PASS THE PAIN AND PRAISE THE AMMUNITION: I get the picture. Times are tough; everybody has to sacrifice. In this context, I can accept a serious shave and a haircut, even one with scalp burns. But a self-inflicted lobotomy? I don’t think so. I am referring to the $26 billion package of cuts, theft, and accounting gimmicks masquerading as the state’s “adjusted” annual budget. Every year, they say it can’t get any worse. Every year it does. This is the year California jumps into the ocean.

Upon hearing how the state’s legendary Big Five — 50 points for anyone who can actually name them — hatched their compromise package of spending cuts late Sunday evening, I wondered why we need all 120 state legislators in the first place. If only two state senators and two assemblymembers, as well as the governor, are allowed to participate in Sacramento’s single most important legislative act, why bother with the other 116 elected reps? We can get interns — always eager to have something impressive on their résumés — represent us for free.

When the Big Five came down from Mount Olympus, they held in their hands a document dripping with blood. Public schools would take it in the shorts by $6 billion, state universities and colleges by half that amount, and healthcare for the poor by $1.3 billion. In addition, the Big Five proposed collectively ripping off cities and counties throughout California to the tune of $4.4 billion. From the County of Santa Barbara, the state will skim $21 million; from the City of S.B., it’s $5.3 million. That’s a whole lot of pain about to be delivered. Beyond that, the Big Five also have proposed a host of bookkeeping tricks I don’t pretend to understand in which they take tax monies from the future and budget them for today. It’s sort of like the whole time-travel trip Arnold tried to stop in the Terminator movies — in which John Connor comes back from the future to save his mother from being killed in the past — just with money instead of bullets.

Naturally, all this was crafted and engineered behind closed doors. There were no reports to read, no public hearings to attend, no paper trail of any kind. Most legislators are in the dark as well. One would presume, however, that members of the Big Five know what’s in the deal. Now, it turns out, maybe even they don’t know.

Among the key details mentioned in early news accounts was a $1.2 billion cut to California’s bloated prison system. With 170,000 people behind bars — that’s up from 25,000 about 20 years ago — the state prison system has approximately twice as many people as it’s capable of handling. Every year, the Department of Corrections releases about 120,000 prisoners on parole, and every year, 65,000 of them are sent back on rinky-dink — as opposed to substantial or serious — parole violations. The only way to trim $1.2 billion from this $10-billion prison bureaucracy is through early release, in this case somewhere in the neighborhood of 27,000 prisoners. That means shorter sentences for well-behaved prisoners, ankle bracelets, home detention, and less supervision upon release. Obviously, some serious bad apples will squeak through the cracks.

By Tuesday afternoon, one of the key members of the Big Five — Republican Assemblymember Sam Blakeslee from San Luis Obispo — already was disavowing the deal. He’d never heard of such an agreement, Blakeslee protested, and he certainly never agreed to it. Blakeslee, who enjoys a reputation as a relatively level-headed guy, shot off an email to fellow Republicans claiming he’d been hoodwinked by the governor and the Democrats, declaring he would never sign off on such a provision. Normally, I might be inclined to believe him. But the Democrats have been so lacking in leadership, strategy, and punch throughout the budget debates that it’s impossible to imagine them displaying enough initiative to hoodwink anybody. In their defense, it should be noted that the deck is stacked impossibly against them. Although Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans in both the Senate and the Assembly, California remains one of the few states on the planet to require a two-thirds majority to pass any spending bill, giving Republicans — who oppose any new taxes on strictly religious grounds — an almost ironclad veto power despite their drastically diminishing numbers.

As a result, there never was any serious discussion about imposing an oil severance tax upon oil production within our borders, which would have generated $1.3 billion a year. California is the only state in the union not to have such a tax even though it’s the third-biggest oil producer out of all 50. In 2006, the oil industry spent in excess of $150 million to defeat a state ballot initiative that would have created such a tax. Not surprisingly, the oil industry has been just as lavish fighting any efforts to weaken California’s two-thirds majority requirement. Say what you will about what an obnoxious whack job Sarah Palin is, but she and the Alaska Legislature approved a whopping 25-percent oil extraction tax. By comparison, the most recent proposal for California was a modest 9.9 percent.

Likewise, the tobacco lobby has successfully fought efforts to increase California’s tobacco tax from its current 87 cents a pack — lower, by the way, than 30 other states — to $1.50. That would have generated $1.2 billion. By charging a dime tax on all drinks served in California, the state could have generated another $1.2 billion. For a while the governor supported a nickel tax, but he’s backed off. And of course, if pot were legalized — and taxed — the state might generate as much as $1.3 billion. But the Democratic leadership seems so without voice that these proposals were, at best, mumbled.

Perhaps the best advocate for any of the proposed tax increases is Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Campbell, a genuine brainiac-wonk who’s given littler chance of success. On a temporary basis, Campbell suggested increasing the gas tax by 30 cents a gallon. Just half that would generate roughly $5 billion.

At the end of the day, some degree of budget pain is both necessary and inescapable. But there are other options that would have raised some serious money. They would spread the pain around more evenly. These never got to the table. They weren’t even considered. That’s not so much self-inflicted lobotomy as it is a decapitation. The only question now is what kind of necktie I can wear.

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