They need to rewrite their budget process. They need to stop being held hostage by all these statewide ballot measures. They need to do something to stem the flow of illegal immigration. Easier said than done, I’m sure! But I think that is what needs to happen.

The U.S. government should not be in the business of bailing out large state governments, except in extraordinary circumstances, for the simple reason that eventually there will be a cascading effect, and the federal government could be tottering on the brink of financial failure. Then we will become like Germany in the 1920s, hyperinflation, nationwide economic depression – don’t laugh, it could still happen.

The California Dream of 1880-1970 is over, has been for a while. It is a little sad – it was a nice dream. Now Californians need to find some more sensible ways of governing.

You have a huge costly prison system with a high percentage of illegal aliens. And now you have high unemployment costs with millions of illegals taking your jobs. And they’re not just farm work. I know a contractor who says he hires illegals to stay price competitive with other contractors who do the same.

There are many sources of california problems. And there will need to be many solutions. But I doubt the legislatures will make politically incorrect decisions or take on unions who vote them in office.

Members of unions have good wages and benefits because their predecessors looked at their wretched, unsafe working conditions and 14-hour+/7-day workweeks and lack of health care and discrimination and their individual powerlessness and decided that their children shouldn’t live that way. They got together with other powerless people and formed a union.

And now (like everyone else) they have weekends and 8-hour days and insurance when you’re sick and vacations.

I wish people would spend as much time trying to figure out effective routes to improving *everyone’s* lives *up* to these standards as they spend complaining about those who have them.

When you hear a Democratic comptroller claim that teachers “pay” is only 60,000 and therefore quite reasonable, doesnt an alarm go off in your head, or in the head of one of the other panelists, that the word “pay” is ambiguous, and a way for him to fudge…ie. lie.

Teachers average statewide total compensation (including their health care benefits, and retirement benefits)is MUCH higher than 60k. More like 90K most of which (of the benefits) is unfunded due to democratic (lets be real here) politicians caving in to the whims of the teachers union (same with prison guards) in order to get reelected (with the support of their union conspirators) than in fiscal responsibility.

But he got in his word, and it is now planted in your listeners heads…so too late…maybe the evil forces at Fox news will actually point this out to him if he pulls that on them.

The budget/deficit discussion was largely beside the point because it
ignored the two large elephants in the room:

Elephant 1. The requirement that it takes a 2/3 majority of both houses of
the Legislature to pass a budget. This allows The Minority Party Of No! to
hold the entire state hostage to its unwavering hatred of government in
any way, shape or form aside from things that subsidize their privileged
flock. For the past 20+ years, it has been impossible to pass a budget on
time because of this. This past year, the process dragged on for more than
6 months, in total stalemate, because one more vote was needed, and that
one vote could not be found. Until finally one TMPON! state Senator, mine
by the way, agreed to jump ship provided he got everything in his
self-serving agenda included one way or another — including future ballot
measures to be put before statewide voters! One of his measures explains
it all: a measure allowing open-party primaries for statewide offices,
something we approved several years ago, but which TMPON! went to court to
successfully block. Why is this issue so important to our Senator? Because
he’s about to be termed out (having already been termed out as an Assembly
member), and wants to stay in politics; he wants to be able to be a budget
hero and attract votes from non-TMPON! people, like Democrats! Which
brings us to:

Elephant 2. Term limits. This initiative was sold to a naive public by
TMPON! as a “fix the bastards” measure. As a result, a legislator is
limited to 6 years in the Assembly, and 8 in the Senate. It is said (and I
believe it from my own experience on lesser public boards) that it takes
about 5 years to learn the process of legislating. But by 5 years, one is
about ready to be termed out. So our legislative “leadership” is both
inexperienced and constantly changing, and the bulk of legislators don’t
have a clue how to legislate. This is tragic. Think of all the outstanding
national legislators who would not be serving if Congress worked this way!
When term limits were passed, TMPON! used it’s Willy Hortonesque posterboy
Willy Brown to get the point across — his bald black head was plastered
in almost every term limits ad as illustrative of “the problem.” This was
disgraceful, but it worked.

These are the key structural reasons why California is in such bad shape.
TMPON! has turned on its own governor and my senator as traitors to their
obstructionist cause. It’s sick. But none of this got discussed in your
show. Joe Mathews seemed to know his stuff, but Sandy Banks was way off
track, a fact made obvious when she said Bill Lockyer’s milquetoast
comments had explained things she didn’t understand before! (And she’s a reporter! His comments sure weren’t news to me, and I’m not a reporter.)

The vote on
Tuesday had next to nothing to do with taxes, as she alleged. The Jarvis
people, who are still regularly quoted by the media, aren’t even
players anymore.

Taxes weren’t the issue in this vote. All the propositions were gimmicks
that purported to solve problems, but most actually created worse
problems. People saw through the sham. The California Teachers Association (K-12) got their skin
covered by proposing to divert funds from mental health, childhood health
initiatives, food for the poor, university funding, etc., into K-12, but
their largest chapters (in northern AND southern California) jumped ship
when they realized the implications. UC and state university faculty
unions opposed those same measures, as did most of the labor movement.
Indicative of the gimmicky nature of the measures: the lottery
“modernization” measure would allow the state to sell bonds, to be paid
back over up to 30 years, to realize the proceeds of the next several
years of lottery receipts today, to plug into two years of state budgets.
That leaves a future generation to finish paying off these bonds, at some
multiple cost of the proceeds realized, from which they had no benefit. Can you seriously blame the voters for saying no to this scheme? Seems to me their judgment is improving. A
couple of years ago we passed at the ballot box a huge 30-year bond to
finance road repairs today — another example of deferring payment for
today’s needs that makes no fiscal sense. Long before the bonds are paid
off, those roads will have to be rebuilt again!

My take on the election outcome was that people are becoming aware of and
dismayed by this sort of nonsensical deficit spending to finance current
needs TMPON! refuses to let the legislature find in more sensible ways.
People are even saying we need to tax ourselves now to pay for what we want today –
and that’s a really big change in attitude totally lost in the platitudes
of your show’s unfortunately heated but off-track discussion of the
election. The election’s real story simply isn’t the one presented on air.

P.S. I am a big fan of and respect Arnold as a person very much.

A few weeks ago on a Saturday I watched this cop stand on the side walk while window cleaners worked using a cherry picker. I noticed him standing next to his car, a 40k or 50k BMW sports car.

When I was working as freelance web designer, on of the other freelancers was on line to get a job with the state as a programmer. He was bragging how he would only have to work 3 to 4 hours a day and get paid for 8. The salary was in the 6 figures with a nice fat state pension.

Give me break, most state systems are so corrupt and full of dead weight. We need sweeping reforms here.
Get rid of the dead weight, no more free rides.
You work for 4 hours, that’s all your going to be paid for. In fact your a part time employee.

Pasadena, CA

What gives?

Can you ask your guests, how California can pay for any funds raised through bond issues if they refuse to tax themselves?

Kind regards

Your so off base it’s not even funny.