Nobody mentions the fact that Arnold became governator in a neocon funded coup in 2003.

Neocons convinced California voters that Governor Gray Davis needed to be recalled even though Davis had contained the 2000-2001 Enron power price manipulation assault better than Arnold or any previous governor would have. As bad as the 2000 "energy crisis" was for California and several other states, it would have been worse if Davis had not taken the action he did.

Californians not only voted for the recall, they actually elected Arnold in 2006.

Pigs will be pigs, az.

And he IS made of plastic. Or is it carbon fiber, or titanium? Didn't you see Terminator? And all the sequels?

They should have little farms at all the schools where the kids can learn how to grow food and raise animals. They could be raising most of the food they eat in school lunches, composting all the stuff they don't eat. This would be a good way to save money and the kids would be learning something useful.

But cutting programs for sick people is inexcusable. So they need to legalize cannabis cultivation, 100%. No strings attached.

I went back to my old school where we used to have a quarter acre horticulture farm. I loved horticulture! It was my favorite class. It was the thing I was most looking forward to seeing. When we topped the crest of the hill and looked, the little school farm was covered in portable classrooms.

I was so bummed that we kept on going without stopping.

Azjoe. . . I think it is unconscionable that CA lawmakers are so willing to patch their budget on the backs of the poor and disabled. . . but you make it sound like CA just slashed the state-funded supplement to the federal Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program by $200 a month. The simple truth is that CA has reduced its supplement to the federal SSI payment by a total of $40.

$40 is a lot of money to the disabled and the elderly poor who have to rely on Supplemental Security Income (SSI) . . . but there is quite a significant difference between a $40 reduction and the scaremongering implication of $200.

And consider this. Many people who rely on SSI (which supplements Social Security payments for people who earned such low incomes when they were able to work -- remember, we are talking about disabled and retired seniors, people unable to participate in the economy through no fault of their own) in CA are also likely to live in subsidized or affordable housing. Not all of them, of course, but many. Everyone in CA who does rely on SSI, who just got their income reduced by $40 a month, can, in turn, have their rent contribution under any subsidized program. It still ends up being a reduction in income. . . but all together, IF this person has some kind of housing assistance, the reduction comes to, in real out of pocket change, about $20.

And yes, $20 is a lot of money. $20 buys a monthly transit pass in Alameda County (Berkeley and Oakland are in Alameda, a bus pass for seniors and disabled is a great bargain). $20 can mean food on the last few days of the month.

Things are grim for poor people, in CA and everywhere, but you do not help the dialogue, azjoe, by making it sound even uglier than it really is.

And your personally derogatory comments about Arnold? They are uncalled for. They do not make a positive contribution to the discussion and they undermine your point.

When I first heard about the CA cut to the CA contribution to the federal SSI payment, I was angry. I reiterate that I think it is hideous to take away form the poorest and most vulnerable citizens (disabled and elderly poor). but then I started to think this: millions of people are hurting. Millions. compared to a low-wage parent struggling to feed a kid or two, and cloth them, without health insurance, people who might have lost their jobs, people doubling and tripling up with friends and relatives and struggling day and night to stay afloat. . . maybe it isn't completely awful that poor disabled people have to take a small hit along with many millions of others.

things are going to get uglier before they get better. for instance, there will not be the automatic, annual cost-of-living increase in social security checks come next january. . . . for most people relying on social security, the cost-of-living adjustment is very small amounts of money but when you are that poor, a few dollars means a lot. But inflation is real. Food costs keep going up. Utilities rise in cost.

AAAAAArnold's god is Ronald Reagan. His kind will be preaching Friedmanism with his last vile breath. A member of the Kennedy Clan, he won't have to worry about rent or food.

acuera, I like your attitude. You don't just regurgitate the problems, you offer solutions. Your fresh insights are welcome like a cool rain after a heat wave.

Please keep it up. We need wise "elders" to show us how to throw stones.

I never thought I would say this, but I see no point in voting any more, especially at the national level. There are a FEW decent politicians in congress but the vast majority are completely corrupted by the flow of lobbyists dollars. This makes the few that are trying to do the peoples business completely impotent. (Kucinich and Bernie Sanders come to mind as the small minority that are trying to do right by the average Joe/Jane).

Obama was supposed to be for change and hope. I was excited about him becoming president but I now doubt you will see any fundamental changes in anything. There are just too many crooks in congress and a corporate press that has no interest at even attempting to hold them accountable.

And may I add here the "Wonderful" too party system we have in this country completely sucks. We need more real parties, probably at least four. With the system we have now if you have a democratic politician that is a complete boob that means if you want to throw the bum out you have to vote for a Republican. Now there's a choice, a boob or a corporate whore.

I am poor. I have voted in every single election that I have ever been eligible to vote in, even those almost unnoticed municipal elections that sometimes pop up. Isn't it amazing that there are elections that people, like, hardly notice?!!

Not me. I have voted and voted. I have written letters. Gone to hearings. Lobbies at my state legislature (although not in the state I currently live in).

I have decided that it is meaningless for me to participate in anything even remotely connected to public discourse. My ideas do not matter to the people with the power to shape this culture. For-profit corporations have bought 'the people' out. This is not only true in USA, it is true just about everywhere on the planet. There are a few tiny pockets that have, thus far, escaped the corporate dominator culture.

Capitalism is going to have to collapse, with really ugly chaos ensuing. When our systems begin to completely fail, I predict that things will get uglier . . and then, only because of mass suffering, things will start to get better. This will not happen in my lifetime. Nor my grandchildren's lifetimes.

I am only going to focus on being happy. I can't control anything except my own personal choice to be happy in each moment. I want to be a good person, to not step on other toes, to take only what I need to get by. .. and lay low.

