Totall Recall, part deux
Jan. 14th, 2004 03:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quesarah reproduced from Salon.com
Balancing California's budget on the backs of the poor
If you have a few Schwarzenegger-branded Hummers in your garage, you've just received a tidy windfall at the expense of those who can least afford it.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Robert Scheer
Jan. 14, 2004 | We should have known from his movie roles that California's new governor would be nothing more than a blowhard bully. Lacking the guts to take on the entrenched special interests, as he promised when he played the heavily scripted role of outsider candidate, he now proposes to do what all cowardly politicians do: balance the budget on the backs of the poor.
A Los Angeles Times headline Saturday said it all: "Budget Ax Will Fall Heavily on the Poor, Ill." The story on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget plan explained how it "promises higher costs and hurdles for thousands of Californians, from some children with cancer who will no longer get state help paying for chemotherapy to high school graduates who will be shunted to community colleges instead of universities."
Those kinds of cuts, including reneging on an already-approved cost-of-living increase for mothers and children on welfare, are not only hardhearted, but they won't save enough to dent the state's $14 billion revenue shortfall for the 2004-'05 budget. They are window dressing to give the governor the cover of making what he termed "painful" spending cuts while selling his $15 billion bond initiative -- which is a way of raising taxes without appearing to do so. Another scam involves the $1.3 billion in property tax revenue Schwarzenegger proposes to steal from cash-strapped local governments and school districts -- you know, the people who bring you police, firefighters, street repairs, schools, parks and all that other frivolous stuff.
"It's perplexing to me that the governor would say that public safety is the top priority of the state of California and do something like this that really jeopardizes our ability to provide public safety to our citizens," said Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn, who had praised the governor's promise of a few weeks ago to restore funding to cities and counties. That was before looking at these budget numbers.
Unchallenged are such questionable expenditures as the continued irresponsible expansion of our prison system far beyond our needs; under the governor's proposal, the youth and adult corrections budget would increase by 8 percent, causing no pain for the powerful prison guards lobby, which will now switch its allegiance to Schwarzenegger.
"The aged, the blind, the disabled and poor women with children are paying for a big chunk of the loss of revenue from the vehicle tax," state Senate leader John Burton told me Monday. "Them and college students and people needing medical assistance. The reality is the only way to balance this budget without exploiting these groups is to raise taxes on the wealthy, and the governor doesn't want to do that."
Put another way, if you have a few Schwarzenegger-branded Hummers in your garage, you've just received a tidy windfall at the expense of those who can least afford it -- such as mothers trying to work their way off welfare through the CalWORKS program. A mother in Los Angeles raising two kids would see her transitional family aid drop from $704 a month to $669, according to the Times. That wouldn't support the governor's stogie habit, even if he cut back to two decent cigars a day.
What hypocrisy for megamillionaire Schwarzenegger to refer to "painful" budget cuts. His kids, after all, are not enrolled in the Healthy Families program, which encourages working poor parents to get needed dental and vision care for their children, nor another initiative that helps working families meet the extraordinary expenses associated with treating severe medical problems such as cerebral palsy and cancer -- both of which would be curtailed in the governor's budget. His kids will never have to drop out of community college because of the fee hikes he's imposed, or suffer from the deep cuts in Medi-Cal funding for the health needs of the poor.
No, the pain that Schwarzenegger claims to feel is the fake suffering of actors in movies -- blood and bruises that can be wiped away when the filming stops. Perhaps that is why he evidenced so much wisecracking good humor at his press conference announcing the budget cuts, which are not likely to hurt anyone in his circle.
"It has been terrific," he told the more than 100 reporters, domestic and foreign, who yuk it up at his cornball jokes. "I have enjoyed every single day of this job."
Well, good for him. Perhaps he could stop grinning long enough to imagine how much fun it would be to support his family for a month on $669 or be unable to pay his children's medical bills.
Balancing California's budget on the backs of the poor
If you have a few Schwarzenegger-branded Hummers in your garage, you've just received a tidy windfall at the expense of those who can least afford it.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Robert Scheer
Jan. 14, 2004 | We should have known from his movie roles that California's new governor would be nothing more than a blowhard bully. Lacking the guts to take on the entrenched special interests, as he promised when he played the heavily scripted role of outsider candidate, he now proposes to do what all cowardly politicians do: balance the budget on the backs of the poor.
A Los Angeles Times headline Saturday said it all: "Budget Ax Will Fall Heavily on the Poor, Ill." The story on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget plan explained how it "promises higher costs and hurdles for thousands of Californians, from some children with cancer who will no longer get state help paying for chemotherapy to high school graduates who will be shunted to community colleges instead of universities."
