California Budget Deficit? What California Budget Deficit?

The Gubernator announced his last May Revise  this past Friday.  It was greeted with the usual rending of garments and gnashing of teeth now a customary part of the California budget blowout.   To close an almost $20 billion deficit His Arnoldness is now proposing freezes on local education, more slashing of government workers’ numbers and pay and huge cuts in social welfare and state medical care, including the complete termination of Calworks. Take that , you million mooching kids living off of state handouts.

But what are you going to do when the state is running almost 25% in the red?

And Our Last Action-Hero Governor can’t even depend on a last minute uber-dramatic rescue from Obi Wan Obama.  Washington’s response to  the Governor’s January request for $7 billion in reimbursements for Federal programs?  Drop dead.  Washington’s likely response to his new $3.4 billion beg?  Ditto.

Our Term(Limited)inator in Chief shouldn’t be  asking for a paltry $3.4 billion, anyway.  If the Feds have the audacity to insult the Golden State with such brass tribute he should throw it back in their faces.

No, what  one of the most successful businessmen in Hollywood History should demand is $70 billion.  That’s BILLION, with a big “B”. $70 billion is how much more California pays the Feds then the Feds give back in services and spending.

Californians get back about 78¢ for every dollar collected here by the Feds That means for the $313 billion  per year Californians pay the Federal government the Feds put back around $224 billion  in services and payments.  Which leaves California with that magic $70 billion deficit vis-à-vis  D.C.

Rather than running a $20 billion dollar budget deficit  in terms of revenues and spending  California actually has a $50 billion surplus. That is, if the Golden State got to keep all the gold it ships off to Washington.  Who then ships it off Red States like Mississippi, Alabama and all the others who get more back than they put in to the Federal slot machine.

I heard a commentator on the Dennis Prager show today compare Germany bailing out Greece to Texas bailing out  California .  Sorry but that’s the wrong comparison.  Texas gets back 94$ per dollar it sends.  Alaska gets back  a whopping $1.84.

So it’s Germany is to Greece as California is to Alaska, SAT fans.

Note to Feds: pay us our $70 billion, please.  We’ll take it in gold, if possible.

Note to Sarah Palin:  Shuttup already.  Your state takes more federal money per dollar sent than any other and you have the nerve to cry at your own Tea Party?  How about  you send us Californians—Real Americans who pay a lot more in shouldering the burden of being Americans than you and your mooching Alaskans—the $3.6 billion more you get back from that hated American government than you send in?

Consider it a down payment on monies owed California by a grateful nation.

At A Boy, Pluto

Hello America and congratulations.  Now that your Supreme Court has wisely decided to lift all bans on money in politics you can safely say the USA is closer to being the Happiest Place On Earth.

I mean, after all, we’re now officially living under the rule of Mickey’s Dog!
Welcome to Plutocracy, everyone.

Hope you enjoy your visit. and be sure to check out our new attraction opening Fall, 2012: Palintopia!

Dancing With the Devil

So Tom Delay knows how to dance?  Whodathoughtit? Whodathoughtanyonewouldcare?  But, boy, have the pundits and newslite shows lit up on this one.  And why not?  Tom Delay  shaking his booty in heels is at least as entertaining in an “ain’t that bizarre way” as a little dog dancing in a red dress on youtube.  (Truth be known I feel worse for the dog than Delay.)

Delay was doing more than a little tango, though.  He was doing nothing short of the Republican Reputation Restoration Rumba.  That’s where a Republican who has done something pretty darn not good goes public in an act of “darn, that guy is so contrite he’s willing to blow his dignity right out the window” and ends up reputationally refurbished and ready to run again.

Why it was just a scant 57 years ago this week—right as Tommy Tune Delay was learning his cha cha—that Tricke Dickie played checkers on national TV and saved his political bacon, thereby launching the modern genre of political resurrection through public humiliation.   Ho apropos is that?

Delay is by no means the only Republican since Nixon to stage a redemption comeback on the political theater of the absurd’s stage.  Heck,  Newt Gingrich (as in  lost the second most powerful position in American government after leading his party to political disaster after  trying to  impeach the President for lying about an affair while having an affair that would ultimately result in his second divorce)  has been flaunting himself as the heir apparent of a Republican party in retreat on every AM talk and Fox news show he can be booked on.  Now if he can only get himself booked on American idol the nomination will be in the bag.    And let’s not forget that Sarah Palin (before giving up on being a governor so she could get lucrative speaking fees for talks to Asian businessmen) actually preemptively restored her rapidly declining political panache with one well placed appearance on SNL.  If she’d only done a couple of cheers in high heels she might be in Joe Biden’s tights right now.

Indeed, there have been so many Republicans (Craig, Sanford, et. al)  doing the mea culpa mambo in recent months that they could all get together with Delay and do a special edition of Dancing With the Stars:  A Chorus Line. 

And, yes, there are more than a few Democrats who, over the years, have had to make their own humiliating amends with the public they’d betrayed.  None of them, though, have been able to dance their way back into the public’s heart like  Fred “The Hammer” Astaire.   So what’s a little political corruption way back when  when the man can dance right here and right now? 

Welcome back Tom, you tap dancing fool.  All is forgiven.  Now if they could only get George W. in spandex….

Boo Boo

When I read on Satuday that Sarah Palin was going to drop the puck at a Philly Flyer’s game I  told my wife (she’ll vouch for me!) that if the Alaskan Great White Hope got booed on the ice by hockey fans–her own  self-described peeps and homies–the election is over.  Obama wins by 5 to 10 easy.

Check out the U-tube of the booing here.

So, what are you going to wear to the Obama inauguration?

(And why isn’t the Hockey clip being run right now as an Obama ad?)