I see an unfamiliar tone cropping up in the commondreams.org discussions lately. This used to be a place of very civil discourse, and reasoned discourse but more and more people seem to be flailing in their anger and suffering. People make uninformed declarations (such as the azjoe who made it sound like CA reduced SSI payments by $200 when, in fact, CA SSI supplement has been reduced by $40. . . this kind in inflammatory statements serve no good purpose. . . except, maybe, to inflame. . . )

He got "elected" like any other person who gains a high-level office in our country. Through a corrupt election and party system that makes the choices for us. The lies and narratives perpetuated by the corporate mainstream media help out quite a lot as well, an integral part of the whole process. Most people lack even a basic education in civics and democratic theory, so they don't even know their interest are being undermined until it is too late. All the more reason to slash education budgets, it is win win situation.

Schwarzendikker is just one example of the viral systemic corruption, there are hundreds more just like him, both D and R. He is unique in that: he can barely speak English, his father was a member of the Nazi party in Austria. Even ol Ronny Ray-gun was a B movie actor

The modern democratic socialist movement takes its ideas from many sources, including Marx. But it has evolved, and continues to do so. Combine social policies that are as non-authoritarian as possible with economic ones that prevent a too top-heavy distribution of wealth, and you have the gist of it.

Abstractedaway - excellent voicing of the rage I feel for the complete disregard of the intentions of the US Constitution.

I live in South Dakota, a state with only one rep to Congress - a Bluedawg Democrat, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin. Prior to yesterday's vote to spend $106 billion on the war there was ZIP coverage in the local press (Rapid City Journal). Today however there was a small column on page 6 saying the Supplemental Spending Bill had passed along "party" lines. How she voted or why was not even mentioned! WTF? Not to mention that the bill included $5 Billion to be funneled through the IMF to bail out big-ass Euro banks.

An entire state and absolutely no dialogue on continued funding of war. Interesting time.

Sioux Rose

ABSTRACT: Excellent post.

It's going to take an earthquake.

Californians voted for Reagan TWICE for governor and he was the one who started the ruination of their economy which led to the taxpayers' revolt. It appears no one ever caught on to that. When I saw it happening I thought OMIGOD. This man can be elected president and he will do the same to the entire country. Was and did.

And from that lesson we have learned - nothing.

When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson

"how the good citizens of California could vote this man into office"

that would assume we have a democratic process that offers real choice, sadly that is not the case. The whole recall of Gov. Davis was a set-up and a sham anyway.

(1)order a 1% pay cut for all county and state employees.

Why not a 1% pay cut for everyone in California, not just government employees? The 1% cut would be forwarded by all employers, including the state, to the "bail out California" fund.

Open your eyes.

Beside the orgy of gluttony -- which is sure there, no doubt; you're stone right about it -- the very poor pull their cardboard together, hollow their places in the sand, sleep in the urine and bugs under the freeway passes and in the thicker plants by the offramps.

You can find them near the beaches because it is less cold in the wee hours when the ground chills them makes them shake. They pull what they find of garments around them and try to sleep during the day, shaking while the kids step around them in shirtsleeves because even gentle weather gets cold when one has not eaten.

Then let's think of the immigrants laying like cordwood until 5 or 6 am, when the labor pool opens, or maybe 8 or 9, when the repo folks may come around their properties.

If the water has been turned off and no one has the sense to take a wrench to the key, the smell is another good reason for leaving for a few hours. Usually the fleas are anyway.

There to scoop up the waste? Did you mean metaphorical waste or literal waste? I suppose it partly works either way.

Then we have the longterm working poor. When Americans and Europeans visit L.A., they don't spend much time in Boyle Heights or Cudahy or wandering up and down Slauson or Central Avenues or hanging with the people set on the street when the hospital closes.

It has been a while, but I remember the garbage in the gutters. The garbage I most easily identified was literal. It might have some value for someone more concerned with starvation than infection, but I suspect this is not what you meant, is it?

California has been 47th in per capita spending on education. Schwarzenegger wants to cut another %20. No, I see no reason to blame that on folks from Mississippi or Michigan. That was primarily the decision of a California electorate made largely of people who arrived in one or another gold rush.

But the students did not vote in '78. The teachers in '78 did not back Jarvis. The poor in California don't vote; most don't speak English. By and large, the people who backed Jarvis and the Governator and the rest are the ones who have been slinging that capital around. The ones who will be out in the cold are the ones you seem to suggest should live from the (probably metaphorical) waste in the gutters.

Still bizarre? Or are we getting more familiar?

...and then there is Proposition Hate! That should be enough to drive all the honest people out of California. Maybe it will be like the 1930's except the caravans will be moving North, East and South. The Fat Cat Republicans can pick their own damn Grapes of Wrath.

Yes. This is the fruit of Prop 13.
But, also, nothing is worse than the 2/3rds supermajority California legislators must develop before they can raise taxes. Thats like telling 2/3rds of the state, 'your vote doesn't count'. Californians consistently vote Democrats into the state legislature, but it doesn't matter, as long as 1/3rd of the legislature is GOP they can't raise taxes.

California is in trouble because its no longer a democracy and hasn't been one for 30 years. The State GOP did that to California, and they'd like to do the same thing to the Federal Government. When I think of how profoundly un-American the CA state GOP is and has been for 30 years, willing to destroy the bedrock principle of any democracy (that, on the subject of finance, majority rules), it makes me sick. Any party that can develop such a casual relationship with the concept of 'democracy' should be banned, as the communist party is banned presently.

You can mess with my state. But, if you mess with my democracy I'm going to hunt you down! The california state GOP should be banned.