California Recall Debate:
Ivan Hall:
09.09.2003 | 8:50pm (PST)
California's economy, the nation's economy, and indeed the world's economy, in my view, all suffer from a common ailment: Stagnation.
The discovery, and integration of oil into the economy accelerated world wide economic growth. However, the advent of the oil economy hastened the end of traditional decentralized economies. Consequently, over the past 100 years money and power have once again become highly centralized.
The base for the existing power struggle is largely centered around the oil producing countries in the middle east. As third world economies attempt to gain momentum thru the shift in manufacturing to them, from first world economies, world wide demand for oil increases. Meanwhile the U.S. continues to massively build up its fixed military assets in the middle east, e.g. in Qatar, Kuwait, and Iraq in order to convince ourselves that "we are in control of the oil supply."
We are truly at a critical juncture in human history. Will we continue the inexorable march towards more war, calamity, and chaos, or will Californians seize this unique opportunity in history, to vote into office the one candidate who first, and foremost preaches the need for California to massively invest in renewable energy, specifically, solar power?
The fossil fuel/ nuclear power pathway is ultimately a dead end street. Nonetheless, the energy conglomerates continue to invest heavily in extracting a resource from the bowels of the Earth, combusting it, and then spewing the harmful chemical constituents into the air for all life to breathe.
Meanwhile, the nascent solar and wind turbine industries set poised, bearing forth after 30 years of technological development, with the most advanced mechanisms ever available to human society, in capturing renewable energy from the sun and wind.
It is time to start the fire. It is time for humanity to rise up and demand government's massive infrastructure investment in solar, and wind power. California is the key. We can seize this moment to direct tax money away from purchasing fossil fuel power negotiated at rip off rates, during the height of our power crisis, and instead, invest heavily in solar power.
Consider, that essentially every new industry that comes into existence is dependent upon government first massively investing, in the infrastructure needed, to facilitate that industry's existence.
For example, without government's investment in roads, and highways, there would not be modern automobile, oil, and steel industries. Without government's investment in building and operating airports, there would not be airlines, and airplane manufacturing industries. Without government's investment in dredging harbors and building modern seaports there would not be a modern shipping industry, nor the capacity for worldwide economic trade at today's massive scale.
Government's investment is the crucial foundation at seemingly every turn, that facilitated the transformation of society from steam and coal towards oil.
Thus it is logical, and necessary that California once again take charge, and lead the United States in a massive program of solarizing our economy. The first step is a multi-billion dollar investment to place solar panels, and other modern solar collector technology on all appropriate government buildings. This massive purchase order will dramatically reduce the cost for existing solar technology. The ramifications are prescient.
And as we near the 30 year anniversary of the OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, oil embargo of 1973-4.......we must unite across all political spectrums, to defeat the hugely entrenched special interests of the oil conglomerates, in order to democratically, and dramatically move forward in a bold new direction, which will do more to benefit the needs of humanity of all income classes than any one single ideology.
Thank you for the opportunity to share.
C.T. Weber:
09.09.2003 | 5:08pm (PST)
The national economic decline began during the Clinton administration but escalated during the Bush administration. Bush failed to recognize the problem and failed to take any actions to lessen the devastating effects of the decline. Under capitalism, business cycles continue to plague the economy. There are robust years, and recessions or depressions over which the best minds have little control. However, Bush chose to give huge tax breaks to the rich and plunged the nation into an expensive invasion of Iraq. As the U.S. economy collapsed, so did the economies of most of the states. Besides being drawn into the national tailspin, California was invested in the stock market and when it crashed so did California's revenues. A particular problem for California was the DOT.COM crash. California depends on income taxes to a large extent and with the DOT.COM crash the state lost a huge amount of income tax revenue from employees and investors, as well as sales taxes.