Those kinds of cuts, including reneging on an already-approved cost-of-living increase for mothers and children on welfare, are not only hardhearted, but they won't save enough to dent the state's $14 billion revenue shortfall for the 2004-'05 budget. They are window dressing to give the governor the cover of making what he termed "painful" spending cuts while selling his $15 billion bond initiative -- which is a way of raising taxes without appearing to do so. Another scam involves the $1.3 billion in property tax revenue Schwarzenegger proposes to steal from cash-strapped local governments and school districts -- you know, the people who bring you police, firefighters, street repairs, schools, parks and all that other frivolous stuff.
"It's perplexing to me that the governor would say that public safety is the top priority of the state of California and do something like this that really jeopardizes our ability to provide public safety to our citizens," said Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn, who had praised the governor's promise of a few weeks ago to restore funding to cities and counties. That was before looking at these budget numbers.
Unchallenged are such questionable expenditures as the continued irresponsible expansion of our prison system far beyond our needs; under the governor's proposal, the youth and adult corrections budget would increase by 8 percent, causing no pain for the powerful prison guards lobby, which will now switch its allegiance to Schwarzenegger.
"The aged, the blind, the disabled and poor women with children are paying for a big chunk of the loss of revenue from the vehicle tax," state Senate leader John Burton told me Monday. "Them and college students and people needing medical assistance. The reality is the only way to balance this budget without exploiting these groups is to raise taxes on the wealthy, and the governor doesn't want to do that."
Put another way, if you have a few Schwarzenegger-branded Hummers in your garage, you've just received a tidy windfall at the expense of those who can least afford it -- such as mothers trying to work their way off welfare through the CalWORKS program. A mother in Los Angeles raising two kids would see her transitional family aid drop from $704 a month to $669, according to the Times. That wouldn't support the governor's stogie habit, even if he cut back to two decent cigars a day.
What hypocrisy for megamillionaire Schwarzenegger to refer to "painful" budget cuts. His kids, after all, are not enrolled in the Healthy Families program, which encourages working poor parents to get needed dental and vision care for their children, nor another initiative that helps working families meet the extraordinary expenses associated with treating severe medical problems such as cerebral palsy and cancer -- both of which would be curtailed in the governor's budget. His kids will never have to drop out of community college because of the fee hikes he's imposed, or suffer from the deep cuts in Medi-Cal funding for the health needs of the poor.
No, the pain that Schwarzenegger claims to feel is the fake suffering of actors in movies -- blood and bruises that can be wiped away when the filming stops. Perhaps that is why he evidenced so much wisecracking good humor at his press conference announcing the budget cuts, which are not likely to hurt anyone in his circle.
"It has been terrific," he told the more than 100 reporters, domestic and foreign, who yuk it up at his cornball jokes. "I have enjoyed every single day of this job."
Well, good for him. Perhaps he could stop grinning long enough to imagine how much fun it would be to support his family for a month on $669 or be unable to pay his children's medical bills.
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no subject
Date: 2004-01-15 08:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-15 08:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-15 08:52 am (UTC)Are they willfully ignorant? Are they plain stupid? Or were they so desperate for a hero that they'd vote in a fading action movie star just to feel like they'd put someone in power who could accomplish something for them. I don't really know.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-15 09:38 am (UTC)There are complaints about how much CA taxes, and how people don't want their taxes raised, when the fact is, Californians aren't taxed more than the average for the rest of the country. Maybe how the tax is spread out needs to change, but all the whining about how we pay so much in taxes is bull.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-15 10:12 am (UTC)But why Schwarzenegger? Why did they think he'd be different? He's a multi-millionaire movie star, he smokes expensive cigars, drives a fucking gas-guzzling Hummer, and pals around with big business types. Why in hell were people convinced that he'd stick up for the little guy? Historically, rich people don't give a flying fuck about the little guy.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-15 10:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-15 10:29 am (UTC)Remember that SUV article I mentioned? Despite all the facts given about the lack of safety of SUV's, people still buy them and believe they are safer--they are bigger, they look safer, you are higher up, you feel safer.
The majority of people buy BS.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-15 10:35 am (UTC)I'm starting to believe in the validity of dictatorship as a viable governing scheme. Provided I'm the dictator, naturally.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-15 12:38 pm (UTC)Ignorant morons!
no subject
Date: 2004-01-15 10:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-15 10:31 am (UTC)got that?
Date: 2004-01-15 10:57 am (UTC)Cleveland has gone broke. I mean they are actually trying to get people to adopt a public trash can and come and empty it once a week!
The county wants to raise taxes to build a convention center. The city wants to spend billions-really to revamp the whole shoreway.
And the point is there are no national stories no cameras; it's Cleveland, it's Ohio and no-one is interested.
Only 3 sp.errors!
Re: got that?
Date: 2004-01-15 11:40 am (UTC)Re: got that?
Date: 2004-01-15 12:43 pm (UTC)yeah, CA gets lots of press, so much that people really are starting to believe we're insane. ;-)
I make a lot of spelling errors, too. I blame it on my poor typing skills. ;-)