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Yesterday was interesting, a bit frustrating, and punctuated with a little bit of fear. Not that you'd know from the news, even the local news, but there have been a series of protests against the California governor's proposed budget. A few months ago he sponsored some ballot measures that were put on the ballot. They were put there as a condition of getting one Republican to switch his vote in order to pass the budget. As you may not know California is one of the few states that requires two thirds vote in order to pass the budget every year. So even though the vast majority of our state legislators are Democrats, Republicans hold a disproportionate amount of power because it is necessary that some of them vote along with Democrats to get to the budget passed. So anyway, there were several ballot measures related to the budget. All of them failed except one. It will not allow legislators to vote themselves a pay raise when there is a budget deficit. It doesn't require that they actually cut their wages, just not give themselves raises.

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