California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger once starred in a film called Total Recall. Now he might find himself in the real thing.
The Los Angeles Times reports that the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, the state’s prison guards union, is funding a recall effort against the former movie star.
"This is a governor that has done absolutely nothing," Lance Corcoran, a spokesman for the union, said on Monday. "We have the largest budget deficit in the history of California. We have one of the longest budget stalemates."
"I'm not going to get intimidated by those guys," Schwarzenegger declared to reporters. "The state should not spend more money than we take in, and their intimidation tactics will not make me change my mind whatsoever, because I happen to not represent the CCPOA. I represent the people of California."
According to the Times, the governor and the CCPOA “have been at odds for years, unable to agree on a new contract for the guards. Last fall, the governor invoked a rarely used provision of state law allowing him to unilaterally impose new working conditions on the union in the absence of a deal.”
Corcoran claims that the contract dispute has “nothing to do with the recall effort,” but Schwarzenegger disagrees with this.
Many people may find this situation ironic, considering the fact that Schwarzenegger himself came to power through a successful recall effort against his predecessor, former Governor Gray Davis.
If anyone think the union is being honest in saying that the contract dispute has nothing to do with the recall, I've got a bridge in Arizona for sale...cheap!
"We have the largest budget deficit in the history of California. We have one of the longest budget stalemates."
You are only partially correct, rwahrens. It's about the abuse of power by the Governor and his cronies - I live in California - you do not. I see on a daily basis the corruption in his administration and his promises, which have mostly become a bunch lies.
When he ran for Governor, he borrowed money to pay-of the debt that California owed, yet we now find ourselves in a much worse position, since he has been running the State. I realize, it is not all his fault, since the legislature bears some of the responsibility for the mess that is California, however it does take two bodies (the Legislative and the Executive branches) to create fiscal instability.
One of the realities, that many people are perhaps not aware of, has to do with the fiscal irresponsibility of this Governor. He talks a good story, but is short on the follow-through.
My comment did not mean to imply that there is no need for the recall, it was just about the comment in the article where the union denied that the recall had anything to do with the contract dispute.
THAT'S a bunch of whooey, no matter how justified a recall may be otherwise...
If it is justified, then say so, but don't give me a buncha crap about how you have no ulterior motives. That undermines your credibility.
There is no doubt that the contract dispute over the sweeheart contract has lead to the attempt to Recall the 'Total Recall' man himself. But he has turned out to be the 'Girlie-man' in the end. Totally ineffective at holding down spending.
The Democratic Legislature has spent everything and them some for decades, with no thought of a balanced budget on the horizon. They think the glory days of silicon valley are going to come back sometime soon, and if it does not they will advocate for increased taxes for one of the heavily taxes states in the nation.
Senator Tom McClintock
Date: August 29, 2008
Publication Type: Press Release
Last year, when some in this chamber assured us that the budget was not only balanced, but included the biggest budget reserve in the state’s history, others of us issued an urgent warning that the budget was dangerously unbalanced and that we were fast running out of the time needed to implement reforms.
The State Controller reports that during last year we received $96 billion in revenues – a new record -- but spent $107 billion. And now we’re running out of money.
I am concerned that conventional budget reductions alone will no longer bridge the fiscal gap without severely impacting delivery of vital services.
We have centralized and unionized and bureaucratized our service delivery systems to the point they can no longer adequately perform the basic tasks for which they were designed.
Simply stated, we have created a bureaucracy we cannot afford.
We cannot afford spending 1/3 of a million dollars per classroom when only a fraction of that actually trickles into the classroom to educate our kids.
We cannot afford spending $42,000 to house a prisoner when Florida does it for $18,000 and the federal government for $26,000.
We are going to have to clear away the massive bureaucracy in our public schools that does nothing to educate our children and instead put teachers back in charge of their classrooms, put principals back in charge of their teachers – including the authority to hire and fire -- and put parents back in charge of their principals through their local school boards.
We are going to have to rescind the sweetheart labor contracts in our prisons, restoring management authority to the wardens and contracting out at least 50,000 prison beds.
