California VS. Naomi Klein

"And I tried to tell you before

That's why I left California..."
- Liz Phair, California

I've had a serious case of California dreaming lately. The other day I wrote a post about the ban on same-sex marriage in the state and what seems to me like a much bigger threat to queers and non-queers alike -- the impending gouging of California's social services and health care.

Naomi Klein just weighed in on the subject in a post entitled, Schwarzenegger's Shock Therapy -- The Poor Pay For The Sins of the Rich. She writes:

California is facing a $24.3 billion dollar budget gap, and the governor wants to attack it with cuts to social programs alone. If Schwarzenegger has his way, the price will be paid by 1.9 million people who lose their health care coverage, 1.3 million who lose basic welfare, thousands of state workers who get fired, schools that lose $5 billion in funding, having already survived brutal cuts earlier this year.

Klein was in the state last week filming a documentary on the crisis for Fault Lines, the show she co-hosts on Al Jazeera English Television. The two parts of the half hour show are below and they're well worth watching:

Some of the dark days ahead got a tiny bit lighter today, however. According to the Kaiser Daily U.S. HIV/AIDS Report:

A joint legislative budget committee in California on Monday rejected a number of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's (R) proposals to cut funding from some state programs to address the state's $24.3 billion deficit, including a plan to cut $80.1 million from HIV/AIDS programs, the Sacramento Bee reports (Wiegand/Sanders, Sacramento Bee, 6/14). The committee voted to reduce the $80.1 million proposal, which would affect a number of HIV/AIDS education, prevention and treatment services, by roughly $50 million, to $33.5 million, according to the Los Angeles Times (Goldmacher, Los Angeles Times, 6/15).

Well, that's something, right?