Taking The Exact Wrong Advice

Last week, Robert Cruickshank offered the special election advocates some pretty good advice - focus on Prop. 1C, which covers 83% of the short-term budget hole that can be gained from the passage of the ballot measures, because the state party approved it, because it's the only measure that matters in the near term, and because they need to focus their energies, since very little good is likely to come of the election at this point. Of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger controls the Budget Reform Now Campaign. And he has shown himself to be completely indifferent to the short-term needs of the state in favor of writing a long-term, right-wing spending cap into the state Constitution. Because instead of abandoning all the other measures in favor of 1C, Budget Reform Now has jettisoned everything in favor of 1A & 1B. I saw this ad a couple days ago, out of nowhere, and Budget Reform Now dropped it without a press release. The ad tries to use the 2005 special election imagery which killed Arnold's Prop. 76 (substantially the same proposal) in favor of this spending cap, with the firefighter warning of "$16 billion in cuts" without bothering to mention that those "cuts," really lost revenues, would be two years off. And the new "Yes on 1A and 1B" logo makes an appearance.

I think we can finally figure out what Arnold Schwarzenegger wants from this election. He could care less about the $6 billion in short-term budget solutions - but his corporate partners want that spending cap, and his new pals in the CTA want their out-of-court settlement locked in (it would've cost them less just to take the Governor to court for falsely calculating Prop. 98 revenues, with more of a chance of winning). So all this talk about how we have to vote Yes or the budget hole will grow deeper was a ruse. The Governor clearly supports the deeper budget deficit, or at least he could give a crap with coming up with a solution. He and his Chamber of Commerce puppet masters want that cap. They have wanted it for four years. Anyone lining up with these interests should understand what they really support. Good job, Democratic leadership.