The Sac Bee has re-written and scubbed the editorial headline, content, and comments section and is engaged in damage control.
Not only that, they have tried to tone down their condescending rhetoric in that hissy fit of an editorial. Look at the original, and then the change this morning after a fire storm of protest from their readers:
ORIGINAL:
Good morning, California voters. Do you feel better, now that you've gotten that out of your system? You wanted to show the state's politicians just how mad you are at them. And you did. Boy, did you ever. Proposition 1A with its taxes and its spending limit? Too much of one and not enough of the other, you said (or was it the other way around), and voted it down. Never mind that the taxes go into efffect anyway. You showed 'em. Proposition 1B? That was a tougher call. Proposition 1C? No way. You like the lottery just like it is. And all they were going to do with that extra $5 billion was spend it. Propositions 1D and 1E? Forget it. You had already voted to put money into preschool and mental health programs. You're not taking it out now. And 1F? Heck, yeah! Let's not pay our legislators if they can't pass a budget on time. So what if it likely won't have any effect, or that this year they actually passed a budget months earlier than they needed to? That's not the point. The point is that you're sick and tired of all this political mumbo-jumbo. So you showed those politicians who's in charge. You. You're now officially in charge – of a state that will be something like $25 billion in the hole for the fiscal year beginning July 1.
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CLEAN UP IN AISLE 9
Good morning, members of the California Legislature. Good morning, Governor. Feeling bruised and abused this morning? Well, you can't say you didn't see it coming. The polls have been saying for weeks that voters were going to do just what they did on Tuesday: Conclusively reject your slate on the ballot, Propositions 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D and 1E. Today, on the morning after voters kicked around your best effort at fixing the state budget as if it were a deflated soccer ball, you face a decision. You can blame the voters for reacting with uninformed and misplaced anger.
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The previous comments were removed and scrubbed. One reader noticed:
whitesteak wrote on 05/20/2009 11:37:38 AM: Nice job ed board in deciding to remove, rewrite and rename your condescending and elitist we-told-you-so piece from this morning. This whole fiasco shines a bright light on you're enduring attempts at relevency. Would the Times ever do this? No.
Wow. Welcome to Stalin's world. Their diatribe has now become an "Un-Person."
