The fight in California over the insane proposal to raise taxes in the midst of a recession continues.
In case you’ve missed it earlier, the tax increases are: 1 cent raise to sales tax (making the sales tax close to 10% in many counties), doubling the car tax, adding 12 cents per gallon of gas as tax and adding a 5% surcharge on CA income taxes … which are the highest in the nation. It has been estimated that the average family of four in CA will pay about $1,400-1,500 extra per year in taxes under this “compromise” bill.
Wow, that $8-13/week from Obama will sure go far, eh?
And the so-called $16 billion in “cuts”? That’s cuts to increases not cuts to last year’s budget line. But the CA Legislature and a castrated Gov. Arnold cannot be denied their spending this year that they had for the four boom years that had unprecedented amounts of money roll into Sacramento. No, the LA Times whines, the refusal to add more leaches to the CA taxpayer is irresponsible!
Few could disagree with Maldonado’s very real concerns about raising taxes in the midst of a recession. But the budget compromise that a majority of his Republican colleagues irresponsibly rejected incorporates most of what they insisted be included before tax increases would be considered: a spending cap (although a flexible one); deep cuts to education and other programs; borrowing from funds that voters demanded be left intact. The GOP members offered no other plan, so there’s no actual alternative to the agreement among Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Democrats and the Republican leadership, which includes painful but moderate [moderate? according to whom? ... ed] tax increases. The implied alternative — get California out of the public education business, let local voters fend for themselves on funding public safety — pursues an extremist agenda demonstrably against Californians’ wishes and far outside the scope of Maldonado’s centrist and pragmatist political history.Each of the senator’s eleventh-hour demands has merit. Open primaries could return the state to its centrist tradition. Banning lawmaker pay raises when California faces budget deficits and halting pay altogether when the budget is late are sensible enough. Remove pork spending? Sure — and there go the other budget votes.
The LATimes is the one making straw arguments that resisting sharp tax increases in a recession is a wish to toss teachers and police on the street – a rather tired and trite meme. But note in the last line they acknowledge the pork, but say it cannot be cut because the Democrats in the legislature must be appeased.
Screw ‘em.
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 2/18 @ 9:04 am #
Ever notice that it’s always the services that most people actually want that they threaten to cut?
I mean, we all know that the State of California doesn’t spend money on anything at all besides police and fire protection. Nope.
Comment by Joe on 2/18 @ 9:05 am #
Excuse me, what is so bad in cutting every California state budget by its budget shortfall, say 20%, other than Highway Patrol and public safety personnel? Arnold and the State Legislature should cut their staffs 20% too. Government will go on and life will continue.
Comment by Carin on 2/18 @ 9:06 am #
But what about the blind children? If they don’t raise taxes, aren’t schools for the blind going to be closed? Criminals let free? The Governator needs to takes some hints from Jenny Granholm….
Comment by pledgepolish55 on 2/18 @ 9:08 am #
So does anyone have a ballpark idea when what’s going on in California starts happening throughout the country?
Comment by Mr. Pink on 2/18 @ 9:17 am #
2012
Comment by Bob Reed on 2/18 @ 9:17 am #
“The LATimes is the one making straw arguments that resisting sharp tax increases in a recession is a wish to toss teachers and police on the street – a rather tired and trite meme.”
Yes Darleen,
But it’s the same one the politicians, especially Democrats, trot out every time they wish to increase taxes. I’ve seen it my whole life, especially in the blue states I’ve lived in…
How about cutting services for illegal aliens? And, last I heard California colleges were still nearly free to attend when compared to the rest of the nation. And why did they gradually accumulate so many state employees to do the infrastructure work, as opposed to the private contracting model that had been in place prior?
