How’s that for a “gotcha” title?
Anyway, there’s a saying that goes somewhat along these lines:
How California goes is how the rest of the country will go.
There is some truth to that as California (along with NYC) has been the liberal forerunner over the past several decades. And California, with all its liberal “we just want to protect you from yourself” hooey and all the “punish the rich, save the field rat” tommyrot, is going belly-up. California’s money bucket has a liberal-sized hole in it. And how do they intend to fill that hole in the bucket?
That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn’t it? How do they intend to cover their expenses? By withholding ten percent more than they’re entitled on each paycheck a California resident receives. Oh, you’ll get it back in April (maybe). (That’s a gazillion different links, folks.) Or, you might be giving California an interest-free loan for as much as a year. And it’s not your choice. It’s the liberal California government’s choice to take the interest-free loan right out of your paycheck. Got a problem with that? Need the money yourself? It’s YOUR money anyway? Tough nuggets. They’re taking it anyway.
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Cross Posted on Truth Before Dishonor
You’re not very smart, are you, John? The Governer of this so-called “liberal” State is a Republican.
California may be more socially liberal than most of the rest of the States. However its money problems can be laid squarely at the feet of democracy, specifically citizen referenda. Direct democracy leads to citizens never ever voting for tax increases, while still demanding more services (and even without that, budgets have to grow based on population growth).
*THAT* is why California is stuffed up – because of idiots screeching about taxes and believing you can get something without paying for it – and unlike representatives, they never have to acknowledge or face up to the gap between wishes and reality.
And you may be right about the US going the way of California – especially if ignorant anti-taxers such as yourself get your way.
Again – I point at this simulator http://marketplace.publicradio.org/features/budget_hero/
The wingnuts here have been conspicious in not being able to deal with putting actual figures to their bloviating. This is because you’re bigger cowards than you are blowhards, and you’re massive blowhards.
Prove me wrong. Go to the simulator, figure out precisely what you would do to change US policy and finances, and post the results.
The Governator is a Specter/McCain Republican. And he would’ve never been elected in the first place had normal rules applied. As it were, the “recall” rules (and not the “mission to mars” type) applied. Try the makeup of the legislature over the past 50 years. Try the California courts over the same time-period. Try the federal circuit court that serves the region (and slurps the libturd kool-aid every chance it gets). Then come back to me.
Oh, and examine the California sales/real estate/income/profits/property tax rates compared to other states. (And real estate taxes are not the same as property taxes.)
And anyone who can call California a “so called” liberal state will be laughed at by liberals.
One place to start eliminating stuff would be here.
The Phoenician wrote:
Actually, Mr Hitchcock has a post on his own site addressing the “Republican=conservative” meme: would that all Republicans were conservatives! Instead, we have the two Senators from Maine, both “moderate” Republicans, dontcha know, and we had Senator Arlen Specter, a Democrat-turned-Republican to win an election in Pennsylvania, eaten up with RINO-disease for years, and then finally back to being a registered Democrat when it became obvious that real Republicans were going to nominate an actual conservative for his seat in next year’s primary.
The original Los Angeles Times article noted:
Of course, there are problems with this advice as well: if you are already claiming the maximum number of exemptions to which you are entitled, it is illegal to claim more on your Form W-4 (the form you give to your employer, not the one sent to the Infernal Revenue Service). That’s a federal form, but the numbers are used for your state tax withholding as well. These things are almost never checked by the IRS, but it’s still violating the law to claim more than you’re allowed.
The boldfaced line tells you another story: a lot of Americans claim fewer exemptions on their Forms W-4 than they can when they file their taxes in April. This is done (usually) to insure that they will get a refund rather than owing taxes. That’s fine, if people want to do it, but the “experts” are always telling people that it’s economically foolish: it is giving the federal government an interest-free loan.
The people most likely to claim the proper number of exemptions are those who have help with their taxes and who can afford to pay in on April 15th if they owe. The people who can’t afford to pay a chunk of change to Uncle Sam are the ones who generally earn less, who can’t afford professional tax help, generally speaking. Not only is California going to take interest-free loans from its people, but the Pyrite State is going to require those loans disproportionately from the lower earners!
Some who are over-withholding to make sure they don’t owe Uncle Sam will refile their Forms W-4, so that California can’t rob them, as a result of this news. But that means a couple of other things: reduced federal withholding, meaning that the federal deficit will rise somewhat, and smaller — if any — refunds to a lot of people. This will negatively impact another feature of the American economy, the tax refund time business surge, as a lot of people buy some of their bigger-ticket items with their income tax refunds.
