Local Highway Money is Target Again
The $1 billion in local highway money the state didn’t get in last month’s budget agreement could be a target again when the Legislature comes back from its summer recess next week, Darrell Steinberg, the Democratic leader in the state Senate, suggested Wednesday.
Steinberg, joined by local Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, was at a neighborhood health center in San Francisco’s Mission District, talking about his suit to recover nearly $500 million Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger blue-penciled from state health and welfare programs before he signed the budget revisions.
"We could go back to (the highway money),” he told the crowd of doctors, nurses, patients and various care providers. "That’s one way to do this.”
Death and Insanity
I’ve been starting to dig into the primary sources on California’s last constitutional convention in 1879. First impression: If past is prologue, expect our next convention to be long and difficult.
Another lesson: you don’t necessarily end a convention with the same delegates you start with. Four delegates to the 1879 convention died between the election establishing the convention and the conclusion of the convention. Another delegate, Jehu Berry, a Democrat from Siskiyou and Modoc counties, had to replaced because of "insanity."
A few other highlights:
- The delegates – there were (120 elected to represent counties, the rest elected at large from the state’s four Congressional districts – we were a bit smaller then) – were paid mileage and per diem for 100 days, under the rules of the convention. But the convention went 127 days anyway.
Why You Should Forget the Tie and Bring a Protest Sign!
"A Finely Tuned Job Killing Machine."
"California is not suffering from a recession as much as it is suffering from self-inflicted blows to our own economy by our own State government."
Both of these quotes pose a true and accurate depiction of our current State of affairs. The observations, however, derive from a 1992 report of the Ueberroth Commission on California Competitiveness. Things are of course even worse today!
We suffer this day as a result of energy and water shortages, the dilapidation of public infrastructure, astronomical public debt, high taxes, and a punitive regulatory climate. These seventeen years later, I can only echo Ueberroth as he singled out our State Government as primarily responsible for our sorry state of affairs. Just how did we go from having one of the best economies in the world to the brink of bankruptcy?