Durka-Durka-Muhammed-Jihad!!
They say that if you want the straight poop, go to the source.
To what am I referring?? I'm referring to the radio commercials being aired here in San Diego that basically whine about Governor Schwarzenegger cutting the education budget by $2 billion.
The commercial - paid for by the California Teachers Association - talks about the governor 'robbing' $2 billion from the Prop 98 funding last year and this year 'won't repay it!!'. It sounded a bit unlike Schwarzenegger, so I got off my dead butt and called the CTA office here in San Diego.
They were quite concerned why I was curious about their number used in this commercial and I was put on hold while they scrambled to find someone to 'splain it to me.
After assuring the guy that finally picked up that I wasn't with a media organization, he basically talked about how the monies from the Prop 98 fund - that are virtually untouchable - were diverted to the General Fund last year and that the governor was going to implement one of the catch-loops in the propostion that allows the state to deviate from the letter of the law.
I explained that while I wasn't an economic genius by any stretch of the imagination, I looked at the proposed budget and told him that I saw an increase in education spending. This gentlemen said, Yes, that's true....but blah-blah-blah-whine-whine-bitch-moan.
After I got off the phone, I looked up Prop 98 and examined the specifics of the suspension clauses that are written into the propostion. And guess what I found: the governor can - during times of economic crisis - invoke the 'maintenance' clause for Prop 98, which is what he did last year and will again this year. And after examining the aspects of how the state can do this while still upholding the letter and spririt of the proposition, there's nothing to bitch-n-moan about here - the CTA is making much ado about nothing.
Now, all of this happened last week; I wanted to sit and ponder this over the weekend - which I have.
The only reason I can think of that the CTA would be spending their members dues on running a commercial multiple times on multiple stations is that they're (pardon me Bill O'Reilly) looking out only for themselves. Gee....why am I not surprised?
Now, am I off-base with this analysis? Anyone a bit smarter than me in econ want to set me straight if I'm wrong? Maybe I need to smack myself in the head with a hammer a couple times to see how increasing budgetary spending in education is "robbing our children"...
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