There is a way for Californians who have been claiming too few exemptions to get around this. I assume that most such people claiming too few exemptions are doing do to insure that they get a refund on their federal taxes. But Form W-4 (note: .pdf file) has a better option. You claim the proper number of exemptions, and if you want additional money withheld from your federal, but not state, taxes, to insure that you get a refund, line 6 on the Employee’s Withholding Allowance Certificate is “Additional amount, if any, you want withheld from each paycheck.” The IRS even encourages this on the bottom of the worksheet, the “Two-Earners/Multiple Jobs Worksheet” section, giving you a worksheet to calculate what you’ll need to have in additional withholding if you have two earners in the family, especially if they have significantly diferent wages.
More from The Los Angeles Times:
If a business thinks it needs additional revenue, and raises its prices, if it turns out that they raised prices too much and people can’t afford to buy their products, the business sells less, and may even go out of business. With taxes, you don’t have that option: unless you can move to another taxing authority, you are just plain stuck.
And, of course, the government takes its “share” of your paycheck first, before you ever get it.
It seems to me that so many people who tell us that it’s just a little bit more simply don’t understand that, for a lot of people, even a little bit more is too much more. What is $12 a month? Well, it might be three gallons of milk for your kids, or perhaps it’s your gas to work for a week — if you don’t have to commute too far — or, if you’re frugal, dinner for the whole family one evening a month. Judging by his picture, Mr Levy hasn’t had to worry about putting food on the table; judging by his statement, he hasn’t considered that there are people who do have such concerns.
The “Pyrite State” – I like
Anyway, Phoe’s got a point, and Dana, I’m surprised you’re not seeing it. Californians, via their referenda, have made it all but impossible to raise taxes, and have frozen property taxes (Prop 13), thus depriving the state of valuable revenue. Meanwhile, they have also required massive amounts of government spending – and this in a state whose largest metropolitan area requires massive government works projects to even exist.
I have little sympathy for older Californians being docked extra pay. They have only themselves to blame for this mess. I have lots of sympathy for the younger members of the workforce who didn’t have the opportunity to vote for fiscal responsibility. Perhaps anyone who voted for any of the offending propositions could be asked to pay the share of those who did not?
In Ohio, we have two withholding forms. There’s the W-4 for the fed and there’s the state withholding form. My previous permanent job, I had zero allowances on my W-4 for a higher fed income tax return (my zero-percent savings account) and one allowance on my state form.
Jeff, why is it fiscally responsible to raise taxes? Why wouldn’t it be fiscally responsible to actually cut expenditures? And don’t call a reduction in the planned expansion of expenditures a cut. That’s still an expansion, just smaller than planned.
The fact we’re already on the wrong side of the Laffer Curve means tax reductions actually provide more tax dollars.
Jeff, it sounds like you are not a CA resident. Would you be okay with your state taking ten percent more tax that it is not entitled to out of your pay check? Would it be okay if the fed took ten percent more than it was entitled? How about ten percent more SocSec tax? Ten percent more medicare tax? Or your local city government taking ten percent more income tax? How about ten percent more property tax? Ten percent more sales tax? Ten percent higher vehicle registration tax? Ten percent higher fuel tax?
I mean, if they promise to pay it back to you in April? Knowing full-well that they gave you an IOU this past April and you couldn’t get real money until October? Are you okay with various levels of government forcing you to give them those interest-free loans?
Mr Pico said, referring to 12-40 dollars a month loss of funds:
I can say I have recently been forced to make 12 dollars last for an entire week of food for me. Sketti today, sketti tomorrow, sketti the next day, … So, yeah, an extra 12 dollars out of my check that nobody is entitled to take can mean a whole heckuva lot.
I’m a Californian who saw a decrease in her check this month and although I can afford it, it’s utterly shameful that people like Levy don’t understand the serious consequences this can have for families. His arrogance is stunning. It’s also ridiculous for people to use the Well Arnold is a Republican meme. So what? Arnold sold himself as one thing to get into office and then when the going got tough, he showed his true colors. A lot of us saw through him at the get-go and didn’t vote for him. Unfortunately, not enough. The worst thing about the 10% increase in tax is that it will do very little to pay down the deficit.
California’s problems are always a spending issue, not a revenue issue. If the commenter who mentioned that took the time to read any of Steve Poizner or Tom McClintock or Chuck Devore’s assessment of the economic crisis facing our state, things would be clarified.
