August in California. It doesn't scan as a song title, doesn't sound like "Autumn in New York" or "April in Paris," even if you if you accentuate it into Schwarzeneggerian rhythms.

Nobody this year can complain, as in that Larry Hart lyric, that they hate California because "it's cold and it's damp." But who'd want to sing about it now, anyway? Still, it's a pretty typical August, hot and dry, not cold and damp. The temperature in Needles is 110.

Five weeks after the beginning of the fiscal year, there's still no state budget. Lt. Gov. John Garamendi announces for another office, there's vague talk (again) about Dianne Feinstein running for governor, and both the left and the right are heading to the ballot with a few of their favorite things. (Now that might make a song lyric, though a sappy one.)

Coming in November: two proposals on renewable energy; one on rehabilitation for nonviolent drug offenders, another on parental consent for minors wanting an abortion, plus a constitutional ban on gay marriage. And in the meantime, as always in the summer, fights over ballot wording.

Does Proposition 8 "provide that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California", as its backers want it worded? Or does it "eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry" as Attorney General Jerry Brown's office reworded it after the state Supreme Court struck down the prior ban?

The fight over the language is testimony to the contenders' belief in the inattention, if not the stupidity of the electorate. But it also underscores the pivotal importance of political language.

As usual, the media, describing the budget mess, talk about a Republican governor and a "Democratic- controlled legislature" or, if they adhere to the conservative line, a "Democrat-controlled Legislature." In fact, of course, it's neither.

In budget fights and other fiscal controversies, this is a Republican-controlled Legislature. Because budgets require a two-thirds majority to pass, the Republicans, though a minority, have effective control. But because they're a minority, they're never held accountable, so they can obstruct at will without having to take the rap.

Conservatives, many of them, argue that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't a real Republican either, and certainly not a conservative, more a closet mugwump, classically defined as a politician whose mug is on one side of the fence and his wump on the other.

But then, of course, the contemporary American conservative isn't a real conservative in the classic European sense, either.

But the propositions heading to the ballot are also indicators that it's not the politicians who invented the ideological extremes in our public arena; it's the voters who tend ever more to segregate themselves out of the public square and into their private squares. The pols all represent somebody.

Every quadrennium in the Bush era, you knew it was August when the Rove boys began to play their dirty political games, and this year, even with Bush on the way out, they're back, dirty as ever, sliming up the legacy of their own candidate, a Republican who earned a reputation as an honorable man and who, eight years ago, was himself the target of the same gang. Will this be the mark of McCain?

Conceivably, nothing political that happens in August before the party conventions much matters, unless you're unemployed or standing in a line at the DMV or a vendor wondering when you'll get your check from the state.

On the other hand, the dying grass and the parched shrubbery are real. So is the smoke in the air and the likelihood that fees at the university will be higher, the classes more crowded.

Budget or not, when school begins in a couple of weeks, the programs in arts and music at the neighborhood school will be even sparser, assuming there were any to begin with. There will be fewer counselors, fewer reading specialists, fewer teams and fewer materials. Ditto for clinics, libraries, park maintenance.

August in California. Almost every year, we mark it with mounting anger about why the pols in Sacramento can't get the job done and pass a budget. That's what they're there for. Dock their pay for every day they run over the June 30 deadline, recall them.

But we don't ask what kind of budget for what kind of state, and let the convoluted, dysfunctional fiscal system cover for life in a fiscal dreamland and our own unwillingness to confront choices.

With a monster deficit, how much do we want in new taxes, and on whom – the rich, the corporations, sales taxes, property taxes, gas taxes? How much are we willing to cut in whose programs – prisons, the old and sick, the higher-education system, the school kids, the highway program, support for local governments – name your priorities?

August in California. It's long been thus and unless there's a restoration of community and citizenship, it will be thus again next year and the next. August in California.

Reach Peter Schrag at P.O. Box 15779, Sacramento, CA 95852-0779.