In January, Gov. Brown released a video highlighting his plan for the budget.  You know all about that, and the video update to the right alludes to that plan.  Tax extensions on the ballot and big cuts.  That’s the long and short of it.  The big cuts were made, but there has been no extensions, by vote or any other manner.  And those taxes expire in 17 days from today at the end of the month.

So, today Gov. Brown gives the people a status update on where he is in that process, and, again, we know where it is.  We are still waiting on 2 GOP votes in either house to materialize for either a vote or the actual tax extensions.  At this point, Brown has made major moves on ancillary (at best) issues, but still can’t lure the votes across.

Punishment for defying orthodoxy in California’s GOP is extreme and swift.  There will be major challenges, especially with so many of the sitting legislators drawn together for 2012.  This is the sort of the thing Republican primaries are made of.  Whether a Republican candidate who votes for some sort of extensions can make it through into the Top 2 system is yet to be seen.  And frankly, they aren’t particularly keen to be the guinea pigs.

But somebody is going to be the guinea pig. Taking that step past the brink is never easy, but that’s why it is called leadership.  If it were easy, we could just have some action movie star like Arnold… wait… we’ve tried that already…