Today is the first day of the fiscal year in 2010-11 California, and there is not a budget. The state legislature has missed the deadline to pass a budget, yet again, and with the skinflint Republicans in charge with the requirement to pass a budget with 2/3 vote we may get a repeat of last year even to the point that every state worker gets paid only the federal mimimum wage, not even California's higher minimum wage.
This is what I have dubbed "The Lexus and the Pothole" problem. The rich who want to not have new taxes will eventually pay when the infrastructure neglect destroys their luxary car. It is a slap at the book about market economics and Globalism. It may not matter to rich Republicans that the poor, students, and the integent elderly have to carry the burden of their mantra, "No New Taxes!", until it starts to impact their ability to do business and get around. Anti-Government types like consumers neglect the technology that they have come to take for granted, much of it run by the government, until one day it isn't there.
In this state it doesn't take much to make for a bad day, a power outage. a shortage of water, closure of the freeways. We have had a taste of the results of neglect of public services before, the power outages of 2000, the traffic jams of 1999. and we may get a new taste when the state cann't combat wild fires because of budget cuts. One can expact that the wildfire impact would be greatest in some Conservative strongholds in Southern California.
