Really, an alternate reality is the only possibility for the nonsense coming out of the Horseshoe. First, he rejects the Assembly’s payment deferrals that would keep the state from issuing IOUs. That, apparently, messes with his games of brinskmanship, or as Sen. Steinberg calls them, “machismo game-playing.” In this reality, while the package is essentially a placeholder for the real cuts, it averts a mess next week. Sure, it’s not beautiful in any way, but it needs to get done. Even the Assembly Republicans acknowledge this.
But, the real clue that Arnold is stuck in an alternate dimension? He apparently thinks the federal courts were just kidding around with this whole prison medical constitutional issue:
Also on Thursday, the governor rejected a tentative deal his prisons chief struck last month with a court-appointed receiver in long-running federal lawsuits brought by inmates seeking better healthcare. The deal would have required the state to spend nearly $2 billion constructing prison medical facilities. “We cannot agree to spend $2 billion on state-of-the-art medical facilities for prisoners while we are cutting billions of dollars from schools and healthcare programs for children and seniors,” Schwarzenegger said.
The governor’s decision sets up a potential confrontation with federal judges who have sharply criticized his administration for moving too slowly. The judges have linked inmate healthcare problems to prison overcrowding and have said they intend to relieve it by ordering the release of about 50,000 inmates. (LAT6/26/09)
The $2 Billion deal was in place of the plan that federal receiver J. Clark Kelso wanted to implement. The cost of that plan? $8 billion. The thing is that Arnold really has no say as to whether he wants to spend the $2 Billion. We have been deficient under the constitutional guide lines, and now we must pay the piper. If we really want to lock up 165,000 people, we have to pay the price.
Given that Kelso has so scaled back his plans from what he originally had conceived, it is hard to imagine the federal court siding with the state here. They have shown quite a bit of frustration with the Governor’s resistance. When AG Brown and Schwarzenegger tried to get the receivership lifted, well, smackdown seems a fitting word:
U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson in San Francisco said that although health care has improved under federal management since 2006, he has “no confidence that such improvements would continue, or even be maintained,” if the state regained control now. (SF Chronicle 5/25/09)
Now why would Judge Henderson be a skeptic of the state’s prison policies? Oh right, because of stuff like what is coming out of Arnold’s mouth right now. For some reason, Arnold fails to grasp the situation that the prison mess has put us in. And he is unwilling to either deal with it by reforming the sentencing system, and releasing prisoners, or by providing more resources for the overcrowded prisons.
Whatever the reason for Arnold’s delusions, it would be far more helpful to have a governor who deals with the reality on the ground, rather than a reality as he would like to be.
Just because someone has a differant opinion about how he views a situation doesn’t IMO give you the right to add comments like “he’s huffing paint”. Maybe he is looking at the election results that clearly said stop kicking the can down the road and deal with the budget. Both parties in my view are mere indicators of how dysfunctional our system of government and populace have become.
the court could jail him for contempt?
as “State of the Art”… typical rightwing hype.
It’s gonna take two billion dollars just to raise the prison clinics from SUBSTANDARD to barely acceptable.
Worst. Governor. Ever.
Strikes me that he’s and most of the relevant legislators have acknowledged that they need to limit the prison system somehow, and if they wait long enough, a non-elected will do the heavy lifting and take the hits for them.