Governor Whack Job

Arnold has gone around the bend and is ignoring polls that say the no votes on sales tax increases means the public wants to eliminate in-house care for Alzheimer's patients, CalGrants for students, CalWorks, state parks, everything. He's going to go down with the right-wing ship, with the extreme right of the California Republican party that hates him anyway, and is taking as many of us as possible with him. The Gov goes around saying stupid helpless stuff like, "I know that that could mean potentially that now Alzheimer's patients will not get this in-home service that they deserve. . . . But you know something? Even though those are tough choices, what is the alternative?"

Actually the alternatives are legion, but most of them involve increasing equity in the tax system, and we have all been taught that fairness is bad for California business, so
are totally ignored as the entire state political system is thrown into a paroxym of defensive lobbying. Who can take the U.S. and especially California seriously given this total inability to solve the most basic financial problems?

Genius at work:

"Several of the latest cuts were eye-openers, but the largest was the wholesale elimination of the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids Program, which provides grants to parents that people commonly refer to as "welfare."

"Matosantos said that by eliminating the CalWorks welfare program and the Healthy Families program for children's healthcare -- which would affect 930,000 children -- the state could save nearly $1.6 billion. But it would also lose $4.7 billion in federal funds."

The captain is crazy. The crew is awol. The ship is sinking.

Statehouse Clown Show

I've been avoiding comment on the California budget situation, which has gone from bad to ridiculous. But my native state is an object lesson in our topic of the last few days - well of this whole blog, really: replace social with market economics, watch everything fall apart. It's an object lesson in this blog's other topic: the failure of the political class worldwide.

The LA Times story today is "Legislature adjourns with no budget; governor prepares to lay off 10,000." The large Dim majority needs more or less one Republican to vote with them to beat the 2/3 limit for tax increases. The Republicans, unable to face the reality that on economics they are ALWAYS WRONG, have taken a no-tax pledge. The result will be the shutdown of every single public project in the state, and mass layoffs to add to the furlong.

Schwarzenegger now gets to star as Herbert Hoover in his own movie called "I, Arnold - Depression Governor." He was cast in the role by his own party, whose rank-and-file is also ignoring their own party leadership.

Here's the circle of geniuses that are holding 40 million people hostage with their ideological narcissism and general lack of a grip on reality.

That's GOP Sens. George Runner, Sam Aanestad, John Benoit and Bob Dutton, from left, and Dave Cox, seated.

Genius, you ask. Is my sarcasm a little harsh? Well here's swing vote holdout Abel Maldonado (R-Central Coast) in his own genius words:

Last week, I sent a letter to the Big 5 demanding that the funding be removed from the budget and allocated to other programs. But instead, the Big 5 ignored my request. If they were truly making a good-faith effort to show the people of California that they were serious about fixing this budget problem, the million dollars would have been re-appropriated to a vital program.

Etc. Seems that Genius Maldonado, self-described son of farmworkers, ran for the Republican nomination for Controller, was shut out by his own party for voting for a budget compromise in 2006, and is mad that the current Controller has $1 million for "office furniture," or whatever. Ergo, no state budget. Ergo, tens of thousands are out of work.

Maldonado to current farm workers (and every other kind): let them eat office furniture! Pure genius!