California Is the Place You Oughta Be...

The Press-Telegram hits the nail on the head on the current demagoguery over the California state budget crisis.

By presenting the public with only two choices, higher taxes or dramatic cuts in vital services, state politicians and special interest groups are taking a page from an age-old political storybook, absolving themselves of blame and scaring the public into believing it's up to them to solve the state's budget problems. Take your pick, people: Either pay more or prepare for a crime wave. Pay more or deal with a generation of uneducated kids. Pay more or get ready to toss frail seniors into the gutter. Are you really that cold-hearted?

What an infuriating, self- serving ruse.

Here's what is really going on in Sacramento:

1. Rampant overspending.

The state has been unwilling to play by the most basic financial rules you can't spend more than you earn without running into severe problems. During the dot-com boom politicians gave systematic favors to the special-interest groups that finance their campaigns, like the prison guards union, jacking up their budgets, salaries and pensions way beyond anything necessary for inflation or population increases. The numbers tell the real story: State spending has increased 40 percent in the last four years alone, as revenues increased 25 percent (spending for inflation and population alone would have increased the budget 21 percent).

Through some tricky accounting the state has managed to borrow its way through the last few years the equivalent of a binge spender opening one new credit card after another but it won't work anymore. Wall Street has said that the state's most recent credit card, an $11 billion line that expires in August, is its last.

2. Waste, fraud and incompetence.
...
3. Featherbedding and payback.
...