ACP Pubs

Loren Faulkner

How Long Can An Engine Run Without Oil?
October 6, 2008

When warning lights flash on, engine temperature jumps and you know you’ve neglected simple maintenance for years, wouldn’t it be wise to stop, check major components and add fresh oil up to the proper levels?  Not to mention other fluids. You’ll save an engine and lots of dollars and downtime.

This year, Caltrans had to issue a statement that private contractors might have to pay their people and subcontractors from their own pockets until California passed it’s fiscal budget, which was showing a shortfall of some $15 billion. This kind of thing has happened seven out of 10 years, as deficits increase and budgets are late. Like a neglected engine, the warning lights have been flashing for years, and yet nothing has been done about it. 

Dan Walters, Sacramento Bee columnist (www.sacbee.org) lays out the problem in a “must read” column Oct. 3. Here is part of it:

In 2000, then-Gov. Gray Davis and legislators of both parties squandered most of a one-time, $12 billion windfall of income tax revenues on permanent spending and tax cuts – one of the most indefensibly irresponsible political actions in California history.

As brain-dead as that action was, however, Davis & Co. made it worse by trying – and failing – to paper over the budget deficits that quickly emerged after the spending orgy.

Rather than undo their horrendous error, he and legislators adopted the first of a years-long series of bookkeeping gimmicks, up-front and backdoor loans and raids on other funds to keep the state fiscally if not morally afloat.

Walters goes on to explain how when voters booted out Gov. Davis because of this fiscal irresponsibility and voted in Gov. Schwarzenegger, we expected common sense to return. But now, the budget problems persist, and they will only continue to show massive deficits, the way things are set in motion now.

Read his column and then think about how to get the State legislature to change its way of thinking. But as Walters says, the current crop of legislators…”now qualify for employment in the investment-banking industry.”

Posted by Loren Faulkner on October 6, 2008 | Comments (0)