Dear Santa

Saturday, May 23, 2009 | 0

By Julius Young

(Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, clad solely in jockey shorts, kneels on the rug in his Pacific Palisades bedroom, looking out the window). Muttering to himself, his consciousness streams and riffs with his heaving chest....

Santa, Dear Santa, I need you now. Need my stocking filled with some goodies from my new best friend, Barack. The voters sure ain't in a Santa mood. They busted my chops. So glad I decided to be in D.C. yesterday.

But what to do?

Geithner says that federal loan guarantees to California will require Congressional approval. Barack's got to know how crazy this is. Without some bridge financing, we can't pay our bills next month. This ship is sinking.

Somebody's gotta get Pelosi and Harry Reid on board with financing guarantees. Forget the waterboarding stuff and this crazy Truth Commission stuff. Do you really want them looking at what you knew and what you did about torture? Panetta pretty much already backstopped the spooks, anyway.

Most folks wanna hear about surfin' rather than waterboardin' anyway. Surfin' Safari and Two Girls for Every Boy and all that good old California dream stuff. That's what people want. I thought I was going to give them that dream again. Collyforneeya!

This sucks.

Spending my last years in office keeping this place on life support.

And those little jerk-offs in my own party. Putting me, and even my beloved California Chamber, on the list of losers:
http://www.flashreport.org/commentary0b ... 8162202504

And can you believe the goofballs that Fleischman calls "winners of the special election"?:
http://www.flashreport.org/commentary0b ... _offsetP

Oh, well. No more Mr. Nice Guy. I can reinvent myself as the ultimate slasher! I'll slash and burn and cut and blow up boxes like you've never seen. I really will go out as The Terminator.

That'll show some of those purple-shirted union folks who opposed my initiatives. Overplayed their hand. Wait till I get a shot at their IHSS funding. Welfare cuts, here we come: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2 ... -aid-.html

By the time they get their California Constitutional Convention or their budget vote initiative, I'm going to have smoked em.

Gonna Budget Cut like its 1999! (apologies to Prince and KQED's John Myers....)

In '99, K-12 education was $26.3 billion; now it's $36.3 billion. Prisons were $3.3 billion in '99; now $9.6 billion. Higher education was $7.7 billion in '99; now it's $11 billion.

Workers' comp better be glad they got some user funding. I'd love to get my hands on some of that targeted dough. We'll be looking at borrowing from them. Oh yeah.

Slash, baby, slash.

That's my new mantra. Let the groveling and whining begin. I'll dictate life and death for scores of programs.

But Barack, I need a short-term Santa. Will you help?



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Julius Young is an applicants' attorney with Boxer & Gerson LLP in Oakland. This column was reprinted with his permission from his blog, http://www.workerscompzone.com
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