We are going to have to replace the massive bureaucracy in our health system with a simple prepaid refundable tax credit to bring within the reach of every family a basic health plan of their selection.
This is the only way we are going to be able to maintain vital services without bankrupting the state. But if the consensus does not exist to enact conventional budget reductions, it certainly doesn’t exist to enact a fundamental restructuring.
During my 22 years in this legislature, I and others have laid out all these proposals, but they have fallen on deaf ears. There is some bitter irony in the fact that those who have voted against these proposals year after year accuse Republicans of not offering alternatives when that is all we have done year after year. But at some point very soon, these reforms, or others like them, will have to be enacted.
Senator Ducheny tells us that the budget before us is a baseline budget; that it merely continues business as usual. The problem is that business as usual produced $11 billion of red ink and we cannot afford to do so again.
Nor can I agree that the path to fiscal recovery is through taking the highest sales tax in the nation and raising it still higher with the second biggest tax increase in the state’s history. In that respect, I agree with Barak Obama who last night said: “In an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle-class.” And yet that’s the first thing this budget does.
I was here in 1991, and I warn you that raising the sales tax did not improve our finances – it made them worse.
The census bureau reports that in the last two years, a half million more people have moved out of California than have moved in. The historic migration FROM Oklahoma and Arkansas TO California in the 1930’s has now reversed itself in an historic outmigration of Californians TO those states with lower taxes and vastly less burdensome regulations (including Oklahoma and Arkansas). The difference is that the dust-bowl migration was caused by an act of God – the new migration is caused by acts of government – OUR government.
Those acts are fully within our power to reverse – but that will mean reversing the policies that have wrecked the once Golden State of California.
I would conclude with an observation on process. It is good that for the first time since the budget deadline we finally have a formal budget proposal on the Senate floor to begin deliberations. But it is unfortunate that this did not arrive on our floor in May. And it should have stayed on this floor day after day until it cleared the 27 votes needed to send it to a conference committee.
So I would ask those of you who voted to send an empty budget bill directly to the conference committee earlier this year to contemplate the damage that was done by bypassing the entire legislative process. And I would express the hope that the next session of the Senate finally return to the traditions and procedures that served this state so well for many, many decades and that produced relatively balanced and relatively punctual state budgets.
There was a great article by a former officer in the "drug war" who was calling for a change to legalizing drugs for a number of reasons. We are spending a fortune arresting and locking up non-violent drug offenders. His angle was the racism involved in those arrests, but he pointed out the financial benefits were striking. By taxing instead, you get the tax revenue, the arrest and prision savings, and the release of police assests to more pressing jobs. Instead of spending a fortune in a futile effort, you make AND save huge amounts. California could probably go a long way on their reefer money, if they had a chance. And all those folks would now be working in a legitimate business and paying taxes on it like normal folks. Our current laws force otherwise law-abiding citizens into "criminal" practices. Most would gladly switch to buying at legitimate stores. Why let the criminals make all the money?
Actually, please provide some proof that legal prostitution in Nevada HASN'T worked out well. From all I have heard, it has.
And as you well know, nobody is promoting legalization of anything beyond prostitution or drugs. (That is YOUR straw man!) Both are illegal merely from a morality standpoint, with no real justification otherwise.
The so called "War on Drugs" has produced the same negative results in today's society that Prohibition did in the Twenties, namely, widespread smuggling, the rise of a monied, well armed, violent criminal class devoted to supplying that commodity, and a resulting contempt for the law by otherwise law abiding citizens who see nothing morally wrong with using that commodity. Countless of them have been arrested, convicted and imprisoned for having mere fractions of an ounce of drugs, resulting in shattered lives and ended dreams.
We ended Prohibition because of those negativities, and the current prohibition should be ended too, for the same reasons.
Now, by what standard do you say "...the business would be far from legitimate..."??? Legitimate alludes to legality, and if it is made legal, that statement has no meaning.
I think your think tank lost their way years ago!!
