I'm back folks. Instead of blogging, I've been spending nearly every personal CPU cycle studying for the Project Management Professional test. I failed the first time and was emotionally crushed and thrown for a loop by this. After some personal agonizing, I dug into my pocket and schedule another test. I had been wondering if I can actually learn new information anymore and fretting over whether my mental faculties were working as well with nagging thoughts of senility. I studied material I had previously disregarded and scheduled the 4 hour test for the morning. I passed! I didn't actually do that well, but as it's a pass/fail test that doesn't really matter.
I'm still working for Arnold and it seems that we're stuck in some sort of time loop about the politics of the State of California. More below:
I just went back and read some of my dairies from the beginning of May. Not much has changed so I'll try and skip some back ground information.
California State budgets are often build out of smoke and mirrors. Surprisingly they often work quite well, much to the disappointment of most Republicans. The Republicans here are not much different than anywhere else. They want to go back to around 1915 and don't care who or what they have to destroy to get there. Normally they are unhappily stuck in this present. However, this year, the smoke wasn't quite thick enough and some of the mirrors shattered. Suddenly we're looking at a $21 to $24 shortfall. At least $8 billion of this was due to legislative cowardice as they decided to use our anachronistic initiative process to duck out of raising some taxes and moving some money around from one mom and apple pie program to another mom and apple pie program. That election had to be the most confusing thing I've ever seen. I didn't get my ballot information / argument brochure and had to go on line to get it. There was almost no positive publicity, hardly even negative publicity. The 12% of voters who participated turned almost every initiative down. It is a truism among California voter on initiatives that, "If you confuse me, then you loose me. I'll vote NO if your loose me." I know I was confused and I have an above average education.
I know that has been discussed the day after the election, but what it boils down to is perhaps 7% of the electorate voted against these measures. Schwarzenegger immediately grabbed the microphone and claimed the electionn results were a 'mandate to cut' State Government. He didn't poll the voters leaving the polls to find out what they were thinking. He just backed his prejudices (in his Hummer) into the space available and has ran with it ever since. He has sent out 5,000 layoff notices to State workers. Also, in classical Republican fashion, he has also closed State programs that harvest Federal dollars for the State. These programs often bring in $2 or $3 dollars for every dollar spent on the State level. Arnold has also proposed to cut taxes for support to the blind, elderly bed ridden, widowns, orphase and schools. He also threatened to add another furlough day (that's 3 a month folks) if the legislature doesn't unilaterally cut State worker pay by 5%. He did the first 2 via an executive order and feels like he can do it again.
Now, as I write this, the Democratic portion of the State legislature has submitted a program of both program cuts and tax increases. For example, California is the only oil producing State in the Union that doesn't have an oil severance tax (Can you say Standard Oil?). Also, they've decided to increase tobacco taxes (gasp, cough, wheeze). Just like any 3rd rate actor without a script, Arnold has fallen back on rolls he's played before and has threatened to veto any budget that doesn't get balance solely through cuts. Right now he's back to thuggishly holding State Workers hostage by threatening the legislature that he'll go with that 3rd furlough day for State Workers if they don't do exactly what he says.
Arnold is a bit of a mystery. He's not native born to the USA so he can't run for the Presidency. The Democrats seems to have a lock on our Senate seats. He claims to be doing all this out of the goodness of his heart as he 'doesn't get paid.' This is a misleading statement as he actually donates his salary to charity. At the very least, that means he gets to deduct his large charitable donation from his income taxes. As he has an estimated net worth of $50 million, that must make quite a difference in his taxes.