California Nightmare (The Continuing Story)

Ahnold the Terminator is the most unpopular governor in the U.S. A recent California poll has him running behind the Dem governor he got recalled, Gray Davis.

So far however the campaign for governor has been oddly quiet--that is, Jerry Brown has. Meg Whitmaniac has been loud loud loud for most of this year, and Brown's chief tactic seems to be to let her blow herself out. She's spending $100 million--more than the GDP of 8 countries. She's recently been spending more per day than Jerry Brown has spent all year. And he's letting people know that this is a key difference...but quietly.

Not that he's silent. He did a newspaper interview in which he said that California's climate crisis laws were key elements of his economic approach to building jobs in green energy.

Meanwhile, the state is quickly coming up to another budget crisis, maybe even worse that last time. The Terminator is trying to reduce state employees to minimum wage--literally, to minimum wage--and all that is apparently stopping him is the Dem official who says that the state's cranky old computer programs can't manage the change. But some state employees are already subjected to forced furloughs--this time, three days a month without pay. And major program cuts are again on the table.

But for the first time I know about, somebody has had the guts to talk about a tax increase. Sort of. Dems are proposing a tax swap, in which most Californians will actually pay less (more in income tax, less in sales tax.) Apparently this works out to increase revenues somehow. Yet some are wondering why not do the decent thing, as well as the simplest and smartest--increase taxes on the wealthy. Things have to be really desperate for that even to be mentioned, in this political climate of toxic insanity.