9pm Saturday: Sorry! I just found out that the Akismet spam filter, in conjunction with WP-Spamfree, treated every comment as spam. And deleted them forever! Without my having even seen any comments. I can see, from the log files, that people have tried to comment, but unfortunately all these have been lost. Please re-comment, if you don’t mind. I’ve fixed the situation.
This applied too all posts, and not just this one.
Jet lagged today, folks. Only a brief post.
Back to the States in time to hear the news that the Governator has proposed cutting the Californian budget. Weeping and lamentations can be heard from all sides. Typical is this story from the San Francisco Chronicle: “Gov plans deep cuts to programs.”
Democrats quickly shot down most of the governor’s plan, saying his cuts to services for poor, sick, disabled and elderly Californians were unacceptable.
“Many of our poor, elderly and most vulnerable people simply would not survive this budget,” said state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco.
In case you glossed: the minor trimming is expected, as Senator Leland Yee has said, to kill people.
One gloomy story follows another. Sadness is nigh. The flow of dollars will be ever so slightly squelched. The horror! The horror!
But the cuts average only 4%, and some agencies’ budgets, like “Legislative, judicial, executive”, are going to double. The sacred monies of education won’t be touched, nor will the cash be cut off to politically correct disease programs.
I have yet to find, because there is none, any story which celebrates, which finds joy in this tiny reduction in government size and control.
But it is joyful. We should be celebrating.
People are so used to the “government” pampering them and doling out favors that they have forgotten that they are the government. They forget that they are taking money from their own pockets and giving control of their lives to mysterious, far off entities whose only purpose, whose only reason for existence, is to grow larger.
I therefore declare the the day Arnie delivers his budget to be a holiday. Break out the (sin-taxed) beer and drink to the shrinking.
the Governator’s proclamation is just a bunch of sound and fury signifying absolutely nothing. As Matt says:
“Sacred” includes the key employee unions, too. No pain for them. Only the poor, defenseless and unrepresented will suffer – even more than they did last fall. Key constituencies – the really, really important people – must be protected at all costs from “suffering” or feeling the pinch. Camelot must continue. After all, California is TOO BIG to fail, isn’t it?
What will probably happen is the next big earthquake will come along in time to save politicians’ bacon by providing massive amounts of insurance and federal – which by definition is free – funding for recovery, etc.
Welcome back, btw.
“the minor trimming is expected, as Senator Leland Yee has said, to kill people.”: in Britain this tactic is called “shroud waving”.
The country will very likely vote to pull back or at least halt the craziness of the previous two years. But for California it is too late. They have gone past the oft cited ‘tipping point.’ Those dependent on government are now numerous enough to command permanent majorities. But the tax base is diminishing as businesses leave and shut down. Yet the suicide spiral continues. There will be no choice but for a broke Federal government to bail them out, at least partially. It is really too bad for it is a beautiful state, but they ruined it. And it didn’t take long.
Want to see our future. Look at California. As always.