California is in tough straights, much like NY. But all they’re gonna do by jacking up taxes is drive the stake in directly like they’ve done here in NY. Over the last 15 years industry has fled the state, due to high taxation; the same thing that has driven a wage and price spiral here that is among the highest in the nation. And the collapse of Wall street has dashed the house of cards that the tax base relied on, much as the collapse of the housing bubble has harmed California…
Politicians are going to have to realize that the answer is to reduce spending overall, and reduce tax rates concomitantly. Otherwise they’ll continue to see business and productive people flee to states that aren’t as economically rapacious…
Comment by Sdferr on 2/18 @ 9:24 am #
I don’t disagree Bob, but I think the people ought to go first, become once again the disciplinary hand that puts a halt to this nonsense. The politics appear to be unhinged altogether. Time to put the door back in the frame.
Comment by Mr. Pink on 2/18 @ 9:32 am #
That would require an informed electorate, something that the MSM and our public school system is trying painstakingly to avoid.
Comment by happyfeet on 2/18 @ 9:37 am #
Arnold is the biggest homo dirty socialist closet case what has ever pranced into Sacramento I think.
Comment by happyfeet on 2/18 @ 9:39 am #
I vote cliff by the way. Screw these losers.
Comment by Darleen on 2/18 @ 9:41 am #
hf
I don’t blame Arnold completely … the state GOP has some of the blame in pushing him into lefty territory. CA GOP has a long habit of standing in a circle and shooting — they get involved in the “who is the truer Republican” arguments. In the mean time, our socialist Democrats have been happily creating a dependent voter class so every “bread and circus” offered up (enjoy now! pay later!) gets them voted in. And no incumbent, either party, is turned out!! (gerrymandering is a fine art here)
We are a banana republic and the rest of the nation should watch and shudder.
Comment by Mr. Pink on 2/18 @ 9:44 am #
Arnold “Come on, Cohaagen! You got what you want. Give those people air!”
Comment by Pablo on 2/18 @ 9:48 am #
There is some hope for the Cali GOP.
Comment by happyfeet on 2/18 @ 9:49 am #
The California GOP is sad but mostly cause they’re as gerrymandered as everyone else. Arnold is useless I think. Always has been. He’s also a big global warming pansy. Oh look. A sympathetic Californian…
Susan Erb is a whiny loser. I wonder how many people she put into the exact same loser situation she’s in?
Comment by happyfeet on 2/18 @ 9:50 am #
oh. link
Comment by Mr. Pink on 2/18 @ 9:50 am #
Susan Erb signed an ARM knowingly, F her.
Comment by happyfeet on 2/18 @ 9:52 am #
Yay! That’s happy news, Pablo.
Comment by Mr. Pink on 2/18 @ 9:54 am #
Damn that movie Total Recall is just chopped full of good Arnold quotes that seem to be coming alive in our brave new world.
“Howdy, stranger! If things have gone wrong, I’m talking to myself, and YOU’VE got a wet towel wrapped around your head.”
Comment by happyfeet on 2/18 @ 9:56 am #
We’ll have to see who runs against this useless coward Cogdill person. I’d like to help if the challenger is even passably not a dumbass.
Comment by cranky-d on 2/18 @ 10:03 am #
I like it so much when politicians scream that people are cutting a budget when all they are doing is cutting back on the mandatory yearly increase. I wonder how many in the electorate know how government budgets actually work.
Comment by serr8d on 2/18 @ 10:08 am #
California embraced lefty-liberal causes long before the rest of the U.S.
This isn’t surprising or (sorry, CA residents) unwelcome.
Comment by happyfeet on 2/18 @ 10:11 am #
What’s really sort of striking is how the LA Times sneers with such unabashed puerility at someone who’s simply trying to avoid\ the economically disastrous consequences of a giant tax increase in a recession.
Can anyone name a reporter for the LA fucking Times? Jeez. Just cause these socialist LA Times retards have run their business into the ground that doesn’t mean that needs to be the norm for the whole state.
Comment by TheGeezer on 2/18 @ 10:16 am #
California goes through this every so often. Ex-californians then invade habitable, low-tax, safe communities and then voila! Within a decade those same communities have property covenants regulating exterior paint colors and political signs, schools taxes are unearthly, the crime, drug use and venereal disease infection rates go sky high, and then everything becomes ungovernable.
