Wonkette
- CALIFORNIA SURVIVES, FOR NOW! The Calfornia state Senate has ended a 45.5-hour gridlocked session by finally passing a budget! This required convincing a THIRD Republican senator that a couple of modest, temporary tax increases was better for the state than the immediate loss of 90,000 jobs, debt default, and revolution. “The taxpayers of California are going to view this as a loss,” the Republican minority leader said after a deal was reached. [Sacramento Bee]
Arnold’s solution to the next budget crisis: GET YO ASS TO MAHS.
This whole budget situation was fucked up. It also forces me to admit that I’m grateful that Republican Abel Maldonado saved us from having to pay 12 cents more PER GALLON of gas. Unfortunately, the Democrats caved and gave him open primaries in California. It’s enough to make me feel jaded again. I need a hot Hope injection. Better go find some pictures of Barry on the interwebs…
norbizness:
“You know Sulli, when I told you that I wouldn’t rayz takzis?”
“Yeah?”
“Eye lied.”
To celebrate Ahnold cracked open a couple cases of Opus One he had been saving for just such an occasion.
Thanks to privately financed ballot initiatives the California constitution has a provision that requires a 2/3 majority for the passage of: “any bill that does not precipitate the State’s immediate and irrevocable financial ruin.”*
*exact wording
Those republicans are such forward-thinkers. If only they’d had their off-the-hook, hip-hop strategy together earlier, maybe they could have won this and turned Cali into a wasteland like the voters want.
To stay working 45.5 hours, how many of those California State Senators were on Coke, Speed or Meth?
Lex Luthor had the right idea.
Sorry, I don’t understand the Republican mindset. Let a state/nation go down the crapper just so they can say they were against higher taxes the next election cycle?
Where is our liveblog of the Canada City news conference?
I’d like it in French and English, merci.
Gopherit: This was part of their hip-hop strategy — in keeping with their stereotyped perception of their target audience, they figured the best thing to do was to act like ignorant crackheads.
…what fukkin reality do Republicans live in?! They make it seem like there is actually a choice between raising taxes and causing an economic apocalypse!
What kind of fairy land did that GOP guy live in? It’s like he’s some Ayn Rand character who would rather shut down his factory and layoff the whole factory rather than pay an extra $1 in taxes to the goddamned leechers
Texan Bulldoggette: Or let a nation go down the crapper just so they can say they voted against condoms for poor people in the next election. Six of one . . .
And yet Cali will pull off the Acadamy Awards in a few days with everyone swimming in millions in diamond bling. I’m crying for Argentina (Cali).
After signing the bill, Schwarzenegger fired hundreds of rounds into a bearded Mexican dressed inexplicably in a kefiya, jumped out of an exploding helicopter without a rope and groped some chick, because hey, it was the style at the time.
How else is the state supposed to raise money? The stock market?
Or we can just suspend every social program and then figure out
a way to go to work without having to see all the homeless begging
on the streets.
The one good thing about the whole situation is that we now have a new
record on legislative sessions in California. Ah, how wondrous is man!
Idiotic. We need to tax the living hell out of gas to get people out of their gas guzzlers.
Republicans are hell bent on destroying our government. Literally. See Grover Norquist and how he wants to shrink government until it can be drowned in the bathtub. They should be tried for treason.
SwamTheRiver:
Cali is the state where hospitals were caught by hidden camera throwing quadripaligecs out of the back of ambulances in the middle of the night on the street. Can’t wait to see the glittering botoxed bejeweled Acadamy Awards Sunday!
Let ‘em keep pissin’ off everybody with their “integrity” and “family values”. The years of foot-in-mouth disease will eventually lead to their extinction.
Nerdalicious:
Yeah, but at least they got a free hospital gown out of it.
hockeymom: Our new Canadian girlfriend is liveblogging here:
http://blog.macleans.ca/2009/02/19/liveblogging-the-layover-of-the-century/
She describes it as “stultifyingly dull”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXZ9gGy3MnY
jagorev: Obama + Canada is like Charlie Brown + NPR
I think… Yawn. Nevermind.
Serolf Divad: Oh, hai! That privately financed ballot initiative would be Proposition 13, the 1978 Howard Jarvis initiative that allegedly lowered property taxes and ruined the public services sector out here in Califohnya. Hidden inside was that 2/3rds majority rule. Our new budget also adds new value-added taxes for many sundry things, like furniture repair and veterinary services. Should I reupholster my old sofa in dog?
american mutt: I mean, Barry could at least break out into an inappropriate dance, or harrass a member of the opposite sex, or throw up on someone. I miss the Bushes.
What California needs to do is have a tax on ballot initiatives.
I’m so looking forward to DMV lines again. You miss the little things.
Nerdalicious: I personally can’t wait to see poverty chic vying to outdo itself. I’m not Nate Silver, but I predict someone may even wear jeans.
If Joe the newly minted wing nut Journalist is done fighting for freedom in Israel, he better get his butt to Cali cause it’s just gone straight up socialist. Thanks Arnold.
12 cents a gallon?!? boo-friggin’hoo I wish there was a dollar a gallon gas tax! But what else would you expect from a sushi eatin’, latte sippin’, saab drivin’ liberal like myself. (And as a matter of fact, I DO live in silverlake!)
See what I did there? Even though I’m an elitist, I dropped the “g” on the participles. That makes me one of the people. The people that think participles are gerunds. And the people that think NASCAR is a sport.
I have to go back to working on crappy TV shows now. Sorry, that was redundant.
Does this mean California will send me the check for $3000 they’ve been sitting on for years? No? Fuckers.
Hehe, “See you next year” is right. What a cuckoo budget process.
PS: “Next year” is only 4 months away.
Cuckoo budget process is right! Two-thirds majority to pass a budget in a state where half the representatives come from some god-forsaken desert no man’s land not fit for man nor beast… err, whoops, sorry Ken!
I was kinda hoping for the revolution part… there’s some serious shit that needs to be settled….
being a resident of california i can honestly say that i’ve never felt so good and so cheap at the same time as i do today.
One important thing that should’ve been in the budget, but wasn’t: a decrease in remittances from California to the Feds, equal to the difference between what Cali sends to D.C. and what Cali gets back from D.C. - let’s starve the Red-state welfare Queens like that sack-o-pink-shit Haley Barbour, whose state gets 2 Dollars(!) for every Dollar they send to the Feds. Death to the Confederacy of Dumbasses!