Take a Dog to Work

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HEAVEN IS THAT WAY: The good news, I was to learn, is that I don’t have to worry about the state’s yawning budget deficit, just made $6 billion worse than the staggering $15 billion it otherwise would have been with the defeat of Propositions 1A through 1E in Tuesday’s special elections. Will the state run out of money by July? Toss widows and orphans overboard by the boatload? Cut schools to the tune of $600 per pupil? Remand 23,000 state prisoners to the custody of the state’s 58 county jails, which — like Santa Barbara’s — are already overcrowded? The real answer, I found out, is it just doesn’t matter.

Angry Poodle

That’s because the world is going to end on October 21, 2011.

I got this startling information on good authority, thanks to a modest index card affixed to one of the many news racks standing sentry in front of the county administration building at the intersection of Anacapa and Anapamu streets, street names that connote the marriage of power and confusion when translated from their original Chumash. I had been attending one of those post-fire meetings, in which about 100 Jesusita Fire victims got up close and personal with the bureaucratic gauntlet they will be running for the next couple of years, should they seek to rebuild. Had they read this card — “WORLD ENDS OCT 21, 2011 FREE INFO” — they would know they needn’t bother. By the time their homes are back, the world will be Phhhhfffttt! Naturally, I was upset. What time would the end come? I’m a busy guy with things to do. I need to schedule things.

“They” in this case refers to familyradio.com, which is affiliated with a group of evangelical doom ’n’ gloomers based in Oakland and led by “Brother” Harold Camping. After studying Genesis, Camping simply did the math and calculated that we can pencil in “the beginning of the end” — a k a the Rapture — for May 21. That’s when all the dead shall rise up and walk the Earth for five months. This may be a boon for real estate values, but the downside will be all the locusts, earthquakes, and zombies we’ll have to put up with. Not to mention lots of fires. By the time the “End of the End” rolls around on October 21, we’ll be ready to go.

All this weighed heavily upon me as I entered my polling place on Tuesday morning. What was the point, I wondered? Apparently a lot of voters felt the same, and they stayed away in droves. Turnout, I heard, was less than 25 percent, reflecting voter disgust, confusion, exhaustion, and preoccupation with the Lakers’ playoff performance. Those who bothered to cast ballots were in no mood to be trifled with, overwhelmingly rejecting the six revenue-generating proposals by margins of 65-35 percent. The only measure to pass — 1F — was a big symbolic “screw you,” denying state legislators pay raises in times of deficit. Certainly state office holders deserve the contempt with which they are held, and the 12- percent approval rating they now enjoy may be too kind. But in California, voters are getting precisely the representatives they have coming. Year after year for the past 30 years, state voters have passed initiative after initiative that make anything but empty posturing impossible. Voters increased government costs by mandating longer prison sentences for an ever-widening net of offenses and offenders. They’ve stripped the legislature of spending discretion, mandating that half the general fund be allocated for public education. They’ve limited how much money the state can raise in revenues. And they’ve required that all spending bills be approved by an all but impossible two-thirds majority. To ensure that legislators never establish the sort of across-the-aisle relationships upon which deal making and horse trading depends, they imposed a term-limits restriction. They, of course, is us.

Collectively, initiatives Prop. 1A-1E had lots of problems, the biggest being they weren’t nearly big enough. Even had all passed, the deficit would have still stood at a staggering $15 billion. Why swallow bitter pills if they won’t fix what ails you? On Tuesday night, Santa Barbara’s anti-tax crusaders celebrated the initiatives’ crushing defeat by pounding a few at Harry’s. I couldn’t make it. These are the same people who donned three-corner hats to reenact the Boston Tea Party earlier this year in protest when Obama proposed abolishing tax breaks for the rich. They also have embraced the term “tea-bagging” — which normally means to drape one’s gondalia over someone else’s head — as an act of political resistance. I don’t do three-corner hats.

With the failure of these measures, the bloodletting can now begin in earnest. The school district probably won’t experience the $8 million in cuts some have projected, but it won’t be pretty no matter what the amount. The county stands to lose $13 million in property taxes, special districts $3 million, and the City of Santa Barbara another $2.3 million. Eventually, these numbers translate to real pain. Just four days before Tuesday’s special election, a Los Angeles jury convicted Ernest V. Nelson of illegally selling the body parts of cadavers donated to UCLA for medical research. For four years, Nelson hacked heads from bodies and limbs from torsos, selling the parts to private medical and pharmaceutical research firms, like Johnson & Johnson. For his efforts, Nelson pocketed $1.5 million. Now he’s looking at 10 years behind bars. Given budget realities, I suggest the Gubernator grant Nelson a full pardon and hire the man to apply that same entrepreneurial spirit on behalf of the state. That’s what it’s going to take.

As far as October 21, 2011, and the Rapture, certain important questions remain unanswered. For example, when the unsaved dead are risen from the Earth, will these zombies eat other people’s brains? Can you stop them with a bullet to the head, or even a well-applied blow with a shovel? I guess we’ll find out soon enough. And given the current state of affairs, there might be worse things than the world ending some Friday two years hence. Like, maybe it won’t.

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