There are plenty of draconian cuts in the state budget Gov. Jerry Brown signed last month, items that promise to affect hundreds of thousands of Californians.

California has a new budget, and it even came in on time for a change. Cause for cheers? Maybe, but only if you don't get into the fine print. As often happens, the devil is in the details. This is quite a bunch of devils.

By now, most Americans have heard the story of the Jewish holiday of Chanukah many times, with its tale of a Greek king in ancient Syria (which included modern Israel) trying to eradicate the Jewish religion. He was thwarted by the guerrilla warfare of the Maccabees, who liberated the ancient Temple in Jerusalem in the second century B.C.

Millions of Americans believed all through his Presidency that George W. Bush never deserved to hold that office – regardless of what the U.S. Supreme Court ruled and no matter who got a few hundred votes more or less in Florida. That was because Democrat Al Gore won more actual votes in the 2000 election than Bush, even if he didn’t get more electoral votes.

Budget deficits have threatened California’s state parks – among the finest places with which nature has gifted this state – for several years, with annual threats to cut their operating budgets or even close them down.

The years-long campaign against Californians by the state of Texas, its officials and industries has done anything but abate since the Lone Star state was revealed as having a worse budget crisis than California’s, in addition to poverty and school dropout rates that far eclipse ours.

“It is nice to hear,” writes a reader of one of California’s largest newspapers, “that Arnold Schwarzenegger is sorry for his actions and takes full responsibility. But I just don’t quite understand what it means when a powerful person does wrong, tells the media that he takes full responsibility…and then the public sees no accountability or punishment for those actions.

For years since the 2008 passage of Prop.1A gave planners of high speed rail in California the prospect of spending $9.9 billion in state bond money, they have seemed bent on a single path: spending as much as possible.

Any week now, the state Dept. of Education will issue its annual report on the number of school dropouts in California. Note, the term is no longer “high school dropouts” – that’s because a lot of kids today leave the education system long before they ever arrive in high school.

Eliseo Medina is one prominent Democrat who wasn’t much upset by last year’s midterm election outcome, in general a Republican rout of Democrats.