California--Curioser And Curioser

Right now, Democrats are "running away" from Barack Obama in droves. Democrats hiding from a Democratic President. Here in California, we always do things differently. In the Golden State, the Republican candidate for governor is running away from the current Republican governor. There is one similarity, though. Like those Democrats, Republican Meg Whitman is running away from the governor because he's just too damned liberal.

Candidate Whitman is running on the concept that a government should be run like a successful business, not like an ATM. She is the type of Republican who will probably do very well in the general election in November, since she fits in with the majority in a state that overall tends to be moderate to liberal on social issues but looking for a sensible fiscal conservative to drag California back from the financial abyss. She's no movement conservative, nor is she a RINO. But next to the Governator, she looks like Calvin Coolidge.

Whitman has vowed to take on the unions, most particularly the fat public employees unions. She wants to cut taxes, but is even more adamant about cutting state expenses. She wants to see decent environmental concerns addressed without bankrupting and starving the state's major industries. She's only a very light shade of green, and that's in part from being around all that nice green money. While Schwarzenegger was busy ginning up green projects, making internal combustion engines into demons and pronouncing the advent of hydrogen-powered automobiles some time in this century while billing the taxpayers for them now, Whitman says that people must come before theoretical pollution control.

But the big break in the party came when Whitman announced that California can dig itself out of its budget hole by cracking down on waste, fraud and abuse in state spending. She has proposed a statewide grand jury that would investigate and indict those who have "fleeced the state treasury for billions of dollars. A key factor accounting for the massive overspending and continuing budget deficits is state government's failure to police itself well. A statewide grand jury would supply the real enforcement mechanism now lacking in state agencies and county grand juries."

Considering that she is implying at least criminal negligence, and that many of the spending disasters come from the governor's office, the Governator has decided not to endorse a candidate in the general election. In an ordinary year, the refusal of a Republican governor to endorse his proposed Republican successor would be a very bad thing. This year, not so much. It's not just that there is a strong opposition to tax and spend officials, but Republicans add enthusiasm to the mixture at the poll level by wanting to take a slap at Schwarzenegger for what they consider to be his surrender to the Democrats and various other liberals, most particularly the public sector unions and green weenies.

The Central Valley, once the breadbasket for half the western world, is blowing away with the wind because of the lack of water caused by the cutoff of supplies occasioned by the protection of a fish that serves no known purpose in the ecological scheme of things. Schwarzenegger announced that he supported the farmers and agricultural workers, but did absolutely nothing to help them get the eco-freaks off their backs and out of their lives. While other states have been actively defying the federal government, Schwarzenegger has essentially thrown his hands in the air in an attitude of "vot can I do?"

Yet somehow, "energy" funds seem to get spent at a breathtaking pace, and Whitman is demanding to know why. Her critics (most of them from Attorney General and Democrat gubernatorial candidate Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown's office) are asking what a statewide grand jury could do that county grand juries can't do. Whitman isn't a lawyer, but she plays one on the campaign trail. And she plays one rather well. That question is both naive and disingenuous. Statewide grand juries are not subject to the influence, partisanship and good-old-boy coziness of county grand juries. Business as usual isn't usually statewide business. Local fiefdoms merely perpetuate the "I got mine, up yours" attitude.

Scott Thorpe, executive director of the California District Attorney's Association, says that the statewide grand jury would be California's "only prosecuting authority that wasn't elected by the people," as if that's a bad thing. Thorpe plays on the tough prosecutor image held by the average voter, neglecting to mention that District Attorneys and their staffs are public employees participating at least in part in the waste Whitman wants to investigate.

In reply, Whitman spokesman Darrel Ng replied that the persistence of fraud shows that the current system doesn't work and that it's time to try something new. Says Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco, "A state grand jury would have a broader perspective than local prosecutors and would tackle cases that are slipping through the system. There is fraud on a statewide level. People are not concentrating on it, and there is no mechanism to handle it."

Jerry Brown's office offered that they had filed a record 165 criminal charges against Medi-Cal providers in 2009 recovering over $200 million in twelve months. Whitman replied that it was about time, now what about the $18.9 billion that appears to have been mis-spent through malfeasance and/or misfeasance since 2000? That includes a $1.25 billion program in state education which failed to improve test scores, more billions in fraud in welfare and workers' compensation, and even a $3 to $4 billion cost overrun for San Francisco Bay Bridge reconstruction.

Whitman has also called for a reduction in state employees by 40,000 state jobs. Jerry Brown is more concerned about how many people would be employed by the investigative grand jury, naturally. I can't give you a figure myself, but I suspect the answer is "a lot fewer than 40,000." Brown has no plan, but says he'll cut governmental inefficiency (not by criminal investigations, apparently) by "bringing all sides together and not raising taxes without voter approval." Interestingly, Brown also supports an initiative to reduce the number of votes required to pass tax increases and bond measures.

Schwarzenegger, meanwhile, seems to think he can solve all the state budget problems by targeting the growing program of domestic care for the low-income elderly and disabled. He hasn't noticed that a thorough investigation along those lines showed that overpayments, fraudulent or negligent, comprised at most 1% of the total payments. While Schwarzenegger dithers and chases the home-helpers and Brown says to "come now and reason together," Whitman says: "We're going to put in great systems, we're going to find that waste, fraud and abuse, we're going to convene a grand jury, and if you rip off the taxpayers of California, we're going to send you to jail."

Lord, I hope we have enough jails.