Last year, something like 850,000 persons were arrested for marijuana charges, 760,000 were for simple possession of relatively small quantities. These numbers are from memory and may be off by 10 or 20 thousand. Bottom line, is what sense does it make to arrest and imprison persons for using a relatively harmless drug when it could be licensed and taxed. Instead of $14.000 to $40,000 a year each for prison time, our governments might actually find a new source of revenue that they could use to buy our votes and otherwise squander.
Prostitution & drugs have been made illegal for any number of reasons, and the lists are all to common out there. I have no desire to start that drug legalization debate in this forum, I make the statements above for the purpose of pointing out that anytime a 'budget' comes up the make drug legal crowd jumps up and down and gets all excited about an opportunity to make their failed case all over again.
The fact that a few of there hopful, wishful thinkers in this tank want it to be legal makes it far from legitimate.
The debate about Nevada legal prostitution has been going on ever since it was started. It has not spread all over Nevada, or to neighboring states, that fact in and of itself speaks to how well it is accepted by the general public.
Back to the ORIGINAL TOPIC...
There might be hope for 'the Schwarz' after all, or maybe he found a used pair for the moment. Either way, this was good for Californians.
San Jose Mercury News
"The proposed budget would count billions of next year's tax revenues this year, increase tax payroll withholdings early in the year to boost revenues on paper, only to return the money to workers later in a refund; and borrow nearly $1 billion from various government accounts, among other schemes.
And
"Democratic legislators balked at the governor's plan to limit withdrawals from the account and refused to include it in the budget, calling it a backdoor attempt to shrink the size of government over time.
Schwarzenegger Vows to Veto Budget
By NICK WINGFIELD and JUSTIN SCHECK
A defiant California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vowed to veto a budget passed by California lawmakers early Tuesday after a record 78-day impasse, saying legislators had failed to incorporate needed reforms to deal with the state's fiscal problems.
The threat by Gov. Schwarzenegger, if he follows through, would be the first time a California governor has ever vetoed an entire budget, though it isn't likely to prevent the spending plan from going into effect. State leaders from the Democrat-controlled legislature said they were confident they had enough votes to override a veto.
Still, a bigger showdown appears to be brewing between the governor and state lawmakers. Gov. Schwarzenegger threatened further vetoes of "hundreds" of other bills awaiting his approval to put pressure on lawmakers to enact reforms. "The budget they passed this morning takes our problems and makes them even worse," he said at a news conference.
Karen Bass, the Democratic speaker of the California assembly, said she was about "95% certain" that lawmakers would be able to muster the two-thirds majority necessary to override the governor's veto. The bill passed 28-12 in the state Senate and 61-11 in the Assembly.
The stalemate over the state's budget was at risk of deepening a fiscal crisis, causing layoffs, hiring freezes and reduced wages for state employees.
The bipartisan compromises hammered out in California's $104.3 billion budget Tuesday left few lawmakers in Sacramento satisfied. The plan relies primarily on more than $7 billion in spending cuts to schools, social programs and other state services to help close an estimated $15.2 billion budget shortfall. It seeks also to use one-time gains, including a requirement that more taxes be paid early.
But the budget did little to solve the state's persistent problem of spending that outpaces tax revenue. Jean Ross, executive director of the nonpartisan California Budget Project, said the compromise budget "fails to acknowledge that our tax system doesn't bring in the revenues to pay for the services that voters want." She added, though, that Gov. Schwarzenegger's requests for future reforms are misdirected.
"He's looking for changes that would permanently ratchet down investments in public services," she said.
As lawmakers neared a compromise spending plan, Gov. Schwarzenegger had been expected to sign the budget. But late Monday, he sent a letter to legislative leaders of both parties warning he wouldn't sign any budget without several reforms to a "rainy day" fund that can be used to help close budget shortfalls, including conditions on how that money can be spent. State lawmakers didn't meet all of his requests, raising speculation about a veto.
The stalemate over the budget for the fiscal year that began July 1 reflected a bitter divide in the California legislature. The state is one of the few that require a two-thirds majority of lawmakers to approve budgets. That rule forced the state's Democratic majority to accede to demands of the Republican minority to include no new taxes. Democratic leaders are vowing to change the two-thirds requirement.
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(One million, cash - in small bills, please!)