We are a Democratically controlled state whose rallying cry to we the taxpayer is: We don’t have a spending problem, we have a revenue problem. When you have representatives assuming their constituencies are that clueless and buy that line of crap, well, you know they do not have your best interest at heart.
Finally, I heard Meg Whitman, who is running for governor, interviewed this week and while I realize politicians say one thing when making a run for office and often behave differently once they’re in, she did say that the greatest shock of this new learning curve she’s in is discovering first-hand the immensely cavalier attitude with which Sacramento spends taxpayers’ money and the incessant waste that takes place. There is very little accountability, and candidates typically get into office with a union backing and therefore remain in their back pocket. They do for the union, and are then guaranteed a comfy 15 year or so run in state politics before moving on to something bigger and better. Same as it ever was.
For Other Dana…
John, I guess I simply don’t buy that we’re on the wrong end of the Laffer Curve right now. I think that raising taxes would raise revenue and thus be fiscally responsible. I don’t think simply cutting spending (and you’re right about trimming expenditure increases not being a spending cut) will get us to a balanced budget.
I’m not a CA resident, but I don’t understand how voters can consistently vote against fiscal responsibility and then whine about the consequences of their actions. Other Dana, I think your state has both a revenue problem and a spending problem. Lots of CA’s government, especially its education system, wastes money. But it’s also a state that simply requires a high level of revenue to run. I don’t know if the state has to kick in money to take care of the huge aqueduct infrastructure required to get the Central Valley, LA and San Diego their water, but it for sure has to take care of a gigantic mess of freeways (some of which break unpredictably – see the Bay Bridge) and high energy prices which place a heavy burden on the state government’s spending – among other things. We can argue over the best way to raise that necessary revenue (taxes? toll roads? water consumption surcharge?), but CA needs a lot of revenue, and citizen initiatives that have made it damn near impossible for the state to raise said revenue have certainly contributed to this crisis.
Jeff,
I have always voted for fiscal responsibility, unfortunately, as I stated above, not enough Californians do. There seems to be the delusion that the state is still Golden and will always have the wealthy to squeeze more money from.
The typical California politician easily and readily attacks the budget problems from the revenue end: raise taxes, try to label it something other than a tax to fool the ignorant rubes, etc. Rarely, if ever, do they attack it from the front end: excess spending. And that has consistently been the problem. The state we’re currently in continues to back that up.
Yes, Cali is an enormous state and an expensive state to run and yes, the education system, welfare, etc. are huge expenditures but that is also tied into supporting a population of illegal immigrants and being caught in the stranglehold of the various powerful unions: SEIU, CTA, etc.
Yes, we need huge revenues but instead of choking the taxpayer for it, why not start with spending controls? The waste is exorbitant. The problem with raising revenues is that there is no change in the behavior or attitude of those in power: it just means more money to spend on pet projects and special interest. Until the behavior changes and the overall ability to be allowed to spend on the frivolous, we in Cali are essentially, screwed.
Jeff, regarding the “lot of money” California needs, what does the electoral college look like? What does that mean about revenue sources? What do Hollywood homes look like? What does that mean about revenue sources?
This isn’t the link I was looking for (follow the link down to “Dozens Of Homes Allowed To Burn To Protect Rats”), but a California man was fined for saving his home from a wildfire. He cleared his land of overgrown brush, in violation of the “save the rats” law, and his home was the only one in the area that wasn’t burned to the ground. Again, for his action, he received a big fine.
And there was that little to-do over reducing the speed limit on a California highway from 55 to 45 to save flies. Again, not the link I was looking for, but it does tell the story.
It is not a revenue problem in California with the nation’s most populous state and many of the rich sort.
California has a HUGE GDP, so, again revenue is not the issue.
Revenue is not the problem. Expenditures and idiot laws are the problem. By the way, where is it in the Constitution where the EPA is authorized to write laws?
Other thorns in the Californian flesh are: gerrymandering, water shortages and the Delta smelt, and mandatory EL classes in our public schools. I’m too lazy to provide links but you can easily find them…
Heh. What to expect in Cali:
The recession will eventually end, and California’s finances will get better. Given its powerful systemic bias against efficient and effective public services, however, the question is whether the state will ever get well. California’s public sector has pinned its hopes for avoiding fundamental reform on increased federal aid to replace dollars the state’s fed-up taxpayers refuse to surrender. In other words, residents in the other 49 states — the new 49ers? — would enjoy the privilege of paying California’s taxes. Their one consolation will be not having to endure its lousy public services.