To stimulate the economy we need to double the minimum wage and index it to the cost of living. This would pump millions of dollars back into the economy. Consumers would have more money to spend, so more money would be returned to the state in additional taxes. Also, we should move to a 30-hour work week with no loss in pay. That means companies would need to hire millions of new workers, resulting in millions of new consumers and taxpayers.
Ending the present militarist policies of both major parties would also stimulate our economy. Federal military spending already costs Californians $30 billion a year and that will escalate as the current interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, the Philippines and elsewhere continue. We should not allow the California National Guard to be used in pursuit of these policies.
Most importantly, we need to address the real needs of Californians. We need to immediately implement a single payer health care system where the state assumes the role of paying for quality health care to all Californians. This would not eliminate profit from the medical field, but would at least get rid of the insurance company bureaucracies while still allowing people to choose their own doctors and clinics. It would also actually aid other capitalist interests by reducing the benefits overhead caused by the wasteful nature of the present system.
Instead of laying off state employees and raising student fees, there are ways to save billions and billions of dollars to reduce or eliminate this deficit. State departments should stop contracting out jobs to private firms which state employees can do better and for less money. We can educate and treat non-violent drug offenders instead of sending them to state prisons. (This would eliminate half of the state prison population and let us close down half the prisons.) Repeal "three strikes" to further reduce the prison population, and repeal the death penalty so the state can stop spending million of dollars on protracted litigation which only serves prosecutors' blood lust. Implement a "split-roll" property tax reform so that residents pay low taxes while corporations again pay a larger share of the property tax; and increase, at a minimum, higher-bracket income taxes back up to what they were under Reagan and Wilson.
To effectively present a Left program to the voters of California, one needs to have the backing of a ballot-qualified party. My campaign helps to develop a base for a strong Peace and Freedom Party which can carry a left response not only in this election but future elections as well. As a result, if socialist and other progressive left organizations could develop a common strategy on important issues we have a party to carry that message forward the Peace and Freedom Party.
For more of my positions and those of the Peace and Freedom Party, please go to http://www.peaceandfreedom.org.
John Christopher Burton:
09.09.2003 | 1:34pm (PST)
The crisis in California represents more than the failure of the Davis administration in Sacramento. It is impossible to separate Davis’s policies—dictated by Wall Street, the giant energy companies, and the corporate elite as a whole—from the policies of the Bush administration in Washington and the crisis of the capitalist system on a world scale. The crisis in California demonstrates the failure of the profit system at the very center of world capitalism. The needs of working people and the interests of society as a whole—the abolition of poverty, guaranteed employment at decent pay for all those able to work, universal health care, affordable and comfortable housing, new schools and increased funding for education, secure retirement and care for the elderly—have proven to be incompatible with an economic system based on the unrestrained accumulation of personal wealth.
Far from representing a unique event that can be attributed to the mismanagement of an individual, the budget crisis in California is part of a broader crisis of American society. The $38 billion state deficit is dwarfed by the $455 billion deficit of the federal government, the $500 billion-plus balance of trade deficit, and the gargantuan accumulation of debt by corporate America. The federal deficit will be swelled further by the latest war appropriation requested by Bush--$87 billion. This vast sum, on top of $79 billion allocated last April, will be approved by Congress with the support of the Democrats. This colossal squandering of resources underscores the impossibility of seriously addressing the fiscal crisis in California without directly opposing the occupation of Iraq and demanding the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all US troops from the Middle East.
Even the most singular aspect of the California crisis—the plundering of the state by big energy monopolies such as Enron—is bound up with broader processes affecting the US and world economy. This was clearly demonstrated in the August 14-15 blackout of the northeastern United States, which revealed an important truth: the greatest threat to the well-being of the American people comes, not from terrorist bands or “rogue states,” but from the anarchic nature of the profit system and the selfish pursuit of personal wealth on the part of those who run the giant corporations.
