Bass & Villines: Deaf to the Reality of Our Lives

Wouldn't you know it but the first time we actually get bi-partisan agreement in the state legislature, it is pure lunacy? Speaker Karen Bass (Dem) and Minority leader Michael Villines (Rep) have agreed to pay increases for selected staff members totaling over $500,000!

At a time when California is in economic free-fall, with unemployment pushing past 10%, with public employees being laid off, teachers pink slipped and workers put on forced furloughs, when better to give the deserving few a pay raise? I know, it's only half a million, a mere soupcon, a drop in the state budget's bucket. But the bucket has a hole in it and we the people are circling the drain.

In May we are being asked to approve the phony baloney budget deal. Maybe 11% of the voters will show up and decide whether or not to trust in the analyses, judgment and intelligence of our elected representatives. Bass and Villines do not make trust easier by this act of truly remarkable political tone-deafness.

Of course the professional politicians have a really good excuse cum analysis. This raise won't cost us anything because they are going to take the money from money already allocated. So, let me see about this: They are saying that in the middle of a financial crisis, the worst of our lifetime, giving raises will be costless because they found money they don't really need? Did it ever occur to them that if they had money they didn't need to give it back or put it into programs that have been reduced or save jobs that were important? Sorry, that was a rhetorical question. They obviously never thought about that. What did they think about? Do they actually think or just plot and scheme?

This is an act of such stunning political malpractice (never mind the morality of it), that they should both lose their leadership positions. Then we can recall them. You see, they went beyond just political tone-deafness; they are clearly deaf to our cries, to our pain, to the reality with which so many Californians are trying to live.
©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.org