If, on the other hand, America’s taxpayers (and China’s bond buyers) succumb to bailout fatigue, California may reach the point at which, after every alternative has been exhausted, it is forced to try governing itself competently.
In regards to gerrymandering, that evil creature both sides have used, I can remember seeing a map of some state many years ago, maybe 20 years ago, that had a shoe-string-like district that was half an inch wide but 50 million miles long (exaggeration, obviously). I recently heard an anti-gerrymandering person suggest districts be as square as possible. And I fully agree with this idea. Sure, that still means wavy lines or chunks taken out (where that square hits a major city), but that would get rid of all the shoe-string districts.
Other Dana, that’s funny.
John, California has a huge GDP… but it also has a huge population. I’ll agree with you on the idiot laws – my limited experience with California is that it has some regulations that the rest of the country would definitely consider batty – but I did some number crunching on CA’s revenue.
Anyway, a paper in the October 2005 Journal of Socio-Economics by Heijman and Van Ophem sets up a model Laffer Curve based on an adjustable parameter called the “willingness to pay taxes” which varies from country to country. (I’d link here, but it’s behind a paywall that I can get around because of my school.) The paper states that even if the willingness to pay taxes were set to zero, the optimum tax rate on the curve would be about 36%.
So I looked up the numbers on state and federal tax paid per capita for each state and divided them by the per capita income of each state. (These numbers are easy to get from the Census Bureau.) Local taxes vary, of course, and need to be included, so I added an extra 5% to each state’s numbers. We’ll assume for the sake of argument that Americans are very unwilling to pay taxes. So which states might be in trouble, Laffer-curve-wise?
Well, the only state that’s really in trouble (and this surprised the hell out of me) is Delaware, whose citizens pay out an average of 47.82% of their income in taxes. Four more – Minnesota, New York, Arkansas (!), and Connecticut are all around that 36% magic number.
California, incidentally, is decidedly middle-of-the-pack; at 25.42%, it ranks 23rd – better than my home state (NC), which is 15th at 29.60%. (Other states that might be of interest to y’all: Ohio is 16th at 29.41% and Pennsylvania is 17th at 28.91%.) So Californians have some room to collect revenue if they need it. I do agree with Other Dana that streamlining state services is an absolute necessity, but there is room to raise taxes if it needs to. However, the 10% across-the-board hike might backfire, since if local taxes are higher than the 5% I assumed in my calculations (and with CA’s bizarre reliance on fees it might well be) then it could push CA over the Laffer Curve peak…
(Unsurprisingly, Utah has the lowest tax burden at 18.46% – it is followed, also unsurprisingly, by New Hampshire and Alaska.)
(If anyone wants to check my spreadsheet, I can send it to you.)
John, you just made me tell my favorite gerrymandering story…
When our redistricting was done back in 2000, we had a state representative named David Miner (a RINO) who represented a district in the southern half of the Raleigh suburb of Cary. This was well within the boundaries of NC’s 4th district, a heavily Democratic district anchored by Durham and Chapel Hill and represented by the well-entrenched David Price. The new 13th district was slated to cover most of Raleigh and some of the rural areas to the north, but wasn’t supposed to go anywhere near Cary. Miner, however, wanted to run for Congress and didn’t want to run against Price. So he used his influence as a state legislator to draw a tiny finger of the 13th into Cary… directly to his condo. (Turns out Miner didn’t run – the 13th ended up being heavily Democratic as well, and is today represented by Brad Miller.)
NC redistricting – it’s faaaantastic. Check out the shape of Mel Watt’s district (NC-12) if you want a laugh.
For the record, it was not an accross-the-board hike. It was an accross-the-board “borrow without permission.” There’s a huge difference there.
Not new taxes, just borrowing money from everyone until April (or October).
John, I put the chances of Californians ever seeing that money again at slim-to-none. That’s why I called it a rate hike. Technically, you’re right, but I think that when all is said and done it’ll function as a tax.
So, Jeff, you’re admitting Liberals have no morals? I mean, if you’re saying they’re raising taxes ten percent without being permitted to do so, …
No, I’m saying California legislators have no morals.
The sad thing is that California is the state that so many of our friends on the left wish that the nation were like. Very much liberal on social issues — though Proposition 8 sure fooled ‘em! — most friendly to unions and immigrants, laid back when they can be laid back, thoroughly environmentally conscious, and as multicultural as it’s possible to be. There are a few pockets of wicked right-wing conservatives, but they’re generally isolated and have no real political power statewide. California doesn’t have a single-payer medical care system, but it does have Medi-Cal, so that no one can go uncovered. The Pyrite State is liberal governance, put into practice.
