Brown Proposes $8.3 Billion in Cuts for California
Source: NYT
Struggling to contain mounting state budget shortfalls, Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday proposed $8.3 billion in spending cuts, including slashing state employees pay and spending on social programs and prisons. He warned that California would have to impose another $6 billion in cuts on public schools and higher education if voters fail to improve his initiative this fall to raise sales and income taxes.
Mr. Brown said the state was facing an estimated $15.7 billion shortfall, up from $9.2 billion in January. He blamed the worsening state budget situation on the slide in California’s economy, which has led to less revenues than he had projected just last year, and court decisions preventing the state from imposing cuts voted on this year.
“I don’t like making additional cuts, and I recognize the impact they have on Californians,” Mr. Brown said in releasing his budget plan. “They are difficult — but necessary — in order to get us back on firm fiscal footing until California fully recovers from the global economic recession.”
Even as he proposed cuts, Mr. Brown proposed a 16 percent increase in funding for public schools. But he said they were contingent on voters approving a quarter-cent hike in the sales tax and an income tax surcharge on wealthy voters this year, hardly a sure thing.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/us/brown-proposes-8-3-billion-in-cuts-for-california.html
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...and then we'll all see what life is like on the other side of the drain. Just as soon as the other shoe drops a JPM........
- K&R
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The profit mechanism creates established orders which constitute the survival and wealth for a few groups of people. The fact is that no matter how socially beneficial new advents may be, they will be viewed in hostility if they threaten an established financially-driven institution. Thus, abundance, sustainability and efficiency are the enemies of profit.
Today we use paper proclamations to denote a person's so-called 'rights.' And just like laws, they are culturally biased, artificial concoctions which attempt to solve recurring problems by simply declaring something with words on paper. Rights, in fact, have been invented to protect ourselves from the negative byproducts of the social system itself.
And once again instead of seeking a true solution to a problem, we invent these patches by way of paper proclamations in an attempt to resolve them. This does not work. It has never worked. There is really no such thing as an inalienable right outside of the culture in which it is assumed. We are making this up. Therefore liberties need to be inherent in a social system by design not alluded to ambiguously on paper.
In other words, declarations of laws and rights are actually an acknowledgment of the failures of the social design. There is no such thing as 'rights' - as the reference can be altered at will. ~Peter Joseph
What Was The Ultimate Cause Of JP Morgan's Big Derivative Bust? The Shocker - Ben Bernanke!!!