IOU

CA Budget cuts will

• Reduce per-student spending by $448 - cutting K-12 spending by $3.8 million
• Eliminate the Healthy Families Program
• Make Medical significantly more complicated; dental and eye exams will no longer be convered
• CalWORKS will be reduced by 4% even though it has been frozen since the 2004-5 fiscal year
• Benefit corporations: "Eighty-seven percent of the benefits from credit sharing will go to the 0.03 percent of California corporations with gross incomes over $1 billion" ("To have and Have Not")
• Potentially close 220 parks, including Will Rogers or hand them over to the Federal gov They say this is a last resort. Who knows. I think WR will have a chance...Palisadeans can fight for it, and they have the money to win if necessary. Sadly, saving it would probably be at the expense of parks in neighborhoods who are hit hardest by the budget cuts - those of the poor and minorities. I love Will Rogers, I must admit.
  

Margattack and me at Inspiration Point, Will Rogers State Historic Park, Pacific Palisades, CA

These cuts would obviously have devastating effects on the most vulnerable Californians, particularly students of all ages. But as of today, July 1st, the senate and Gov have not passed the budget, which could end up hurting us Californians even more. John Chiang, the state controller who issued my lovely unclaimed paychecks last year, is prepared to dole out IOUs by tommorrow, July 2nd.

Hey CalGrant recipients,
Did you need that money we promised you? About that. We're in a bit of a squeeze here. How's about a nice IOU?
Sincerely,
Your ELECTED officials.

Good luck paying your tuition with an IOU.

The CA budget proposes to cut non Prop98 General Fund spending for k-12 education by 19% while only cutting Corrections and Rehab by 8.7% (Summary of Major Changes..., 33,38). We seem much more willing to anticipate crime than to prevent it. Cutting per-student spending, shortening school years, closing parks, decreasing jobs and complicating and eliminating health care? Less education, less green space, less income, less health. Less, less, less; cut, cut, cut.

What does this have to do with going green? We are maintaining a system that prioritizes corporations over laborers, prison beds over child health care, everything over education. Even prop 98 has not cured our notoriously troubled public schools. I fail to see how this will free us from the habit of fast tracking environmentally unhealthy and ethically unsound development and industry. I can't imagine how it will encourage or enable people to green their own lives. As a self-proclaimed environmentalist, I refuse to limit my understanding of the environment to bioecology and saving the rainforests. While those are essential, the social aspects - education, efficient and clean mass transit, safe neighborhoods, equitable access to resources - all enable an harmonious lifestyle, at the very least, by allowing people to care about their environment. This budget just might suppress a lot of the individual-level environmental enthusiasm that has recently arisen.

It is as though the state, that distant, powerful, too-irresponsible body of governors, has attempted to make its subjects as desperate and high-risk as possible so that it can fill the $34 million in contracted out of state prison beds for which their 2009-10 budget calls.

I have become so disenchanted with politics lately. Bush, Schwarzenegger, Villaraigosa, Obama, Jindal. At least we can claim ethnic diversity. Finally, we can celebrate equality. We have conquered our vile prejudices and can now see that under no circumstances does skin color or national origin prevent politicians from spewing out equally ludicrous bullshit to every corner of the world.

I wish I could spare my eyes the pain of having to witness my home wrestle a seemingly unconquerable giant. With blurred vision and a tired mind, we appear to have stopped fighting, slowly but surely accepting our decline from mansion to a ramshackle hut so dilapidated that its resident family has plummeted through the floor gazing upward though a cracked foundation at a structure too blighted to hope for reconstruction.