A California Republican

Today and tomorrow, from 8am - 10am there will be a picket line at California State University Sacramento (CSUS). The faculty is going to picket, and they are encouraging students to come picket with them. What are they picketing for? They are picketing against the budget cuts to the CSU system - of course.

The CSUS faculty has to take furlough days, and they are unhappy about it. To show they are unhappy, many faculty are taking their furlough days on instructional days, rather than days they are not teaching. In this way, they are showing their high regard for their jobs and the students they teach - or not. Instead of simply taking the days on non-instructional days, the professors are taking furlough days on days they are scheduled to teach.

Why is there such a huge protest? Fees for an undergraduate, in-state student are still lower at the CSU system than they are anywhere else (except the military academies where they pay you to go there). The fees are very low, and you can get a full 4-year degree with the same amount of debt that someone at a private school will have for one year of education. But the fees are too high - according to the faculty and some students - so they are going to picket.

People have to cross the picket line. Classes start today. If you are not in class, you will lose your seat in the class. For many students, that means a loss of financial aid and possibly a loss of a job. This means people have to cross the line.

If the protest is about the lack of funding for the CSU system, then perhaps the faculty should also come up with where they would take the money from, in order to pay for increased funding at the CSU system. If they have no solution, and are simply protesting the cuts, then they shouldn’t be picketing.

The truth of the matter is that there simply is no money available. Why should California be funding a higher education institution when it cannot pay for roads or other education? Kids come to the CSU system needing so much remedial work in English and Math that there are programs created around the remedial work, tutors employed, and special classes for the students. If the remedial programs were cut, there would be a huge chunk of money to fund other things at the CSU system. But why should the state pay for this? Why should higher education be a public funding priority?

The professors cannot tell you that. They also cannot tell you where the money should come from. Instead, they are simply walking a picket line with not solutions - only complaints. It turns out that college professors are not so different from the rest of the world - they like to complain without solutions as well.

Is there an opening for Republicans in the United States?

President Obama’s star is falling. The stimulus package has yet to affect Americans in a positive manner, the budget estimates are saying that President Obama’s plans are going to double the deficit, and the health care debate is falling apart. New taxes are being threatened, and people are becoming disenchanted with Pelosi as a leader.

The stimulus package that President Obama widely touted hasn’t worked, and isn’t likely to work. While some people might have gotten jobs from it, the stimulus package failed. It failed because there is still a huge tax burden in the United States, and the industries the stimulus needed to affect were - and still are - very regulated. When there is huge regulation, a simple influx of money won’t solve the problem, there has to be reforms and looser regulations to get the industry moving again.

The shine is coming of the Democrats as the shine comes off President Obama. For all his big promises of change and reform, none of that has been delivered. He has not fixed anything that he promised to fix. In fact, much of the news coverage is about how in-depth he gets into issues. When you are into an issue, it becomes hard to see the larger picture and look outside of the box for reform. No one should be surprised, there wasn’t really a chance for him to do anything.

President Obama promised, in his first State of the Union, to cut the deficit in half. However, his health care plan alone would raise the deficit. Military spending is not going down, nor is troop deployment. All the military is doing is shifting the focus from Iraq to Afghanistan. Most military experts say it is harder to fight and win in Afghanistan than in Iraq, so President Obama picked the harder fight to fight.

What does this mean for Republicans? It means they can say that big government is not working. Nothing screams big government quite like everything President Obama has done - from the car tzar to federal stimulus (and all its attached strings), big government failed. And the Republicans need to take advantage of this.

However, they cannot simply state that big government failed, so it is time to try another type of governing. The Republicans must show, through plans and thought out actions, that they are different. They must show that their plans will not raise expenses. In fact, if they could find a health care alternative that would lower expenses, that would be the best way to go. A local, individual plan for health care that lowers cost might assure the Republicans a win at the 2010 midterms.

The Republicans must come out with a plan to cut spending and lower the deficit. They must have plans, they simply cannot say “The Democrats’ way didn’t work, let’s try ours.” That is simply not defined enough or engaging enough. What message they need to send is that the Republicans are organized, we have a plan, and we are willing to try it out and go for it. Here is what our plan would do…….If they do that, maybe they can count the midterms as a Republican win.

