Assessing California Budget Fiasco

It's difficult to feel any enthusiasm for our political system after watching the fiasco that was the California budget "debate".

This from David Dayen's Calitics blog via Opinionator says it well:

 “After witnessing enough of these [California state] budget negotiations, I’ve finally found the formula, under this broken system, to get the best of any deal. Whoever cares the least about the outcome wins.

"If you don’t care whether children get health care, whether the elderly, blind and disabled die in their homes, whether prisoners rot in modified Public Storage units, whether students get educated… you have a very good chance of getting a budget that reflects that.

"If on the other hand you claim to care, you will concede and concede and concede so you can at least play the responsible part and say at the end that you didn’t completely eliminate the social safety net, though what you did get in return will be totally unclear. . . .

"You’d think at some point over the last 31 years, someone would cry “Stop!”

California has more billionaires, in Silicon Valley and Hollywood, than any other region in the world. California has more centi-millionaires, like Governor Schwarzenegger, than any other region in the world. We have the highest paid prison guards in the world. We have train operators that are paid more than many airline pilots.  

Yet, somehow, we don't have enough money for adequate schools, to fix our roads, or to take care of our disabled and elderly.