Posted on 09/07/2008 3:27:51 PM PDT by Lorianne
Do you get the impression Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has reached a level of flippant frustration in his efforts to fix Kaleefornya?
The latest budget impasse may be the final, insulting reality that blew away any illusion he had that the nation's most populous state - and one of the world's largest economies - can be rationally governed.
His recent executive order to reduce state employees' pay to the federal minimum wage level, and to lay off thousands of part-time state employees, might be an expression of peevish exasperation, but it does strike at the heart of California's chronic budget problem, namely bloated staffing and overpaid government employees.
Not surprisingly, his actions were greeted with howling protests from the various International Brotherhoods of Public Treasury Pirates, i.e., public-employee unions, as well as by the mutiny of the state's controller, a Democrat.
The largest union has filed suit against the governor in an effort to reverse his decree, and thus demonstrate, once again, that unions control state government, not the governor or anyone else.
Because Schwarzenegger was rushed into the governorship on the shoulders of voters disgusted with his feckless predecessor, Gray Davis, whom they had abruptly fired in a recall election, it was reasonable for Schwarzenegger to believe he had a mandate to repair state government - returning it to some semblance of fiscal sanity and honest representative democracy.
To that effect, he correctly identified the state's fundamental problems and, through four initiatives placed on the 2005 ballot, sought voter approval of government reforms to address those problems.
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To control spending, he wanted a line-item veto on the budget, something California governors had until 1983. He wanted an independent panel of retired judges, rather than self-interested politicians, to determine legislative districts, which are now unscrupulously drawn to secure sinecures for Democrats and some Republicans.
He wanted to improve the quality of education by improving the quality of teachers, awarding tenure after five years rather than just two. He proposed prudent budgetary restraints that would trigger spending cuts when necessary.
His ballot initiative to halt the growth of the outrageous public-employee pension liability by converting these pensions to defined contribution plans - like those in the private sector - was withdrawn under heavy fire from the public-employee unions.
He also supported efforts to curtail the devious practice of public-employee unions to make political contributions without the express consent of their dues-paying members.
Yet all of his ballot initiatives were defeated, and today, with the current budget impasse, and the usual partisan floundering in the Legislature, polls indicate the majority of Californians blame the governor. It is understandable, then, that Schwarzenegger might become grumpy and disillusioned with his job.
The real problem Schwarzenegger failed to identify was the neurotic capriciousness of California voters - a character flaw that makes them wholly unreliable in a struggle of the magnitude he was willing to lead. In 2005, he was counting on them to support his reform initiatives. He was disappointed.
Now, California has another budget lingering in limbo because Democrats and Republicans, the Shiites and Sunnis of state politics, cannot agree on how to address the irresponsible level of state spending that leaves California billions of dollars in debt every year.
The Democrats want to increase taxes and keep spending, which will ensure that the state maintains its position as the highest-taxed state in the union. Most Republicans want to reduce spending and not increase taxes.
That the state is seriously in debt is due to the profligate, irresponsible levels of spending that were established well before Schwarzenegger became governor. In the three years before he came to office, California state government increased its spending by 36 percent - more than double the rate of inflation and of population growth over the same period.
The most-favored recipients of legislated largesse are the state's elected officials and government employees - the engineers of legal larceny. Thanks to the insidious symbiosis between these partners in piggery, public pay, benefits, and staffing continue to exceed prudent levels.
To accommodate its more than 200,000 employees, state government is riddled with redundancy, inefficiency and unnecessary bureaucracy.
With many of these employees eligible for retirement soon, funding California's generous public-employee pension plans will become an even greater burden for California taxpayers to bear. Unscrupulous pension padding by some public employees only increases that burden.
All of this is what Schwarzenegger has tried to confront, but neither he nor any governor will be able to fix Kaleefornya alone. Sometimes things must totally collapse before they can be rebuilt.
I guess that is what Californians are going to let happen. Watch out for the wrecking ball.
The editorial correctly identifies a major culprit in the budget woes, public employee unions. Collective bargaining should never be granted to public employees because of the inherent conflicts of interest between politicians and unions. The taxpayer does not have anyone to balance the outrageous demands of the public employee unions.
The other two villians in this tragedy are the illegal alien cheerleaders and the green mob. The Utopian vision of these three groups and the muscle to enforce this Utopian vision is bleeding California to fiscal death.
I am not sure that the state can withstand the vice grip of these three groups. California may be heading for bankruptcy. Bankruptcy may be the only tool to control the mob. The Democrats at the national level may try to bail out California. Unfortunately, California is not the only state sinking into abyss. With all of the other rat spending plans, bailouts of rat strongholds may not be feasible.
Comeon... We all know that Arnold failed because he is a liberal.