In California, the Republicans need to retain the Governorship - which will be tough, but not impossible. It is clear that the Democratic candidates offer more of the same - higher taxes and more government - which has not worked for California in the past, or the present. The California Republicans need to get a clear message behind a good candidate, and not simply choose a candidate with a lot of money and presence. They need someone who can stand for the small government, lower taxes, cut spending attitudes that are needed in California.

The falling of the Democrats’ star simply gives the Republicans a better opportunity than they had 4 years ago. It doesn’t give the Republicans a win, they are going to have to work for that.

There is a great debate between your typical affirmative action believer and a non-believer located here, at A California Republic. The classic debate highlights a very important discussion that California needs to have about its education policies: When is enough help enough?

There are kids that come from sad, depressed and poor backgrounds. There are kids that succeed from those backgrounds, and do it without being held to a lower standard than others. There are kids from those backgrounds that get pushed into college through various programs, and then spend years in remedial math and English before going through a normal college curriculum.

There was a study recently published that says over 50% of incoming freshman in the California State University system require remedial work in Math and English before they are prepared to take regular freshman courses. Getting into the California State University system means that you have achieved a certain GPA, that you are in a certain top percentage of your class, that you took the ACT/SAT (unless you are a transfer from a community college) and that you want to go to college. Yet, in-spite of those requirements, a lot of remedial work is needed.

The CSU system spends a lot of money on those remedial programs. They have special tutors for the students, smaller classes, more classes, professors dedicated to those students and labs where the students can go to get extra help. Then, hopefully, the students can graduate to normal coursework, or else they are going to drop out.

When did society’s expectations become so low? When did affirmative action come to mean we ask people who are not ready, who cannot be ready, to do things they are not ready for? The people who have succeeded in going to Ivy League schools from poor neighborhoods don’t want pity. The Asians don’t need affirmative action and they are not white, so this cannot simply be a white vs. all other races issue - as if all whites are ready and all non-whites are not ready so they need extra help. There has to be more to this affirmative action debate and the decision to put un-ready students into college.

It would be cheaper, and more fair, for everyone to have to take freshman English. If you are having a hard time, you do what everyone else who has a hard time does - goes and sees the professor for extra help, or the teaching assistant if there is one. Just because you have a hard time in a class does not mean you are not ready to take the class. If you are truly unready to be in freshman English, why should you be a freshman at all? Are you a math whiz and just don’t get writing? Then you need help from your professor. Is English you second language and you have a problem? Then you need practice, not a remedial class.

These days tuition is rising at CSU schools. In fact, it has risen over 65% in the past two years. Classes are being cut and students are in school longer because they cannot get the classes they need. Shouldn’t a decision be made about education? Do you keep the remedial programs to help people who are not ready for college and shouldn’t be there, or do you cut them and make college a place for those who are ready to be there, or will work hard to stay there? Why not make community colleges the places remedial classes are offered? Or require that high schools adequately prepare their students? We, the taxpayers, pay for the high schools. They ought to be required to do what they are given money to do - educate the students.

Part of this problem is social promotion, and part is affirmative action. Social promotion allows, requires, teachers to pass students up through the grades. The students think they are passing, but in reality, the teachers just don’t want to handle them anymore, or are required to pass them up. This means that a 13 year old, however ready for it, is going into 8th grade. It also means California has high scholars who cannot read, which means the CSU system gets freshmen with a 5th grade reading level (sometimes lower) coming in to be college students.  Part of the problem is affirmative action, which seems to require people to be concerned about the racial composition of a college, instead of the academic composition of a college.

This is ridiculous, especially in this age of budget cuts. High schools need to do what they are getting money to do - educate the students. Stop passing students into the next grade who are not ready for it, because then affirmative action gets ahold of them and they go to CSU schools and are not ready for it. This is a societal problem.

Everyone can succeed academically. It is a matter of individual drive. Some people have more obstacles to overcome than others. Those who are blind still overcome the obstacles and succeed in college. Those who are poor, or first to go to college also succeed. So why is it that we, as a society, think that we need affirmative action? Why can people not be judged on the basis of their successes and failures without regard to race?

Who knows. Maybe it is guilt.

The tale of Jack and the Beanstalk should serve as a warning to anyone thinking that you can trade what you have for something magical, for a fix. Instead of keeping the cow, Jack got beans that took him into all sorts of problems. The same idea is behind the constitutional convention for California.