The California recall represents a continuation of efforts by far-right elements to force through their political agenda against widespread public opposition, using methods of backroom conspiracy and employing huge financial resources. These include the impeachment conspiracy against Clinton, the theft of the 2000 presidential election, and the ongoing efforts to pack the Congress through repeated re-drawings of legislative boundaries (Texas). As in these other cases, the aim of the recall is to create the conditions for removing all restrictions on the accumulation of personal wealth and corporate profit—an agenda that has little popular support and could not be imposed except through antidemocratic and illicit means.
The budget crisis has been developing in California for a quarter century, going back to the passage in 1978 of Proposition 13, a ballot initiative that severely limited the levying of property taxes. These were, until then, the principal source of California state revenues, and remain today the basis for financing most other state governments in the US. Proposition 13 was the product of a right-wing campaign—considered so extreme at the time that even Ronald Reagan refused to endorse it—to mount an indirect attack on social spending for education, health care and welfare programs by slashing state revenues.
The success of Proposition 13, with its populist appeals for a “taxpayers’ revolt” against “big government,” was a product of the bankruptcy of Democratic Party liberalism, and the dead end of its policy of limiting all social reform measures to that which was acceptable to the profit system. Under the conditions of “stagflation” in the late 1970s—a combination of soaring price increases and near-zero economic growth—there was a tremendous squeeze on the living standards of working people throughout the US, including large sections of the professional middle class and small business owners. In California this took the form of record increases in property taxes—triggered by rising property values—which had to be paid out of dormant or declining real wages or the fixed incomes of retirees.
The Democratic administration of then-governor Jerry Brown made no attempt to alleviate this crisis, opening the way for right-wing demagogues to posture as the defenders of middle-class homeowners and retirees threatened by rising property taxes. Although the media and the political establishment of both major parties opposed the measure, it passed easily. The main beneficiaries of Proposition 13, however, were not retired workers or other struggling homeowners, but the biggest owners of property—the giant corporations and the very wealthy.
The 1978 “tax revolt” in California prefigured the election of Reagan two years later and the policies—pitting sections of the middle class against the poorer sections of workers—which were employed over the next two decades to destroy social welfare programs and build up the political power of the Republican right. In a similar fashion, the current political crisis in California foreshadows political eruptions on a national scale, which will threaten the stranglehold of the two entrenched big business parties.
In the years following 1978, more such ballot initiatives were adopted in California. Some were sponsored by the far right and big business, adding new limitations to the state’s taxing powers. Others were sponsored by the Democratic Party or groups linked to it, including the trade union bureaucracy, and mandated specific levels of spending for health care, public schools and other programs. The result is that more than 80 percent of all state government revenue and spending is mandated by voter initiatives or constitutional amendments, and not subject to legislative action. Even if the state legislature had eliminated all discretionary spending in the current budget crisis—shutting facilities, eliminating jobs, cutting paychecks—there would still have been a massive deficit.
For a time, in the 1990s, the inherent conflict between these tax and spending mandates was masked by the flood of revenue generated by the stock market boom, especially the explosive growth of the computer and software industry in northern California. During Gray Davis’s first term, beginning in 1999, burgeoning state revenues made it possible to maintain and even increase spending on public services without breaching the constraints of Proposition 13 and similar measures.
But even before Davis’s election, the forces that would undermine the financial boom were already at work. The Asian economic crisis of 1997-98, hitting California’s biggest export market, was followed by the collapse of the dot-com bubble in 2000, devastating Silicon Valley and culminating in the onset of statewide and nationwide recession in 2001. Nowhere was the liquidation of paper wealth so calamitous as in California. Since the revenues of the country’s largest state were largely dependent on income and capital gains taxes, as opposed to property taxes, the state budget was swiftly plunged into deficit.
The crisis was exacerbated by the systematic robbery of California residents by the giant energy trading companies, above all Enron. Deregulation, enacted by Davis’s predecessor, Republican Pete Wilson, and continued under Davis, allowed the energy companies to rig the market, jack up prices to astronomical levels, and reap billions in profits. The energy crisis cost the people of California over $40 billion, and the state government alone over $10 billion, tipping the budget from surplus to deficit.