I’ve been waiting for CA to collapse and start over, but it really has just become a sort of ca spreading to adjacent states…
Comment by Pablo on 2/18 @ 10:16 am #
Shit. That sounds all too familiar.
Comment by Sticky B on 2/18 @ 10:23 am #
I have friends in western Wyoming who bitch constantly about all the wealthy Californians who have moved into their community. I have friends in southwest Colorado who sing from the same hymnal. The county I grew up in plus several surrounding counties, up in the Texas panhandle, have about a half million more cows now than they did when I grew up there in the 70’s. And they’re all dairy cows. And they all came from California in the last 10 years or so. Thirty years ago, Austin, TX was a medium sized city of about 200,000. Today it’s approaching 700,000. I’m told that a large percentage of the growth is Californians who are in the computer industry.
It appears to me that there are a lot of ex-Californians. The productive, wealth-generating type of people for the most part. I wonder why.
Comment by geoffb on 2/18 @ 10:26 am #
New York City has done the same thing throughout the New England area and Florida. Cancers always metastasize if they are not killed, or cut out, at the source.
Comment by Techie on 2/18 @ 10:42 am #
You’d think the teachers and police unions would be out in force against making them the scapegoats for spending cuts…….
Comment by Log Cabin on 2/18 @ 10:42 am #
You know, California was a nice Conservative state when I was a kid. Excepting San Francisco and downtown LA, it was paradise; low taxes, good jobs, available land, and the best weather that you could ask for almost year round. Then all these idiots from other states (and 3rd world countries)poured in and fucked it all up.
Washington, Utah, Texas, Wyoming are just getting the backwash of what we have been dealing with for 40 years.
I am wondering which one of these GOPers in the state assembly is gonna cave first. The dems only need one more vote, which makes me VERY nervous.
I figure that the federal government is about 3-4 years behind us in this same situation and coming on strong.
Comment by Curmudgeon on 2/18 @ 10:43 am #
It could be that the purpose of this state is to serve as a warning to the rest of the nation. The Left wanted a “progressive” tax system. Well, California has that. 30,000 odd wealthy individuals and corporations pay the lion’s share of income taxes for a state of 30,000,000 odd people. Make it too difficult for these people and corporations and they will leave. Many already have.
Still, I can’t just blame the Commiecrats for all this. All the greedheads who wanted cheap illegal alien labor (which really isn’t cheap when you factor the overcrowded schools, hospital emergency rooms, and the like) shouted down us border patriots as bigots and worse. Well, Wall Street Journal, how did that work out for you?
Comment by Cave Bear on 2/18 @ 10:45 am #
Darleen,
I am curious about something, as relates to the “ex-Californian” comments. Has there been a significant migration out of California yet, as in recently?
Comment by urthshu on 2/18 @ 10:48 am #
Hey – you guys notice that Obama wants to re-open NAFTA? Yay! We get to fuck over the Canadians now!
And, “Pride and Predator” got the go ahead for production…somehow Elton John is involved…
Comment by Curmudgeon on 2/18 @ 10:49 am #
#30 Cave Bear. yes. In the early to mid 1990’s there was. However, these population losses have been offset by foreign immigration, presumably even more by illegal aliens. With the exception of some Asian and Slavic immigrants who are skilled and entrepreneurial, most of these immigrants are net takers of social services. This is not to say that they are all bad people, far from it. But seriously, the romantic views of immigration are not rooted in reality. And I say this as someone who married a lovely immigrant from Korea.
Comment by Log Cabin on 2/18 @ 10:51 am #
Cave Bear, I can’t speak for Darleen, but the flight out of California has been ongoing for years. The problem is, the flight consists of the hardworking, educated, professionals with financial assets.
This is more than balanced by a massive influx of poor, uneducated, menial types from … take a wild guess where, Amigo.
