Running Down California- Davis can't blame Arnold for the state's problems

Los Angeles Daily News ^ | September 28, 2003 | Editorial

[Mark]

Los Angeles Daily News

Running down California Davis can't blame Arnold for the state's problems

In an unconventional campaign filled with many an over-the-top statement and the occasional whopper, Gov. Gray Davis has delivered the biggest doozy yet.

Complaining about possible-successor Arnold Schwarzenegger's assessment of California government, Davis quipped, "I'm tired of him running down the state of California."

That's right, Davis accused someone else of running down California. How's that for irony?

Davis -- whose inaction fueled the energy crisis, whose profligate ways busted the budget, whose lack of vision gave us skyrocketing workers' compensation costs and a looming catastrophe in public-employee pensions -- has the nerve to suggest that it's Schwarzenegger who's giving California a bad name.

Unbelievable!

Schwarzenegger's crime, according to Davis, is overhyping California's woes. This is not the highest-taxed state in the union, Davis claims, nor are its workers' comp fees the worst. Its budget isn't $38 billion in the red any more -- Davis' heavy borrowing fixed that.

Spare us the hair-splitting.

Statistics are malleable, everyone knows that. California's predicaments can be made to look better or worse depending on which data are included, how they're calculated and who's doing the evaluation.

So Davis -- an experienced book-cooker -- can jigger the numbers to make things look rosy. And Schwarzenegger has his own set of accountants spinning the facts to paint Davis in as dark a light as possible.

That's politics; big deal.

What rank California holds on the list of most-taxed states is immaterial. What's undeniable is that California businesses are suffering; that they're moving out, and they're taking jobs with them.

And if, by some set of criteria, the workers' comp system is worse somewhere else, that doesn't change the fact that California's is still unbearable.

Davis can quibble about the numbers all he wants. But he can't argue that California hasn't already been run down. It has been, as most people would acknowledge, and not by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

That, Gov. Davis, is why there's a recall election.

[Mark]

Unbelievable!

No, it's believable.

[DoctorZIn]

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[goldstategop]

Yeah.... they accuse us Republicans of not being Progressive. I say its time we take Hiram Johnson's legacy back. The special interests controlling California today is big government, the trial lawyers, and the public sector unions and its time they were cut down to size and that government served the public interest.

[ridesthemiles]

Arnold promised at the beginning of his campaign to bring in the big gun accountants and audit the state's books. I can't wait for this to happen. I think the state of Calif is far more than $38 billion in the hole.
Davis has "borrowed" over $13 billion in the massaging to "balance" the budget. I never heard of borrowing money and then claiming it as INCOME on the books, but that is what Davis and John Burton and the rest of the legislature has done to meet the standard of "balanced budget". A judge has declared such borrowing to be unconstitutional and that it cannot go forward. (anything over $300,000 must be approved by the voters in an election).
There must be some accountant types on this forum who can clarify if borrowed funds are declared as INCOME on the books. I am only a full charge bookkeeper, and I have never heard of such shenanigans in 47 years of working.