California is a micro-cosm of what Obama wants for the entire country. An electorate anxious to vote itself stuff with no thought as to how it gets paid for. They’re like teenagers with a credit card.
We now hae a problem larger that what we had when we threw out Davis and replaced him with Arnold. I said back then it made no sense to toss out Davis and keep the same legislators in office. These guys are owned by the unions and special interests.
The frustration that many of us Californians feel is that Arrnoold is in fact hen pecked. Were he to put a freeze on spending for illegal alien programs (education, welfare, health benefits and those lame home depot buildings for example) he would turn billions in state defecit into 2 billion surplus, more then enough to offer not only a flight back to the country of orgin to those illegals who would no longer be getting a literal free ride, but also a stipend to return. Why won’t he do this? lack of ‘guts’ imo. Time to remind him that we fired the last dork and if he’s a girlie man, we can fire him too!
They need to break California into 3 States. Seriously. Northern California (Oregon border to Sacramento). Southern California (San Francisco to Bakersfield). And Mexifornia (LA to San Diego).
What a bunch of inaccurate cr@p.
More than just prohibitting state employees from unionizing. The state needs to start contracting private companies to do much of what the lazy state employees are supposed to be doing, and make them get real jobs. There are actually enough state employees to influence an election, so any realy reform involving state employees or benefits is impossible.
Then California truly is forever damned and doomed. If the majority of the electorate -- in all of their mind-numbed ignorance -- can't figure out that the problem is the liberal democrats they send to the Legistature, then the state is truly damned and doomed. George Deukmejian. Pete Wilson. Gray Davis. Arnold Schwartzenegger. The state budget has been a disaster through 4 gubernatorial administrations, and the only constant is the overwhelming liberal democratic majorities in the Legislature in all of the time since Ronald Reagan was governor. We Californians are so screwed. The only solution is... to move.
Why should bakersfield have to suffer?
It would make a lot more sense to break the central valley and northern california off from the coastal regions. I pity the poor folks in the central valley, being governed by the idiots from the coasts.
California should split, and leave Frisco and LA to themselves. Let them fall of into the ocean! The rest of California is not what San Franfeakshow and LA make it out to be.
If public unions are a major culprit in California’s budget woes, then why are other states with public unions NOT experiencing severe budgetary problems.
The fact is, the unions are not the problem. As bad as unions are, and they are bad, they are just as bad in other states that don’t have free-spending liberal idiots running the Legislatures.
Unions get paid whatever the government decides to pay them. Public unions don’t have any of the power that private unions do and often are not allowed to strike.
The problem with California is not the Unions, but the Legislature. The liberal California Legislature is the body that creates, funds and fills the unions jobs. They are the ones who overspend with impunity on all of their socialist entitlement programs.
You can go ahead and blame the public unions but then you are going to have to explain why Idaho’s and Washington’s and Wyoming’s and Oklahoma’s public unions haven’t ruined the budgets of those states the way public unions have ruined California’s budget?
In light of that, your comment sounds preposterous, doesn’t it?
The solution is “to move.” As for me, a sixth generation Californian whose family was buying hides from the missions in the 1830s, and someone who loved California (past tense) I couldn’t stand it. I moved.
This analysis ignores the impact of the exceedingly liberal California media and Hollywood, who have done everything they can to further the liberal disaster that California has become.
You don't know how that sounds to a native Californio.
Breaking California up is NOT the solution. Rather, California needs to take some tough fiscal medicine to get its house in order. That is an inescapable fact, and one that will eventually have to be confronted by the residents of that state, whether they like it or not.
Exiles like myself are broken-hearted about the conditions in our beloved home state. This is the same state that Ronaldus Magnus governed once, remember? It was a politically conservative place when I was a kid, and a damn wonderful place to grow up.
I just hope and pray that someone like Sarah Palin steps up from among California's people to take the state back from the lunatics, before it's too late.
(sigh.....)
I must admit, that I made that move myself, a couple of years ago.
I'm a native Californian, and I truly did not want to leave my home to the invaders, the lunatics, the druggies, criminals, moonbats, the lavender latte crowd, the tree huggers, the big unions, and the tax-and-spend liberals in the state legislature.
I wanted to stand and fight.
In the end, though, I had to look out for my wife and kids and our small business first. We were also priced out of the housing market at that time, which magnified all of the other issues, and made the choice to re-locate a lot easier.
We're in North Texas now, which is the fastest growing area of the country. It's nice here. It's eerily similar to what California was like when I was a kid, so you can bet that I'm liking it.
Still, I sometimes feel the call to go home and kick some liberal butt. These threads can really get me worked up.
Moving with your feet is tried and true - good move.
I’m glad I left. That place is so weird and run so poorly.
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