Time For The Fright Lists
By Peter Schrag
So now all of Sacramento is going to have budget crisis road shows – Jerry Brown, the Democrats, even the Republicans. And they’re all going their separate ways, literally and figuratively.
But at bottom there’s still the same old question: How much pain and inconvenience will taxpayers have to suffer before they understand that there’s no such thing as a free lunch? How many potholes and unsafe bridges; how many cancelled university classes; how high the tuition; how short the school calendar; how slow the response from the fire department, how long the wait at the DMV? Or do we simply not care?
The governor, said GOP Assembly leader Connie Conway, is trying to scare people by trying to tell them that the budget deficit either requires even more severe cuts than the state has already made or the tax extensions the governor wants.
That’s a false choice, quoth she, "It's disingenuous to scare people." You can fix it all with fiddles and efficiency. And pigs can fly.