What Hath Arnold Wrought?

Hooray for progress! I’m looking forward to Hopey’s similarly stellar record when we look back at his whack-ass campaign promises in a couple of years.

If he was really a bold, forward-thinking conservative, he’d sell hunting licenses for homeless people. The state budget would balance as psychopaths would flock to the state for a chance to slaughter and eat the most hopeless and destitute Americans.

Q: Does Kalifoynia have a balanced budget requirement? It’s going to hurt me in Georgia when the furloughs come.

The Mexican drug cartels will have an even bigger harvest thanks to the state park closures.

If you read the budget, it’s actually bigger cuts than what Calitics is saying: $120 million cut to foster kids, not $80 million, and a huge hit to In Home Supportive Services (the nurse’s aides that go to the homes of the elderly and change their diapers).

People receiving CalWORKS and Medi-Cal will have to re-enroll every six months – this was one of Gov. Rick “Good Hair” Perry’s brilliant ideas in Texas and the number of kids getting Medicaid plummeted thanks to the state agency’s inability to process the apps.

ADD: Apologies for the lack of snark and the wonkiness of this post.
@Cubbie: Yes we have a balanced budget requirement.

@FlyingChainSaw: Uhh, I’ve already thought too much about cannibalism today.

@SanFranLefty: Is that idiot term-limited?

1. I thought I read something about California actually losing a bunch of those parks to the Federal Government should they not be able to maintain them. I’ll have to check teh Google.

ADD: Here it is.

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-me-parks6-2009jul06,0,6843528.story

We’ll lose six of them.

2. 80% of funding cut for Domestic Violence shelters. Wow, does that say something about our legislators view of women or what? Shameful.

3. I’ve got to talk to Mr. ‘Catt seriously about fostering a child. We can afford to help one kid out, and it looks to me like the state can’t.

AND, I suppose “decentralization” of Cal Grants and other financial aid means farming it out to private finance interests, right? Fucking bastards. I thought the Republicans were the minority party here.

@blogenfreude: Yes, he’s term-limited, that’s why we have the circus of candidates on both sides to succeed him.

@Tommmcatt Floats: More private loans for the banks to make to students. Yipee fucking yi-ee. ADD: Let me know if you two are serious, can give you some info about it. If we had a spare bedroom, we’d be doing it right now.

Does Ahnuld and the rest of Kalifonya’s leadershit get full pay under this budget?

Seems like a pretty good time to cut executard salaries.

TJ/ Bunnies?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/28/cuteridiculous-animal-thi_n_246483.html

@ManchuCandidate: Arnie doesn’t take the paycheck, the members of the Legislature got a 18% pay cut from the state citizens’ compensation committee, but they won’t feel it until Dec. 2010. And their per diem that works out to more than $35 K a year and their car allowance wasn’t touched.

@SanFranLefty:
What a bunch of pricks.

My favorite San Francisco radio station (KFOG) just played James McMurtry’s “We Can’t Make it Here Anymore” …. in honor of the new California budget?
This is the radio station that played “The Revolution Starts Now” the day after the 2004 Presidential election when they announced that Kerry conceded and after they announced the state Supreme Court decision upholding Prop. 8.

Seemed oddly apropos.

Lyrics, if you’re not familiar with the song:

Vietnam Vet with a cardboard sign
Sitting there by the left turn line
Flag on the wheelchair flapping in the breeze
One leg missing, both hands free
No one’s paying much mind to him
The V.A. budget’s stretched so thin
And there’s more comin’ home from the Mideast war
We can’t make it here anymore

That big ol’ building was the textile mill
It fed our kids and it paid our bills
But they turned us out and they closed the doors
We can’t make it here anymore

See all those pallets piled up on the loading dock
They’re just gonna set there till they rot
‘Cause there’s nothing to ship, nothing to pack
Just busted concrete and rusted tracks
Empty storefronts around the square
There’s a needle in the gutter and glass everywhere
You don’t come down here ‘less you’re looking to score
We can’t make it here anymore

The bar’s still open but man it’s slow
The tip jar’s light and the register’s low
The bartender don’t have much to say
The regular crowd gets thinner each day

Some have maxed out all their credit cards
Some are working two jobs and living in cars
Minimum wage won’t pay for a roof, won’t pay for a drink
If you gotta have proof just try it yourself Mr. CEO
See how far 5.15 an hour will go
Take a part time job at one of your stores
Bet you can’t make it here anymore

High school girl with a bourgeois dream
Just like the pictures in the magazine
She found on the floor of the laundromat
A woman with kids can forget all that
If she comes up pregnant what’ll she do
Forget the career, forget about school
Can she live on faith? live on hope?
High on Jesus or hooked on dope
When it’s way too late to just say no
You can’t make it here anymore

Now I’m stocking shirts in the Wal-Mart store
Just like the ones we made before
‘Cept this one came from Singapore
I guess we can’t make it here anymore

Should I hate a people for the shade of their skin
Or the shape of their eyes or the shape I’m in
Should I hate ’em for having our jobs today
No I hate the men sent the jobs away
I can see them all now, they haunt my dreams
All lily white and squeaky clean
They’ve never known want, they’ll never know need
Their shit don’t stink and their kids won’t bleed
Their kids won’t bleed in the damn little war
And we can’t make it here anymore

Will work for food
Will die for oil
Will kill for power and to us the spoils
The billionaires get to pay less tax
The working poor get to fall through the cracks
Let ’em eat jellybeans let ’em eat cake
Let ’em eat shit, whatever it takes
They can join the Air Force, or join the Corps
If they can’t make it here anymore

And that’s how it is
That’s what we got
If the president wants to admit it or not
You can read it in the paper
Read it on the wall
Hear it on the wind
If you’re listening at all
Get out of that limo
Look us in the eye
Call us on the cell phone
Tell us all why

In Dayton, Ohio
Or Portland, Maine
Or a cotton gin out on the great high plains
That’s done closed down along with the school
And the hospital and the swimming pool
Dust devils dance in the noonday heat
There’s rats in the alley
And trash in the street
Gang graffiti on a boxcar door
We can’t make it here anymore

@ManchuCandidate: My bunny can do that.

