http://www.contracostatimes.com/daniel-borenstein/ci_14150059 is a good example of the problem. Why the hell does some dude make $250k a year in retirement when he was a damn civil servant? Give me a break…

Those are the facts. Sorry if reality has that effect on you. It’s too easy for the rich to dupe the voters. That’s why I am starting not to have much hope for our state. Once Arnold is gone they will find somebody else just as corrupt as he is to finish looting our state.

Enron stealing 7-9 billion did not help, but that would only begin to fill the hole we are in. Repealing the car tax reduction which I beleive has been done for the most part is not enough to close the gap either.

Prison Spending has to go up because of Three Strikes, the lowering of the Age of chargable felonies to 14 by prop 21, the addition on many more crimes to the felony lists by Prop 21,and other mandatory increases in sentenceing passed by the voters and the legislature. I beleive their has to be a better solution, but our hands are tied by previous propositions.

Much of School funding is required and in part restricted in how it is spent by propositions. Many taxaes and fees are locked in place by propositions. The Redevelopement scandals are a direct result of Cities and counties taking advantage of a tax loophole created by a proposition.

This is just a brief list. We need to start over with a fresh slate.

Jim,
I agree – bankruptcy (or something like it) is the way out.

Rather than using sledge hammers over each others heads the Governor the legisature and all interested parties should come to the table open minded with every option on the table.

I tend to agree that it is likely that bankruptcy and/or a new constitution free of the current restraints that the many propositions have put on the state are the likely only solutions left with a chance to work.

GREG PALAST: Ah, well, the worst thing — these guys fear one thing more than jail, and that’s giving back the money. The State of California under Gray Davis — you just had him on saying, you know, ‘God bless this jury’. Gray Davis had demanded that after Enron got and their buddies got caught nicking the state for $9 billion-plus, he did the obvious thing, he demanded that the money be returned.

So Lay panicked. He did two things: He went to meet with Dick Cheney in Washington, but he also held a meeting with Mike Milken, who had just gotten out of jail for his multi-billion-dollar stock fraud. Milken and Lay invited Arnold Schwarzenegger to a private meeting at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, and, you know,Schwarzenegger used to do these private hotel things where he’d go down to his Speedos, but now this is in 2001, and they suggested that they needed — if only they could get the State of California to agree to basically a sweetheart fake settlement, where the people would get back, instead of $9 billion, would basically get, you know,
donuts instead of dollars, next to nothing.

Right after that, the recall drive starts against Gray Davis,who is demanding that the money be returned. Schwarzenegger becomes — the Terminator becomes the Governator, and literally within days, the Lay plan from the Peninsula Hotel
goes right into effect, and Schwarzenegger just starts signing off with every one of
these power companies to give dimes on the dollar, so that the public in California
just never got its money back, just got virtually nothing.

Before Enron’s energy crisis, California had a 17 billion dollar surplus generated by the tech boom. Enron robbed that surplus leaving us with a 6 billion dollar debt. Davis then raised ther car tax to pay off the debt. People had a fit, elected an uneducated buffoon who cut the car tax, blowing a 4 billion hole in the budget on top of the 6 billion that was already there.

Then said buffoon cut education spending and increased prison spending. Then he borrowed billions. Then the housing crash happened and compunded the debt we already had.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/01/eveningnews/main620626.shtml

http://tabacco.blog-city.com/enron_the_california_energy_crisis_gray_davis_recall__ar_1.htm

The state’s problems are due to unsustainable runaway spending. Spending increased 50% in the years 2003-2008. The state hired (on average) 48 workers per day in the years 1997-2007. That’s not sustainable.

Spending on these things reduces people’s standard of living because they must be paid for out of individual savings and private investment.

To blame the state’s problems on Enron is beyond laughable.

Really? You don’t have government bureaucrats making 20 million a year like CEOs.

This state has problems because of the Enron raid of our surplus in 2003, Prop 13, excessive prison spending, the car tax cut which blew a 4 bilion dollar hole in the budget, and the fact that we pay more in taxes to the federal government than we get back in services. Add to that an ignorant buffoon for a Governor. Notice how nobody mentions those things. They just want to lower people’s standard of living even more by gutting their paycheck and their pensions.