Schwarzenegger’s budget: Ever deeper into Mississippification
By Peter SchragIf you watched Gov. Arnold d Schwarzenegger’s presentation of his budget proposal last Friday, you’d have learned (again) that the state’s chronic fiscal problems are everybody’s fault but his.
It’s the legislature’s fault for not making the cuts he asked for in January (even though Schwarzenegger vetoed some of the cuts it did make).
It’s the fault of the federal judges who ruled that some of the cuts enacted last year violated federal law and struck them down.
It’s the fault of an income tax structure too dependent on high income taxpayers and the stock dividends they get in good times and don’t get in lean years.
It’s the unions and the other “special interests” who dominate Sacramento.
It’s the recession. He even made allusions to Greece and Spain.
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Governor's Revisded Budget: No Dam Good
By Traci SheehanPlanning and Conservation League
Today Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger unveiled his 2010-2011 revised budget which remarkably includes over one billion dollars in funding from the widely unpopular water bond slated to go before voters in November.
By counting on revenue from the deeply troubled water bond, the governor isn't just counting his chickens before they're hatched. He's counting on a winged pig to take flight this November.
It's no secret that one of the main reasons the bond faces such deep opposition is because it will make California's budget situation even worse that it currently is, costing the state nearly a billion dollars a year. While the governor called for budget reforms and laid out deeps cuts to health and human services, including the complete elimination of CalWorks, he is proposing to dig the budget hole deeper by relying on more borrowing for costly and destructive projects like dams and laying the groundwork for a new Peripheral Canal.
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Right-Wing Lesbian Bashing at All-Time High
By Tommi Avicolli-MeccaEvery right-wing Christian nutcase with a keyboard and a DSL connection is filling up the internet with their lesbian-phobic remarks about Elena Kagan, President Obama’s nomination for a replacement for retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. No one knows if Kagan is queer (the White House has denied it in a tone that implies that there’s something wrong with being lesbian), but some right-wingers are assuming she is. Perhaps because she is unmarried.
Most of the conservative chattering can be dismissed as plain old bigotry, but some of it is hysterically funny as well. Reading it brings me back to the bad old days of the 50s and 60s before the Stonewall Riots propelled untold numbers of queers out of our closets to permanently ruffle the feathers of the stiff upper lip set like anti-feminist and anti-gay rights activist Phyllis Schlafly.
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California Prison Healthcare Proposal Pads a Texas Company’s Profits First and Foremost
By Stuart Bussey, MD, JDIt came from out of nowhere: a” too-good-to-be-true” proposal that would purportedly slash costs for California’s prison healthcare system through the expanded use of telemedicine. Now suddenly, without any appropriate vetting or study, this proposal is being touted as a sound, fully baked solution.
It is not. Instead, it’s a sales proposal from a for-profit Texas corporation with only six employees, and with financial problems of its own. This company is looking to sell California hundreds of million of dollars in telemedicine equipment along with a whole lot of empty promises.
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California's Not Venezuela, Either
By Robert CruickshankIn what is becoming a particularly stupid trend, right-wingers are increasingly comparing California to foreign countries that best exemplify whatever it is they dislike. We've shown how the "California is Greece" claim is baseless. Now comes another similar claim about California's impending doom, with Chief Executive magazine comparing us this time to Venezuela:
"The leadership of California has done everything in its power to kill manufacturing jobs in this state," observed another CEO. "As I stated at our annual meeting, if we could grow our crops in Reno, we'd move our plants tomorrow."
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