Guest Post: Proposed Budget Theme Song

(Editor’s Note: A reader suggests the following, somewhat dark Tom Waits tune as the best candidate. Lyrics below:) 

I‘d sell your heart to the junkman baby For a buck, for a buck If you’re looking for someone to pull you out of that ditch You’re out of luck, you’re out of luck

Ship is sinking The ship is sinking The ship is sinking

There’s a leak, there’s a leak in the boiler room The poor, the lame, the blind Who are the ones that we kept in charge?    Read more »

More

Three Little Words

Majority-vote budget. 

If the huckstering of the President’s Day Weekend demonstrated anything at all, it’s that the majority party should be able to pass the budget it considers best for California. 

If its awful the governor, should he or she be of a different political party, can slice-and-dice it through the miracle of the veto process.     Read more »

More

What About That Pesky Public’s-Right-to-Know Thing?

The Democratic leaders of the Legislature claim there will votes within days on the floors of the California State Assembly and Senate on a spending package that is supposed to close a $42 billion chasm between state revenues and spending commitments.

The proposal contains well more than $10 billion in tax increases and, potentially upwards of $20 billion in spending reductions that affect homecare workers, the developmentally disabled, welfare recipients, school children and the state’s poorest aged, blind and disabled population.    Read more »

More

Memo to Budget Negotiators

To: Legislative and Gubernatorial Budget Negotiators 

From: Concerned Citizenry 

 Much has been said by each of you about the severity and magnitude of California’s estimated $42 billion budget gap. 

While $42 billion is a hefty chunk of change it represents the difference between revenue and spending commitments – if no cuts or tax increases are enacted — as of June 30, 2010, a little less than 18 months from now.     Read more »

More

Who Says the Legislature Isn’t Doing Anything?

The sign next to the doors of Governor’s Schwarzenegger’s Capitol office and the graphic on his official State of California webpage are not only misuses of a minuscule amount of public funds for political purposes, they’re wildly inaccurate.

“Legislature’s Failure to Act” is bannered over a numerical tally of the days that have passed since the GOP governor called lawmakers into special session last November to address the state’s monstrous budget problems.    Read more »

More

Old Dog, New Tricks

Who says old dogs can’t learn new tricks. 

During his six years as President Pro Tempore of the California State Senate, John Burton’s Senate webpage was permanently  “under construction.” 

Now that he is a candidate – apparently successful – for chair of the California Democratic Party not only does Burton have a website he has a slick and interactive one.     Read more »

More

A National Treasure

Martin Luther King Day, January 19, 2009

“This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.”

The highlight of the “We Are One” Concert January 18 at the Lincoln Memorial Sunday was 89-year-old Pete Seeger — introduced as the “father of American folk music” by Bruce Springsteen — anchoring a rousing version of “This Land is Your Land,” the anthem written by his late friend, Woody Guthrie, another father of American folk music.    Read more »

More

Tax Me, Please. Enough is Enough!

A Special Guest Editorial to California’s Capitol

By Gus Turdlock 

The hole is just getting bigger, now get rid of your shovels.   It’s time to get on with it. 

I pay a lot of money to the state each month in personal income taxes.  But I’m willing to pay more, assuming everyone joins me, to end this monumental standoff in the state Capitol.     Read more »

More

Review of the Budget Bidding

The Schwarzenegger administration now pegs the state’s budget disaster at nearly $15 billion this year and over $41 billion if nothing is done between now and June 30, 2010. 

If the administration’s estimates are correct and, given the state of the state’s economy, it’s well within the realm of possibility, that would mean a gap between revenue and spending commitments of close to 40 percent of the state’s $103 billion general fund.     Read more »

More

Irate About Weight

Must have missed the proclamation officially designating us as the Gladys Kravitz society but how exactly does Oprah Winfrey being “irate about her weight,” as KCRA-TV glibly put it, constitute as important news about the world — particularly in a 20 minute or so broadcast. 

Whether Oprah Winfrey is 200 pounds or 20 stone seems slightly less weighty than the latest from Iraq or Afghanistan or Elk Grove, for that matter.    Read more »

More