Comment by Log Cabin on 2/18 @ 10:52 am #
Darn Curmudgeon! Beat me to the punch!
Comment by Mr. Pink on 2/18 @ 10:54 am #
31
Got a link?
Comment by TheGeezer on 2/18 @ 10:56 am #
Log Cabin, it’s the nice weather that creates so much stress in CA.
Think about it: here in the midwest, rain and cold and overcast days allow us to cheerfully sit in front of the TV. It’s too cold/rainy/hot/snowy/chilly to do anything else. In CA you must be outside enjoying that beautiful weather. You have to plan picnics, badmitton matches, play golf, swim, go to the beach, camp, hike, ride horses, drive fast convertibles along cliffs. The stress, man! The stress!
No wonder CA has a greater cross-section of insanity.
Comment by urthshu on 2/18 @ 10:56 am #
Sure – here and here.
Comment by Curmudgeon on 2/18 @ 10:57 am #
#34: Glad to know *someone* else gets it.
Comment by cranky-d on 2/18 @ 10:57 am #
I left California to go to graduate school in 1995, thinking I would move back when I was done. As the years passed, I started to realize that I wasn’t going to go back. It’s not the state I grew up in any more. I visit often because my father is there, but once he’s gone (hopefully not for a long while) then I probably won’t return.
Comment by Curmudgeon on 2/18 @ 11:00 am #
Well, California has *always* had a bit of the desperate people looking for the end of the rainbow syndrome. (Think “Day Of The Locust” if anyone read that story).
Jim Morrison said it well: “Here, young people grow up more freely than just about anywhere else, but it’s also a place where old people come to die. Kids know both (sentiments) and we express both.” Ironically appropriate for a heroin junkie who destroyed himself at 27.
Comment by happyfeet on 2/18 @ 11:01 am #
I like the illegal immigrants more better than most of the for real California people. They’re friendlier and more sensible and more conservative and they work harder and they make me tasty food.
Comment by Log Cabin on 2/18 @ 11:03 am #
Geeze, you got me laughing at that one. I just returned to Cali after 3 years in New England. It’s incredibly beautiful there in NE(they actually have trees!), but by March, I was climbing the walls for some warm sunshiney days. We actually have leaves and blossoms coming out already here (I am near Napa).
I never did get used to the cold or the summer humidity. I guess you get accustomed to what you are raised with.
Comment by mojo on 2/18 @ 11:04 am #
It’s “leech”, hon. And in the case of the CA legislature, a redundancy.
Comment by Curmudgeon on 2/18 @ 11:17 am #
happyfeet: that only goes so far.
After all, I would say most African Americans in Oakland and LA are far more sensible than the New Age whack-jobs in the nearby hills of both cities, and in a cultural sense, actually more conservative.
But an underclass is still an underclass, and prone to political manipulation.
Comment by happyfeet on 2/18 @ 11:31 am #
Right, I guess. But they’re an underclass cause liberals like for their brown people to be an underclass, not cause they’re inherently underclassy. The ones at my supermercado have way more class than Nancy Pelosi or her bitch daughter I think.
Comment by happyfeet on 2/18 @ 11:37 am #
You just wait til it gets summertime and see if you run to those nasty snotty white liberals when you want a tasty agua fresca I think.
Comment by McGehee on 2/18 @ 12:29 pm #
Hmmm. Maybe if we let Mexico take California back, they’ll give us back Arizona, New Mexico and Texas?
Comment by BJTexs on 2/18 @ 12:29 pm #
From urthshu’s link:
As I said before; the inmates are running the asylum.
Comment by McGehee on 2/18 @ 12:30 pm #
…and, like, the Constitution, and decent almost-occasionally-honest politicians, and our federal republic, and stuff?
Comment by happyfeet on 2/18 @ 12:38 pm #
ways to sequester carbon, preventing it from being emitted into the atmosphere
This is nothing less than molecular apartheid. Baracky’s bigoted knee-jerk policies are a self-indulgence this nation can’t really afford right now I don’t think.