A constitutional convention is a bunch of magic beans. The proposal being floated would require all the amendments, the whole new constitution, to be put to an up or down vote by the citizens (those who vote) of California. Nothing is going to pass in that type of environment. Assume, for a moment, that the people who ended up drafting the constitution were non-biased people, not people of special interests, and people who really do want what is best for California. Even if their proposal came up for an up or down vote, it would go down. If there was no guaranteed education funding, the CTA and education lobbies would work hard to strike it down. If there was a gay marriage provision in the new cosntitution, conservatives would work to strike it down. With those tow issues alone you have united the right and left to strike down the new constitution.

So put away the idea of a constitutional convention. It is a bag of magic beans. Instead you need to focus on what you can get from the cow - from what we have now.

Reforms are needed. These reforms should be discussed and should be transparent. They should be written in such a way that the ordinary voter can understand what is going on.

Several reforms could be made that would help out with the situation in California. First of all, take the part-time legislature idea and run with it. Part of the problem with the legislature is that they are there too long, it is a full-time job, and they have too much spare time to think up bills that influence and nanny over the lives of Californians. reduce the time they are there and make the legislature work on what is important - the budget.

If the 2/3 requirement for passing the budget is going to be gotten rid of, then the 2/3 requirement for raising taxes needs to stand. If the majority wants responsibility for the spending priorities of the state, let them have it. They are  constitutionally required to pass a balanced budget. Do that, on time, and people will start to believe you might be worth the money you are earning. However, keep the 2/3 requirement for raising taxes, otherwise there are no checks on the majority party’s spending habits.

There should also be made, explicit, a law that prohibits fees from really being taxes, and prohibits taxes from being lawered to be replaced by fees so that other taxes can be raised. This is just the sort of political nonsense that is driving the call for reform. Make these tactics illegal, and prohibit them from being used. Then the majority party can really have control over the spending priorities of the state.

There should also be clear goals for programs. There are many state programs with no clear goals, and no clear objectives. Since the end is not clear, there is no way to measure the success of these programs. Therefore, there is no way to know if the money being spent is being used effectively. When you need to look at spending priorities, there needs to be a way to evaluate programs and their goals. This type of evaluation should be completed for each program that spends state funds, and then those who do not meet goals and expectations should be shut down, and the money spent elsewhere. This should be a process the state looks at every year, not just when they feel like it. It is this type of evaluation that makes a state successful at spending money and supporting the population. The hodgepodge of programs California has, some of which are successful and others of which are not, are no good for the state because they do not reach identifiable goals. For all the state knows, non-profits are doing a better job with these programs for less money, and it would make more sense to give out grants than run the programs ourselves. However, the only way to know this is to engage in evaluations.

There are other reforms out there that may or may not work. Budgeting for two years, instead of one, has been an idea that is floating around - as is relaxing term limits. Whether these reforms will be discussed remains to be seen.

The clear thing is that the system needs reform, and it is not going to come through a constitutional convention. So toss the constitutional convention Kool-Aid and work on looking for reforms that will work.

In February the Legislature and Governor approved a set of “reforms” that raised taxes. The sales tax went up to 1%, the vehicle license “fee” went up to 1.15% of a car’s value and income tax was raised 0.25%. These were all approved as aprt of the “budget solution” that is nothing like a solution.

Now, a few months later, the Legislature passed another budget solution - but this one was $200 million out-of-balance, so the Governor vetoed some money out of it. The Legislature is suing the Governor, saying he cannot vetoe anything in it because there were no appropriations.

Believe it or not, this particular tax bite we are all going to feel has nothing to do with the Legislature. In fact, the state tax board automatically adjusts, each year, the income levels where the tax brackets start and stop. This year, because of the deflation in the economy (or what the tax board is calling deflation) the income levels were dropped for the various tax brackets.

With these newest changes, for a married couple filing jointly, the top tax rate of 9.55% now begins at $92,698, instead of $94,110. Combined with the earlier increases, such a couple with two children, earning $100,000, will see their California income tax bill rise by 22.3%, or $716, according to the state Franchise Tax Board. Their tax would go from $3,208 to $3,924, factoring in a $110 drop in the standard deduction for joint returns. This doesn’t factor in charitable donations or any other deductions.

