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Why doesn't the article explain the budgeting process and tell us the broad issues so we can understand why it's not likely to pass on time?

Like this:

Last year's budget was $80 billion or so.
The deficit is $20 billion or so.
So we have to cut about 25% from it
We have some constitutional requirements (such as the educational percentage mandated by one of our propositions) which make adjustments harder than they should be.
The money left is a huge battleground.

That would give people a better feel for the mess we're in than all these bland words. After all, a budget can be hard to pass in easy times.

I would really like to see an article with a few of the proposals that exist - "Cut the schools by 25% and make the teachers' unions want to kill Davis", etc.

Where did Davis' idea that he was expanding spending on things that could be easily contracted go? For instance, he put a lot into the roads, maybe he can pull that back during this desperate emergency. Of course now we have a proposition that forbids that, so never mind.

What would you do if you were Davis? He certainly seems to be in an unthinkable mess that voters will find hard to forgive if it's presented to them with any flair.

Seems to me that Simon's a lot better off than the pessimists think - although I agree with Dog Gone that he faces a very tough challenge if elected.

Cutting the budget isn't attractive to a Democrat governor because his core constituency is government, and those who depend on government spending.

Raising taxes is always appealing to a Democrat, except in an election year, because doing so tends to anger everybody except his core constituency.

The third alternative is to have somebody loan him $20 billion or so, and worry about how to repay it next year.

I don't know how feasible that third alternative is, but it's the only one that can keep Davis in the Governor's chair. I think the odds of lining up that kind of loan in two months is pretty slim, when he has been trying for over a year to borrow $12 billion for the power purchases.

It's going to be awfully entertaining to watch, especially to those of us who live outside of California who aren't paying the bill.