Bait and switch number one: Today, California's preparing to constitutionally limit spending in order to build up a rainy day fund, which I assume will be a juicy target for future tax cutters.
Bait and switch number two: Another amendment will securitize the lottery... Michael Perelman
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Thanks for putting this up. I've been elsewhere, not paying attention to the absurdity of California politics. Just to add to the craziness of Jerry Brown during the 70s, he turned fiscal conservative during a period when the state's big cities services were breaking down and cutting back, as the state's manufacturing was imploding like those in the Midwest and East Coast. The public schools were coming apart, crowding, etc, ... the richer mostly white suburbs were going strong. Meanwhile large corporations were moving their operations out to new industrial parks even further out of urban areas to cheaper land. Commercial and residential real estate prices climbed in an inflationary spiral.
The whole SF bay area was turning from a blue collar shipping, manufacturing, and transportation hub, into the white collar office complex for finance, business services and giant legal firms.
It is interesting to think back and consider the neoliberal wave that went through cities from east to west, say from London to New York to Chicago, Philly, then west to SF and LA and off through the Pacific Rim.
The Obama administration and Congress seem to be going through the same general plan, feed finance, starve manufacturing and production.
In Andy's words: ``Why make a product when you can make dollars?'' Or as Joanna put it, it's capitalism without going through the production cycle. Just hand the money to the rich and skip the pretense they produce anything.
I suppose that's fine, but meanwhile what are guys like me supposed to do for work? A lot of families in Michigan are asking themselves the same questions. Occupy the plants dummy. As far as I can tell plant occupation was the reaction in Ireland and is being talked up in Canada. I am interested to see how far that idea travels around the world.
It seems the US auto workers are still stuck in the dream that somebody will help them.
Hey, I am getting my stimulus package through SS from the US Treasury, a big $250 payment at the end of May. You bet I am going to spend it paying down credit card debit. When the tax return check comes through in about June, that's where that's going. Tax and spend, tax and spend.
In April the credit card company sent me an notice they were upping my rate by 4%. I called up and got them to drop the increase. It turned that Congress was debating some bill the same week.
I take it from this little example that the credit industry is happy to lend, it is just they want extra blood to do so. Meanwhile stopping by my old job, the place has laid off a couple of more people and cut others to part time. Those that remain full time took another pay cut.
CG