So now people are going to be paying even more taxes. If the state wants to stimulate the economy, it shouldn’t make people pay more to the state.

To shoe just how ridiculous and economically stupid the people in charge are, the Legislature agreed to increase withholdings from paychecks, starting in November, to 10%. This is a general state income tax withholding, regardless of what level you claimed on your forms, or what amount you wanted withheld. The state is helping itself to 10% of your paycheck - even though it knows they are not entitled to the money. The state admits that most of this money is going to be given back in tax refunds (or IOUs), but they are going to take the money anyways.

This smells of illegal conversion of personal property - or personal wealth - grand theft in some cases. Anyone up for filing a law suit?

There is no surprise that polls are finding that people in California don’t trust their government - just look at the way they are acting. They raise taxes without every really raising taxes, simply by lowering the income levels for the tax brackets. Then the state goes and helps itself to your paycheck, knowing that the money belongs to the workers and not the state. Trust has long since been lost between the state and its citizens.

Did you know that California is auctioning off stuff on eBay? And is posting it on Craig’s List?

Today begins the great California garage sale. In order to raise more money, the Governor has signed things - like cars - in the hopes that they bring in more money. Good luck.

Even if the auction brings in $100 million dollars; it is a one time windfall that immediately spends 48% on education and the rest goes to what? Paying the fees of the auction? Getting new furniture to replaced the furniture that was acutioned off?

This”garage sale event” makes it seem like the Governor is interested in getting rid of the fluff in California, but it is simply not so. Getting rid of stuff will not make a dent in the budget. Instead the Governor needs to decide what is important, what services must be provided. The services that do not need to be provided should be cut, and the state workers providing those services will be laid-off.

The only real way to bring money into the state is to lower taxes, be more business-friendly (so that business want to stay here and operate here) and lose services that are not meeting goals. Those steps will bring in money. The garage sale is a joke, and simply makes the state look like it is a bumbling fool.

There is a lot of talk around the Capitol this week of prison reform.

That’s a misleading name for what is going on. The discussions are not about prison reform, they are about sentencing and punishment reform. The Senate approved a package that would allow elderly and infirm inmates to serve out there sentences at home, under house arrest. What prison is that reforming? When the Senate and the Assembly are having problems deciding over what to do with the state wobbler laws, and whether there should be an independent sentencing reform commission - what prison does that reform?

The discussions are centering around crime and punishment to be sure, but they are not sentencing around prisons. The clock is ticking on the plan California is required to come up with; required by a federal judge to come up with. The plan requires California to cut their inmate population over the next two years. However, this isn’t being discussed. There isn’t a plan in place, and so - like most plans the state has tried to submit in the various federal court cases - this plan is going to be late, if it is going to exist at all.

There is no discussion of real prison reform. Prisons serve a purpose. They keep people who break the law segregated from the rest of society. However, prisons should also serve to rehabilitate those same people. Otherwise, as has happened in California, the prison population is simply going to keep growing as more people commit crimes and offenders repeat crimes.

What is being done to reform the lack of rehabilitation in California prisons? What is being done to make sure prison is seen as a punishment? What is being done to prevent the prison guards union (CCPOA) from running the prisons, and instead making sure that qualified administrators from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) oversee the prisons? What is being done to lower the cost per inmate at California prisons?

Nothing. There isn’t anything being done about these things.

Instead the talk of “prison reform” is centering around letting inmates out early, not punishing certain offenders, lowering sentences, giving more “good time” credit to prisoners, and letting out non-violent offenders.

This is not prison reform - this is sentencing reform.

If the Legislature wants to reform sentencing, that is their prerogative. It is something that is within their powers to do. But let’s call it what it is - sentencing reform. It is not prison reform, and shouldn’t be called that.

There will soon be another commission in California, and I don’t mean a military officer commission, I mean a commission composed of people to do something (well, who are supposed to do something).

A commission is the government’s way of passing the buck. Instead of making the tough choices themselves, the government creates a commission to make the tough choices. The government gives themselves the right of vetoing, or accepting, the whole commission package. That way, the government has no responsibility for the decisions made. Instead, they can say that the commission - generally called and independent commission - made the decisions and they simply had to go along with what the commission decided.

