The State of our State

I watched the Governor's "State of the State" on Tuesday (or was it Monday, I don't remember) and the presentation of his budget today. It was hard not to, since I work with a lot of state workers and what he says applies to us. He even gave today's presentation in the building next to mine, so the entire block was covered by news vans.

There are a couple of things on which I agree with the governor. First, you shouldn't spend more than you have. It's a philosophy I follow religiously. I pay my credit cards off each month, I pay more than i need to on my mortgage, and I don't buy more than I can afford. I had a friend when I was working at River City Communications so long ago, that used to brag about these deals she got on clothes, but then she couldn't pay her credit card bills. She ended up paying the minimum each time, and ended up paying 10-20 times what the clothes cost, if you count all the interest she paid. My goodness, silly people.

Also I agree that in good times, instead of finding more programs to fund, put some of that money away for the bad times. That way, you don't have to cut every single program, like was announced today, or get rid of the new programs started just a couple of years before. What an odd concept! (sorry swingbug) I also think that in good times, you don't just start cutting taxes, because when the bad times come and you want to re-install those taxes you cut, well, you get re-called. The governor has never suggest that would be a good idea, but I like it.

So let's get one thing straight here before I go on. I am fiscally conservative and a liberal. I don't have a problem paying taxes. I have a problem with money going to waste, but I don't mind spending money so I have have free public education -including college, roads, streetlights, firefighters, policemen, parks, state parks, help for those who are down on their luck, health care, an organization that makes sure medications do more good than harm, an organization that makes sure our water is safe to drink, etcetera. I could go on and on, but I believe a community is better when make sure our citizens have access to at least the basics.

I also believe in prevention. Relying on memory, because I don't have the research in front of me (I'm not going look for it for a blog) I seem to recall that the more educated people are the less likely they are going to engage in criminal activity, and I don't mean your strict and formal education, but even just basic job training can be good. Teaching people fundamentals so they don't sign mortgages they don't understand or can read the newspaper, or understand some basic science. This could all keep the crime down (fyi - half of the prison population is illiterate). But instead of putting money in to education, we tend to put it into corrections. Sigh.

But I could go on and on about what I believe, let's get back to the Governor. His speech was a typically political, full of crap data and hypocritical comments. He said he was glad he stopped the car tax increase and would do it again (which, incidentally, we paid at one time, but when the economy was up, it was decided we should be given a break for a while. So this wasn't an increase, just a return to normal levels. Which, by the way, would bring in 6 billion dollars, almost half of the 14 billion deficit. But I digress.). His reasoning? It's wrong to punish people who can barely afford gas for California's over spending. It's a burden on poor people. But most people have cars so practically everyone would have to pay and the people who would pay the most would be the rich because they tend to have the big expensive cars while the poor tend to have the cheaper ones.

However, he is more than willing to finance Health Care by placing a $1.75 tax on cigarettes. Peoples, guess who smokes? The poor. The rich don't smoke, they know better ( or they know where the black market cigarettes are. Besides, they probably take better drugs anyways). The poor are the ones who buy the cigarettes (22.1% vs 7.7%). So he wants to put the burden of our new health care on the shoulders of those who can least afford it. Not only that, but as the price of cigarettes goes up, the number of people that buy them go down. Will we have enough to fund the system. Who knows? Still seems a pretty stupid way to set things up.

Now here is where things really interesting. The governor has flat out said he wants no new taxes. But oddly enough there is this interesting little proposal in his budget. A 1.25% surcharge on every home owner to help pay for fire preparedness.

"The Wildland Firefighting Initiative will not be funded through the General Fund. It will be financed through a 1.25 percent surcharge on all property owners statewide, amounting to approximately $10-12 per property owner each year."

When asked about this little inconsistency today, the Governor said that he does not believe in raising taxes. "We promised the California people that we will not raise taxes. " He then went on to say "And so we need more fire trucks, we need more fixed wing aircraft, we need more helicopters, we need a lot of resources. So we want to create those resources, because that will protect billions of dollars of property in California, this 100 million dollars, 200 million dollars that we raise through those fees." " So this is a support system." Can we have a support system for health care Mr. Governor, or education so the next children can have the possibility of a bright future even if their parents don't have millions of dollars to spend on private schools (okay, so millions is an exaggeration)? Please, pretty please, with sugar and a cherry on top?

Another thing that got me today was the graph. The governor referred to this beautiful graph of revenues for the State over the past 20-30 years or so (I never actually saw the x-axis). It went up and up and up and up. Each year with more revenue than the year before. With this much money coming in, how can we be in a deficit? It's all due to overspending and nothing else, at least according to him. I would like to see other things on the graph, like the proportion of revenue based on the number of people in the state (more people, more revenue, but more people in the system). What about inflation? I never saw anything that said that graph accounted for inflation. Of course we are paying more than we did 20 years ago, everything has gone up since then. What the freak do you expect? So before I go around and give any credit to the nice, glossy, pretty charts that people tend to like, I want more information.


Oh, I almost forgot. Peoples, we need to stop relying on bonds to solve all of our problems. Really, they are BAD not good. They are not free money. The state of california is going to have to pay back all of those bonds we've been voting on with INTEREST (probably at the same time we are going to have to start paying for this War we are in. I wonder when that is going to happen). That means not only do we have to find all those millions of dollars for bonds that went to go fix a deficit a few years ago, it means we have to pay interest on all that money too. Which means we will have to pay more than if we just did it now. Think of my friend and her clothes. There is no such thing as free money.

Another thing that's been getting my goat are all the people blaming the state workers and saying that they get paid a lot for doing nothing. I am not a State worker, nor do I want to be, but I work with a lot. I will tell you most of those state workers work hard and would get paid more for their efforts in the private sector. Most of them are just upset and frustrated, if not more so, about the bureaucracy as anyone. Things don't get done because of the 16 different layers of approval. It's impossible to get raise or a promotion, and there is no training. When a guy at the very top leaves, instead of there being someone around to step into his shoes, the State goes berserk and begs for the guy back and offers him a $100,000 increase in salary. Can you imagine what that does to his retirement? So yes, there are some people at the top that need to be skinned, but for the most part, people are doing the job of 2 or 3 because of all the cuts in recent years (not including the 10% that is coming next year), not getting paid for it, and have very little chance of moving up in the world. Give them a break.

Okay, end of rant today (even though I have far more to say) and if you got this far, well, I am amazed. Swingbug, I might take you up on your offer of a rant, but I had other things to talk about today.

I think I'm going to move to seattle.