“Rich” depends on where you are standing. From the wrong side of $10k, $50k seems fabulously wealthy to me. $50k in California is enough to not worry about the basics, and not having to worry about food, shelter and healthcare is enough to make a huge difference in one’s political views.
I hear this complaint often regarding CA politics, this idea that spending it out of control, outrageous, etc. I’m from Indiana and I’d appreciate it if someone could explain to me what the spending is on, how it’s outrageous, and how it corrolates with California’s budget needs, i.e. what is absolutely uncuttable? I’m simply ignorant on the issue. Thanks.
Maybe the debate is whether the people that voted for Schwarzenegger will be disappointed if he becomes a good governor? My opinion is that they’ll be pleased.
Not according to his promises:
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He won’t cut education spendng, which takes up 40% of the budget.
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He won’t raise taxes.
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He has promised to cut the car tax. The problem here is that all car tax money goes to local governments in CA, and there are mandates requiring that a certain hunk of the budget must go to local governments.
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A large amount of the budget can’t be touched, as it is spending mandated by CA voters in various propositions.
In short, he’s fairly well backed himself into a corner.
I think the point of the OP is that lissener hopes Arnold ends up a good governor – in the sense that he is willing to make the painful decisions needed to help restore the state’s financial problems – and disappoints his supporters by not just being a flashy big-name actor who won’t make their lives inconvenient. E.g., “I hope Arnold shows true leadership, instead of populist fluff.”
Unfortunately, as Governor Quinn points out, Schwarzenegger’s campaign has already backed him into a bit of a corner; it’s precisely because of those points that I was disappointed that he didn’t give details of his gubernatorial plans beforehand. Short of finding several billion under a sofa cushion, I think he might make a bad situation even worse.
Some SDMBers apparently don’t ask more of a candidate than whether or not he’s got that little “Republican” tag next to his candidate entry. :rolleyes:
To an outsider, it seems clear that Arnie simply promised everything to everybody - he’s going to sort out the deficit without significantly cutting spending or raising taxes. He’s either a political and financial genius or an arrogant shithead who thinks that these problems are solved with vague promises of “leadership”. Way to live up to the flakey stereotype, California.
I was opposed to the recall and didn’t vote for Arnold.
However, he is now the governor of my state. I really hope that he does an incredible job, lives up to his campaign promises, gets us out of our horrible financial situation without raising taxes and his social policies are at least in the same ballpark as mine.
It’s not about whether I think he has a reasonable chance of doing all those things, but that’s what he said that he’d do and I sincerely want him to succeed - it would take an incredibly short-sighted CA resident to want Arnold to screw things up even worse for all of us, just so they could trumpet “I told you so!”
Well, there are other ways to raise money. He could start a restaurant chain featuring famous Californians…
Arnold is not going to make the famous $38B deficit disapear overnight. Only an idiot would expect that of him. I’ll be happy if he can cut some waste and keep spending growth lower than the growth of the economy, thereby getting the state to pay down the deficit over the next 7 years (assuming he serves out the rest of this 3-year term plus the next 4-year term). Unless the economy stays in the absolute dumper for that time period, it really shouldn’t be hard to do. The key is controlling the growth of spending.
And he has enough personal charisma and enough of an election mandate to convince the people of this state that “cutting the rate of growth” of spending isn’t going to mean the end of the world.