[img]7|left|||no_popup[/img]While the news is filled with reports of celebrity deaths; while valuable and scarce taxpayer money is shoveled onto providing police supervision for what should be a private event; while an ultimately tragic figure goes from quasi-pedophilic freakshow and object of ridicule to canonized saint of pop music; while people feel pain in regards to a person with whom they had no tangible, personal relationship; while people express their grief in that most capitalist and American of ways, by buying tee-shirts and trinkets; while it’s hard to resist saying “He’s dead, people. Get over it!”; another far more important death goes unnoticed.

I refer, of course, to the California State Budget. And it doesn’t take the L.A. County Coroner to determine the cause of death: Sacramento. But this time, the blame belongs mostly to Republicans and Gov. Schwarzenegger, whose recent downgrade from albatross-around-California’s-neck to mostly harmless has been reversed by the latest developments. This is not to single out Democrats as especially praiseworthy – the argument is as valid as it is duh-worthy that irresponsible spending increases throughout the state’s history got us in this mess. But in their willingness to consider at least some spending cuts, Democrats have shown greater flexibility than Republicans. Two points in particular stand out:

The Republicans’ refusal to consider any tax increase (e.g. oil and tobacco) is like fixing a machine without having all the proper tools in the toolbox; they’re saying, in effect, that they’ll only consider using the hammer and not a Philips-head screwdriver. Conclusion: Republicans, who always seem to be pushing to cut public spending on anything, are using this crisis to further ideological rather than pragmatic goals.
 
By blocking a stop-gap measure proposed by Democrats, Republicans and the governor directly added $2 billion to the deficit by missing the budgetary deadline. They can blame Democrats all they want, but their refusal to accept a partial solution while a complete solution is hammered out was ultimately their choice to make. They made that choice and now the budget is in a worse state (pun intended).

So what are we, the taxpaying people, supposed to do about this? What’s infuriating is that what needs to be done isn’t really rocket science. On a structural level, we need to get rid of that 2/3 supermajority requirement and change the public initiative process so that voter-supported propositions don’t create these complex, mandatory funding formulas that create law-infested waters for budget planners to swim in.

The Lopsided Tax Code

But the other issue we need to consider are all those things no one is seriously talking about. I was taken mildly to task last week by reader Adam Fox for promoting the L.A. Times and Next 10’s budget tools. Specifically, the tools don’t quite distinguish between labour-derived income and wealth and idle assets, nor is there a discussion on how the tax code is hugely favourable to corporations and entrenched moneyed interests at the expense of the working class. Although I mentioned the tools as an informative snapshot of the budget as discussed by the legislature – and an example of how it seems that the only way out of this mess is through both spending cuts and tax increases – it’s entirely true that there are many issues affecting the economy that aren’t being discussed. Among them: legalizing pot and prostitution, thereby saving on law enforcement and prison costs. Legalizing hemp and fostering a new industry. Tort reform to reduce costs associated with California’s litigious system. Reform the tax code to make it truly progressive by fairly and clearly sharing the costs and benefits associated with public spending. And this on top of the above-mentioned structural reforms.
 
The question is: Isn’t it time we all grow up and put away our celebrity obsessions?  In her recent column, Jessica Gadsden wondered about the obsession with dead celebrities. “Who are all these people now purchasing Michael Jackson’s music and paraphernalia in such numbers that many stores are sold out?  And who is driving the massive sales at iTunes and Amazon’s digital music stores?” And why? Here’s an idea, not new but worth dragging up from its endless cycle of suppression and resurrection. Adam wrote that “the powers that be (those with transformative assets) seem to always exclude themselves from the conversation that impacts working people,” which is true. But let’s go further and say that we live in a brilliantly organized dictatorship of capital. Despite the odd flavour of 1984 here and there, the model is Brave New World and money is our soma. It may be too James Bond to suggest a single-point villain directing the media to distract us with frivolities while the governmental and corporate powers gorge themselves. It would surely be too much to cast doubts on the sincerity of all the lawmakers in Sacramento. But we’ve been whipped, defeated, enslaved to the point that we can’t even take to the streets in fist-raised protest when the government is clearly not functioning. We are conditioned to express our emotions through consumption rather than citizenship. You feel sad, you buy something. You feel happy, you buy something. You feel certain “natural urges,” you buy something. This is no mere materialism but hyper-materialism in which emotions are reduced to symbolic purchasing power. Hey, it’s better to be a happy sheep than a vigilant goat, right?

Frédérik Sisa invites you to visit www.inkandashes.net.