California Is Still Fucked

California Is Still Fucked

Well, we finally did it. We finally got a budget worked out. Yup, that's right. A budget plan has been agreed for California.

Legislators in California have agreed a plan which will close the state's $26bn budget deficit - while making severe cuts in public programmes.

Public services hit

"There isn't a whole lot of good news in this budget," said Darrell Steinberg, the president of the state senate and a Democrat.

Public schools, colleges and universities will lose $9bn in funding under the plan, while the state’s prisons department would have $1bn removed from its budget.

Cities and counties will lose about $4bn in funding, while Medi-Cal, the state's health programme for the poor, will be cut by $1.3bn.

Under the plan, state employees would have to take three days off work each month up to, and including, June 2010 – amounting to a pay cut of about 14 per cent.

[...]

When I think about good ideas, taking money away from schools isn't one of them. As if the 25% high school drop out rate wasn't high enough. Why they would cut more money for education than prisons? Besides it being the prison guarts' union thinking ahead. I mean, it sure as hell takes a lot of money to keep non-whites locked up, right?

It's also a rock and a hard place with the prison system. I hear they're going to reduce sentences and release inmates. More than likely it'll be the murderers and rapists. Gotta have room for black people caught with an ounce of weed in those jails, right? And if they don't reduce sentences then our already third-world-level prisons are going to get a whole lot worse.

Its weird really. If you took all the money spent on killing and prisons or even 50% and put it into social programs and sustainable job creation you'd probably have a more stable economy. The rich people would be slightly less rich though.

But hey, we probably don't need roads either, right? Why don't we just take some of the money away from that. Potholes and screwed up roads keep you awake when you're drunk driving at night.

Maybe if we can convince voters to raise taxes in order to shore up the budget we can get ourselves corrected..... ha, yeah. Sorry about that wishful thinking. The California Republican Party has one position and one position only: NO NEW TAXES! This whole budget is a Republican budget. They passed it because the republican minority obstructed all the democratic majority's proposals, and since the Democrats don't want to incinerate the government they had to fold. You have to love that stupid 2/3rd majority vote shit. Republicans got everything they wanted in this "budget deal".

Zero new taxes. Zero taxes raised.
Cuts to the state employees (fuck union workers)
Cuts to education (fuck teachers unions)
Cuts to the state parks system (fuck the environment)
Lift on oil drilling ban off the socal coast (fuck the environment)

CA Dems are weaker than their DC cousins and it's fucking laughable at how bad California is getting. Then again, don't think this is only us. Since our governor is an actor, consider this a teaser of what the federal government will be facing in a few years. The US governments are finally getting drowned in bathtubs and really, all you can do is sit there and watch the destruction.

The again, we can always take the alternative suggestion in correcting this:
legalize it
tax it
smoke it