California - Did We Budget For This?

And Now For: Your California Legislature

That can’t pass a budget. California, home to the Steve’s (Wozniak and Jobs), birthplace of Google, Stanford, UCLA and UC Berkeley, can’t pass a budget. We have Hollywood, Napa, at least part of Tahoe, Silicon Valley and a really nifty bridge in San Francisco, but we can’t pass the budget.

California, arguably the best state in the union (especially for those of us born and raised here), has, also arguably, the worst legislature in history. It’s a budget guys, it’s not rocket science. Most of us learned how to do this when we moved out of our parent’s house. Hopefully not all of our representatives still live at home with mommy and daddy.

Sure they need a 2/3 vote to pass the budget, but how long does it take to get 2/3 of your friends to agree on what to do on a Friday night? An hour of playing phone tag? 20 minutes in person? Sure, 1/3 of your friends might not come out, but the rest of us all know that doing something is better than doing nothing, even if it doesn’t work out quite as planned. (And really, does anything ever work out quite as planned? Have you seen The Hangover? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1119646/ )

We don’t expect you to be perfect, but we do expect you to do something, like your job perhaps. So suck it up California legislature and pass the budget already! Or amend the constitution to get rid of that pesky 2/3 vote if it’s such a problem!

So what happens if the budget doesn’t pass by tomorrow (June 15th, due date for passage according to the state constitution http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/.const/.article_4)? Clearly, the state won’t drop off into the ocean. Although, if California became an island, the amount of beachfront property would double and maybe I could finally have the ocean view I always wanted, with the Vegas lights off in the distance. Perhaps we could have each of our state representatives and state senators turn to their colleagues on their left and give them the old, “You’re fired!” Whoever does the best Trump impression gets to keep their job, of course. Unless those old tricksters already extended the deadline when I wasn’t looking… Did they?

I don’t know when they would have had time as the San Francisco Chronicle so kindly pointed out; they’re busy up there in Sacramento. Doing things like, you know, making sure that juice sold under the name “Pomegranate” is really 100% pomegranate. Check out the hilariously tragic article by Juliet Williams “Debate for Calif lawmakers: Budget or blueberries?”