Governor Schwarzenegger’s recent budget proposal upsets most Californians and will hopefully be trashed by the time Slingshot goes to press. He currently proposes closing 48 state parks and cutting Medi-Cal, among other cuts to the General Fund.
Strangely enough, delayed plans to spend $350 million on a new death row chamber at San Quentin are going ahead full steam. The whole world is horrified by California’s expansive abuse of the death penalty. Schwarzenegger’s own home town of Gratz, Austria, cut its ties to the Governor in 2005, removing his name from their soccer stadium and forcing him to return the town’s ring of honor after he ignored their protests and executed Stanley “Tookie” Williams. What is the sense on spending lavishly on death and cutting off services to the living?
All Schwarzenegger’s talk about Universal Health Care -“California is going to lead the nation in breaking new ground to meet the health care needs of its people”- proved to be no more than hot air. Instead, he insulted Californians receiving SSI, calling us “unproductives… who deserve nothing from the state.” He added injury to insult by vetoing the annual cost of living increase for SSI recipients in May and draining $300 million from Medi-Cal funds in August 2007. Depleting Medi-Cal left a lot of people stranded in the emergency room after clinics lost funding. The flooded emergency rooms of public hospitals were awash in blood after Schwarzenegger’s decision. I sat with a woman for over eight hours seeking treatment for a miscarriage until she eventually gave up and went home. This was only one incident among the sea of malpractice caused by the state’s policies, and the new budget includes more cuts to Medi-Cal.
How do we live with this nutcase? Unproductive and dishonest, he deserves nothing from this state but vigilant protests wherever he goes.