My sister was just accepted into a master’s degree program at the University of California. She was thrilled. But then she was told that due to budget constraints, she’ll have to be waitlisted, because the University isn’t sure how many students it will be able to afford this coming academic year. Meanwhile, the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania have offered her fully funded positions in their programs. We’re missing out on the opportunity to bring a brilliant young person from the east coast to live and work here in California.

My sister isn’t alone. Governor Schwarzenegger and his Republican allies have chosen to prioritize the need for yacht-owners to buy their boats tax-free rather than invest in the future of California.

This in the year that Schwarzenegger declared the “Year of Education.”

Thanks to the collapsing housing market, California has a massive budget shortfall. With the budget millions of dollars in the red, Schwarzenegger has two options. One, he could insist that California is the wealthiest state in the wealthiest country in the world, and that it can afford to maintain the best education system in the United States. Of course, this would mean that he’ll have to preside over a modest increase in taxes on the wealthiest Californians.
Or, Schwarzenegger could cut back on education drastically.

Guess which way he’s headed.

Schwarzenegger’s refusal to fully fund education has led the California State University system to impose an early deadline on applications for enrollment — a trick to minimize the number of students who will get the opportunity to attend college by hoping that students (who are used to deadlines falling much later in the academic year) won’t file on time. That’s just the beginning. As I mentioned, the UC and CSU are bracing for even deeper cuts to their budgets (which were already cut drastically as recently as 2003).

In case you think this whole “drastic cuts” business is an isolated incident in Schwarzenegger’s California, remember that Arnold declared 2007 the Year of Health Care. He failed in his promise to extend insurance to the nearly 7 million uninsured Californians. Now, he’s looking to cut off even more people rather than fix the state’s budget problem.

Yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle noted how Schwarzenegger has a new scheme to make the already inadequate Medi-Cal system even more inadequate. Using bullshit paperwork rules that require Medi-Cal patients to fill out redundant forms four times a year, our cowardly governor hopes to trim about 122,000 of the neediest people off of the state’s health care plan. These folks would be dismissed for no reason other than their paperwork might get lost in the mail. Disgusting.

Schwarzenegger was reelected because he promised to offer bold leadership.  Since his reelection, he’s proven that he’s a coward — using sly paperwork tricks to shuffle hospital patients and college students under the rug.

Thanks to David Dayen for his excellent writing on this topic.