@SanFranLefty: They proposed that 6 month re-enrollment thing in Arizona but had to back off because the feds said we’d forfeit stimulus money if that change was made.

Here’s how to deal with some shit:

“Chinese state media confirmed Monday that a steel factory executive was beaten to death after thousands of workers gathered to protest the takeover of their company.

“Chen Guojun, an executive at Jianlong Steel Holding Co., died Friday after an angry mob in the northeastern rust belt city of Tonghua beat him and then blocked ambulances from reaching him, according to the China Daily.”

LAT via rawstory

So we gonna see a reverse Grapes of wrath as the poors leave California?

“California – Get Rich or Get Out!”

@redmanlaw: The poors can’t even afford the gas to move let alone first and last month’s rent deposit on a place in Tulsa.

@Jamie Sommers: Yeah, that stunning lack of foresight by the budget-makers on the whole wacky idea of stupidly slashing programs that pull down matching federal funds means that the cuts to Medi-Cal, foster care, etc., are magnified, and practically doubled.

@SanFranLefty: Talk about “Nobody could have predicted.” WTF did these people think a diagnosis of schizophrenia and post-partum psychosis meant, that they let her be alone with the baby??

Jeff Sessions should just wear the white robe to Judiciary Committee hearings.

@Mistress Cynica: It is so horrible and so sad – two things at work – the stigmatization of mental health diagnoses (esp. those two – schizophrenia and PPD) and a complete lack of available mental health services.

My blood pressure going back through the roof – News Hour is showing clips of Arnie signing the budget.

@SanFranLefty: We’re staring at a similar outcome in Pennsyltucky, except foisted on the guvnuh and the citizens by a balls-scratching majority Rethuglican state senate. If we’re lucky we’ll have a stop-gap budget to pay salaries and vendors by the end of this week, major downside being it will be based on the bare-bones Senate bill that slashes funding to lower than last year’s operating expenses.

Which means furloughs. Once we start laying people off, there will be no turning back. And you will not want a bunch of the guns ‘n bitterz of PA unemployed heading into bow hunting season.

@SanFranLefty: I have loved that song since I first heard it, and post the lyrics here and there regularly in my travels, its like Guthrie.

@Nabisco: But do the guns ‘n bitterz work for the State of PA?

There seems to be more outrage and news coverage about the cuts to the state parks (which I love the outdoors and the parks) than slashing AIDS programs for the poor, in-home supportive services for the disabled, foster parent payments, and foster care social worker cuts.

@SFL: it won’t change here until the business community can’t get their permits because all the government workers are furloughed.

I’m at the Sacramento airport. Where’s my goddam plane? Get me outta this lobbyist slimepit.

@Dodgerblue: Dude, I’ve been up since 4 am MDT trying to get home. Spent the last six hrs in the Denver airport. I almost could have driven to Santa Fe from here on this layover. Hope to board in half an hour and be home by 1 am Wednesday. Fishing that lake in North Dakota this morning seems like a lifetime ago.

@Dodgerblue: It’s already happening that they’re not getting permits, but the small biz-ness owners take it in the ass and the big biz-ness folks bribe someone or say fuck the permit, we’ll pay the attorneys fees when the building collapses in the next earthquake.

@redmanlaw: Six hours at Denver? Yes, you could have drove home sooner. What’s up w/ you and DB both stuck at airports at the same time?

Beacon Theater is 1/2 block from me, and it’s 8 nights of Steely Dan shows. Lots of white people here … I will try to swallow my disgust and get some photos.

@SanFranLefty: Both parents were schizophrenics and met while training to become dental assistants.

Must. Fight. Urge. To. Make. Sick. Joke.

@redmanlaw: Got home at 11 PM Left Coast time. I need a shower after spending a day in Sacramento. Can you say “regulatory capture”?

@blogenfreude: I liked the Dan when they first came out. It wasn’t just three chords and a cloud of dust. I’ve done “Boddisatva” with my garage band.

Home at 1:30 am the day after I started, a 22 hr day after about 4 hr sleep. Eyes feel like coals. Off to bed after slamming the cheap single malt. Today is my 14th wedding anniversary.

@redmanlaw: Felicidades!

Did you have to whip out that big 10 in. (fish) at anytime on the flight?

@SanFran Hussein Lefty: There are some guns and bitterz, yes indeedy, especially among the ranks of those who would get furloughed. The cuts will hurt us most in loss of support to such frivolity as state parks, state museums, public libraries, school districts, public safety, yada yada. Our roads can’t be any shittier, so no sweat there.

@blogenfreude: Hey Nineteen! I am still embarrassed for them.

@redmanlaw: Congratulations to you and Mrs. RML on your anniversary! Enjoy the fish dinner.