{"id":523,"date":"2004-01-19T10:31:53","date_gmt":"2004-01-19T18:31:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2004\/01\/good_luck_to_the_lemmings\/"},"modified":"2004-01-19T10:31:53","modified_gmt":"2004-01-19T18:31:53","slug":"good_luck_to_the_lemmings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2004\/01\/good_luck_to_the_lemmings.html","title":{"rendered":"GOOD LUCK TO THE LEMMINGS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><P>Der Gropenfuhrer has assembled what columnist Jim Washburn calls a Dynamic Oligarchy to<br \/>\nrule California&#8217;s lemmings. &#8220;The beauty of Dynamic Oligarchy,&#8221; <A\nhref=\"http:\/\/www.ocweekly.com\/ink\/04\/19\/lost-washburn.php\"><B><EM><FONT\ncolor=#003399>Washburn writes<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A>, &#8220;is that it works where it&#8217;s needed<br \/>\nmost. &#8230; If you&#8217;re an &#8216;unfit&#8217; member of society struggling to meet your meek goals, it zeroes right<br \/>\nin on you.&#8221; <\/P><br \/>\n<P>Washburn recalls seeing the Grope &#8220;crush a car with a wrecking ball&#8221; during his campaign for<br \/>\ngovernor. &#8220;I&#8217;ll never tire of his quote at the time, which ranks with Thomas Jefferson and Tom<br \/>\nPaine&#8217;s best: &#8216;In movies, I played a character that if I didn&#8217;t like something, I <I>destroyed<\/I> it!<br \/>\nI <I>viped<\/I> it <I>out!<\/I>&#8216;&#8221; <\/P><br \/>\n<P>That&#8217;s just what he&#8217;s doing to education, health care and social services. &#8220;How did we know<br \/>\nthat the special interests Arnold was complaining about were our kids and our poor and ailing<br \/>\nelderly?&#8221; Washburn asks. Nobody says the Grope&#8217;s job is easy. But his so-called solutions to<br \/>\nCalifornia&#8217;s fiscal problems are heartless and no better than those of his predecessor, Gray Davis.<br \/>\n<\/P><br \/>\n<P>And how about George Pataki, New York&#8217;s governor? He doesn&#8217;t want to be left out of the<br \/>\nrunning for heartless. To save New York state all of $9 million, he plans to cut assistance to the<br \/>\npoor&nbsp;who are&nbsp;physically disabled. &#8220;In a state budget of more than $90 billion, the<br \/>\ntotal savings would be minimal but at least 26,700 families could be affected,&#8221; <A\nhref=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2004\/01\/19\/nyregion\/19DISA.html\"><B><EM><FONT\ncolor=#003399>The New York Times reports<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> this morning.<\/P><br \/>\n<P>The report noted that those households&nbsp;&#8220;would lose $90 per month on average,<br \/>\naccording to an estimate provided in the proposal. For a family with a fixed monthly income of<br \/>\nonly several hundred dollars, that loss could have a significant impact, advocates for the poor<br \/>\nsaid.&#8221;<\/P><br \/>\n<P>Nice, huh? That piece&nbsp;of&nbsp;cheery&nbsp;news comes just in time to celebrate<br \/>\ntoday&#8217;s federal holiday <A\nhref=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2004\/US\/01\/19\/king.day.ap\/index.html\"><B><EM><FONT\ncolor=#003399>honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Der Gropenfuhrer has assembled what columnist Jim Washburn calls a Dynamic Oligarchy to rule California&#8217;s lemmings. &#8220;The beauty of Dynamic Oligarchy,&#8221; Washburn writes, &#8220;is that it works where it&#8217;s needed most. &#8230; If you&#8217;re an &#8216;unfit&#8217; member of society struggling to meet your meek goals, it zeroes right in on you.&#8221; Washburn recalls seeing the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-523","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-8r","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}