CA recall

[Rainster]

I'm curious what Californians on the QLC boards think about the recall and how it'll turn out. One more month to go... ;)

I feel like I'm an outsider and can't comment on it, but I'm curious what locals think. Most media coverage isn't so in-depth...:cool:

[jku]

I'm producing some interviews with 135 of the candidates - so I'm a minor expert on the Recall these days. The way I see it now, the Recall may not pass - Davis may then keep his job and the whole thing will be useless.
If it does pass, it will be a narrow margin, and since the Republicans have split the vote so much, Lt. Gov Bustamante will win it.

[Jayaic]

Like most elections it feels like picking the lesser of two evils. Not a fan of Davis, but not one person on the ballot seems to show they can make things better. Plus it's just sad to see what a joke the democratic process has become. I have a list of all the people on the ballot and we have a sumo wrestler, a chemistry professor, and a railroad brakeman/switchman on the ballot. Add those to the 2 actors, the porn star, the comic, and the former commissioner of baseball, and it is the sadist thing in politics.

[jku]

There are actually some very good candidates. I've met the major ones with the exception Arnold - I thought Camejo of the Green Party was the most passionate, Huffington the brightest and sharpest,
MCClintock has the most experience. But we also have representatives from the Socialist party, who have a message many young people starting off in their careers could agree with. Progressive idealists, communists, facists, bigots, gay rights advocates, marijuana advocates, gambling advocates - people with messages against the President,
artists like Trek Kelly, who I had a common friend with - its fun and feels very real, even if the origin of this election is suspect.

Next time you hear a car alarm, remember Darrel Issa and that the money for that alarm also paid for this recall race.

As a sidenote, the contention of "lesser of two evils" has always been something I strongly disagree with.
Politicians represent ideas and ideologies.
Some people agree with those ideologies, and some don't, for a variety of reasons. To dismiss the whole group as "evil" pays disrespect to the people of this country and what we stand for - right or wrong.

"Stay strong, active, and well informed!
Knowledge is power!" - Trek

www.trekkelly.com
www.wsws.org

[cheetah]

I think this recall is a joke. It's a way to find someone, anyone, to hold accountable for the problems in CA. Davis isn't great, and he DID NOT tell the truth about the size of the budget deficit prior to his reelection, but he isn't the most evil thing on two legs either. People are holding him accountable for the budget problems, but they are not all of his own making. CA has a structural problem in that almost all revenues are allocated to something before anyone can even look at them. There's very little discretionary money. S o, for that, you have to hold the electorate responsible. Secondly, the governor has about the least power of any governor, vis a vis the budget, in the US. CA is the only state that requires a 2/3 vote of the legislature to pass the budget. This was intended to make sure there was bipartisan support for the budget, but has turned into a way for the minority party to hold the majority party hostage until they get their way. So, you can't even blame Democrats, saying Repubs are the minority, because in CA, the minority has a lot of power. Finally, they pass a budget each year 2-3 months after we are already deep into that fiscal year! How would you like to be the governor that vetoes that budget and makes the legislature go back and work on it more? They'd probably be working on it till the next FY already started...we'd never have a budget! So, you see, the governor just does not have the political power that other governors do in that regard, and making him the budget's sacrificial lamb is bogus, IMHO.

And what about the energy crisis? People still blame Davis for originating it when it is known that there was price gouging by, who? Enron and Halibruton, our president's cronies. Yet, the liberal media never made a big deal out of it and I bet 90% of CA still doesn't realize the true source of that scandal. Davis takes the heat for this, too. Honestly, I can't feel too sorry for him, because I don't think he's the best. But, I do think people are just doing anything to take him down, blaming his for everything. In honesty, and I am a pubilc financial analyst, Davis' plan included a fairly reasonable balance of spending cuts, new taxes, restructures and deficit financing. Yet, all the republicans say, of course, is that he wants to raise taxes, because they know that will piss people off.

I'll be voting against the recall, just because I hope those pissants don't get their way. If they do, though, I'd be fine with Huffington or Bustamante.

