World class editorial cartoonist and Calbuzzer Tom Meyer today portrays the blinding insights California’s would-be governors have about the state’s chronic budget deficit. Sadly, he may be giving the candidates WAY too much credit.
With California facing a $20 billion deficit this year, and seemingly for every out year through the middle of the next century, you’d think candidates campaigning to be the state’s chief executive would have developed some thoughtful, innovative, fresh ideas on the subject.
You’d be wrong, that’s for sure
Republican front-runner Meg Whitman, time traveling back to Ronald Reagan’s first race for governor in 1966, assures voters with a straight face that she can deal with the red ink in a jiffy, simply by eliminating “waste, fraud, abuse.” Yes, we heard her speak to a crowd the other day and she actually said those words.
GOP rival Steve Poizner, meanwhile, has at least put forward a plan on the budget; unfortunately, as Meyer sharply shows, the plan it defies the laws of arithmetic.
As for Krusty the General Brown, well, his big plan to date has been to invite legislative Democrats and Republicans over the governor’s mansion, have Ann cook up a big pot of brown rice and urge everyone to be nice to each other. Oh, wait a minute, that’s what his blackboard scribbling say in hieroglyphics.
I’m paying for the ads, I have to watch ‘em too? Kudos to Politico’s Jonathan Martin, who caught eMeg flat-ass fibbing when she tried to tell him that she wasn’t pandering on illegal immigration, as clearly evidenced by the fact that she’d never run a spot with an image of the border fence in it. Uh, what Ms. Whitman meant to say….
Meg’s also took the opportunity Friday to lie about her position on offshore oil drilling. After switching her position in an interview with Calbuzz last week she now insists she’s ALWAYS been against offshore drilling. That would be untrue.
Oh yeah, and here’s the shot of the border fence that eMeg has never put into a commercial (taken from her ad).