The latest round of commission-creating is being done by the Democrats in the California Legislature. Instead of dealing with the tough issues at hand - like water and taxes - the Legislature is creating commissions to deal with them. Well, the Legislature has already created the commission to deal with the tax problem. Then they under-funded the commission, and did not appoint experts to the commission. So there is a commission out there which is under-funded, under-staffed, and not very public, that will be making recommendations about what to do with California’s tax structure to avoid the ups and downs of the current system.

The newest commission idea is to create a commission to deal with moving water through - or around - the Delta. The creation of the independent commission underscores the reality that this has been an issue for years and the Legislature and the Governor have done nothing. Instead, they have been embroiled in the political fights that go along with the water issues. The hope is that the independent commission will be free of these political battles, and will be able to do something about the situation.

This is the latest in a series of acknowledgements that the Capitol cannot do anything about the major political issues of the times. The re-districting commission, which is also an independent commission, showed that the Capitol cannot possilby reform itself. When the Capitol, and the Legislature specifically, start abdicating their responsibilities to independent commissions, maybe it is time to start thinking about making the legislators abdicate their positions. If they cannot do what their job says they must do - make the tough decisions to govern California - then they shouldn’t be in office.

Either that or the state is really too large to govern effectively, and there needs to be more than one state. The system is broken. If anyone needs more confirmation of this, simply look at the proliferation of independent commissions in the last few years. The more independent commissions there are, the less the Legislature has to deal with, the more reform is needed.

Everyone who lives in California knows that gas prices are always higher than the national average reported on the news. Everyone who travels in California knows that gas prices are always higher. The question is why?

The simple answer is that taxes make everything in California more expensive. Gas taxes here are $0.18 per gallon. This is the second highest in the nation after New York. California taxes gas in order to pay for several things which it says are related to gas, or transportation broadly. The gas tax pays for road repairs, new roads and bridges, and some of the public transportation budget. However, California is a big state, and the money doesn’t go very far. Anyone who has driven on the highways in California compared to the highways in other states knows that California highways are in a state of disrepair. Some of this is due to how they were built, but a lot is simply due to the fact that the gas tax money designated for highways doesn’t go very far.

That is, when the gas tax goes there at all. Every so often the California Legislature raids the gas tax monies for other purposes, with the promise to repay the money. So essentially, the gas taxes fund whatever the Legislature wants it to fund, rather than funding the things it is supposed to fund. However, with the newest budget plan, the tax is now a fee. Which means the monies have to go to something related to the gas, and provide a direct benefit to those who buy gas. Hopefully this will reduce the frequency that gas money is raided.

The second reason gas is so pricey in California is because of demand. California has no real public transportation. San Francisco has Muni, which goes some places. But between the buses and the trains, Muni is complicated and costly. BART is limited in the places it goes, and so is only useful for some trips. Sacramento has Light Rail, but again, the limited locations of Light Rail make it impractical to use for anything other than commuting to downtown, or to the Folsom Outlets. LA has some public transportation, but it is as limited as the rest of the state. Various counties have some bus services. There is nothing state-wide that is public transportation. This means Californians drive, which raises the demand for gas, which raises the prices.

The last thing is that California has a law which specifies the type of gas mixture that can be sold in California. Only California refineries, or some place in Finland, make this mixture. This means that California has to import its oil and refine it here. If there are any problems in production, supply goes down and prices rise. When the Tosco refinery has a fire and has to shut down for two days, that impacts the supply of gas in California.

There also is not as much storage for refined gas in California as other states have. The Legislature and other planning commissions do not want gas storage built because of its possible environmental impacts. The Legislature also doesn’t want more refineries built because of their environmental impacts.

The Legislature is who mandated the special blend used in California. It was an attempt to keep the air cleaner. It is unclear whether this has really worked, or whether other things have helped improve air quality.

However, if the Legislature really wanted to improve air quality, they would spend money on public transportation that links places people go in California. They would mandate that cities, when they are expanding, plan public transportation that can serve the expected population. Seattle has a great public transportation system because they planned for the system, ten years ago. They didn’t build and then plan, they built and planned at the same time.

The Legislature seems to have no problems mandating all kinds of things to the various localities. In fact, they do it with such regularity that there is a law that says that state has to pay for its mandates (which they might do, 30 or 40 years later). Why not mandate something that will matter in the long run, like public transportation, rather than mandating how many days an animal must be in the shelter before it can be adopted or killed?

