[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]
I took a three day break to try and calm a badly jangled political soul but, as we all know, current events have not cooperated. Not 24 hours after baby Jesus day the Israelis went berserk with American-made ordnance, and then Blagojevich tossed a political grenade to produce a scenario where Harry Reid is ever known to actually possess testicles: knifing another Democrat. Appalling year-end market numbers came in with Depression scope, while even the most tectonically patient souls have become angrily disgusted with how long it takes to get that felon out of the White House. Even the most sunnily optimistic among us are starting to wilt, but trust me, it isn’t you, this sucks.
Rankly creeping knowledge of what’s happened in California descended foggily December 27th, for the Legislature and Governor officially ate the worm, flipped out, passed the Rubicon, and in a confusing, contorted game of budget twister finally fell flat on their faces with incisor-projection splats of terminal failure, finally going the Mob for help. It’s impossible to simply report what happened but I will do my very best, but again, after all the confusion eventually settles down an irrevocable stamp of gloom will descend with a rattling finality to the most faithful among us, god damn it, this is bad.
Governor Tricep called a super special emergency session with powers the Mob gave him, but he couldn’t even work with his own Republican Party, who adamantly refuse to raise taxes with a bawling obtuseness no 4-year-old could ever hope to match. Of course there is no other alternative, so Tricep Brain pathetically cut a deal with Democrats that in fact raises taxes in the most stupid regressive manner possible, dares to threaten our children with $5 billion in education cuts, and fantasizes about the ability to borrow $5 billion more.
Purple Republicans popped out their pacifiers and screamed the deal was unconstitutional and thus the Mob would have final say over the budget. How in fact was the constitution ignored and taxes increased without a supermajority? I don’t know. What was the precise legislative mechanism that somehow declared the budget the laughable failure it is and spit it out for the Mob to give final say? I don’t know.
Oh, the Mob? That’s us, Californians, the voters. We rationalize that we live in a legislative Democracy and then crush it with mob initiative rule where the people pass laws. Politics is actually quite difficult for a citizen to perform well with, requiring a good education of history, various political models and economic systems, and laser attention to current events. Unsurprisingly the Mob is busy and completely absorbed in much more interesting cheerful things, so it’s easily goaded and fooled into the dismaying total government failure that California is today.
Proposition 13, term limits, three strikes, knifing gay marriage, these are but a few of the Mob disasters that have been inflicted upon Californians, not the least is the heinous Governor Tricep, Jesus, just three months after a perfectly normal election the Mob tossed Davis and with the luck of St. Patrick avoided total disaster with a clean electoral win of Mr. Musclehead. The mob angrily rejected initiatives that would have gutted California unions and then elected the moron again anyway, do not ever look to the Mob for rational, consistent progressive behavior.
Schwarzenegger, of course, promptly stabbed Democrats in the back over the deal and ran the tattered IOU flag up the pole, promptly picked up by every wire service, playing yet another game of budget chicken to desperately try to get what his muscle Republican brain wants.
Which is of course never aligned with the little people of California, all of whom I deeply love and respect, desperately wishing for an equitable, fair, clean productive place for all over our citizens to live in, even if they can never be trusted to legislate (it’s not exactly a unique human California failing).
We need leadership to get us out of this and we don’t have it, without a Democrat as Governor it’s grossly unfair to expect the Democratic Party to somehow provide it, that just doesn’t work in a vast, complex society like California. The Obama transition team has been understandably transfixed with other urgent problems, but that doesn’t change the fact Federal Democrats have so far been zero help either.
California is terminally failing before us this very minute, the latest confusing fiasco of myriad games and unknowns can only mean that. If the United States expects to avoid a Depression in 2009-2010 with California smashing into total civic failure, well, good luck with that.