

Indebted and Unrepentant - hga
http://city-journal.org/2010/eon1103fs.html

======
TomOfTTB
I can't speak for New York but the irony in California is that Political
patisanship, almost universally considered a bad thing, is now our only hope.
Because right now the Dems have all the power. The Republicans literally have
no say now. So if California falls it will be the biggest repudiation of
liberal ideas probably ever.

So without the rest of the countries help our only hope lies in the Democratic
legislature being dedicated to their philosophy enough to make it succeed at
all cost.

~~~
MichaelSalib
Some people may dislike partisanship, but do you really think most
partisanship-haters despise 'majority-rules' voting? I mean, most elected
governing bodies operate under majority-rules and it seems to work pretty
well. Giving the CA legislature the ability to pass a budget without a
supermajority doesn't seem related to partisanship at all: its about a fixing
an institutional rules defect.

------
freiheit
I think this conservative journal is trying to make a lot of something out of
nothing and attacking areas (large coastal cities) that simply have always
tended to go more Democrat.

I think this article (probably intentionally) misses the simple point that
there's a lot of "get rid of the old" going on everywhere. This has everything
to do with the economy (unemployment) and little to do with actual actions by
the ousted politicians. Dissatisfaction with life leads to voting out
incumbents, and the economy has been particularly terrible for particularly
long now.

Federally (House, especially) that's meant a lot of Democrats have been voted
out, because the Democrats have been in power.

In California, the combination of an ineffective Republican governor, 2/3rds
requirement to pass a budget, and a block of hard-liner Republicans has been
crippling California (with an overly polarized legislature), and that's what I
think California voters were voting out. Absolute stupidity about implementing
some of the emergency budget measures (so they cost instead of saved) really
didn't help. In particular, Whitman sounded an awful lot like Schwarzenegger:
conservative talking about running things like a business, but with no
political experience, leading to making promises they have no idea how to
keep. And, of course, voting for lowering the budget passing requirement to
simple majority.

(To be fair, prop 25 was very astutely designed to pass, with the simple
majority budget on one hand and not paying legislators when the budget is late
on the other hand.)

~~~
anamax
> To be fair, prop 25 was very astutely designed, with the simple majority
> budget on one hand and not paying legislators when the budget is late on the
> other hand.

What makes you think that legislators care about their pay? (Note that
salaries are a small part of their govt income.)

Note that CA's balanced budget reqt doesn't mean that income equals outgo,
that is, what the rest of us think that "balanced" means. CA's balanced budget
reqt means that a model, which isn't tweaked when it fails to match reality,
has equal income and outgo. It's accounting theater.

~~~
freiheit
I didn't say anything about legislators caring about their pay.

I think the pay thing in prop 25 was a smart way to write a proposition to get
it passed, because many people were expressing unhappiness that legislators
were getting paid while there was no budget, especially when many of the
legislators were doing nothing about it.

In other words: if you'd split that proposition into the two different main
things, it's likely neither would have passed.

~~~
anamax
> if you'd split that proposition into the two different main things, it's
> likely neither would have passed.

I disagree. Pretty much anything "punishing" CA legislators would have passed.

It's unclear whether replacing the 2/3rds reqt with a majority vote would have
passed on its own.

------
MichaelSalib
_the split between, on one side, California and New York—two states, deeply in
debt, whose wealthy are beneficiaries of the global economy—and, on the other,
the solvent states of the American interior that will be asked to bail them
out._

I am in awe of the ignorance on display here. This sort of analysis ignores
the fact that NY/CA pay much more than they get back to the federal government
while the "solvent" states of the American interior get much more than they
pay from the federal government. It is easy to be solvent when you're living
off of welfare. And it is easy to go into debt during a global economic crisis
when you're committed to paying large sums of money to support others your
economically unproductive brethren.

See [http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-
klein/2010/04/the_red_...](http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-
klein/2010/04/the_red_state_ripoff.html) for more information.

~~~
hga
Let's assume I accept your premise.

What does that say the state governments of NY and California should do? If
the Federal government is subjecting them to an unfair transfer payment burden
to the interior states, well, that's just a "cost of doing business in the
US". There are, after all, precious few people out there who pay their taxes
with a song in their heart and a spring in their step.

I.e. on an imaginary balance sheet for the states' budgets, it's a single line
item in the liability section. Given that, it's still the responsibility of
the state governments to manage their finances.

For better or worse, these states have to live within their means. Putative
exploitation by the rest of the country does not absolve them of that
responsibility.

~~~
MichaelSalib
_What does that say the state governments of NY and California should do?_

Practically speaking, they should do what they're doing now: work to get their
budgets in order. What do you think the alternative is?

But it would be more equitable for states like NY and CA to break into several
smaller states. After all, the reason underpopulated and economically
underperforming states in the middle of the US get so much cash from the
federal government is that they get extra representation in the Senate.
Breaking CA and NY into a bunch of small states each with its own pair of
Senators would allow them to establish a much more equitable distribution of
federal resources, which would in turn dramatically improve their long term
budgets.

 _Putative exploitation by the rest of the country does not absolve them of
that responsibility._

Given that I supplied data, there is nothing putative about it.

What exactly do you think that NY/CA will do instead of "live within their
means"? Do you think they'll just start printing money? Launch a war of
aggression against NJ or OR to seize assets? What?

------
hga
It should be noted that a conspiracy of the upper and lower classes against
the middle is an _old_ historical pattern.

But has it ever been tried when there was so little friction hindering the
middle from leaving? Especially in the case of small business owners; several
that I've been dealing with for many years have moved out of California over
those years. If you don't depend on unique resources/ecosystems like Silicon
Valley and Hollywood, if, to take one example from my experience, you just
manufacture and sell vitamins and other supplements, what's keeping you in
California?

------
mrj

      Proposition 25, drafted by one of the state’s premier
      pressure groups, the California Federation of Teachers,
      sought to allow the legislature to pass a budget with
      simple majorities instead of the current two-thirds
      supermajority, which requires a degree of GOP support.
      Naturally, it passed.
    

Well, that's not quite fair. I voted for it, if only for the belief that one
party rule is much better than no party rule.

