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Just a reminder of how crazy California was/is
Failed State
California’s legislature adjourned from a marathon budget debate after falling one vote short of a $40 billion package of tax increases, spending cuts and borrowing aimed at reducing a record deficit.
Lawmakers went home at 9 p.m. yesterday after spending 28 hours in session while Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Senate leaders worked to secure an additional Republican vote for the package of 27 bills. Schwarzenegger made rare appearances at closed-door party caucuses and urged a quick solution to the impasse.
“We are just searching for that one more vote that we need in order to get that budget done,” Schwarzenegger told reporters after the meeting.
Failure of the package would prolong a four-month stalemate over how to counter a record $42 billion deficit that drained California of cash, left it with the lowest credit rating among U.S. states, forced officials to delay paying bills totaling $3.7 billion and halted $3.8 billion of bond-financed construction on schools, roads and other public works.
The LA Times has more details on the fun and games that are going on.
Edit: This is just to good to pass up….
“I think I’ve already taken more financial risk than would be prudent, but I’ve been operating on the theory that we’re going to get this budget done,” California Department of Finance Director Mike Genest said in an interview. “I’ve probably been too hopeful and too optimistic for too long.”
Ya think?
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About The Stimulus (But did not have time to read)
As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. This chart provides a really good overview of the hideously complex stimulus package without making you read a small book.
Three Links of Note
Shocker
A medical theory that has led to dozens of women being jailed for shaking their babies has been called into question by new scientific research.
Child abuse claims often cause the normal standards of evidence to be thrown out the window. There is no doubt that some babies have been shaken so hard that it caused them harm. But as this article points out, some of the symptoms that have been used to prove harm can come from natural child birth. I don’t doubt that at least some people who have been convicted of shaking their babies were innocent.
Who will be first?
FEARS are mounting that Ireland could default on its soaring national debt pile, amid continuing worries about its troubled banking sector.
It is hard to tell, but I think an eastern European country will beat Ireland to the punch as far as defaulting goes. Still, it will be forever to Ireland’s shame if they default before one of the Mediterranean countries do. They are supposed to be the ones that are poorly governed.
One of China's many problems
But bird flu, it seems, is back. Last month’s five deaths — one of the highest tallies of bird-flu deaths China has ever recorded in a month — were in locations as far removed from one another as Beijing in the north, Xinjiang in the west, Guangxi in the south, Hunan in the center and Shandong in the east. “From a disease-control perspective, the increase in cases in China is notable, as is the wide geographic spread,” says Dr. Hans Troedsson, the World Health Organization’s representative in China. There is still no evidence that the virus has mutated to spread easily between humans, he says. But while such a nightmare scenario, which could set off a global flu pandemic that could kill millions, has shown no signs of being an immediate threat, serious concerns remain. “The fact that this is the highest number for a single month in China reminds us that the virus is entrenched and circulating in the environment,” Troedsson says. (See pictures of the resurgence of bird flu.)
On Feb. 10, authorities in the far-Western region of Xinjiang culled more than 13,000 chickens in the city of Hotan after 519 died in a bird-flu outbreak. But until this week, China had reported no widespread outbreaks of the virus among bird populations, prompting concerns among some public-health experts that mainland health and veterinary authorities could be missing — or even concealing — the spread of the disease through poultry and wild birds.
(h/t Scott Mcpherson who is rather worried about the whole thing)
They Never Had A Chance
A federal aviation official says the plane that crashed into a house near Buffalo, killing 50 people, was on autopilot when it went down, a possible violation of airline policy in icy weather.
For those that don’t already know why being on autopilot is a very bad thing, watch this video.
Poem of the Week: 2/15/09-2/21/09
This week’s poem of the week is Phyllis McGinley’s “Intimations of Mortality: On being told by the dentist that this will be over soon”.
It was rather hard to find a half way decent presentation of the poem on the internet. In spite of being a modern female poet (a trendy thing in this day and age) who hit the big time in her day and age, almost nothing Phyllis McGinley wrote can be found online. We can’t but help think that this is because she came down on the wrong side of the cultural wars that her generation fought.
Granted, she will never rank among the greatest poets of all time. But there are a lot worse poets than her who are more widely known simply because they had the right beliefs.