{"id":10368,"date":"2009-10-29T16:58:01","date_gmt":"2009-10-29T16:58:01","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-10-29T16:58:01","modified_gmt":"2009-10-29T16:58:01","slug":"oh-its-going-to-be-like-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2009\/10\/29\/oh-its-going-to-be-like-that\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh, It’s Going to Be Like That?"},"content":{"rendered":"

George Skelton catches<\/a> a few, ahem, tall tales in some of Meg Whitman’s radio spots.  <\/p>\n

“Did you know,” Whitman asks radio listeners, “that in the last 10 years, state spending has gone up 80%?”
\n
*** *** ***
\n
It doesn’t take much digging to learn that general fund spending “in the last 10 years” has risen just 27%, according to finance department data. Adjusted for inflation and population growth, spending actually has decreased by 16.6%.
\n
(LA Times 10\/29\/09<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They have some fun with numbers excuse for the 80% number by finishing with the 2007-2008 closed book numbers, but, of course, even that excludes inflation and population growth.<\/p>\n

But Meg Whitman<\/a> has a story for the people of California. A story that bears no resemblance to the more complicated reality, but it’s simple: California’s state government spends too much. That somehow California is just tossing around money because the numbers are big. <\/p>\n

Yet, despite the numbers that Whitman would like to show you, here are the real numbers. California is 26th in per capita state spending with about $5,000 per capita. And that’s from FY 2007, the high water mark where eMeg’s ads were proclaiming out of control spending. (Data from Kaiser Foundation<\/a>). Since that time, we’ve slashed and burned through our budget. We’re spending substantially less money, and providing a lot fewer services. But, we can’t all keep up with those spend happy states like Oklahoma (#18), Louisiana (#9), Alabama (#7) and Alaska (#1).<\/p>\n

So, it’s going to be more of the same crap. Lies, deceptions, and half-truths. Yup, a real change candidate, that Meg Whitman<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

George Skelton catches<\/a> a few, ahem, tall tales in some of Meg Whitman’s radio spots.  <\/p>\n

“Did you know,” Whitman asks radio listeners, “that in the last 10 years, state spending has gone up 80%?”
\n
*** *** ***
\n
It doesn’t take much digging to learn that general fund spending “in the last 10 years” has risen just 27%, according to finance department data. Adjusted for inflation and population growth, spending actually has decreased by 16.6%.
\n
(LA Times 10\/29\/09<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They have some fun with numbers excuse for the 80% number by finishing with the 2007-2008 closed book numbers, but, of course, even that excludes inflation and population growth.<\/p>\n

But Meg Whitman<\/a> has a story for the people of California. A story that bears no resemblance to the more complicated reality, but it’s simple: California’s state government spends too much. That somehow California is just tossing around money because the numbers are big. <\/p>\n

Yet, despite the numbers that Whitman would like to show you, here are the real numbers. California is 26th in per capita state spending with about $5,000 per capita. And that’s from FY 2007, the high water mark where eMeg’s ads were proclaiming out of control spending. (Data from Kaiser Foundation<\/a>). Since that time, we’ve slashed and burned through our budget. We’re spending substantially less money, and providing a lot fewer services. But, we can’t all keep up with those spend happy states like Oklahoma (#18), Louisiana (#9), Alabama (#7) and Alaska (#1).<\/p>\n

So, it’s going to be more of the same crap. Lies, deceptions, and half-truths. Yup, a real change candidate, that Meg Whitman<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[117],"tags":[4467,3121],"class_list":["post-10368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-117","tag-4467","tag-3121"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2He","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}