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The Taxpayer, of course! California is likely to issue IOUs to taxpayers who are due a refund this year. In other words, After taking the taxpayers’ money and holding it hostage for a year (and collecting the interest on it!), the state of California won’t even be returning the money that the law says they don’t own. If you’re a Californian, are you outraged yet?
And while California may have the worst budget problems, they’re not the only state facing credit problems. A whole host of states were requesting a Federal bailout just recently, including my current home state of Massachusetts.
Are you outraged yet? Don’t you wish we had a tax system that made sense, didn’t punish success, and was efficient and fair?

From the California Budget Project -
As the state’s economy continues to deteriorate, many low-and middle-income Californians are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet.Consequently, more Californians are turning to income support and related programs, such as Food Stamps, WIC, Healthy Families, MediCal, and CalWORKs for assistance.
Increased demand for public programs comes at a time when policymakers have proposed deep cuts to health and human services programs to close the state’s budget gap. However, prominent economists argue that carefully chosen tax increases are preferable to spending cuts during a recession because “steep budget cuts will exacerbate the economic downturn and harm vulnerable low- and moderate-income” families.
Read the full report click HERE

CNN has a story that broke my heart today concerning one of the families that lost their home in the California fires.  The Reyes family lost everything they had which is devastating enough…but their seven year old son Jonathan has autism.
Most autistic children have a toy or two that is their calming mechanism.  When they want to get away from the sensory overload of the world they have something they can plug into that calms them and helps them deal with things.  In Eli’s case, it’s “A Room with a Moose” and his handheld video games.  If we were suddenly lost all of those, Eli would have a tendency to act up more and have more tics.
In the case of Jonathan Reyes, his toy was Hot Wheels cars.  They searched the smoking ruins of their house and could not find any of his Hot Wheels cars.
This is from the story:
“The [...]

This is what I wrote last July:
My great fear is that, in California and elsewhere, the coalitions fighting against these restrictive ballot measures won’t reach out in any organized and systematic way to Latino voters. This may be a huge mistake, because, I assure you, the other side already is.

Last month, I reiterated my analysis:
Last summer my fear was that the “No on Prop. 8? movement would not reach out effectively to these groups, leaving them with no other channel of information than the steady stream of fear from intolerant zealots. I continue to have this fear. Poor and working-class immigrants and people of color are often ignored in political campaigns. It is not surprising, therefore, that they also tend to vote in lower numbers. In an ironic twist, the state of the economy and the campaign of Barack Obama are both contributing to a projected increase in these groups’ [...]

Hace unos días llegó a mis ojos una web interesante, se trata de la web de JAQK Cellers, desde esta bodega californiana nos proponen un producto que no se si será agradable al gusto pero si a la vista, tanto la web como el diseño de sus botellas, packs y merchandising es AMAZING, como dirían algunos. Jack, Ace, Queen and King, han usado para su imagen iconos y grafismos propios de la industria de los juegos de cartas americanos, fichas de casino, blackjack, etc…el resultado es a la vez original, atrevido y cuanto menos curioso, eso sin mencionar el cuidado que ponen en la limpieza de acabados y composición de sus gráficas.
En la web dicen:
“Play is good. In fact, it’s more than good. It’s important.
It allows us to forget the pressing business of the day and uncoil the nerves. To breathe. To laugh—and that has a [...]

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
An inmate at Wasco State Prison in California has sued Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (I still giggle typing that) for medical negligence for $100,000.
The inmate had previously written and requested a transfer to another prison after contracting a disease known as “valley fever” because of the prison’s location .  This disease prompts its victims to start every sentence with “Like,…” and tease their bangs up with hairspray.  Actually, valley fever it is a real disease that is a fungal infection in the lungs prominent in the Southwest which produces flu-like symptoms and can in rare cases lead to death.  Ha!  You just learned something of substance from this stupid blog.
The inmate, Terry Alexander, claims he is now confined to a  “wheelchair for life” because of Schwarzenegger medical neglect in not approving the transfer.

“California is a fine place to live – if you happen to be an orange.”
(Fred Allen, American humorist)
I’ll link this observation to the sense of emptiness I preceived while staying for a while in Venice, Los Angeles (see picture above), a couple of years ago.
One of the social milieus I stumbled upon was this weird bunch of people who, while hoping to find a job in the entertainment industry, had this everybody-sleeping-with-everybody type of lifestyle who puzzled me because of its total nihilism and emptiness, or so it appeared to me.

Not that the writers that have lived in LA have greatly contributed to better this image of emptiness and … blankness, from Aldous Huxley, to Raymond Chandler (with his marvellouslly depressed Philip Marlowe) and the more recent James Ellroy (The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere etc.).
Fresh Idealism
But I also keep the most beautiful memoirs of San Francisco, northern California. I [...]

 
I'll refrain from a cheesy caption about being on the road to change…oops.
You’ll be without my musings for a few days, as I’m heading out to Nevada tomorrow morning to take part in the Obama-Biden campaign’s “Drive For Change.”
This program’s stated purpose is to get Californians who feel like they can’t make a difference in their own solidly blue state to drive out to Nevada for the weekend to work in a crucial swing state. I’ll be going door-to-door, trying to convince undecided voters to vote for Barack Obama on election day. It’s my first time working for a campaign of any kind, mostly because this is the first time I’ve ever been legitimately excited about a politician.
And here’s hoping the United States economy doesn’t completely collapse before I get a chance to play a few hands of blackjack. Don’t think I’m not seeing the irony of visiting Las Vegas on [...]

It’s finally SUNDAY!  I think a lot of us bloggers have a BBAW hangover this weekend.  So many posts to read, so many giveaways, so many awards and so much excitement!  It was a great week, put on by the tireless My Friend Amy, who did a phenomenal job putting it all together and keeping track of everything.  A round of applause for AMY!  (clap, clap, clap)

My BBAW giveaways will be ending this week too;  this one on Monday, and this one on Tuesday.  Hurry and enter if you haven’t already!
Fall has arrived here in Southern California. I used to love this time of year growing up in Michigan- back to school, sweater weather, fall colors, apple picking.  The change of seasons is more subtle in So. Cal. but when you’ve lived her awhile you start to notice small things.  We go from hot to warm, green to brown, and [...]

There are less than 50 days to go before November 4th, and Californians have a major role to play as we gear up for Election Day. 
Supporters like you have stepped up at office openings and events across the state to declare your support for Barack and take an active role in the campaign. But to win this November, we must continue building our organization across California and keep bringing folks into our grassroots movement — not just here, but all over the country. 
That’s why we need your help. As an Obama supporter in California, you can make a huge impact by traveling to Nevada to talk with voters about why Barack Obama and Joe Biden will bring the change we need. 
We have a real shot to win in our neighbor state Nevada, but the race is extremely close and you could make the difference. 
We are organizing a special trip for [...]