Dan Walters

A convoluted and highly questionable scheme to generate billions of dollars for the state via local redevelopment agencies is being revived as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders race with the calendar to close an enormous budget deficit.

Most bills enacted by the state Legislature take effect on Jan. 1, so traditionally, California's major newspapers each December publish lengthy articles about new laws that the state's residents will have to follow.

Notwithstanding its other aspects, the election of Barack Obama as the nation's first African American president should close the circle on our shameful history of treating human beings as if they were nothing more than livestock.

Remember that old word game that began with this question: If you could be a tree (or some other inanimate object), what kind of tree would you be?

We've seen a lot of state budget proposals in the past year, and the only one that was enacted was laughably and obviously out of touch with reality.

This has been a year that most Californians – and especially those in elected office – would wish never happened, a year of severe economic decline that pushed hundreds of thousands onto unemployment rolls, and a year of monumental, ever-growing and intransigent budget deficits.

Arnold Schwarzenegger has uttered a gazillion words since becoming California's governor five years ago, but none has achieved the fame – or infamy – of a two-word epithet he hurled at Democratic legislators eight months into his governorship.

There was a time when California's state legislators believed that they were better off – personally, politically and even financially – than members of Congress.

This pattern has become all too common in California's school districts, large and small: An election changes the balance of power, and the newly constituted board tells the district superintendent to take a hike so it can bring in someone more to its liking.

Pete Knight, a retired Air Force test pilot who set a speed record in the X-15 rocket plane, was elected to the state Assembly in 1992 and later shifted into the state Senate.

The network television drama "Slattery's People" lasted a couple of seasons in the mid-1960s, but won wide critical acclaim for its writing, its acting and its thematic originality – the hero, played by Richard Crenna, was a state legislator who battled for his constituents' interests and against political corruption.

The only constant about how politicians are responding to the deepening state budget crisis is that they are constantly changing – especially Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It's self-evident that the current occupants of the Capitol, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, don't know how to negotiate effectively. But if they weren't endemically dysfunctional, what would be a reasonable way to close the state's budget deficit?

We like to think that people are locked up for committing crimes, but an otherwise dry statistical report issued by the U.S. Department of Justice reveals a dirty little secret of California's prison dilemma – the vast majority of those going to prison these days are there because a parole officer decided they deserved more time behind bars.

Democratic legislators attempted Thursday to take a big bite out of the state's budget deficit by passing a complex, $18 billion mélange of legally uncertain spending cuts and new taxes, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger quickly doused it with the icy water of a veto threat.

The Capitol is consumed with the state budget situation and every day brings some new histrionics, such as Assembly Speaker Karen Bass' threat Tuesday to lock up her colleagues if they fail to approve Democrats' revised package of taxes and spending cuts.

The Legislature's Republicans, after months of dithering, have finally unveiled their proposal for dealing, at least partially, with the state's ever-growing budget deficit – and it's not half bad.

Attorney General Jerry Brown made noises like a 19th-century states' rights zealot last week in opposing a looming federal court order requiring the state to spend up to $8 billion to improve health care in its much-overcrowded prison system.

Political, media and academic circles have heard more buzz about a state constitutional convention in the past three months than in the past three decades, reflecting growing concern about political dysfunction that the perpetual budget deficit crisis has laid bare.

Through months of stalemate on the state's ever-growing fiscal crisis, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders maintained a fairly cordial relationship – but the gloves came off Thursday as the governor issued much bigger budget deficit numbers and gave lawmakers a private tongue-lashing.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is a proponent of the all-gain-and-no-pain school of public policy, especially when he peddles the notion that California can radically reduce its greenhouse gases while reaping immense economic benefits.

Thousands of words were spoken Monday during an unusual joint session of the Legislature on the state's budget crisis, but the two most important were uttered by the state budget director, Mike Genest, when he quietly told lawmakers that the deficit will be "substantially worse" than the current figure, as staggering as it may be.