Seems to me that the Pyrite State is a very large lesson that the rest of us could learn as President Obama tries to take our entire country in a more leftward direction.
For the record, Jeff, I believe you have morals. Just some of your morals are royally screwed up, since you’re an obvious liberal in many of your views. But, unlike many liberals (and one or two Conservatives), you do have morals.
Jeff: I recall when Mr Watts’ district, along with that of another black Member of Congress, were considered, because the state was trying to comply with the federal mandate for as many “majority-minority” districts as possible, to insure that there would be more blacks elected to Congress.
I lived in Virginia at the time, and we did the same thing, to create the majority-black third district for Bobby Scott, following the 1990 census. Mr Scott had been narrowly defeated when he was running in the first district against incumbent Howard Bateman in 1990. The new district assured Mr Scott of a win, but it also made the redrawn first district very heavily Republican.
Majority-minority districts were a godsend to the GOP. They packed very strongly Democratic voters into single districts, so that their Democratic congressmen were wining with 75+% of the vote, while Republicans were now safely in districts that gave them a solid 55-60%. This was one of the real keys to the 1994 takeover of the House of Representatives by Republicans.
I had called California the Chalcopyrite State instead of the Pyrite State, thinking I was being cute and knowledgeable and stuff. It turns out Chalcopyrite is much more useful than Pyrite, so I won’t be doing that anymore.
Dana – yeah, Watt’s district actually helps Republicans by putting the Democratic parts of Winston-Salem in with Charlotte instead of putting them in with Virginia Foxx’s 5th District. Watt could still have a Dem district if he forsook Winston-Salem for some of Charlotte’s whiter neighborhoods, but Foxx would have a much tougher path to re-election…
Seems to me that the Pyrite State is a very large lesson that the rest of us could learn as President Obama tries to take our entire country in a more leftward direction.
I have always referred to California as a cautionary tale to the rest of the country. Unfortunately, the rest of the country looks at us through rose-colored glasses and sees what they want to see. No one looks deeply enough at the consequences of such fiscal leniency, let alone the unintended consequences. It’s to their misfortune that they do.
Or maybe it’s the pirate state …
I found this amongst my e-mail just a few minutes ago:
Much further down in the article:
So, on top of everything else, the state is planning to borrow yet another $9.4 billion.
Is this a good project? I neither know nor even care; you can pretty much fine some justification for virtually any project passed by government. But here you have a (supposedly great) project for California, to the tune of $9.4 billion, and nobody seems to give a damn about how they’re going to pay for anything. At some point, some good projects are just going to have to be left undone.
Dana – unfortunately, dealing with the Delta water mess isn’t one of the ones that can be left undone. Last week’s Economist has a great article on how screwed up the water situation in California is. Basically, if the Delta’s not dealt with properly, either a) farms in the Central Valley dry up, b) fisheries in the Delta and its rivers get decimated, or c) LA goes thirsty. None of which help CA out at all.
Re the Delta issue in Cali, one thing that has been continually suggested but rejected by the left is have the state ease the restrictions of the Endangered Species Act in order to allow more water to reach Central Valley farms which are dying out, thus choosing agriculture and employment over protecting the pinky-sized Delta Smelt. To many enviro groups here, the thinking goes something like this: California is essentially a desert so providing water for such a huge population is unnatural, but if the gigantic faucet were turned off, there would be an exodus out of Cali, thus letting the state return to something resembling more of it’s natural state. Yes, these are the rocket scientists that have our state in it’s clutches.
Arnold threatened to veto 700 bills sitting on his desk if he didn’t get a water bill submitted. Of course there was no forthcoming bill. Too many special interest groups involved…
The other Dana wrote:
So, did the Governator carry out his threat, or did he cave?
Jeff wrote:
So, you’re telling me that this is a good and necessary project. OK, I’ll admit not to knowing — or caring — about that one particular project, as I said earlier. But at some point you have to ask whether all of the good and necessary things funded by the state government are really necessary. This is just one more project piled on the state; at some point, they have to stop.
A bit late on this debate point, but I do procrastinate when I can’t avoid things altogether.
Jeff wrote:
But that’s exactly what businesses (that don’t vanish) do. And that’s exactly what families do. And families may go into bankruptcy to alleviate debt, but they will still be forced to cut their spending down to equal their income (revenue).
