The Governator: "Our wallet is empty, our bank is closed, and our credit is dried up."

Governor pushes lawmakers for quick action on budget cuts

Los Angeles Times June 3, 2009

Excerpts from the article (fair use):

...Saying the national recession has brought about a "transformation of what services Sacramento can provide," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday pressed lawmakers for a swift resolution of the financial crisis that threatens the country's most populous state with insolvency.

"We are running out of excuses and we have run out of time," Schwarzenegger said in a rare speech to a joint session of the Legislature. "And the people have run out of patience." [....]

In the past, lawmakers have passed -- and Schwarzenegger has signed -- budgets that used borrowing and accounting maneuvers to push fiscal problems into subsequent years. Now, the governor said, the nation is watching how the state handles its projected $24-billion shortfall. He said the state must finally confront the problem head-on, without financial gimmickry.

"People are writing California off," he said. "They are talking about the end of the California dream. They don't believe that we in this room have the courage and the determination to do what needs to be done or that the state is even manageable." [...]

In his speech, Schwarzenegger said that although he despises hurting schoolchildren and firefighters and Alzheimer's patients, the state has no choice.

"Our wallet is empty, our bank is closed, and our credit is dried up," he said.

The governor, who was elected to solve many of the problems he now faces, implicitly acknowledged that he has little time to complete that mission before leaving office in a year and a half.

"I don't want to hand these problems to the next governor, and I know that you don't want to hand them to the next Legislature," he said.

Two words to the Governator:

NO SHIT!

The evident aftereffect of the elephant in the room -- Proposition 13. (1994 "Money" periodical article)

Profligacy, unmitigated illegal immigration and political corruption are three other heads of a mutant fiscal Godzilla breathing the fire of "right-wing anti-tax lunacy" that caused the administrative people of municipalities and counties to become so tight-fisted it shifted the local responsibility to the state to handle the massive fiscal budget head-on. Particularly K-12 and college public education administration. The cause of the myriad of regressive state and local tax rates to compensate for the budget shortfall imposed by Proposition 13 as a de facto straitjacket of government finance.

Despite Schwarzenegger state government's astonishingly drastic cuts of the essential services -- 80% of state park closure, wildfire prevention, subsidized drugs for HIV/AIDS & other terminal disease sufferers, care for the sick, disabled and elderly, domestic violence shelter, education grants for the poor and middle-class to continue attending college, etc -- the idiotic, incompetent and revoltingly selfish governor and legislators refuse to look at this obvious problem that literally and figuratively serve as a fiscal noose hanging the very life of California state in common sense governance and welfare & security of the people.

The corrupted and self-interested party of saboteurs fawn over Prop 13 as the holy doctrine in benefits that favor the corporate and selfish residential 78'ers, oblivious to the deadly and deleterious effects of the mind-bendingly awful tax law that will go down in history as the most infamous example of execrable and stupid law passed to benefit the few.

The infamy which will be instrumental in the destruction of the state of California.

Chickens will come home to roost. Don't go to the other states with a hat in hand panhandling for our hard-earned tax dollars to bail out the corrupt and inept California government that refuse to take responsibility, starting with eliminating corruption at legislative & administrative level (special interest) and repealing the disastrous tax law.

California people must wake up from the Prop. 13 nightmare by reforming or repealing the law at the state constitutional convention to re-write the state constitution (RepairCalifornia.Org) or California falls in anarchy as a veritably failed state.

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Update

The Bruin Standard (UCLA journal): A letter from the editor on California fiscal problem and what to do - June 3, 2009

Anarchy Comes to California: California will run out of cash in 14 days

Historical retrospective: From Pitchforks to Proposition 13 (NYT column, 10/5/2003)