A Big Thanks to Calitics

I second that! Thank you Calitics! (5.00 / 1)

But... it seems the more I learn about state government, the less I understand.

It would be a worthy addition to have a FAQ page that would unravel some of Sacramento's mysteries: such as what kind of spending requires a 2/3 vote and what kind requires a simple majority?

The wingnuts are so outspoken because they unashamedly repeat whatever they hear on talk-radio as the gospel truth.

Progressives have a harder time speaking up because we like to be sure of what we're saying. It puts us at a real disadvantage.

I wish I had a set of "flashcards" with rebuttals to their most common and idiotic rants. There's no hope of changing the wingnut's opinion, but there's usually an audience of undecideds within earshot.

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by: jjohnjj @ Sat Jul 25, 2009 at 22:16:41 PM UTC

wiki (5.00 / 1)

We've talked about doing that, I'll look into the feasibility. I think the main obstacle is just providing the content is a pretty big chore.  

I think?

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by: Brian Leubitz @ Sun Jul 26, 2009 at 00:07:09 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

FAQ's like this? (5.00 / 1)

(Here's a rather cynical version that some find helpful)

Two diaries at Daily Kos confused borrowing from last year's prop 1A, the High Speed Rail initiative, with borrowing from the previous Prop 1A, which had to do with protecting local government revenue. (Yes, we're green here in the Golden State. We not only recycle our sewage into drinking water, we recycle our proposition numbers into confusion)

So what's going on with the California Budget?

We'll do this as questions and answers, so you'll have reliable information rather than some random tweets from #cabudget

So whazzup?

Well, in a nutshell, our revenues have plummeted, and the state legislature is again trying to pass a plan that gives the illusion of a balanced budget so somebody will lend us more money.

Is it true that you're paying your bills with IOU's?

Not all of them. But the state is out of, like, cash, and nobody except Uncle Vinny wants to lend us money, and he charges vigorish instead of interest. The picky, picky Treasurer won't let us borrow money from him.

Didn't you just do this?

California has now re-invented our budget cycle to random lengths. Earlier this year we passed a 17 month budget that was conditional on passing some initiatives that moved money around and borrowed five billion against the state lottery, our most valuable remaining asset. Voters rejected the idea of selling the lottery, afraid that the payback on scratchers would decline.

Now we have a new budget that we hope will last five months until all the hokum in this budget becomes obvious. Then the legislature will meet all night again to come up with a budget for another randomly selected number of months.

So what's in this budget?

We've got something great for everyone!!!

If you're poor, disabled, young, or elderly, we're giving you strong financial incentives to relocate to another state of your choosing. Travel, see the USA in your Chevrolet! Some see these as draconian cuts to the social safety net. These are negative incentives which will take away health care coverage from hundreds of thousands of children, remove in-home health care services from the disabled and elderly, and cut back on our welfare to work program. Since we've eliminated most new jobs in California, the whole welfare to work thing was obsolete anyway.

If you teach at a school or college, or work for a state or local government, we're giving you extra days off so you can kick back on long weekends three times a month and enjoy the surf or the mountains, dude. Unfortunately, these furlough days come without pay, so you really have to find cheap entertainment, which is hard, cause we're closing around fifty state parks and selling the various county fairgrounds, starting with the one in Orange County.

Is this Governor Schwarzenegger's fault?

What could go wrong when you choose a charismatic, narcissistic Austrian expatriate in a bogus election? The Governor gave us a cut in our car taxes, and there is nothing more important than our autos here in California. Unfortunately, that cut four billion from the state's revenue, and we had to borrow a lot of money to pay for the tax cuts, adding another two billion a year in payments to cover the cost of the tax cuts. And we lost 1.2 billion a year when our California estate tax was phased out to benefit our billionaires. But don't worry, we're fixing our revenue problem with a multi-billion dollar corporate tax cut that was passed earlier this year, which will stimulate multi-national businesses like Disney, Intel, and Genentech to give bigger bonuses to their executives.

Aren't you, like, Democrats where Obama won by thirty points?

Well, yes and no. Most of our leaders vote for Democrats, but we have a unique state Constitution that requires a two-thirds vote for passing any state or local revenue increase, and requires a two-thirds vote in each house of our legislature. We have just enough Republicans to throttle any positive change, and our Democrats appear to be surfers and potheads, and shuffle around a lot because of term limits.

Isn't Obama Helping?

Obama's pretty damned busy, but he did send Michelle out for a photo-op with the Governator's wife Maria, where they talked about the importance of volunteer efforts, and boy was that prophetic. After the state gets done stealing five billion from local government, we're going to have volunteer fire departments and have car washes and bake sales to pay for everything else.

We are getting stimulus money, but our deficit is so immense that the stimulus money doesn't even cover half the cost of running the largest and most expensive prison system in the world, which is unfortunately under federal court control because we killed a few, well probably a few hundred inmates by not giving them medical care. We're cutting expense there, but our Republicans are making sure we're not releasing any prisoners. Instead we're giving them more time to work out by freeing them from the boredom of vocational training and drug and alcohol treatment. Like that twelve steps shit is so boring.

Seriously, is there any hope for California?

We've been hoping for an extreme makeover, or an intervention, but we haven't been selected for the right reality show yet. A bunch of those googoo wonky types are trying to convene a Constitutional Convention to get rid of the 512  Constitutional amendments we've passed, many of them by a unique initiative system, where very rich and powerful individuals like T. Boone Pickens and Broadcom's Henry Nicholas can give us laws that our legislators wouldn't dream of passing.

Couldn't you just tax marijuana and solve your problems?

Well actually, if we not only tax the marijuana, but also have a tax on brownies and other munchies, we might bridge the gap.

OC Progressive is Gus Ayer, former Fountain Valley Council member.  

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by: OC Progressive @ Sun Jul 26, 2009 at 18:18:51 PM UTC