{"id":13627,"date":"2012-04-02T13:24:36","date_gmt":"2012-04-02T17:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=13627"},"modified":"2012-04-02T13:24:36","modified_gmt":"2012-04-02T17:24:36","slug":"the-6-groups-responsible-for-california%e2%80%99s-budget-mess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/13627\/the-6-groups-responsible-for-california%e2%80%99s-budget-mess\/","title":{"rendered":"The 6 Groups Responsible for California\u2019s Budget Mess"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nbcbayarea.com\/blogs\/prop-zero\/Higher-Education-Protests-California-Public-Universities-Cemeteries-144446955.html\" target=\"_blank\">Joe Mathews<\/a> blogs at NBC Bay Area on the people and institutions most at fault for California\u2019s budget fiasco.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The system makes the decisions, not lawmakers. And that system &#8212; the formulas and court decisions and constitutional spending mandates and tax restrictions &#8212; does not exist in any particular place that can be protested.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the strange genius of this system, which is really a set of complex formulas. You can&#8217;t picket a formula&#8217;s house.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, protesting at the Capitol may be counterproductive &#8212; because it advances a false public narrative that the legislature is the problem here. The problem is the people of California, especially voters of the present and of the past.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Two years ago, in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxandhoundsdaily.com\/2010\/03\/6559-5-better-places-protest-than-a-college-campus\/\">this piece for Fox &amp; Hounds Daily<\/a>, I\u00a0suggested five alternative locations for protests:\u00a0highways, gas stations, the prison guards&#8217; union, retirement communities, and unsold homes.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, I have one additional idea: California cemeteries.<\/p>\n<p>Many of the spending mandates and tax restrictions that are strangling the budget, and higher education in particular, were put in place long ago by voters.<\/p>\n<p>So long ago that many of those voters are dead. What better way to represent this problem of the dead governing the living than by taking the protest to those voters?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And what better way to show the crisis of California\u2019s politics than to act as if politically-imposed spending formulas can\u2019t be politically reformed?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joe Mathews blogs at NBC Bay Area on the people and institutions most at fault for California\u2019s budget fiasco. The system makes the decisions, not lawmakers. And that system &#8212; the formulas and court decisions and constitutional spending mandates and tax restrictions &#8212; does not exist in any particular place that can be protested. That&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[70,299,56],"class_list":["post-13627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-budget","tag-california","tag-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13627"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13630,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13627\/revisions\/13630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}