not be forced to subsidize “gimme lazy, unproductive, Democratic, welfare-taking, nanny-state dependent, wealth-envying Obama voters.reg, you are a pathetic and total left-wing idiot who justifies and ignores any illegalities and moronic moves by the Democrats as the end justifying the means. It would be better if you even had a clue as to what destruction to our nation that the end will bring.
Krugman comments on just how misguided and contrary to basic economic sanity the cuts to the stimulus have been –
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/07/what-the-centrists-have-wrought/
Woody, you ignorant slut! Bagged-out, dried-up, slunken meat like you. Promiscuting means nothing to you, Woody, who hops from bed to bed with the frequency of a cheap ham radio. When you’re on your back, the meter is running.
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Who is the fool above who seems obsessed with Woody’s sex life? My guess his fisrt initail is D…………..onQuixote.
Of course, a liberal thinks that governrment can spend people’s money better than can the people who earned it. But, who’s to question the sanity and balance of a NYT columnist over legitimate, impartial economists?
Oh, well. A stimulus package, which this isn’t and for which Republican input was blocked, wouldn’t help after it creates major inflation, squeezes out spending in areas of greater results, and the President guts the budget of the military defending our nation and our interests in other parts of the world.
What am I saying? The stimulus package is not going to create jobs or stimulate anything, no matter what–peeriod. There’s no proof that it will accomplish what is claimed. But, go ahead and blow the money anyway!
Where’s the outrage from those who criticized the Bush spending? Where’s the quotes about poll numbers showing a large and growing number of Americans opposing the bill? Oh, I see. It’s part of the left’s double standards and situational ethics.
Maybe Obama can follow FDR’s example and get us into a major war over which we have no choice but to fight–to increase employment.
What I see is Obama trying to run and ruin our nation in the style of Chicago politicians with a Huey Long persona.
But, only someone “dumber than dirt”, which includes many noted economists, would disagree with a high-school only socialist intent on converting our nation into a European style nanny-state.
“What I see is Obama trying to run and ruin our nation in the style of Chicago politicians with a Huey Long persona.”
Woody, you also saw Granpa McCain winning the election when he selecte Sara “Dancing With The Stars” Palin as his running mate, and don’t lie. As for me, no thanks, because in my humble opinion, Obama is the best man for these times. See you in church.