CA Assembly Speaker boycotts budget session
When I was an undergraduate college student at (The) Ohio State University, there was a saying: “If you are not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” (It looks like one of the oldest references is to a 1968 speech by Eldridge Cleaver.)
Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles; See, I said that I try to criticize the two major political parties equally. 
), who had left closed-door budget talks Sunday night, boycotted a morning negotiation session. The California budget deficit has now swollen to $26.3 billion. Wall Street has cut California’s credit rating to BBB, the lowest since 2004.
As for the negotiations, Bass said, “They’re getting worse.”
No kidding…. So why the boycott…?
Bass believes that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s call for sweeping changes to California’s in-home healthcare, Medi-Cal, and welfare programs, as well as to the public employee pension system, are unrelated to the budget deficit. Experts are split.
Contention is growing over funding of schools. Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) referred to a proposal that could have cut $3 billion from school funding before the fiscal year expired (oops! too late!) that was BLOCKED by Republicans. (See, I told you that I try to criticize both parties equally!)
If it seems like there is a lot of petty political squabbling by extremists of both parties in California, it is because THERE IS! On an ongoing basis…. To the detriment of the state….
Meanwhile, a new underground economy has sprung up in the trading of California state-issued IOUs! Requests have appeared on Craigslist from people who want to buy the IOUs, presumably to sell them for profit.
State Treasurer Bill Lockyer (a Democrat, by the way) has issued guidelines for third-party sales of IOUs that require a notarized bill of sale signed by the person whose name appears on the IOUs.
All in all, politics in Sacramento of late has started to resemble a Marx Brothers movie, except without the humor.
I am still looking for evidence that anyone in state government cares at all about the state, or the taxpayers who fund it (and who elected some of them).
By the way, I believe that it is true that if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Do the job that the taxpayers elected you to do. Pass a budget.
We taxpayers have the difficult part. We have to fund it and live with it.
-Bill at Cheshire Cat Photo™
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