Californians head to the polls on May 19th to vote on five special measures named 1A-1F. Each is designed to increase taxes and/or make budget shenanigans easier for the state to pull off. Elected officials in California love budget shenanigans like most of us enjoy a warm summer evening.
Arnold Schwarzenegger did an amazing bit of fear mongering in California this week about the consequences of not passing the measures. Arnold’s transformation from tax-cutting tough guy to the Sacramento version of a “Valley of the Dolls” wife these last five years has been nothing less than extraordinary.
From the Los Angeles Times:
“He (Schwarzenegger ) spoke of closing fire stations and reducing engine crews, releasing nearly 40,000 prison inmates, slashing $3.6 billion from education and laying off tens of thousands of school employees, borrowing billions from local governments and making further cuts to healthcare programs.”
40,000 criminals will be unleashed on California communities if you don’t pay up! Basically, Arnold has turned the California Government in to an old school protection racket. As Edward G. Robinson: “California, you’re going to pay the money, see! Or the boys will come and get ya, see.” Just change the “see” to an Austrian “ja” and California to Kali-fornia and you have what is going on today.
Notice how it is always things like fire stations, law enforcement and education that will get cut. How about cutting things like the $75,000 the Bay Area Air Quality Management District paid New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman for a speech? Peanuts in the grand scheme, I know. How about these other examples?
From the state California Performance Review via SaveCalifornia.com:
“The Legislative Analyst’s Office has put the estimated loss due to fraud in the Medi-Cal program at $1.8 billion annually. Some other estimates go as high as $3 billion.”
And:
“According to the California Legislative Analyst’s Office, “The average cost to incarcerate an inmate has more than doubled over the past 20 years from about $19,000 in 1988-89 to about $49,000 in 2008-09, an average annual increase of roughly 5 percent.”
This overspending problem was escalated in 2002, when Democrat Gov. Gray Davis gave the prison guards’ union a massive 33.76% pay hike and shut down five private prisons that threatened the union’s monopoly.”
Are education cuts and a threatened crime spree really the only way Sacramento can save money or trim spending? Really, Governor?
When Arnold was elected governor, Californians of all stripes thought they had found a fiscal warrior in the statehouse. Instead, California’s budget has risen from just over $100 billion (on revenues of $98.7 billion) in 2004-05 to roughly $135 billion this year with a $40 billion deficit. State revenues from 2004 aren’t off that much; it is the spending that has led to the huge deficit.
Arnold has stated that Obama needs team players. Well, California needs a leader.
So yes, let’s be the party of NO in California on May 19th and reject measures 1A-1F. If you think California is still worth fighting for, May 19th is the day to show it.
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