[jku]

Cheetah definitely has it right.
This mess in CA is a mess created by the voters who want better education, roads, public safety, etc - but less taxes. More knots, and knots, and knots...
1. Passing mandatory bond measures with no way of paying for them
2. 2/3 req to pass a budget
3. Term limits for state legislature. No one is in office long enough to forge relationships that could pass budgets
4. The state getting ripped off by Enron, and the
FERC under Bush not saving our state because he is owned and operated by these greedy bastards. 5. Davis not acting fast enough on the energy crisis, knowing that it was bubbling.

So whoever wins will have to cut a lot of programs, and raise some taxes. It's a tough job - I don't think people running realize it.

[dakotagopher]

I don't live in CA (thank god, no offense to those who do) but here is my 2 cents:

A) the republicans are idiots for fomenting the recall. Had they left Davis to twist in the wind, they'd have walked away with the next election en masse. Now, say they get their man Arnold elected, he is stuck with unfixable problems and will be painted with the brush Davis is getting painted with now and probably voted out next election since he could not fix the unfixable. Why not leave Davis in place for the rest of the term to show everyone very clearly how bad his, and by association the Democrat's, policies were? Seems like very bad political strategy on the Republican's part to me.

B) energy crisis - to be fair, this was not all Davis' fault, but he did move slowly when he should have moved decisively and he did make bad decisions and allow his state to pay horrible rates for the power. No one forced him to buy the power he bought at that premium rate; you cannot fault the companies that sold it to them as they were just trying to make a buck. This has been bad policy all around for years, in my opinion. Build more power plants and this wouldn't have been an issue. But that offends the Greens and we can't do that.

C) i was shocked by Warren Buffet's statement that he paid, what, $9,000 per year in property tax on his $500,000 home in Nebraska but only $2,000 per year on his $4,000,000 home in California (I'm going by memory here, sorry if numbers aren't exactly correct; you get the picture). For such a "progressive" state (what a joke), that sure sounds odd. Raise the property taxes! Or cut the programs! Sounds like California has both a spending problem AND a revenue problem.

[cheetah]

Originally posted by dakotagopher

B) energy crisis - to be fair, this was not all Davis' fault, but he did move slowly when he should have moved decisively and he did make bad decisions and allow his state to pay horrible rates for the power. No one forced him to buy the power he bought at that premium rate; you cannot fault the companies that sold it to them as they were just trying to make a buck. Actually, you can, and should, fault the companies for that. it is price gouging, and I believe, collusion. There is still talk floating around of rebates from the companies. We wouldn't be getting rebates, I think, unless they did something wrong, sofarasiknow.
Originally posted by dakotagopher

C) i was shocked by Warren Buffet's statement that he paid, what, $9,000 per year in property tax on his $500,000 home in Nebraska but only $2,000 per year on his $4,000,000 home in California (I'm going by memory here, sorry if numbers aren't exactly correct; you get the picture). For such a "progressive" state (what a joke), that sure sounds odd. Raise the property taxes! Or cut the programs! Sounds like California has both a spending problem AND a revenue problem. Unless Buffett found a loophole, he is paying far more than that in property taxes. in CA, property taxes are approximately 1%, depending on your county. So, he should be paying approximately $40k on his home each year! And that's exactly why raising property taxes will never go through. Most CA property is just way too expensive! My 1550 sq ft. townhome, 3br, 2.5 bath in a nice neighborhood cost $325,000 a couple months ago when I bought it. I can only imagine a similar dwelling in cities other people on this board live in would be half the price. So, I pay almost $3,500/year in property tax, which means I need to save up almost an extra $300 each month for my property taxes alone! And this is a starter home! If property taxes went up anymore, you'd have even less people able to ever be homeowners.

One note, though, it is possible to pay a lot less than 1% of the value of your home, because you only pay 1% of the assessed valuation, and they cannot reassess it unless it is sold. So, there are certainly people here that have been living in their house for 40 years back when they paid $20k for the entire house. If that's the case, they are paying about $200/yr in property taxes, because the county has not been able to reassess the value of their home. That, I believe, happened because property prices were skyrocketing and Californians were afraid they wouldn't be able to afford their homes soon. But yes, CA does have a problem with revenues, because voters have tied the state's hands, and with expenditures, because, again, voters have tied the state's hands to put all the money in certian places. It's a structural problem that no governor can correct until he has support of the voters, since it requires constitutional amendments and such. And when are you going to get voter approval to raise taxes and give them LESS assurance that their taxes will go to education and roads? As soon as hell freezes over, I guess.

