Slashing Salaries, While Pimping for a $9.3 Billion Water Bond

[ensho]

http://counterpunch.com/bacher08022008.html


Schwarzengger's Water Empire


Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger must live in a parallel universe devoid of logic, rationality, critical thinking and accountability, based on his latest contradictory actions at the State Capitol.

The same Governor who is working relentlessly to pass a budget-busting $9.3 billlion water bond, with absolutely no sense of irony, yesterday issued an executive order slashing the salaries of 200,000 state workers to the federal minimum wage of $6.55 per hour and immediately laying off 20,000 temporary workers until California passes a budget.

“Today I am exercising my executive authority to avoid a full-blown crisis and keep our state moving forward,” Governor Schwarzenegger said. “This is not an action I take lightly, but we do not have a budget, and as Governor, I have a responsibility to make sure our state has enough money to pay its bills.”

Schwarzenegger, the worst ever Governor for fish and wildlife in California history, is apparently one of the most ruthless in the way he treats the state's workers, including DFG staff. An S.S. officer's son who became a body builder and then a Hollywood "action hero,"

Schwarzenegger apparently wants to run California like a totalitarian state. Agency staff are routinely bullied and those who disagree with his disastrous environmental policies are pressured into resigning.

-snip-

I ask Schwarzenegger how he can cut salaries and jobs, due to a budget shortfall of $15.2 billion, while he is campaigning for a proposal that would indebt the state for another $9.3 billion? Is Schwarzenegger out of his mind?

-snip-

"I understand that this will affect people at a time when they are already struggling and so I want to apologize to all the state employees for having to do that," said Schwarzenegger. "When I sign this order thousands of pink slips will start going out across the state. And I'm also cancelling all overtime, except for public safety and 24-hour medical care and I'm ordering also a hiring freeze. And, effective for the August payroll, tens of thousands of state employees will be paid the federal minimum wage until a budget is passed and then, of course, they will get reimbursed their salaries."

If there ever was a governor that really needed to be recalled, it's Arnold Schwarzenegger. His legacy to date includes the Prospect Island Fish kill, the closure of ocean and Central Valley river salmon fisheries, the collapse of the California Delta food chain, the gutting of the California Department of Fish and Game and repeated breaking of federal and state environmental laws. What will it take to get the people to rise up and get him removed from office like was done to Governor Gray Davis?
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between climate change and Arnold, Calif. is falling apart. similar to whats happening in Australia and New Zealand. (not the Arnold part but the climate change)

[tularetom]

1. I'm ready to sign the recall petition

Hell, I'll circulate them.

[drmeow]

2. I would think that cutting people's salaries

like that (it sounds like it is a temporary thing - that they will get back pay when a budget is passed - is a direct violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. It may even be against the FLSA if they are permanent cuts.

[tjwash]

3. Actually, you can blame the slashing salaries part on the California voters.

We had a chance in 2006 to add several billion to our state budget with prop 87 put up to a vote in the general public. The problem was it **gasp** taxed the obscene amounts of profits that oil companies are making, and closed all of the loopholes that the greedy bastards were using.

They couldn't have any of that...they spent nearly $100 million advertising, op-ed astroturfing, and hired the best talk radio hosts to convince California voters that collective suicide is a good idea. Unfortunately, they were successful. They were able to hammer home how horrible it would be if the oil companies had to actually pay taxes on the oil that they are sucking out of our ground for free and selling back to us at an enormous profit.

In the end, the dumb-assed bleating sheep that are the cali voters cut their own collective throats by voting it down. The budget cuts are just the end result of all that mess. Can't fault the people who have to make the budget, when they have to cut money to attempt to balance it out.

On the water thing...we don't get the rainfall that Florida does. We have to pay for water out here. If you wanna float us 20 billion that we don't have to pay back so that we can build desalinization plants all through so-cal, send it over. We'll wait.

[drmeow]

4. Don't forget the damage

Prop 13 did 30 years ago.

[tjwash]

6. Prop 13 did an immenses amount of damage.

To this day, I know a slew of people living in their paid off prop 13 houses, and are absolutely smug and proud about having to pay hardly any property tax.

They are the first to complain about our falling apart roads, medi-cal sucking so bad, and the fucked up state of their grandchildren's schools. Assholes always blame it on liberals too, when they themselves are the biggest at fault for it. Go figure...

[A HERETIC I AM]

5. Re: rainfall in California vs Florida...

I lived in SoCal for a while and I am currently in SW Fla. Yes, technically Florida is Tropical and we have a rainy season (It's on now) but we have had a prolonged drought as well. Remember hearing about Lake Okeechobee burning? The water level was so low and for so long, the lakebed caught on fire and burned for weeks. They only got it put out a few weeks ago.

Most drinking water around here is well water (as opposed to the water you drink in California which is, for the most part, Sierra Snowmelt) but when the water table gets low, restrictions are imposed, often severe ones.

[tjwash]

7. Sierra snowmelt helps in No-Cal...doesn't do thing for So-Cal.

So-cal gets most of it's water from the Colorado river out of state, and we have to pay the a huge amount not just for the water itself, but upkeep on pumping it hundreds of miles to our reservoirs. If No-Cal was it's own state, they would not even need to pipe in a majority of it's water.

Believe me, that's an incredibly sore subject to a lot of northern Cal residents as well. I used to do power and utility consulting, and if you break down the PG and E bill, for example....there is a DWR Bond charge. No-cal utility customers are paying off the last bond for water they mostly don't use, for So-Cals water.

Of course if they would just push through desalinization that would cure a majority of it, but the oil and energy lobbies keep killing it before it even gets to the state senate.

[Thothmes]

8. What is the California Legislature

Doint to fix the problem?