The legislators should work without pay. But there is no reason I can think of why the Corrections officers should. And why should judges? California has to administer criminal justice for the number of people in a medium-size nation every day. Believe me, of all those on the cash side of the ledger, it’s these people I want getting their pay. (Civil court I’m not so concerned about. The lawsuits can wait.)

Regarding the retirees, I am getting really tired of hearing that their pensions are “the problem” for state budgets. You’re going to see in a minute what the problem is for state budgets. And no, I’ve never been a state employee and I don’t get a state pension. But “retiree pensions” means pensions for firefighters, highway patrolmen, and teachers as well as whatever sour-faced state bureaurcrats you may have had to deal with at the DMV or corportation commission (or fatcats from the University of California system). There is no way I am going to resent pensions for firefighters and the CHP.

Pensions amount to less than $10 billion in the 2009-10 budget anyway, compared to $40+ billion for welfare and state health programs. These words are some of the most Orwellian ever uttered:

People needing temporary assistance for basic family needs

Well, sure. That’s how the programs are legislated into existence: as “temporary assistance.” But that’s not how they are administered. The beneficiaries of “temporary assistance” are the ones described in this incredible communication. (For HA readers who might have seen this before, yes, this is the same link. Not trying to be a broken record, but it’s highly applicable to this thread.)

There IS no other set of public assistance programs, beyond the ones these people are on. These ARE the “temporary assistance” programs. All public assistance programs of this kind are “temporary.” That’s what the voters are told when the programs are crafted.

We should definitely be up in arms that cash assistance is being withheld from people on disability and in mental health treatment. If the state can’t balance its budget, then keep the help going to these people, and shut the university classrooms down (and issue the IOUs to the tenured professors and administrators).

But you need to know more about the developmental disability program in California. The 2009-10 budget proposal acknowledged that this program has metastasized uncontrollably — it just doesn’t acknowledge what the problem is.

The problem is that the program is designed as a hiring mechanism for specialists, and a means of letting contracts for building, maintenance, and administration. Its implementation standards require substantially more state-paid, state-mandated facilities and specialist care per developmentally-disabled beneficiary than the taxpayers can possibly afford.

Families facing developmental disabilities in their children do have specialty care and big bills to deal with. But is the best means of helping them to set up state programs that actually provide all the services? Not necessarily. It would certainly be more cost-effective to simply provide cash assistance, and let the families contract for the care and support they need through the market, and with institutions that are funded by a combination of private and state support. This could be done in the form of vouchers, as opposed to straight cash, to ensure assistance money was not misspent.

We need to seriously ask ourselves why the state needs to be the employer of first resort for a number of the career fields it has assumed that role for. Even more expensive for the California taxpayer than the state’s vast, unwieldy suite of welfare and health programs is its total education budget, for K-12 and the university system.

A minority of the K-12 budget goes to teacher salaries, and we ought to bring out the pitchforks and torches when the state fires teachers FIRST, instead of cutting back on administration, special programs unrelated to education (e.g., summer breakfast and lunch programs), and building programs. Do we have a school system to educate our children, or do we have it to employ non-teaching administrators, day care workers, and construction firms?

Few state spending decisions are as hard to justify when people are out of work and losing their homes as what the state puts into the university system. Huge expenditures are made on programs and faculty compensation that have nothing to do with preparing Californians to compete in a global interlinked economy, or whatever. When this pitch is made, voters think about things like engineering, information tech, biotech, etc — but that’s only a minor percentage of what their tax dollars are going to. Certainly, $400K salaries, plus university-provided personal vehicles and professional travel budgets for administrators are not funds that are putting professors in the classroom, or keeping the lights on in them. But neither are research grants for things private industry has no interest in researching, because they hold no real promise of utility or profit. It’s real nice to pay for such things when the uncaring free market will not — but operating the state at a deficit when people are losing jobs and homes, in order to keep doing it? What ARE our priorities, anyway?

Or CSUCI (see-sucky). Tear it down and build a nice coastal resort.

Take those neighborhood DMV offices and turn them into convenience marts.

You get the idea…

Figure it out yet? The people who most need cash get IOUs, while the people who could stand to operate on credit get cash. I guess this is also “responsible”.

It’s clear that they think a welfare recipient can get his/her voucher honored by some institution while nobody is going to extend credit from a California judge or senator.

Seems rather obvious to me — if the state is unwilling to honor those IOUs by accepting them, it is fundamentally unreasonable to expect any private individual to take them.

ajacksonian on July 2, 2009 at 7:29 PM

Shipping is less costly, as long as you can plan a bit ahead (at least for computer parts)… got a buddy who runs his own Computer business out there that I still do phone type support for.

Inquiring minds will soon find out, I bet.

Wells Fargo is going to accept CA State IOU’s.

Why would they willingly take on more “Bad Debt”?

PappaMac on July 2, 2009 at 3:53 PM

If WF didn’t Uncle BO will tell them to do it any.

And soon.

-Dave

These idiots were warned, and Arnie warned them. Now is the time to rub their noses in that fact and he’s completely taking a pass on it. I don’t understand. It’s good politics…by today’s standards anyway, so might as well play as the players do.

OK, who are you? There are only about 3 people in Atwater and I only know of one family that actually raised their kids there. Plus, since it takes 30 seconds to drive through the town, and it is behind the Orange Curtain, why don’t you feel safe?

InTheBellyoftheBeast on July 2, 2009 at 6:35 PM

Who am I?

Was typeing out a long description, but its easier to say I was one of the Ramey kids…from back in the 70s…

Heck… I don’t even feel safe in Atwater Calif, the town that I was born and raised in… where my Mom still lives.

Romeo13 on July 2, 2009 at 4:24 PM

OK, who are you? There are only about 3 people in Atwater and I only know of one family that actually raised their kids there. Plus, since it takes 30 seconds to drive through the town, and it is behind the Orange Curtain, why don’t you feel safe?

But if you come calling, I’ll just look for the dork in the camouflaged Carharts and a purple beret.

And I’ll just look for the transplanted metrosexual waving his white panties.

guntotinglibertarian on July 2, 2009 at 5:13 PM

*snicker*

Don’t really have a lot of ‘neighborhoods’ in my neck of the woods…

But if you come calling, I’ll just look for the dork in the camouflaged Carharts and a purple beret.

Loxodonta on July 2, 2009 at 5:00 PM

You’re the antithesis of annin, foxy loxi.
God love you both!

Unless some cherubic toddler goes missing.

Sorry. That should have read, “cherubic white toddler”. Missing black children don’t reach Nancy’s key demographics.