Cynthia McCune's Library tagged "budget cuts" →  View Popular

Without jobs, you don’t have a genuine recovery.

Another promising approach is substantially increased federal aid to state and local governments, above and beyond what is already occurring. Local governments from one coast to the other are facing budget meltdowns and are slashing services and personnel.

The lessons of the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s are right in front of us, ready to be studied, analyzed, updated and applied to the present-day needs of the country.

If we’re serious about getting the U.S. back on track economically, we will have to take our heads out of the sand at some point with regard to the nation’s infrastructure. America has to be rebuilt, modernized and re-energized — from its water and sewer systems to its schools to the smart grid and the alternative energy sources that so many are talking about and beyond. That’s where the jobs are for the long term, and that’s the only route to a truly flourishing future.

Compounding this problem is California's notorious initiative process, which allows voters to bypass the Legislature

it has gone out of control, abused by powerful interests who hire people to collect signatures and ram through bills that no ordinary citizen can be expected to comprehend

the most momentous initiative was Prop. 13, which slashed property taxes. By voting for Prop. 13, while not demanding a reduction in public services, Californians were in effect saying they wanted to have it all: low taxes and social services, subsidized public education, infrastructure and the other things provided by government.

This was, in effect, a mass outbreak of cognitive dissonance, an up-yours delivered to government with the public's left hand, while its right hand reached out for Sacramento's largesse. Now, 31 years later, the bill has finally come due. There is no free lunch. If you want good roads, parks, decent schools (California's schools, once the best in the nation, are now among the worst) and adequate social services, you have to pay for them.

Why can't California do politics as well as it does technology, biotech, movies, music and social justice movements?

Beyond the state's dysfunctional system, the short answer is the rise of the hard-right GOP. Pushed far to the right by ideologues like Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Grover Norquist and their ilk, California Republican lawmakers have staked out an absolutist line against taxes that makes governance nearly impossible. Lawmakers who believe and act on Reagan's famous line that "government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem," are walking oxymorons. Why expect anti-government Republican legislators to resolve a budget crisis when that crisis will result in their goal: the destruction of government? The floundering Governator may not be an extremist, but he remains in thrall to the members of his party who are.

“The trend line is states disinvesting in higher education.”

Public universities everywhere are bracing for deep cuts in next year’s budgets, but the federal stimulus package, providing billions for education and billions more for research, should ease the problem somewhat.

in a time of shrinking state budgets, undergraduates at public universities will most likely pay the price in higher tuition, larger classes and less interaction with tenured professors. So it is a real question how many public research universities the nation can afford, and what share of resources should go to less expensive forms of education, like community colleges.

California’s three-tier higher-education system, which serves 3.3 million students, almost 20 percent of the nation’s college population, is among the hardest hit by the current recession. This year, with hundreds of millions of dollars removed from their budgets, both the California State University system and the University of California are being forced to shrink their enrollment.

Many blame the Legislature for short-sightedness in failing to support the university when it plays such a key role in the state’s economy and residents’ upward mobility.