The crisis of the state has been further intensified by the policies of the Bush administration, which is slashing social spending and presiding over the greatest destruction of jobs and public services since the Great Depression. This year’s tax cut legislation, which poured over $700 billion into the coffers of the wealthy (on top of a $1.6 trillion tax cut windfall in 2001) doled out a miserable $20 billion to state governments, under conditions where 38 states face bankruptcy and California alone has a deficit more than twice the total federal aid.
It would be a mistake, however, to view the present crisis as merely, or even primarily, the product of recent stock market gyrations and the crimes of certain corporate executives, or even the policies put in place by the Bush administration. These factors are themselves the outcome of more profound historical processes. The state of California is not merely one political jurisdiction among many in the United States; it is the most concentrated expression of the contradictions and crisis of American and, indeed, world capitalism.
What is California? If any state expressed the American dream in the 20th century, it was California, rising on the far western periphery of the United States to become the most populous, dynamic and influential American state. For much of the post-World War II period there was a relentless movement of the American population to the West Coast, with California as the principal destination. It was home to Hollywood, Silicon Valley, a huge aerospace industry and the most productive agricultural region in the world, as well as the focal point for the burgeoning US trade across the Pacific Ocean. If considered as a separate country, it would have the fifth largest economy in the world, greater than France.
California epitomizes the diverse character of the American population, and especially the new waves of immigration in the 1980s and 1990s, mainly from Latin America and Asia. The scene of anti-Chinese rioting in the 19th century, and the mass detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II, California is now the first state in which blacks, Hispanics and Asians make up the majority of the population, and US-born whites are a minority.
California expresses in concentrated form both the dynamic tendencies of American capitalism and its internal contradictions. Jump-started by huge outlays on warships and arms production for the struggle with Japan, California became, during the decades that immediately followed the Second World War, a major center of manufacturing, especially in automobiles, steel, shipbuilding and aerospace. Beginning in the 1970s, these industries went into decline, as they did throughout the United States. By the 1990s, there was only one (Japanese-owned) auto plant in California, no shipyard industry to speak of, and aerospace had undergone a severe contraction.
While these manufacturing industries shifted production to offshore locations in Latin America and Asia, the rising computer and software industry replaced them as the engine of California’s economy. Though the scientific foundations for computerization had been established during World War II and in the subsequent development of transistors, serious corporate interest in computerization gathered strength in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in response to the deepening economic problems confronting American capitalism. Computerization arose as a response to declining profit rates in manufacturing that became pronounced in the early 1970s. It was seized on and developed as a means of increasing labor productivity—that is, increasing output while cutting jobs through the computerized reorganization
of the workplace.
In contrast to earlier periods of technological innovation, the destruction of US jobs through the reorganization made possible by computerization was not offset by employment possibilities in new mass production industries. Revolutionary advances in communications and transportation, also bound up with computer-associated technologies, vastly increased the mobility of capital. The process of globalization, epitomized by the transformation of American corporations into transnational conglomerates, radically and permanently altered the conditions of life for the working class. Workers now face a situation in which the major corporations, American and foreign, scour the globe for ever-cheaper sources of raw materials and labor.
Millions of manufacturing jobs have been destroyed as corporations shifted operations to low-wage areas. Industrial workers have borne the brunt of this relentless process, but it is already affecting broader sections of the working population. Even labor processes requiring highly skilled workers—such as computer programming—are being transferred overseas.
The answer to this situation entails an entirely new strategy for the working class. I reject protectionist measures, such as those proposed by the trade union bureaucracy. All efforts to restrict economic development within a national straitjacket are inherently reactionary and doomed to failure. Worst of all, they promote the destructive and chauvinistic illusion that workers in other countries are the enemies of American workers. In reality, workers in all countries are part of an international class that confronts the same enemy: the international capitalist system.
