Albania on the Pacific

When You're wrong, you're wrong, and it's important to offer up apologies. It's clear to me know, that Governor Action Hero and his conservative third in the state legislature are not trying to turn California into Mississippi on the Pacific. My mistake was in not acknowledging their grand ambition, and for that I'm truly sorry. The Action Hero must be looking to Albania as a model for the tarnished state. Mississippi is just too prosperous and liberal an inspiration for the Gov.

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After the state senate and assembly voted on the state budget, it was still out of balance. Even the trick of pushing back the last state employee pay check from the last day of the fiscal year to the first day of the next, still left California in the hole. Oh well, what to expect from the fine bunch of amateur politicians that we insist are a better option than keeping people in office until they've actually learned how to run the state. Enter the Action hero and his magic, line item veto. A partial list of some of the cuts reads like the things that make a modern, first world government: $80 million from child welfare. If those poor kids were smart, they would have been born into the middle class. Of course, the middle class barely exists in California anymore so, even that shows a lack of fore thought. Couldn't Angelina Jolie have had a million more kids? $52 million for AIDS programs. What better way to encourage abstinence? Medi-Cal administration funds for counties. Hey, if it balances the state books, who cares if local governments go into bankruptcy? Just a reminder, the Action Hero, when he took office, signed an executive order cutting car registration fees, money that traditionally went to local government. Can't the Action Hero add? $50 million from children's health care, $50 million from services for developmentally delayed children? Again, those kids should have been smart enough not to have fetal alcohol syndrome; they should have thought ahead and not exposed themselves to environmental toxins in the womb; they should have foreseen autism. But please don't conclude that the Action Hero hates children. He also cut $6.3 million for services to the elderly. Euthanasia anyone?

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It's hard to believe, but California, and the United States once had the finest educational system in the world. We weren't lagging behind Japan; Japan studied us to figure out how we could provide a quality education to everyone, rather than just the elite. Well, like all really bad things, it all started with Reagan. Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty, the great propagandist declared war on taxes, and with his victory, we started dismantling modern education in California, and then the United States. What the Action Hero and the third have done is to finish the job. Ronnie may have held the victim down, but Arnold took out the knife and cut the throat.

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So what's the difference between the Action Hero's vision of California and Albania? The Albanians want to be what we once were. Another year of Arnold, and Albania might just over take California, and become a better option.

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To read my post, Mississippi on the Pacific, scroll back to 7/26/09.