What's the only thing more absurd than being a Democrat who cuts government salaries, then issues worthless IOUs anyway, then demands workers pay income taxes on those IOUs? Doing it at the same time you're giving your own staff tangible raises that you cover up so hamfistedly the MSM calls you out and specifically identifies you as a Democrat:

At least 87 California Assembly staff members received raises totaling more than $430,000 on an annualized basis, even as the state faced a growing budget deficit that led to furloughs and pay cuts for many other government workers... salary bumps went to three employees in the office of Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, the Los Angeles Democrat who leads the 80-member chamber, and three to staff members of the Democratic caucus she oversees. In the 40-member Senate, nine staffers had a boost in pay, leading to an annualized increase of $152,000...

Both houses of the Legislature refused the AP's request to make the payroll records available electronically. Details of their spending are not listed in the annual budget the governor signs, as they are for other state agencies and departments, meaning there is no way to cross-check the information the Legislature provides.

This is a perfect illustration of why Angelinos have an inferiority complex vis a vis other big Blue State cities. I can guarantee that when Chicago Democrats decide to surreptitiously slip money to their friends - which I assume is pretty much every day - they do it right. None of this "so moronic that the AP's Sacramento beat reporter can crack it between lunchtime martinis" nonsense.

California Democrats so incompetent they can't even leverage decade-long legislative domination over an opaque budget into an end-of-session salary bump. No wonder we can't get get them to balance the budget.

At least I assume it was only Dems feeding at this particular trough, since the word "Republican" would have appeared at least once if the AP could have inserted it. The article does mention Schwarzenegger's office at the very end, noting that it shed both total workers and total salary expenditures. At times like this I like to remember Harold Meyerson's prescient 2001 American Prospect article, "California's Progressive Mosaic:"

[W]ith its Democratic governor, U.S. senators, state legislature, and congressional delegation, California is the only one of the nation's 10 largest states that is uniformly under Democratic control... a number of its cities are coming to look like Justice Louis Brandeis's "laboratories of democracy" - enacting minimum wage, health care, and worker-rights ordinances that would normally be the responsibility of the federal government... a civic left has emerged in California, with the state's new-model labor movement... at its core...

California has responded to the economic travails and political opportunities that have come with its immigrant workers by getting out in front of much of the nation, by creating a model of social equity, of worker and public power, at a time of capital supremacy. A full continent off-Broadway, the next New Deal is in tryouts.

It's a truly wonderful article, filled with celebratory descriptions about how the alliance between Big Labor and Latino groups systematically transformed California into an unruly progressive utopia. The phrases "especially innovative union movement" and "the critical factor... is the SEIU" are, I think, particularly poignant. It calls upon the rest of the nation to keep an eye on California to see how the subsequent decade turns out. As the academics are wont to say, it's a piece that rewards multiple readings.

References:
* California: You owe us taxes on those IOUs [Hot Air]
* AP investigation: Calif. lawmakers boost staff pay [AP]
* California's Progressive Mosaic [Meyerson]

Previously:
* NJDC Tool Aaron Keyak Helpfully Illustrates How Liberal Activists Sneeringly Cocoon Themselves In Asinine Arguments And Dishonest Smears
* State Dept Importing 1,350 Palestinian Saddam Supporters From Iraq Into Southern California
* J-Street: You Know What American Campuses Need? More Left Wing Anti-Israel Activism.