I really want to look into how states like OR, which I believe doesn't have Sales or Income tax, work. I know they have a higher reliance on Property Tax, and business taxes, maybe?

[sunshinecat]

Cheetah,

You asked about Oregon taxes. We don't have a sales tax but we do pay property tax and state income tax. We also have a budget crisis because our state legistature had difficulties balancing the budget. They couldn't do it so they voted to raise our income taxes.

I'm not sure, without looking it up, what our state income tax rates are but they seem to be high. Here is an interesting story.

http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/stories/2003/01/20/editorial3.html

For property taxes, I can give you an example of my house. It is a 3-bedroom "average" house of about 1600 square feet. I paid almost $2500 in property tax last year and expect to pay more this year.

One of the biggest problems here in Oregon, of course, is funding education. There is a grade school just a town away from me that has over 70 5th/6th graders in one room. Not every student even has a desk. What good is that for anyone?

sunshinecat

[Rainster]

And the flipside to Oregon is Washington, which doesn't have an income tax but has a basic state sales tax, plus various city and county sales taxes, and then all the property taxes. I also think we're the only state with a B&O (business and occupation) tax.

It's a tragic kind of funny that last year, tax reform dialog in WA focused on imitating our Oregonian neighbors... the two tax structures are direct opposites, and look, we have the two worst economies in the country! So we're both probably doing something wrong... :( Didn't have to close schools a month early like Oregon, though.... 70 kids to a classroom, that's really bad...

[jku]

Dakota, have you ever been to California?
What were your impressions of the people here?

DAKOTA SAID:
"The republicans are idiots for fomenting the recall. Had they left Davis to twist in the wind, they'd have walked away with the next election en masse. Now, say they get their man Arnold elected, he is stuck with unfixable problems and will be painted with the brush Davis is getting painted with now and probably voted out next election
since he could not fix the unfixable."

Tom Delay (House Majority Leader), under Karl Rove, decided that it would be important for Bush's 2004 campaign if California had a Republican Governor - 54 Electoral VOTES! Assemblyman Darrel Issa put up the $2 MILLION - $1 for each signature out-of-state signature gatherers could get. Issa was also told he would get Republican backing for Governor if he put down his money. When the recall happened, and Arnold decided to run, they told Issa to drop his run and stand on the sidelines. I think Arnold said NO to running for Governor before the recall, just so Issa would keep dumping money into it.

When Arnold got in, Issa was pushed out.

Now with all the knots of fiscal problems in California, I can see someone like Arnold sitting down with the people of California and saying:

"Look, we're gonna cut ________, and raise taxes here __________, to pay for ___________. It's the only way..."

In re to Prop 13 that allows Buffet to pay such low property taxes. Surprisingly, the amount he pays is true. If someone bought their house before 1978, the year Prop 13 was passed, they had a fixed number on the amount of Property Tax they paid per year.

Not surprising, Calfornia's education system deteriorated each year subsequent to the passing of PROP 13.

BTW, I think kids who are great students will be so regardless of the school they went to. But there are kids who don't always shine right away, and they need every chance available to them as well. We can't treat children like tiny employees, "put up or get out" - it seems like the type of educational plans out these days favor that.

[dakotagopher]

Yup, i get to CA four to six times per year to visit clients; always busy busy with work, not much time to see the sights. GREAT weather of course, but too many people, i get claustrophobic.

RE the people in general - my impression is good, people seem mostly friendly, especially in the hospitality biz.

I don't think a Repub gov in CA will quite tip the state for the republicans.......maybe Rove's strategy is just to get the Dems to spend a bunch of time & effort on this recall versus spending time & effort on gearing up to beat Bush.

Right out of Sun Tzu's great little book.

I just don't see CA going Repub anytime in the near future no matter who is gov.