California has a budget ... sort of

So California has a budget. Good for us. Now maybe the Legislature can get on with writing laws that will prevent the likes of Nadya Suleman from happening again in our fair state.

This will not be a rant about Octomom today. I’m still writing about her on Trials & Tribulations and the traffic to that site increases whenever I put something up about that wackjob. Today’s rant is the proposed budget that Ah-nold will sign today.

First let me say I think we’d be in worse shape if Gray David had been retained in office. Unlike many, I don’t hate the Governator and honestly would like to see him run for a Senate seat (anything is better than Barbara Boxer or Dianne Feinstein!). Because I lean toward being a moderate (pro-choice and pro-stem cell research), I have no problems with his efforts to work with the dems and do what he feels is best for our state. (Though if a candidate is pro-choice or not pro-choice, that stance all alone is not enough to make me vote or not vote for him or her. There are bigger issues we must deal with here on Earth. We will all face God someday and he will ultimately tell us which point of view was right or wrong.)

So there are four temporary tax hikes that we get to vote on in May. Should I do the pure Republican thing and vote against them, or bite the bullet and perhaps admit we’ve got to raise revenues somehow?

I approve the spending cuts but they aren’t enough. I read nothing about “entitlement” cuts to illegals. So they will continue to come here to get their dialysis and cancer treatment on our dime.

The Sacramento Repubs should have insisted on billing the federal government for those services, and should insist that we want a secure border. Period. Hey, it’s sort of unrelated to a budget package, but consider it pork. Come on, how many bills have been written that have utterly unrelated pork attached to it? Heck even this does—the open primary concept pushed by Sen. Abel Maldonado.

Today the dems are crying foul and not fair. Hey, you all like your pork? About time a Republican does the same back to you. Congratulations Senator Maldonado. The chairman of the California Democratic Party, Art Torres, said what Maldonado did was “extortion.”

About time a Repub play your game, Torres.

Cuts in education are necessary simply because there is so much waste in the system in the first place. Fees for community colleges and state universities are still affordable, and provided an individual or his family has not overextended him or herself credit-wise, there is education money.

Which reminds me, there will be problems down the road in education borrowing with all of the foreclosures and walk-aways. It will become more difficult for those families to obtain student loans, but look at it this way: a student loan is no different from a car loan or a mortgage. You gotta be able to pay it back.

I’m not sure which way I will vote in May. An increase in the state sales tax is at least an equitable way to raise taxes—those who buy more pay more. Those who worry about another penny on every dollar probably shouldn’t be buying “it” anyway.

Don’t even get me started on Obama’s “stimulus package.” What a crock of crap!