Name That State
The state budget hole is huge but familiar ideas have been put forward to deal with the problem:
- lease the state lottery
- cut Medicaid aid
- possible layoff of state workers
- sell state assets
- public/private partnerships
- hiring freeze
- across-the-board agency cuts
And, oh, by the way, it’s not California.
Name that state.
(A tip of the hat to Jack Dean for pointing this out.)
Obama Muslim Rumor, by the numbers…
Rumors that Barack Obama was a secret Muslim whose patriotism was questionable first appeared on blogs and in e-mail messages. In March, the rumors began to show up in the press, though only minimally.
According to PEJ’s News Coverage Index, the media narrative about these rumors consumed 0.4% of the campaign news hole from March 13 – April 12. Since then, however, coverage of this storyline has steadily increased—and in June it gained momentum.
With the general election underway, stories about rumors that Obama was not patriotic and had ties to Islam jumped from 0.9% of the campaign news hole studied a month earlier to 3.8% from June 13 – July 12—nearly ten times as much attention as the narrative received in March.
And that was before The New Yorker’s controversial front cover ran. The early evidence, at least, suggests, this story line is not going away.
Lack of a budget means Governor Schwarzenegger must conserve state funds
California still doesn’t have a budget for the current fiscal year, which commenced on July 1. Without a budget now for nearly a month, California faces additional pressure to conserve cash. The following explains why.
Though often (and perhaps conveniently) forgotten, as a general rule our state Constitution prohibits expenditures in the absence of a budget. Because of that limitation, a great deal of spending – for childcare centers, health care providers, centers for the developmentally disabled, many county services, contractors, and more — was already suspended as of July 1.
However, notwithstanding that general rule, the Constitution as well as federal law and public safety require some spending whether or not there’s a budget. Examples of such mandated or essential service spending include certain funds for public schools, debt service, child welfare programs, public safety, disaster relief and more. Those activities require cash and therefore the state must always have ready access to cash sufficient to meet those essential or mandated requirements.
Moreover, if we run out of cash, we will be forced to access the Revenue Anticipation Warrant (RAW) market for that cash. To understand the nature of the RAW market, one must first understand its cousin, the Revenue Anticipation Note (RAN) market.