Come into the FlashReport fortune telling booth, won’t you? No, we won’t be throwing the bones or pulling out the tarot cards this morning. This morning we’ll use the FR crystal ball!
Gather round and we’ll gaze into its depths…
“I see… Chronic overspending…. I see… Tax rates that are some of the highest in the nation… I see… Poor economic times and Californians who can’t afford to pay higher taxes… I hear… Doublespeak where reductions in projected increases are called decreases… I see… Liberal ideologues in the legislation who see the redistribution of wealth in society by government as some sort of religious calling… I see… Democrat lawmakers scratching their heads, trying to figure out how to keep state government big and fat… I see… Republicans unified against seeing more shameless spending and tax increases that push California into a recession… I see sham negotiations taking place where no meaningful resolution takes place because Democrats refuse to put up real spending cuts and a real and limiting spending cap proposal forward… I see… A group of retiring Republican legislators who will have never violated their pledge to oppose tax increases… Finally… I see a dozen liberal newspaper writers penning stories that once again don’t clearly show readers exactly how much state spending has ballooned over the past five years…”
It’s always tough to look into the crystal ball because it doesn’t always show us a pretty picture. But the images I saw this morning were very clear.
There is no “deal” between Democrats and Republicans that will lead to the passage of any meaningful legislation today. At some point, legislative Democrats will realize that there is simply no way to solve our state’s fiscal woes without a solution that includes the voters setting a hard, permanent ceiling to the annual growth in state spending. That hasn’t happened yet… Perhaps next session…
On a separate note – avid, long-time readers of political news probably already know this – but this is the quietest time of the two-year election cycle for political news articles. Not only is the election over, but many of the reporters who worked a lot of extra overtime hours covering the campaigns seem to trade that off by writing less during the holiday season after it’s all over.
The volume of articles being as low as it is means that our team doesn’t have to start work as early as usual, and it means that it won’t take you as long to cull through the available articles. Fear not, though. The FlashReport will continue its daily compilation of relevant items on California political news all the way up and including the Friday before Christmas. We’ll take our annual holiday break from the 20th of December through the 1st of January.
Care to read comments, or make your own about today’s Daily Commentary?
Just click here to go to the FR Weblog, where this Commentary has its own blog post, and where you can read and make comments.