``...By rejecting five budget measures, Californians also brought into stark relief the fact that they, too, share blame for the political dysfunction that has brought California to the brink of insolvency.''
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Bullshit. The Republicans refuse to raise taxes or vote on any budget that raises taxes on business and upper income. They wanted deep cuts in education, health, and what's left of welfare. They also of course refused to vote to get rid of Prop 13 restrictions or the 2/3rds majority required for any tax measure to pass.
And there is this, ``...former Gov. Gray Davis, whose 2003 recall stemmed largely from a budget crisis brought on by the dot-com bust.'' Again the right wing gets overlooked. Tom DeLay and other Texas energy rot, lobbied the Legislature to privatize the state's public energy utilities, then proceeded to bilk the State out billions, and then fabricated a Recall election over budget mishandling, to get rid of a Democrat governor. The right won that round and we got the Schwartz peter. Most of the regressive ballot measures are generated by the right from anti-tax reform to immigration to homophobia. Most of the money comes from southern California suburban reactionaries, with help from the central valley highway string malls from Sacramento to Bakersfield. So a physical minority hold the rest of us hostage something like the US southern Republicans have held the rest of the country hostage for the decades.
Since Sacramento was stalled out, the only compromise they could reach was to put a few propositions on the ballot. They were all bogus, down to the last bullshit word.
We've been in a deathgrip battle with these assholes for at least forty-five years that I can remember..
Dennis Claxton posted an article on another thread with a news date August 23, 1963 about the platform for the Young Democrats wanted adopted to get out of Vietnam, and a bunch of other things.
For personal reasons, I remember that particular date very well. I am going to go into some history just to give the flavor of the battles that have gone on.
August 23, 1963 was a very hot smog Friday. I was working a summer job as a teacher's assistant in a school in Van Nuys for what was called emotionally disturbed children. The school director was Sonia Braverman. She was a very progressive (communist jewish conspiracy) educator. She was just fabulous to work under. She knew how to teach teachers to be teachers instead of be cops. That Friday the kids went home at noon, and we stayed behind for a party and staff meeting to go over student reports. I got my folder and she told me what she wanted. A couple of paragraphs on how the student did, any progress, and some suggestions for fall. I had about ten kids to write up. She treated me like a junior teacher in training and not some lowly auxiliary staff.
At that particular moment California public schools were under assault by some right wing reactionary jerk the asshole Republicans had just installed as the State Superintendent by the name of Max Rafferty. Well google him, or consider he was like having Dick Cheney as your principal.
Now switch gears. I was earning money to go to Cal State Northridge. Among the stellar people in the Anthro department were Edmund Carpenter, Joan Rayfield, and Council Taylor. I was in Art and seriously considering changing my major. Carpenter is easy to google, he was from McGill and studied under Marshal McLuhn. Joan Rayfield and Council Taylor are more difficult to track down. Rayfield was into understanding different world views through folklore and language following Levi-Strauss to some extent, and her main study area was Africa, and the history of western anthropology. Council Taylor, was into Caribbean ethnographic studies, and African connections, the trace of Africa to the new world through the slave trade. He was part of the US revival of the Pan African movement. His course on Africa was just a killer. The other star of the department was Fred Katz in musicology, folk, jazz and classical in a wild blend.
By some fluke the Northridge administration had hired Carpenter to start an experimental department devoted to anthropology, arts, and media. It was a decision I am sure they regretted. These were enormously creative people and it was a great exposure to what could- be, what should-be. My exposure to them was far more radicalizing than it might seem. They managed to undercut the entire US mind set pretty much from top to bottom. It wasn't a matter of European what we now call Theory complete with history, empires, and colonialism--- it was the whole concept of society, culture and humanity. My mind was just spinning. I was only twenty and had never heard of any of these other worlds. After I left to go to Berkeley, there must have been some big show down with the administration, because Carpenter, Rayfield, Taylor, and Katz all left to other jobs.
Some of those all too brief times were just fabulous. We called Taylor The Count. He used to dress in white linen tropical suits and wear a floppy hat like he was some kind of great white explorer, something out a Conrad novel. He used to hold great parties at his house which was stuffed full of all things Caribbean and African. Fancy rum drinks and curries for dinner. Joan Rayfield used to come to class dressed in hand made peasant dresses. All these people were exotic characters. They quite obviously didn't belong in the California State College system.
So here was a hot bed of radicalizing creativity stuck in middle of a cultural desert. On the other hand it was good training for the decades that would follow...
CG