Very simplistically, if you have zero outlays, you will either have a balanced budget or a surplus. Merely cutting spending will indeed bring a government into balance. And we can start with “earmarks” designed to keep people on the government dole (politicians) and “entitlements” (which happen to be unconstitutional) designed to keep people on the government dole (citizens) and in the Democrat pockets.
But that’s exactly what businesses (that don’t vanish) do. And that’s exactly what families do.
A government, John, is not a business. A reduction in government spending can wind up costing the society far more than was “saved”. To take one example, imagine if California said “no more spending on roads – have to balance the budget”. What precisely would the effects be on the wider society?
Why is it that Pooter and other leftist idiots always go to the strawman “if you quit spending on roads/police/fire” bit? Could it be they don’t have any logical basis for refutation?
What if California immediately escorted every illegal alien who shows up at an emergency room or health department clinic or any other government office to the Mexican border? Wouldn’t that save the Pyrite State a heck of a lot of money in social services not provided? What if California used the list of public school students to identify all families living there who shouldn’t be in the US, and escorted them to the border, showing them the way out? Wouldn’t that reduce social service expenditures? What if California simply said, too bad, so sad, but if you can’t pay your tuition at state universities, you can’t go, because we can’t afford to subsidize you? How much would that save?
What California needs is a heartless bastard like me to go over their budget; I could balance it! A whole lot of people would hate me, but I’d get the job done.
Pooter trotted out the strawman:
Pooter didn’t even try to debate my cost-cutting point here:
Since Pooter already sent the golf ball into the drink, how about we give Pooter a mulligan so he can try again? Or would that be too socialistic and Pooter-friendly?
Or, alternatively, find a way to do most or all of what this project is designed to do, only do it cheaper and more efficiently.
I used to live in California. Their road system is largely complete. LA hasn’t built a new stretch of freeway in over a decade. And, unlike Northern states, you don’t have issues with potholes, snow removal, or damage caused by road salt, all of which affect us here in MN yet for 8 years our state has managed to hold the line on taxes.
Finally, roads can be privately built. Orange County did just this in the 90′s, built two freeways that operate on tolls, and the net result is better traffic flow AND the only people who pay for it are the ones who use it, not the taxpayers as a whole (who still have the option of using the more crowded public highways).
That would be Orange County, which not coincidentally is both one of the more prosperous areas of the state, and one with some of the lowest crime. During the 1992 LA riots (I was there at the time) Los Angeles and Long Beach burned, Orange County did not. It says something when the most conservative part of the state is also one of the most pleasant to live in.
He’s also what’s known in conservative circles as a RINO. If you don’t know what that means, go look it up.
Actually, to be fair to the Governator, he did try to hold the line on spending with a series of ballot initiatives a few years back. After he got steamrollered on that, he decided it was better to be popular (and re-elected) than to stand on principle and lose.
I’d also point out here that the Governator and state legislature decided to actually ask the voters if they would accept a tax increase, in a special referendum held last May. The Powers That Be all told Californians that it really was necessary, and they really should vote for the higher taxes.
The voters defeated the tax increases by a two-to-one margin.
What if California immediately escorted every illegal alien who shows up at an emergency room or health department clinic or any other government office to the Mexican border? Wouldn’t that save the Pyrite State a heck of a lot of money in social services not provided? What if California used the list of public school students to identify all families living there who shouldn’t be in the US, and escorted them to the border, showing them the way out? Wouldn’t that reduce social service expenditures? What if California simply said, too bad, so sad, but if you can’t pay your tuition at state universities, you can’t go, because we can’t afford to subsidize you? How much would that save?
What California needs is a heartless bastard like me to go over their budget; I could balance it! A whole lot of people would hate me, but I’d get the job done.
1 November 2009, 11:41 pm
A whole lot people would love you! There is a large segment of California’s population that is utterly sick and tired of the state of affairs here. I’m very hopeful for Steve Poizner getting in for governor and Chuck Devore knocking Barbara Boxer off her throne. The possibilities!
And in answer to your question as to whether Arnold caved on vetoing the bills – from the LAT: Although he failed to win bipartisan accord on a sweeping, multibillion-dollar plan to address the state’s water problems, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Sunday night backed down on his threat to veto hundreds of bills as punishment for legislative leaders’ inability to reach a deal.
As the midnight deadline for signing or rejecting 704 bills approached, Schwarzenegger said sufficient progress had been made in the water talks, and he planned to act on all of the bills. As negotiations concluded late Sunday, the governor had signed into law 230 bills and vetoed 221.
Still no water bill.