Sometimes, I really find myself sitting here saying…What the ever-livin’ @*^&@*?
Maybe it’s just that I haven’t had my coffee yet. Perhaps this will make sense after I’ve had some caffeine.
Help me out here, people.
Our Golden State is, once again!, in the throes of a budget crisis. Not only are we a tad short of what we need to fund all our stuff (our state motto really should be: Living Above Your Means Is Beautiful), but our beloved representatives can’t get their collective @*^& together and put together a budget that at least gets cash flowing again.
So naturally…the solution would be…to tell State employees that they’re taking a haircut in the paycheck department down to the Federal minimum wage of $6.55 (which in California wouldn’t allow a guy with five roommates to afford a one bedroom apartment, for crap’s sake) (OK, I may be exaggerating just a tad…he’d only need four roommates…) until such time as the budget is passed?!
Oh yes. This is one of the things Ah-nold proposes. It’ll save $1B a month!
Maybe…if I stirred a little acid into my coffee…this would make sense?
Say. I’ve got another idea.
How about if our representatives take a daily pay hit for each day the budget is not passed? $1,000 shaved off their annual take for each day they don’t get their crap together sounds good to me. Let’s see, each one of them would have lost $24,000 this year already! What are there, 120 of them jostling up there? I just saved the state $2,880,000! AND @*^&@ING COUNTING!!
And this before I’ve even had my coffee, folks!
Sigh.
I’m gonna go get my coffee now. Maybe I’m still asleep. Yeah. That’s gotta be it. Caffeine will fix this.
And if that doesn’t, maybe squeezing my eyes shut, ramming my fingers in my ears and screaming, “LA LA LA LA LA!” will.
And if that doesn’t…I may have to pen a sternly worded Letter of {SMACK! DOWN!} to Ah-nold and my beloved leaders up there in the Assembly and Senate.
Heh. Sending furious emails to 121 people. “FEAR MY SPAM OF OUTRAGE! FEAR IT!!!!!!!”
Yeah. Coffee. NOW.
…what a helluva thing to wake up to this morning…{grumble ‘hey thanks for working for the Golden State – here’s your paycut! Don’t worry, we’ll catch you up LATER…’ grumble SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!!!}
Recipe Tuesday: Hoisin Chicken Tray Bake
3 days ago
11 comments:
Tama - you get this on the ballot as a proposition and I'll vote for it as will (almost) every state employee.
go for it. maybe after they have their coffee they'll think 'dude, there's an idea!' (tho more likely they'll think 'wow, hope nobody else ever thinks up a plan like this, it could actually cost us money')
I think it's just disgusting that they are willing to slice-n-dice the 'little guy' state employee but they have the cajones to pick up and cash their own paychecks. Where else, I ask you, would you be able to NOT do your job and get PAID for it?
As a resident and employee of the State of Ill and our Governor Stoo-Pid, I feel your pain. AFAIK we're about a week away from being in the same place for the Nth year in a row.
(found your blog via the Yarn Harlot)
Well said!
I looked it up - in California, state senators and representatives are paid an annual salary of $110,880.
Looks like you could balance the budget pretty easily right there.
One year in New York the legislature was dilly-dallying with the budget, having little arguments about whether this park was more important than that museum, and "you didn't vote for our street repair so I'm not voting for your new port," and the usual nonsense, when the state Treasury Department announced that since there was no budget it would not be possible to mail all the state tax refunds. (This was in the days before the internet). They couldn't afford the stamps, it seems.
The budget was passed in two days.
But I really, really like the idea of taking excess money from the legislators.
Move to Canada. It's less painful than ramming your fingers in your ears.
I've often thought that we'd be better served by paying them MORE as long as they limited their sessions to 60 days a year ... and then deducting heavily for every day over the 60 days that they stay in session. We only have a part-time legislature here in GA and they still manage to mung things up well enough. And dit doesn;t seem to matter which party is in power ...
Here's what the ever so brilliant governor of Illinois proposed a few years ago. All state employees should work a day without pay. Um... what?!? When asked if he would do the same his answer was, "No."
He also lives upstate and refuses to move to the state capitol and live in the Governor's mansion that is paid for with tax money. His excuse? His family didn't want to move and he can just fly away to the capitol in a helicopter whenever he wants. A helicopter paid for with tax money. And all the while, the mansion sits there, fully staffed, heated/air conditioned, etc. Shouldn't he have considered the fact that being elected might require a relocation of some sort BEFORE he ran for office?
He also got rid of all of the Captains that worked in our prisons after hiring a crazy number of deputy directors who don't actually work in the prisons but make decisions on how the prisons should be run. Many have never even seen the inside of a prison. When he was signing the papers that would do away with all of the Captains spots and result in these people either losing their jobs or being hired back as officers if the were lucky (a huge step back for them) he was stunned to find out that Captains were uniformed staff who actually interacted with inmates and did more than wear a suit and push a pencil all day.
I'll bet my guvner would enjoy a day at the circus with your guvner.
Yay, when I saw that I too had a moment of WTF!!!!!!!!!!!? I think it's part of his chess game and will force the legislature to go along with his desired cuts to Medi Cal. Fine! You don't want to cut health care, then I'll cut wages. Check! I'm waiting to see what the next move from the legislature will be and who will ultimately get Check-mate.
I heard on the news a few months back that one proposal was to cut legislature's pay but the oversight committee found that to be unconstitional. They didn't get their raise, though. So you CAN'T cut the pay of the idiots who got us into this mess, but you CAN cut the pay of the people who work for them?
WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?
Post a Comment