Gas prices are higher in California than anywhere else in the nation. This isn’t going to change anytime soon. As long as California drivers use gas, the prices are going to stay high. If everyone in California took one day off of driving their car and walked, or rode public transit, where ever they went, this would make a dent in the gas usage. If everyone did this one day a month, that would make a huge dent in gas usage.

Why not do something that matters? If gas prices are too high for you, you know the reasons. Change your habits. You aren’t going to change the tax situation, and the taxes are only going to get higher on gas. Gas is an easy thing to tax: people use it and need it. Therefore, you can tax it and expect revenues. Since the tax situation won’t change, something else has to change to make gas prices come down: demand or the blend. The blend of gas won’t change. Which means demand is the only factor left. Change demand, and gas prices in California will change.

The federal government is offering funding to public schools. However, the funding comes with strings. The first string, and the one that is most problematical for California, is that there must be no barrier to linking teacher preformance to student test scores. In California there is a law that prohibits teacher performance from being tied to student test scores. Federal education officials have said that if the law is not changed, California will be ineligible for federal funds, that might total over $4 billion, in the “Race to the Top” program.

There are several problems with tying student test scores to teacher performance. First of all, the teachers will focus on teaching to the test so that their students get better scores, rather than focusing on teaching the students how to perform basic function like math and critical reading. Secondly, what do you do with a teacher that consistently gets kids in their class that are low performers, or who aren’t capable of doing well on the tests because they lack certain skills? This is a problem in California schools, and it has to be dealt with.

However, there are benefits to linking teacher performance and student test scores. The major benefit would be $4+ billion in education funding. If that funding were to go straight to the schools, that means $4 billion more for the students. Of course, some of that money will make its way to the bureaucracy in Sacramento and the school districts, but if the bulk of that money can get to the students, that is a lot of money that can buy computers and books.

The Governor wants to go beyond that requirement. He wants to make several education reforms mandatory, and have them done by early October, so that California can comply with the first round of “Race to the Top” proposals. The Governor proposes the following:

*Adopting a merit pay system that would reward effective teachers and give them incentives to work at low-performing campuses;

* Abolishing the current cap on the number of charter schools that can open every year;

* Forcing school districts to shut down or reconstitute the lowest-performing schools or turn them over to charter schools’ independent management;

* Allowing students at low-performing campuses to transfer to a school of their choosing;

* Requiring school districts to consider student test data when evaluating teachers, something the federal government believes is prohibited under state law.

Of these reforms, only the last is required for the state to gain access to the federal funds. If the state doesn’t change the law, which the CTA (California Teacher’s Association) successfuly got passed in 2006, the state loses the money. The rest of the reforms simply tie to President Obama’s wish-list of education reforms…which the Governor has obviously been reading.

The problem with changing the law is the CTA. They are going to lobby hard, and effectively, to get the Democrats to vote against changing the law. The CTA doesn’t want the “Race to the Top” money. The members of the CTA who teach want it, but the CTA doesn’t want it. The job of the CTA is to ensure that its teachers get paid based on years of service, that tenure is preserved, and that there are not too many charters because that takes away from its membership, and power. Based on those goals, the CTA thinks all the reforms mentioned in the list above are bad. Instead, they advocate for more study of possible reforms, and intense debate about the issues.

The time for intense debate has passed. There have been any number of studies that show how, and why, charters are successful. The first reason always cited is the merit pay for the teachers. Teachers in charter schools do not have the same tenure protections as union members in public schools. That means teachers have to be good in order to keep and earn their pay.

However, even if only the one law is changed, it means a huge influx of money to California’s education programs. The poorest schools, who rely almost entirely on state funding, can really use the money to fill in their budgets that have been cut. If the money goes to things that will help the students, this could be the answer to some of California’s education funding problems. However, if the money only feeds the pigs at the trough, then the money will not help.

Regardless, it is a one time amount that can help take the burden off of school districts to get them the newest technology, newer classrooms, books, and supplies for the students so they can focus on classes and the material … instead of focusing on the fact that their classroom looks like a jail and they are learning from books that are out of date.

Even with the federal demands and requirements, this could be one of the answers for California’s education funding.