Grassroots program for preventing future budget deadlocks

Not just here in California --

LOOMING IMPACT

OF BUDGET IMPASSE

HEALTH SERVICES: Poor, elderly, disabled could be early casualties of stalemate after state freezes Medi-Cal payments

but everywhere. Pennsylvania just went through one, that I know of.

I was in a bookstore and someone who'd apparently just seen Inside Man or Dog Day Afternoon looked at the headline and suggested "We ought to do a hostage-type situation with those people. Make it legal to shoot one member of the legislature for every day past deadline. After all, we're paying them to work for us, right?"

And when I stopped laughing (with him, not at him), I said:

"Yeah, but who's gonna vote for that law? Not them."

To which he said:

"Make it an initiative. Put it on the ballot. WE will."

So, I pass along to everyone in Sacramento the fact that's there's more than a bit of frustration out here that you people don't seem to have the intelligence, decency, consideration, or sophistication of third-graders insofar as "works well with others" is concerned.

In the time-honored words we all remember:

"Get your shit together or get gone."