Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Moonbeam's unrealistic wishes and dreams will be very destructive

We are approaching government budget season here in the State of California, so again it's time to dream, to pretend, and to not engage in any in-depth thought about our future.

 On May 30, 2010, I posted the following:
It's fitting that Disneyland was created in California.

It's fitting because we now have two branches of state government that live inside the Magic Kingdom of the late 1950's - in two "lands" far away from reality. The Governor's Office has been relocated to Fantasyland. The Legislature has relocated to Tomorrowland.

Way too many of the voters of California also live inside the Magic Kingdom - in three radically different worlds far away from reality and incomprehensible to each other.

Some live in Main Street USA, a fictional early 20th century Midwest town totally without a corresponding community reality in 21st Century California.

Some live in Frontierland hoping to confront the challenges of the 21st Century with a muzzle loading rifle while wearing a coonskin cap - a reality that never existed in California even when Ronald Reagan was Governor.

Some live in Adventureland where crocodiles, hippos, and other "African Queen" dangers, completely foreign to and absent from 21st Century California, fill people with fear and consume tremendous amounts of their psychological energy.
On April 3, 2011, I posted:
It's clear now, with the election of Jerry Brown, Californian's put the perfect Governor in Fantasyland - Governor Moonbeam - to replace The Gubernator.
California had serious budget problems when Brown was running for Governor in 2010. Almost all those problems stemmed from his pandering to the public and the press when he was previously Governor (1975-83).

For whatever reason, Californians refuse to believe this. The mainstream press, as was the case before, seems to think Brown isn't the problem. But slowly, some old-timers have started remembering openly, such as Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters who recently wrote:
While Brown opposed Proposition 13, the era's landmark anti-tax measure, he quickly embraced it after its passage in 1978, declared himself to be a "born-again tax cutter," and sponsored a hefty state income tax cut as he sought re-election to a second term.

Whether California was under siege from crime is questionable, but Republicans bludgeoned Democratic politicians as soft on crime, and Brown didn't want to be a victim.

He and legislators responded with lock-'em-up crime measures aimed at putting more felons behind bars. California's prison population, about 20,000 inmates, started climbing, and late in his governorship, Brown agreed to place a small construction bond issue on the ballot.
What Walter's didn't explain was that one of the reasons Prop 13 passed was a repeating of a descriptive term "obscene state surplus" coined by Moonbeam 1.0's fellow Democrat Jesse M. "Big Daddy" Unruh.

Unruh, then State Treasurer who previously was the powerful Speaker of the California State Assembly from 1961 to 1969, was displeased with Brown. Brown was pleased with himself because of the surplus. He had refused to use any of it to offset huge rises in property tax revenue created by extreme real estate value growth.

It was the first time the voters who approve of Brown discovered they dislike his policy. But somehow, California voters had by 1978 begun to separate in their minds politicians from policy.

Proposition 13 passed and, despite denials by anti-tax politicians and bloggers, became the basis of the financial problem that plague our State and local governments.

And as Walter's points out, the State's problems were exacerbated by "let's don't try to lead, let's get reelected" policies regarding crime and prisons adopted by Brown and his fellow Democrats in the Legislature back then.

As Walter's goes on to explain without offering any opinion on future implications, confronted with horrendous prison overcrowding the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the State to fix the problem including reducing the prison population to "only" 137.5 percent of design capacity by mid-2013. Brown and the Legislature have responded using a policy they call "realignment" which is a euphemism for "passing the buck" by sending lower-level felons from prison into county jails and maybe, or maybe not, funding the costs the counties will incur.

Oh, and they plan to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to permit 145 percent of design capacity, which would allow 5,000 to 6,000 more inmates. In other words, our political leaders are telling us it's ok to house in our prisons nearly 50% more people than they were designed to house.

The Bee in another article tells us about the Moonbeam-led State Corrections Department:
Officials estimated the department would see its workforce cut by about 6,400 staffers as a result of the long-term plan, and allow the prison system to meet the requirements of court-ordered mandates on crowding, health-care and mental health by the end of next year.
If you believe this, I have some State-owned bridges to sell you.

In the meantime, Governor Moonbeam and the Legislators are singing a blue tune about the fact that the budget is out of balance by some amount between $7 billion to $14 billion. In another recent post, Walter's noted:
With the state budget mired in deficits, Gov. Jerry Brown and legislators, especially his fellow Democrats, are searching under every fiscal rock for money to spend.

That search has spawned an odd syndrome involving what could be three big pots of money – a competition among liberals over how they should be spent if, indeed, they materialize.
What Walter's is telling us is that it's an election year. Our legislators are struggling to keep reality from intruding on the State Budget until after November.

The sad part of the situation is that in January 2011, newly-reelected Governor Moonbeam could have presented a balanced proposed 2011-12 Budget. Yes, the cuts in schools, care for the aging and the young, courts, wildfire fighting capabilities, etc., would have been drastic, maybe even catastrophic. But by this year, California's self-destructive middle class voters would have been forced to confront reality.

Now Moonbeam and the Democratic Legislature have taken California's government services down a road preferred by the radical right. They are offering a completely inadequate, useless "tax the rich and the poor" tax increase initiative measure which they tell us with a straight face will prevent further cuts.

While singing his blue tune about the budget, Governor Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown keeps up a deception, but sometimes I wonder of these song lyrics apply:
The result of this deception
Is very strange to tell
For when I fool the people
I fear I fool myself as well!
In the meantime, California's once-proud public education system - from pre-school to graduate school - has become a shadow of the promise it offered the children of The Greatest Generation.

In the meantime, California's progressive programs to care for the elderly, the disabled, and the children of poverty are becoming comparable to Mississippi's.

In the meantime, California's once-strong, booming economy that existed from 1950 through 1980 has completely stagnated, buried in goofy ideas about taxation, environmentalism, and "green" potential.

At the risk of repeating myself too often:
We are approaching government budget season here in the State of California, so again it's time to dream, to pretend, and to not engage in any in-depth thought about our future.

It's fitting that Disneyland was created in California.

It's fitting because we now have two branches of state government that live inside the Magic Kingdom of the late 1950's - in two "lands" far away from reality. The Governor's Office has been relocated to Fantasyland. The Legislature has relocated to Tomorrowland.

Way too many of the voters of California also live inside the Magic Kingdom.

It appears that Californians have become moonbeams themselves, believing these Magic Kingdom song lyrics:
When you wish upon a star
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
Will come to you

If your heart is in your dream
No request is too extreme
When you wish upon a star
As dreamers do
Unfortunately, embracing Governor Moonbeam's unrealistic wishes and dreams will be very destructive.

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