[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California, finally proposed a 2009 budget last Thursday, a serious disaster of draconian cuts and tax increases all underpinned by a grim bedrock of principle: "...the absolute bottom line is that we cannot spend money we do not have."
The Terminator’s solution for obtaining some of what the State needs to function? Borrow against future gambling revenues.
Californians have many issues but no one on the planet would ever think we could be so mind-numbingly, crushingly stupid as to ever accept borrowing for needed basic revenue next year, the very embodiment of "spending money we don’t have." Lacing the insult is the acid of borrowing upon gambling, my my my, how he have grown up into responsible American fiscal adults 207 years into the Democracy.
No, this isn’t some pathetic civic face splat from a Hollywood doofus totally out of his element engaged in a dangerous clownish political ploy, we should all be so lucky. It’s a fully deliberate budget bomb, precisely designed to blow up in Sacramento this summer to wreak as much havoc and damage as possible. That has always been the mission of The Terminator.
No, Arnold is not a very bright individual, but he always has loved being the testicular front man for the California Republican Party, George Shultz’n Pete Wilson and those fleets of Newport Beach yachts, frantically grabbing as much as they can in an orgy of greed, to hell with everybody else and especially those filthy Democrats in government who dare to take even a penny of ours away in taxes!
Far too many Californians have blithely assumed that this glitzy sexy Hollywood alpha, married to a Kennedy, could never be more than a trivial amusement on the news. The obscenity called a "budget proposal" also has a cute $6 billion hole of revenue oblivion, Arnold just threw up his hands and decided the Legislature had to be adults and come up with a solution, somehow.
The fight to come up with all the necessary money (borrowing against gambling will never fly, of course not) is going to tear the Legislature apart, and after enough damage has been done and more abuse inflicted upon Californians enduring a recession (brilliant Keynesian move there) sometime this Fall California government will fail many more of its citizens in a cascade of public disgust, leaderless and regressive, precisely as planned, Arnold and his pals grinning all the while. Perhaps then the real truth of what Arnold and the Republicans represent to the future of California will finally sink in.
Arnold did chuck a fallback plan into his "budget," a 1% hike in sales taxes, which the Republicans instantly bleated forth opposition to in real stupidity, for a sales tax is the most regressive form of revenue generation, the little people pay with the pittance given to them while a few less ounces of caviar are ordered for the Newport Beach yacht fleet.
Totally incapable of generating any rationale for existence except railing against the evils of government and taxation, all Californian Republicans are singularly capable is opposition to taxes of any kind, of any form whatsoever, not matter how well stocked it keeps the yacht fleet. Arnold is counting on them to obstruct any progress at all this summer and they are fanatically determined to come through.
Progress will have to be the extremely rudimentary acceptance that taxation is necessary for life in America and California, the Whiskey Rebellion was over two hundred years ago but our idiot Republican elitists refuse to accept it, they simply will not, even freaking George Washington staring down at them so darkly through history means nothing to them, nothing at all, they want their god damn money.
California Senate pro Tem Don Perata has already loudly told all of the Democratic Legislature members and staff to completely forget about the Democratic Convention, nobody is going anywhere in this total crisis (the timing of the budget bomb isn’t an accident, of course not). He has my total support and fervent prayers for success as he tries to implement progressive income taxes for the 2009 California budget, so we can continue to plan a modern society for our children and country.
[Note to reporters Yi and Vega of The San Francisco Chronicle: You don’t get to inject the word "unusual" for your lead of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's unusual proposal to borrow against future state lottery revenue...
We’ve all had to endure a completely nauseating American "journalism" ethos of "objectivity" in these trying modern times where reporters studiously avoid judgments of plain truth, "journalists" simply present both sides of the story, judgment words like "unusual" are not allowed.
Personally I’d be thrilled if y’all finally dropped the ridiculous, offensive game of evading the truth and interject reality—backed up with real substance—into your text so that the word "unusual" in this civic obscenity of a budget is fully explained. But after teasing the reader that this budget bomb is "unusual" nothing more is said, nothing, and no quotes allude to anything "unusual" in the story. Please either break the rules correctly or shut up and do your jobs.]