It is more than two months into the new fiscal year and 80 days past the Legislature's deadline to pass a state budget and still, California is without a spending plan in place. State payments are not going out to health care providers, critical state services are under threat of being shut down, and the only action in the state Capitol has proved what Governor Schwarzenegger has said: that legislators are hunkered down in their ideological corners and unwilling to compromise.  more...