The reality of globally organized capitalism requires that the working class adopt a world strategy. Workers in North America cannot be indifferent to the social conditions of workers in any other part of the world. In order to defend their jobs and conduct an effective struggle against their “own” corporate bosses, they must develop an international strategy that unifies all sections of the international working class in a struggle against the capitalist system.
Both big business parties accept and defend the basic social framework of American capitalism: the domination of all aspects of life by private wealth and production for profit. In the Republican Party one hears the unrestrained blood-cry of the ruling class—the maniacal, irrational fixation on the accumulation of personal wealth, through the removal of all legal, social and moral restraints on the exploitation of the working class. The Democratic Party, more so in California than anywhere else, still postures as the representative of liberalism and the defender of social services such as health and education. But, as the record of the Davis administration demonstrates, the Democrats are no longer able to combine welfare-state spending with the demands of corporate America.
Candidates such as the liberal columnist Arianna Huffington and Green Party leader Peter Camejo do not represent a political alternative to the two big business parties. Both campaigns accept the framework of the profit system and propose reforms of the most limited character. (Camejo’s budget policy is the same as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s: to hire an independent auditor to review the state’s books.) Politically, Huffington and Camejo are subservient to both the Democrats and the Republicans. On the most critical question in the October 7 election, the antidemocratic character of the recall, they both side with the Republican right. They urge a vote to remove Davis and justify the campaign financed by millionaire Darrell Issa as though it were a genuine popular movement from below. In the vote for a replacement governor, Huffington declared that she would withdraw if a Democrat acceptable to her, such as Senator Dianne Feinstein, were to run. Camejo, for his part, said he would withdraw in favor of Huffington if her campaign appeared to be gaining support.
The purpose of my campaign is to contribute to the building of a new political leadership among working people. I and the party I support, the Socialist Equality Party, are fighting, through our daily international journal of political analysis and commentary, the World Socialist Web Site, to educate workers and prepare the way for the emergence of a mass movement against the profit system.
Sharon Rose Holland:
09.09.2003 | 10:53am (PST)
It's evident that California's economic crisis is symptomatic of deep-rooted problems in the way the state has been managed. The analogy that comes to mind is driving one's car without ever getting the oil changed, checking the tire pressure, or getting tune-ups. Eventually the car will break down.
It's clear we must stop feeding California's riches to special interest groups and eliminate government waste. It's clear we must set aside reserves in seasons of prosperity in order to be equipped for seasons of adversity. It's clear we must address taxation and employment issues as part of the overall economic picture. But how? One of the first priorities for whoever is elected governor MUST be to build a bi-partisan team to research, analyze and propose strategies to restore our economic health and to draw upon the wealth of ideas from ALL sides of the political spectrum. Sure this sounds idealistic, but it is not impossible.
I'm not sure that any one candidate can boast that their plan is "the best program for Cailfornia, over and above that of other...opponents" at this point in time. In fact, I think that kind of superiority attitude is part of the problem! There was a saying among firefighters in the movie "Backdraft" that demonstrated their resolve to face crisis as a team: "You go, we go." As the state's economy has declined, the quality of life has declined for every single one of us. These times demand a change of attitude not just from the politicians in Sacramento, but from the people of California as well.
Ken Hamidi:
09.09.2003 | 8:32am (PST)
The real underlying problem with California's economic crisis is "TOO MUCH SPENDING" by the Legislature! Considering that California is currently run as a Special Interest Automatic Teller Machine (ATM), for the Democratic Party. My Candidacy is intended to stop out of control spending, by retuning California's Government back to its electorate. Primarily by removing overspending, means testing, and make accountable everyone working for us. Second, I will work to put a stop to special interest groups and their controlling legislation.
How will this be done, very simply, control the root cause, not the symptom. The source for California's problems are what the Founding Father's of the United States Constitution feared most, people legislating themselves benefits from the powers of Government, example...Taxation.
