It is going to be a heck of a year!
Thanks for this economy Bush! Thanks conservatives! If wrecking the economy with stupidity and greed was an Olympic sport, you guys would be the Nikolai Andrianov, Larissa Latynina, and Micheal Phelps of it.
The controller says California is down to Plan D on its checklist of paying bills. Its cash reserves are piddling; the special funds it borrows from are tapped out, and no one in the private sector is going to lend it any cash at a reasonable interest rate. That leaves what in state government circles are called “payment deferrals” and what in real life is called “stiffing your creditors.” – via eschaton
Side Note: In my off line life, California is my biggest customer.
California is FUBAR-ed, thanks to Bush and Schwartzenegger.
Where’s the recall for Schwarzenegger? Jesus Christ…the days of Grey Davis are looking quite good in retrospect.
“In my off line life, California is my biggest customer. ”
Good. I hope you get rogered, you bloated pissmonkey.
Hey Jason
Thanks for the conservative rebuttal Nelson. Insightful as ever.
The budget problems in Cailfornia are a result of built in budget growth dictated by the democratic legislature and has nothing to do with former Pres Bush.
Former Gov Davis went on a huge spending spree after he was elected and sent the state in to perpetual red ink. The current Governor has done little to to reduce the budget growth.
California made poor choices and still does not see the need to reduce the growth in spending. The state like Delaware is hoping for stimulus money to bail out their erratic and wasteful behavior.
Former Gov Davis went on a huge spending spree after he was elected and sent the state in to perpetual red ink. The current Governor has done little to to reduce the budget growth.
Mike, stop re-writing history. One of Davis’ downfalls is that he was the patsy in the energy deregulation scheme Enron had waged in California. It wasn’t until after Davis was recalled that the facts really came out and revealed that much of Davis’ “failures” were kind of out of his hands.
What a maroon.
California’s ills are all Davis. Right. The rest of the country and most of the world just happened to hit the shit can at the same time.
To be fair, there is plenty of blame for California’s budget problems (but it goes without saying that Protack is still flying here utterly fact-free) — not the least of which is no leadership on this issue from either side, a cacaphony of special interest voices dominating the discussion ( No! Don’t raise my taxes!; No! Don’t dilute these environmental protections!), a silly as hell 2/3 rule and living with the consequences of the referendum process which as often as not requires the government to spend on some initiative or another. Not the least of which is the California voter, who really like all of their services and who keep voting in more structural spending. Schwartzenegger could go pretty far in filling the budget hole by reinstating Gray Davis’ hated increase in car registration fees that he rolled back.
California is the poster child for the real stupidity of not being brutally honest with folks about exactly what all of their wants cost AND how — exactly — that increases their own personal tax burden. People have been lead to believe for far too long that you can get alot of government services for pretty much nothing. One of the things that I hope comes from emerging from the other side of our current financial crisis is way more honesty on the part of political leadership in talking about spending and revenue generation.
Mike Protack is just spamming blogs with his new toy website.
Gov Schwartznegger is going after the blind and disabled. Already started with his IOU’ s to the public, just another republican “actor” without a clue as to how to solve the problems in California! Cutting the most disadvantaged to balance his budget is the most pathetic, low life position any politican can take. He has thrown people off medicaid, refusing to admit new cases. I agree with Mike it was the Enron fiasco, the Bush/Cheney energy plan that was the beginning of the bankruptcy in California. No one went trial, no one had justice served and not a dime repaid the citizens of Ca..who paid through the nose for more than year, being ripped off and they have been on a slippery slope ever since.
Exactly, Cassandra. California is ground zero for poor government (the 2/3 rule and the referendum), Bush policies (the housing bubble) and the citizens who think they can get something for nothing.
Davis probably wasn’t a great governor. He certainly alienated a lot of people, because he didn’t have many real friends when the recall came around. Davis was a victim of Enron and energy deregulation (Bush’s buddy Kenny-boy Lay). Davis instituted an unpopular tax, which according to budget analysts would have reduced the budget deficit from $38B to $8B within the year, and to a surplus the next year. Schwartzenegger repealed the tax – his bright idea was borrowing money (more of that money for nothing) and he did absolutely nothing about the housing bubble in his state.
Management skills aside, the whole energy piece hitting California at the time Davis served, would have been the undoing of whatever occupant in office. The whole Northern vs. Southern California, and view on utilities, shared vs. allocated usage was a giant monster to contend with, that I bet cassandra could address more fully and eloquently. He should have delegated energy czarness perhaps to distance himself from the calamity. But the problem was HUGE, and he was never going to get out badly battered. Sometimes serendipity sucks.
Cassandra I am out here in Palo Alto and the Governor has just announced that he wants to put taxs on green fees,cart rentals, and club membership. Ca’s problems started with prop#13. We all want service but we don’t want to pay for it
Yeah, that conservative republican majority that has held the Californian house and senate for decades really screwed them over here! We can all see whats wrong with conservative principles when California, the most conservative state in the union, is having such a hard time paying its bills while the liberal South and Midwest are doing fine.
They should definitely stop buying textbooks from the east coast!
Tom,
Nice try, but California has one of those TABOR laws so that a 2/3 majority is needed for tax increases. The Republicans find it easy to act as a blockade. That being said, I don’t think the California legislature has covered itself in glory either. California also has a direct vote referendum process, which basically gives the government unfunded mandates as well.
what’s better is California was so worried about “deh gays” marrying they sort of forgot about the real stuff….
ahhhhh, I love wedge issues to distract the real problems of government. So Rovian
Joanne, Grey Davis had something of a perfect storm of disasters — some of his own making and some not. He was elected at close to the height of the Silicon Valley Tech bubble and that bubble burst on his watch; the Enron electricity manipulation increased costs (and featured some rolling blackouts); the new Bush Administration’s FERC wasn’t in any rush to help CA or Davis; and Davis or members of his admin had a few money scandals. Schwartzenegger campaigned specifically on repealing an increase in car registration fees and some fiscal sanity. But there is no fiscal sanity to be had in a state that on its own — apart from the US — is routinely ranked as one of the top 10 economies in the world AND cannot pay its bills. So through Republican and Democratic administrations CA borrows money to fund its increasing obligations and is structurally incapable of being able to raise revenues. And none of them have the political cojones to just tell Californians that they just can’t have the government they keep telling Sacramento they want. So they do this brinksmanship — hoping that when it all comes to a halt and the cupboards are bare that the other side will get blamed for it.
TT, I was in CA about a month ago and the Gov. had proposed some new “fees” on something that had just gotten shot down. I’m sure they think that are fooling somebody somewhere that these death by a thousand cuts fees aren’t really new taxes. And the whole Prop 13 business has long range financial problems built in for CA since they are one of the Ground Zeros of the housing bubble bursting.