State of Arnold's State.

The Governor did a brilliant job of framing the issues as everyone's problem except his. He still does not accept the fact that he has done little to solve the problem other than to hold news conferences about an un-needed peripheral canal and veto bills.

The problem is that he is right. Sacramento is mired in an ideological war that may prove to be as intractable as the real war going on in Gaza. We have all seen the problems that are caused when politicians hold a hard line to their ideologies. That is governing in the manner of George Bush whose unwavering adherence to his outdated principles are the cause of most of the problems this country now faces. That is not an example for anyone to emulate.

Thankfully, Schwarzenegger kept his word to not give a list of programs. He replaced that with a list of "wants" that he said everyone had. I am not sure how a millionaire actor / real-estate developer can think he knows what the average person wants, but he gave it a try and some of them are OK. Clean air, water to drink and education are apple pie and motherhood for any politician.

What he neglected to mention is that we want those not only for ourselves, but for our children and grandchildren.. These are the blessings of liberty that our constitution would secure for ourselves and our posterity. We must solve this problem now so that it is not a
burden to our grand children in any way... not through the cost of our fiscal irresponsibility nor from the actions that we did not take.

I am amazed that, in the face of a crisis of their own making, our state legislature has accepted a pay raise and continues to draw per diem payments even if they are not even in Sacramento. While the amount may be small, the symbolism of this is that Bass and Sternberg still don't get it. Somehow, they act as if they are not like the rest of us.

And in all of this, he failed to call attention to the fact that his own party has been the obstruction to any resolution with their perceived goal of whittling government down to the size of a pocket handkerchief and their mantra of No New Taxes. If we were to make the upper 10% of the citizens of this state pay the same percentage of their income as tax that the bottom 10% does, we would have a manageable deficit problem.