California has spent beyond its means, just getting more money, has never fixed the Governmental need for wasting resources, and a lack of Common Sense. I will return both back to the electorate.
Marc Valdez:
09.09.2003 | 6:40am (PST)
I hesitate to paraphrase Ronald Reagan in this forum, but here goes: 'if you get the big issues right, the minor ones will fall into place on their own.' The California budget crisis is the legacy of Proposition 13's passage in 1978. Starved of property tax income, the state was forced to rely too heavily on income taxes, which, because of progressive taxation (a good thing, for the most part) meant the state was unusually vulnerable to income shocks among just a few thousand rich people. The dot-com bust heavily-damaged the incomes of the state's rich people, and made a budget crisis inevitable. To recover stability, the state needs to diversify its income, which means higher property taxes, which means the repeal of Proposition 13.
Repeal would yield a fairer distribution of taxes. Corporations (not suburban homeowners) were the biggest benefactors of Proposition 13, and repeal would mean corporate property taxes would go up. But since budget stability requires diversification, it also means the state income taxes of the rich should go down. And mechanisms would have to be put in place to keep property taxes from escalating uncontrollably the way they did in the mid-70's.
There are several anti-Proposition 13 candidates on the ballot: Arianna Huffington, Maurice Walker, and others. In the recent Walnut Creek debate, Huffington preferred to use what I consider to be an outdated mode of argument, likening Proposition 13 to abused corporate loopholes. But Proposition 13 is very primitive. It has no loopholes. The inequities it creates were designed for that very purpose. Perhaps it can be rendered toothless by a Special Reassessment of all property in the state, but if Huffington thinks she can get that past conservatives without a fight, she's wrong. What, exactly, is her plan?
I prefer a frontal attack. The popularity of Proposition 13 hasn't been tested in 25 years. Today, young conservatives are harmed directly by Proposition 13, while their elders, those who bought property before 1978, escape their fair share of taxes. Why not drive that point home, and drive a wedge into the conservative flank? Proposition 13 is a rotten edifice, and it's vulnerable. Time to exploit that weakness.
The greatest weakness of the Left is its fixation on authenticity, on pigeonholing people based on outmoded categories of thought. Of course, all people pigeonhole (that's a human weakness), but when the world has evolved into square pegs, and all you've got are old round holes, you've got a problem. It's time to look at the world afresh, using the past as a guide. Identity politics has failed the Left: it's time to go back to economics. I'm a rather old-fashioned liberal. I worry less whether someone is an African-American gay feminist, but whether or not the African-American gay feminist has a job.
Just last Sunday, one of my fellow candidates got excited as he addressed us other candidates, down in Beverly Hills at our Candidate's Forum, and said that it was time for all of us to speak the Truth with our candidacies. True enough, but it is also important to win elections, and win them the hard way, by direct persuasion. Elect me, and I'm on conservative talk radio in a flash: to persuade, cajole, menace if necessary, and ultimately defeat the ruinous conservative policies that have brought California to such peril.
EMAIL your question to askthecandidates@glovesoff.org.
Participating Candidates
Candidates names are linked to their websites.
John Christopher Burton
Peter Camejo
Ivan Hall
Ken Hamidi
Sharon Rose Holland
Marc Valdez
C.T. Weber
Who turned us down?
(1) Joel Britton. The Socialist Workers Party organizer running as an independent wins the prize for most difficult Left candidate to contact, and least forthcoming about his reasons for not participating. Click here to send him an email and urge him to debate.
(2) Arianna Huffington. "It's not our top priority," say her campaign managers. Click here to send an email and urge her to change her mind about participating in the debate. (Arianna, if you're as progressive as you claim, you'll realize it's not just Ahnold who matters!)
Complete list of candidates and their statements
Available online at the California Board of Elections
Did we leave someone out?
If you think we left someone out who should have been invited to debate, let us know. Email the editors at editor@glovesoff.org