Comment by BJTexs on 2/18 @ 12:42 pm #
It’s worse than that, happyfeet. There are several scientists working on government grants noodling ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
Think “The Matrix,” only way stupider.
Comment by alppuccino on 2/18 @ 12:45 pm #
Can’t we fill a bunch of baloons with CO2 and then float them out into space? Alphie?
Comment by BJTexs on 2/18 @ 12:47 pm #
No! No! No! Al! Fill the balloons with CO2 and use them to hold up a mile high missile defense shield in Israel! GENIUS!!!
Comment by JD on 2/18 @ 12:48 pm #
BJ – They are going to remove carbon from the atmosphere? It was bad enough that they wanted to capture it, a Gitmo and extraordinary rendition of elements, but now they are going to shoot for element-icide?
Comment by Curmudgeon on 2/18 @ 12:52 pm #
#52: No, please don’t wake up the Gimp.
Comment by BJTexs on 2/18 @ 12:53 pm #
“Giant redwoods in Northern California were asked to comment on this development and replied ‘WTF? … GACK! … [creeeeeeak ... thump.]
Comment by Pablo on 2/18 @ 12:56 pm #
Inhale deeply and then shoot yourself in the head.
What? It can’t hurt.
Comment by alppuccino on 2/18 @ 12:56 pm #
But Beej, what if a missile hits a balloon and a bunch of CO2 leaks out. Wouldn’t that kill the planet instantly?
Comment by BJTexs on 2/18 @ 12:58 pm #
Come on, al. You want to live or do you want PEACE IN OUR TIME!
Freakin’ winger warmongering oil slave….
Comment by JD on 2/18 @ 1:03 pm #
turnip/monkeyboy/sniffles/alphtard’s mile high dirt berm and the balloon fence was one of the single greatest blog moments ever.
Comment by MarkD on 2/18 @ 1:09 pm #
As soon as he grounds Air Force One, I’ll believe he’s serious. Otherwise, this goes in the “one square of toilet paper” folder.
Comment by JD on 2/18 @ 1:11 pm #
Nobloodforcarbon! Baracky lied Carbon died.
Comment by Log Cabin on 2/18 @ 1:14 pm #
“There are several scientists working on government grants noodling ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere.”
Oh yeah, I have seen the prototypes of these exotic new devices:
They are called Trees, I think.
Comment by BJTexs on 2/18 @ 1:21 pm #
JD: That’s awesome, I am so stealing that.
LC: Hah! If you get a chance to watch The Discovery Channel’s special on seven scientists trying to “save the planet from climate change,” you’ll note that the majority of the ideas are unwieldy and non scalable but mostly harmless. (The ginormous “space born sun shield” was hilarious in it’s mega impracticality.) The two guys working on building some huge tower designed to somehow either suck CO2 from the air or deconstruct the molecular compound was something out of a cheesy apocalyptic SciFi novel. (Only scarier…)
Comment by happyfeet on 2/18 @ 1:21 pm #
a Gitmo and extraordinary rendition of elements
I don’t think the true horror of what Baracky contemplates really hit me until I read this. I can never return to my life as usual, uninformed and uninvolved I don’t think.
Comment by BJTexs on 2/18 @ 1:22 pm #
hf: Bitter and clingy you were? HOPE!
Comment by Carin on 2/18 @ 1:26 pm #
turnip/monkeyboy/sniffles/alphtard’s mile high dirt berm and the balloon fence was one of the single greatest blog moments ever.
We really need to to a top-ten comments thinger.
Comment by Sdferr on 2/18 @ 1:28 pm #
Lemme thank JeffG here for eliminating that moronic jerk. What an awful waste of time it was, every time it showed up.
Comment by BJTexs on 2/18 @ 1:29 pm #
Someone needs to find the “Worse Pop Songs” and the one with “Phoenicians in a Time of Romans” threads. Laughed until I cried like a two year old.
Pablo probably knows where they are.
