We're in a bind here in California, mates, in case you hadn't noticed. The till is tapped, the budget deficit is bigger than the great outdoors, and lately even the sun has disappeared.
Reference is to the last coupla weeks of clouds, rain, and thunderstorms. It's been hell, I tell you. My motorcycling has suffered. The Sun has finally returned, but us folks with outdoor activities to tend to are still keeping one eye on the western sky.
What's crystal clear is that the governor can't fix this mess. His mouth still runs, but his muscle has turned to flab.
The last B actor(?) to be governor here was Reagan in the '60s. We're not over the fallout from that one yet, and God only knows how long Ah-nold's 'legacy' will be with us. No more carpetbagger bad actors, please.
The answer, Michael Daly told me, is not less suffering, but more. That's the only way out.
Gee, that sounds swell!
"I'm talking about real pain," he said, grimacing as though a dagger was at his throat. "Catastrophic pain."
The problem up to now, we agreed, is that middle- and upper-class people haven't had to feel any pain because budget cuts are always aimed at the poor, elderly and disabled. If Daly were king of California, he would swing such a mean blade that Republican legislators would start calling for higher taxes to pay for the services their constituents demand, and Democrats would have to make hard choices instead of throwing money at every social service imaginable while the state goes broke.
So how would Daly take aim at the middle class?
"If we shut down half the DMV offices in the state, that would cause real pain," he said with an evil grin.
He has got a point.
Take away state support for canes, seeing-eye dogs and wheelchairs and you might spark a small protest rally in Sacramento. But force people to drive past a shuttered DMV office to have a license renewed, only to find that the lines are twice as long as normal, and we'll have a revolution on our hands.
What other ideas does Daly have for wreaking havoc from Shasta to Sherman Oaks?
You can go see, but I'll give ya a tease: if yer house catches fire, you better have cash money on hand when the fire department shows up. Among other things. Let's just say that Daly isn't going to be 'King of California'.
It was in Orange County that candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger set things on the wrong track when he dropped a wrecking ball to symbolically crush the car tax.
I was there to see it, and now I'm looking at a budget gap which, at more than $20 billion, is roughly what Schwarzenegger's stunt cost the state in revenue.
Here's his last chance to leave a legacy he can be proud of.
Don't be such a girlie man with the budget cuts, Arnold.
Make them hurt in Brentwood and beyond, and bring the partisan hacks to their knees.
Like you used to say when you worked with those other dumbbells:
"No pain, no gain."
I guess I'm gainin'. My vehicles cost significantly more to register this year than they did last year. It's supposed to decline over time.
What we need to do is get rid of the 2/3 requirement to pass anything in our state legislature. The 'ballot initiative' deal has taken a hit lately because the only way for anything to get done here is to put it to a vote, and a lot of times things get voted in or out that should go the other way. Public opinion is not always, in fact seldom is, right. Occasionally something comes along that the voters need to go over the heads of the legislators for, and that is what the ballot initiative is for. It gets misused due to the legislative lack of inertia.
The last two special elections here were all Ah-nold's initiatives, mostly to try and get people to raise the taxes on themselves. All. They all failed miserably. Except for 'no raises for legislators'. Heh. So much for 'taking zee issues to zee people'.
Much of our state spending has been enshrined into law and cannot be cut without a change in the law. Since the laws were passed by legislators for special interests, and the 2/3 logjam exists, the laws are not about to be changed though many need to be.
Social services spending is not covered by law and thus is easy to cut. The poor folks take it in the shorts because they have no political power. The definition of 'political power', of course, is lobbyists who shower the pols with money.
Another problem with the legislature is turning out to be term limits, strange as that may seem. When these clowns get in office they know they have a limited time to be there so they go hell for breakfast for their own agendas and fuck everybody else.
The flip side is that we have some very good legislators who try to do good work, and they are required to leave after they term out. Not good.
I do not know the answers to California's fiscal problems. Neither does anybody else, really. The ideas and spending cuts so far are hurting all the wrong people and won't make much of a difference, I don't think. The items that will save big money are not on the table.
I'm not getting any cuts in my state services because I don't get any. Don't give me any guff about roads and other infrastructure, either. 99% of that money goes to the cities to facilitate the daily commute. Around here, we just trust heavy-duty suspension and try to dodge the really bad patches.
One thing I do know is that, whatever 'remedies' these clowns come up with, I will be paying for other people's mistakes. So what's new?
Here's a word of advice to any of you 'hometown heroes' who want to come to California and dazzle us: Don't. Whatever you've got, we've seen it before and we're not easily impressed. If you're smart and work hard, you are welcome, but if you think Californians are lazy and you're gonna clean up by out-work-ethicing us, I guess you're welcome to try, but you ain't seen nothin' yet. If everybody who has moved here and failed would just go the fuck back where they came from, we wouldn't have the problems we do. Shit, if you came out here and made a pile, you can live a lot cheaper elsewhere. Please split. If that sounds harsh, tough shit.
Sorry. I'm goin' off the rails a little bit, but I was born here and have watched California turn to shit. It pisses me off, has for years, and there's not a goddam thing I can do about it until I'm Emperor.
This gent goes by 'HomePicking' and this Gatlin Brothers tune tells it like it is.
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