|
|||||
|
|||||
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
In May of this year your humble correspondent ceased to be a Californian and relocated to the magnificent (but utterly jobless) State of Washington. I was in sorrow of spirit for what was happening to California: always an exquisitely beautiful, delightfully endowed countryside, it was once the intellectual and industrial jewel in the crown of states—the best schools, the best police and fire services, the best hospitals—in terms of government services it stood toe-to-toe with countries like Sweden and Denmark. All the same, taxes were high and the policy of urban development was ghastly; it was an unsustainable affair, in which urban growth and a real estate boom, rather than a stationary-stochastic stream of income taxes, fueled a costly heap of popular programs.
The administrative waste and the oil crisis of the '70's replaced the pro-development Republicans and New Deal Democrats with chronic taxpayer rebels, political demagogues whos mantra was, "Cut taxes, spend on the suburbs." Spending on the suburbs was reflected in programs to subsidize suburban sprawl; the state of California spent about $13 billion per year in excess of gasoline taxes and registration fees on the maintenance of roads, yet the godfather of the new generation of California politicians, State Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Ventura Co)—a fellow who has made a career of channelling affluent white male resentment of everyone else, and converting it into policy proposals.
The point I want to make here is that McClintock and his sympathizers are dishonest about being "libertarians," or proponents of cheaper government....
Seeing the Forest) broaches the recent coup at CalPERS:Republicans Taking Control of CalPERS - Huge Implications
CalPERS president removed from post. From the story, "The ouster of the president of California's public pension fund has raised questions about whether pension funds, endowments and other big activist investors will be able to keep wielding clout in corporate governance campaigns."
This is a "tip-of-the-iceberg" story with vast implications. CalPERS is the pension fund for public employees in California. It had an activist management that was trying to help clean up corporate corruption. The large corporations got together and have succeeded in getting the fund's management changed. "Richard Ferlauto, director of pension investment for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said Harrigan's ouster was an early success in a campaign to wrest control of pension money from a CalPERS board now controlled by Democratic trustees and put it to work in projects more in keeping with Republican ideals.
"Clearly, we're seeing a Republican attack on public pension systems," Ferlauto said. "And California has been targeted in a very strong way."Public pension plans have been one of the few remaining avenues for exerting public pressure on corporate behavior — it's not just CalPERS that's a target.
This is about right. The Schwarzenegger/Pete Wilson conquest of the governorship on California was an utter calamity for my beloved home state because it represented a coup employing utter confusion as to the causes of the state's problems (Don't bother chastizing me about this; I understand perfectly well this is what happens in elections often. Nonetheless, I was blown away be the yawning gap between what voters I was surveying said about the recall and what was actually the case.) The other reason was that the victors were accomplished grifters, posing as friends of business enterprise. This is not hard; many managers welcome less scrutiny because that's basic human nature, but I doubt they were eager to embrace the champions of Enron (HC).
Kevin Drum (Political Animal) has posted about the matter; he's far, far more conservative than I am—indeed, in recent weeks he has startled me with posts such as this one. However, he is reality-based when it comes to the state's finances.
Sean Harrigan finally lost his job as its president...Why? Because he's a shareholder activist who has pushed hard for
reform in the executive suite. He's a union official who fought the Safeway strike last year. And he and other activists have fought boardroom cronyism relentlessly and nearly got Disney's Michael Eisner fired a few months ago.[...] And here I thought that competition was supposed to be good for capitalism. Just not in the boardroom, I guess.