Comment by BJTexs on 2/18 @ 1:30 pm #
sdferr: Did Jeff finally crush the alph-bot? When did that happen?
Comment by Log Cabin on 2/18 @ 1:30 pm #
BJT, I saw the plug for that show but missed it. Drat. The DVR that reads my mind has not been invented… yet.
Anyone with the tiniest bit of science knowledge knows that the proportions of different elements on the Earth is very, very close to constant. AGW proponents (advocates?) merely want it out of the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas and returned to the crust. Trees do that. As (if?)the earth warms, plant life flourishes.
See how our mother Gaia protects us?
Comment by happyfeet on 2/18 @ 1:31 pm #
oh. alphie is banned again? How do I miss these things?
Comment by BJTexs on 2/18 @ 1:33 pm #
Well, LC, when the trees die they give up their deadly toxic carbon back to teh air as they rot.
No doubt some dreamer of an engineer thinks he can do it better than Mom Gaia. I laugh about it to stop myself from crying.
Comment by Log Cabin on 2/18 @ 1:33 pm #
“What an awful waste of time it was, every time it showed up.”
Not to mention a thread hijacker. We can do that on our own, thank you very much!
Comment by JD on 2/18 @ 1:35 pm #
Carin – To be fair, there are great comments, and then there are comments like the above referenced, which are so incredibly brain-poundingly stoopid so as to make them beyond comprehension. So, I guess we would have to make multiple categories of said Top 10 comments thingers …
hf – The dirty little socialists will not allow you to continue to go through life as you were. Submit.
Comment by JD on 2/18 @ 1:37 pm #
PIATOR – Phones in a time of roaming. That thread was EPIC
Comment by mojo on 2/18 @ 1:39 pm #
Uh, guys?…
CO2 is heavier than your standard “air” mix. No floatie.
Hate to be the one to break it to you.
Comment by Log Cabin on 2/18 @ 1:39 pm #
“No doubt some dreamer of an engineer thinks he can do it better than Mom Gaia.”
BJT, I am still waiting for the coming ice age and the worldwide SARS epidemic. My armageddons are about 20-30 years behind the times. I wonder what the next one will be?
Comment by Carin on 2/18 @ 1:40 pm #
The alphie banning was very understated. Very easy to miss. Sat I think? Somewhere back then.
Comment by cranky-d on 2/18 @ 1:40 pm #
I think it was, “Phone technician in a time of roaming.”
Comment by Carin on 2/18 @ 1:41 pm #
Mojo, when one is thinking up BIG IDEAS, the laws of physics cannot stand in the way. I’m sure we can build a consensus about CO2 floating.
Comment by JD on 2/18 @ 1:42 pm #
Sheeple in a time of cloning?
Pron in a time of moaning?
Comment by Sdferr on 2/18 @ 1:44 pm #
The ban was here.
Comment by Pablo on 2/18 @ 1:46 pm #
Google Advanced Search knows where they are. The hilarious “in the time of” one is here. There’s been quite a few worst song threads. Advanced search PW for “Seasons in the Sun” and you’ll hit the mother lode.
Comment by JD on 2/18 @ 1:55 pm #
Pablo – Is that the one where Carin had an orgasm?
Comment by JD on 2/18 @ 2:01 pm #
#
Comment by Carin on 11/30 @ 11:52 pm #
Oh pander to me, Jeff, pander harder.
Oops, sorry, wrong thread.
(I think I just came. )
Comment by Mikey NTH on 2/18 @ 2:04 pm #
How much of the California budget is out of the hands of legislature? IIRC, only 1/4 of the state budget in Michigan is in the general budget that the legislature can cut.
If proposals are passed to dedicate certain fees, licenses, etc. to certain budget items, then those funds cannot be shifted to cover shortfalls in other areas (such as prisons) that one would think are more important. If California has hobbled itself in these ways – and I would not be surprised if it did – then the legislature is indeed tied up.
