THE NEW DEPRESSION: COMING TO A STATE NEAR YOU

Bob Herbert on the state of the states:

The president, buoyed by the bountiful patronage of the upper classes, seems indifferent to the increasingly harsh struggles of the working classes and the poor.

As Mr. Bush moves from fund-raiser to fund-raiser, building the mother of all campaign stockpiles, states from coast to coast are reaching depths of budget desperation unseen since the Great Depression. The disconnect here is becoming surreal. On Thursday the National Governors Association let it be known that the fiscal crisis that has crippled one state after another is worsening, not getting better.

Taxes have been raised. Services have been cut. And the rainy day funds accumulated in the 1990's have been consumed. If help does not materialize soon — in the form of assistance from the federal government or a sharp turnaround in the economy — some states will fall into a fiscal abyss.

That already seems to be happening in places like California, which has been driven to its knees by a two-year $38.8 billion budget gap, and Oregon, which has seen drastic cuts in public school services and the withholding of potentially life-saving medicine from seriously ill patients.

Most states have been unable to protect even the most fundamental services from damaging budget cuts.

And while we're at it, read this piece on the harrowing fiscal state California's in. Just awful.
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