Schwarzenegger Has California Over a Barrel

via Truthdig:



Schwarzenegger Has California Over a Barrel
Posted on Jun 28, 2009


The L.A. Times reports that Arnold Schwarzenegger is taking advantage of California’s budget crisis to ram through his pet reforms. Among the Governator’s big ideas: making it even harder for the starving poor to get food stamps. If Schwarzenegger doesn’t sign a budget by Thursday, the state will begin sending the poor, elderly and disabled IOUs instead of benefits.




http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20090628_schwarzenegger_has_california_over_a_barrel/?ln

Is there a recall underway yet?

that is a tongue-in-cheek slam that the author just tossed out there w/o bothering to provide evidence for making such a claim.

And what about fraud everywhere else that is traditionally protected by the GOP? Apparently, that fraud is a-okay. :eyes:

That sentence structure makes it look like Democrats are committing fraud.

is a MUCH bigger problem than a million dollars' worth of fraud committed by the wealthy.

:sarcasm:

Just ask the IRS; they waste government money and time to go after suspected EITC fraud cases (relatively small potatoes) instead of pouring their resources into aggressively pursuing corporate fraud, which would actually make MONEY for the government.

If rational, competent government were a diamond, America's would be a cracked cubic zirconia.

you never got returned?

then of course the economy was sacked and the state of CA couldn't get credit.
Just some standard economic looting. Ok, maybe looting on steroids.

in CA. You even see it here on DU.

for the end of California as we know it.

California may be better off as two or more states. It's certainly large enough, and that would help the problem of a state being too diverse, leaving its representatives unable to agree on any major issue.

There is no money left, and these people still can't agree to stop spending money that doesn't exist. There have been a thousand different suggestions already as to how CA can balance its budget and become a functional political unit again, and I don't think the legislature has taken up a single one of them.

where things are just not sustainable. When you have a system that requires only a simple majority to amend the state constitution to spend money or lower taxes, and a supermajority in the legislature to deal with the effects of that, you have a recipe for disaster. California was able to avoid the day of reckoning by using explosive growth that was not subject to the limits imposed by Prop 13, but like all bubbles, that was not going to last forever.

I think it's clear that the cracks were showing during the Davis administration, the voters tried to spackle them up with the Terminator, but this would have happened no matter what.

and California has far deeper problems than the inability to further raise taxes.

California already has a crushing tax burden. Its electorate has said time and time again that additional taxes are not an option. The only way to go the more-tax route in this environment is for the representatives of California's citizens to abdicate their role as representatives, and behave instead as overlords. Besides, there's no amount of possible tax increases that could come anywhere close to making up the 50% drop in tax revenues that CA is seeing this year. The supermajority requirement is therefore academic.

The state as a whole needs to grow up and come to grips with the fact that a government's ability to spend is not limitless. Borrowing and more borrowing and accounting fraud got them this far. Now the party is over, everyone has a hangover, and the bill is yet to be paid.

I don't hear ANYTHING from ANYBODY in the CA government that deals with the basic, fundamental reality that CA is broke, its credit cards maxxed out. The time has come where basic mathematics will force upon CA the kind of discipline that should have been adopted long ago.

Don't spend more than you make. It really is that simple. It is a formula for solvency in individual and government domains alike.

Super FREE documentary of the Depression online, btw. I just finished Part 2.
The parallels are jaw dropping. Same playbook being used.


http://www.documentary-film.net/