Comment by JD on 2/18 @ 2:07 pm #
Mikey – That is a signficant part of the problem. But, the fact that they spend money just like Baracky plays a pretty big role too.
Comment by cranky-d on 2/18 @ 2:10 pm #
I had forgotten the “in a time of” thread. Man, that was funny.
Comment by JD in a time of dirty little socialist fucks on 2/18 @ 2:15 pm #
This whole genocide against carbon by capturing it really makes me giggle.
Comment by Mikey NTH on 2/18 @ 2:17 pm #
#18 Mr. Pink:
Funny thing about ‘Total Recall’. The scene I remember the most is the customs/ticket guy who struggles and finally seals the area off after the window is broken. A real (cinematic) hero who saved lives.
{Of course, you got to think that such a technologic society-thing would have those shields seal as soon as a window breach was detected. Sensors on the glass or a simple barometer – or both – would be the trigger.)
Comment by JD on 2/18 @ 2:21 pm #
Completely off-topic, but why is it always portrayed as a bad thing for government to have to cut back? Why should government not have to go through the same things, make the same kind of decisions that the private sector has to make every day?
Comment by BJTexs on 2/18 @ 2:25 pm #
Because of the transcendent misery, JD. Only ever more incremental increases in teh guvmint spending will ever have any chance of finally eradicating misery in all of its forms, in everyplace and for all time.
We’re getting closer every day!
Comment by BJTexs on 2/18 @ 2:25 pm #
/sarc
Comment by Old Texas Turkey on 2/18 @ 3:00 pm #
Was thor banned too?
Comment by Old Texas Turkey on 2/18 @ 3:01 pm #
Looking at latest comments. Sadly, no.
Comment by happyfeet on 2/18 @ 3:52 pm #
oh. Thanks Sdferr. I actually remember that, I just didn’t get it.
Comment by Swen Swenson on 2/18 @ 4:28 pm #
Yes, it’s tired and trite, but it’s also pretty much true. When any level of government increases spending it most usually includes big pay raises, bonuses, and perks for themselves and the rest of the over-larded bureaucracy. When forced to cut spending they invaribly cut essential services first. That will teach ya to try to cut the expense of govmint!
Comment by Spiny Norman on 2/18 @ 7:26 pm #
Comment by serr8d
California embraced lefty-liberal causes long before the rest of the U.S.
No, not really. As Log Cabin noted, we got an infestation of Northeast liberals in the 1960s. We elected Ronald Reagan Governor, twice, fergodssakes. That would never happen now.
Now that the Mastercard Marxists have bankrupted us, they’re moving on to spread their (expensive) nonsense to other unsuspecting western states.
Comment by Spiny Norman on 2/18 @ 7:29 pm #
Comment by Old Texas Turkey
Was thor banned too?
Looking at latest comments. Sadly, no.
Oh, damn. After the recent sad story of Travis, Jeff should be cautious about keeping pet monkeys…
Comment by Ed on 2/18 @ 8:50 pm #
When California fails to be liquidic
As economists and statistics say it will
I predict my bills will be outstanding
Obambi signed against my will….
Seriously NOT Warren Zevon
Comment by Ed on 2/18 @ 8:51 pm #
Yeah yeah…so I made up a word…but it fits, so poetic license? benefit of the doubt?….
Comment by McGehee on 2/18 @ 9:32 pm #
Burma Shave.
Comment by TDoc on 2/19 @ 5:00 pm #
California’s tug-of-war between lawmakers is nothing new. Given the comfortless economy that we’re in, I don’t think we can afford any more budget stalemate. Meanwhile, national media are looking at the issues with views beyond local politics: http://www.newsy.com/videos/california_feeling_the_red
Comment by JD on 2/19 @ 5:02 pm #
Wrong, TDoc. California can afford a budget stalemate. It cannot afford the budget that they are going to pass/have passed.
Pingback by Personal Grants | Free Government Grants on 4/21 @ 8:37 pm #
[...] Last stand or off the cliff? [Darleen Click] [...]