“…California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and top lawmakers came up with a compromise to close a $19.1 billion deficit and give the state a budget …The accord doesn’t raise taxes, as sought by Democrats, nor does it dismantle the state’s welfare system, proposed by Republicans, the leaders said yesterday. … Lawmakers said more information about the substance of the agreement would be released at an Oct. 6 public hearing. …” From: http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aOhKnnp1VziA&pos=2 No cut in welfare and no more taxes !!! Make you guess what they will do. I have two: (1) Given it is CA, perhaps make a large landing fees for ETs. (2) Invade Oregon and capture its wealth. What is your guess? OK to move this to B & E if not appropriate here, but this is politics in action.
Perhaps they will find other areas to cut spending. Then they could reduse the entire government paychecks to all state workers there by 5 percent, that would help and everyone would still work. Then they could go to a 4 day work week for all non critical personnel such as libraians, dog catchers and road crews. There are many ways to reduce spending but everyone wants more and more until there is none left.:shrug:
CosmicTraveler you give me an idea as schools are a big expense and kids learn more rapidly now (or at least copy from the internet with skill) simply cancel the 11th and 12th grades. That would be at least a 1/6 saving in the school budget. ("at least" as the expenditures per student are greater in the later years) As many colleges don't want freshmen to be two years younger and you certainly don't want those previously 11 & 12th graders left to their only devices for two year, Fire all the street cleaner, trash men, etc for other low education and low skill jobs and draft these kids in the "budget salvation army" to do these essential jobs for much less pay.
Why not just cut the amount of days worked? That way the teachers would be only given 4 days full pay and still have the jobs they have now. Of course they would have to somehow streamline their classes as to what they need to teach as well.
That may be hard to do, but instead they could declare all residents of CA were sick (mostly true) and then they get medical permits to buy. It is quite a big business already, with even marijuana vending machine you stick your money and ID card in for 24 hour / 7 day availability service. Some years ago, a too honest official report appear with marijuana as the largest cash crop in CA, but most copies were recovered and burned.
The more money that any government takes in, the more money they will spend because that is why we are in the mess we are today. By trying to make more money to try and pay down debt doesn't ever work, that's been proven. Only cutting spending will help reduce what is going out to pay off debt the moswt, reducing taxes is another way.
California is not a cheap place to live. Dropping wages won't work. It'll increase the problem. If you drop state workers pay in that outrageously expensive state, they soon won't have any state workers.
I'll bet you if the choice was reducing the pay by 5 percent or not working, they woiuld be for the pay reduction. No fool would give up everything for 5 percent of what they earn.
EVERYONE WAS WRONG They balanced the budget and it will soon pass. They did it by simply lying about what the revenues will be.
I was just imagining the legal possession up to an ounce of marijuana by millions of Californians.Wouldnt this very large amount of mary-jane make it's way all across the US in a big way? What would be the implications of this? How could each State ever fight this overload of mary-jane? Would States end up following CA with legalization? Just curious is all. PS-I support legalizing Mariwona....
Note that such possession is already decriminalized in CA. I.e., you get the equivalent of a parking ticket if caught with less than 1 ounce (and so the enforcement is correspondingly unenergetic). Likewise, medical marijuana is already legal is CA, so there are considerable quantities being mass produced and sold right now. Yes, and that already happens. It's potential changes in the legality of growing and selling marijuana that stand to make an impact here - the legalization of (already-decriminalized) possession won't make a difference. But even if legalization doesn't go through, smuggling of CA marijuana is already a major feature of the US drug market and will continue to be such. More quality chronic for a lower prices, presumably. Prices depending heavily on the distance to the nearest interstate freeway, etc. Decreased profits for Mexican drug cartels (probably they'll forget weed entirely and stick to coke and heroin). Did you have some particular type of implications in mind? Also note that the BC semi-legal weed industry has already created many of the mass smuggling issues you cite, so this stuff is hardly hypothetical. Again, same way they already do: AZ has lots of checkpoints along the freeways connecting to CA, complete with drug-sniffing dogs and the like. Other states don't seem inclined to waste their time. What can you really do to stop some college kid in CA from loading a pound into his trunk, driving a few states over, and selling it to his friend from high school at some other college? Mandatory inspection of all cars crossing state lines, like on the Mexican border? It'd never fly. Yeah, I expect quite a few would do so. In particular I'd expect other west coast and libertarian states near CA to be the first to go (Oregon, Washington, Nevada and Idaho all seem likely candidates). And surely other states farther afield would also join in, sooner or later. More interesting is who the hold-outs would be (AZ and TX jump to mind; less sure about how the Midwest or Eastern US would go).
