Students are not alone in their dissatisfaction. Polls show residents see California headed the wrong way with a gaping budget shortfall, legislative gridlock, slashed social services and double-digit joblessness.

Marchers may be the vanguard of a debate about whether California should temper its aspirations or pay more to maintain universities and other “Golden State” hallmarks.

“This is unprecedented, unparalleled, you know. This is ridiculous,” said Jesse Cheng, a student nonvoting member of the university governing board. “For the students at the (University of California) now, this is our political moment… We can stand up and improve our system and get our state out of these incredibly difficult times.”

Marches are planned in Berkeley, the 1960s protest hub, Los Angeles, Sacramento and campuses of state universities inside and outside the University of California system.

Racist acts, including a swastika and anti-gay graffiti has raised temperatures on campuses. Fee hikes of more than 30 percent to over $10,000 per year will make the university more costly than rivals in other states.

Students see that closing doors to less affluent, minority students — privatizing the university — and building on the effects of a 1996 state initiative which banned affirmative action at state institutions.

California did not even charge an Education Fee — the equivalent of tuition — in the 1960s, when state investment built campuses into national-level institutions, roads to link the state and canals that made the desert bloom with food.

“Beyond the fact that there isn’t money, there is a sense that education has become a private good,” University of California spokesman Pete King said.

The state has cut support and so university fees have risen, he said. Fee hikes will take university costs above the four state schools it compares itself with, including schools in Virginia and Michigan, the university said.

For Hoover Institution scholar Bill Whalen, who used to work for moderate Republican Governor Pete Wilson, the university’s issues reflect an overreaching by the state on services and promises — without the financial power to do so.

“We are at a time where we can’t afford this path of spending, we just can’t keep up with it. It’s like the Soviets trying to compete in the arms race,” he said, arguing that the university and state needed to clarify their missions.

The university also gets plenty of criticism. Students say administrators have been slow to address racism on campus and are forcing university diversity to plummet with higher fees.

A new campus that opened in the agricultural Central Valley in Merced in 2005. It was a long-planned expansion to increase services where they were needed most for some, and a bad move at the wrong time to others.

“There is nothing else to call that but a hair-brained scheme,” said Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy & Higher Education.

Other state universities feel the pinch: rival University of Illinois is weighing tuition hikes of up to 20 percent for incoming freshmen, said Stanley Ikenberry, interim president of university’s campus at Urbana-Champaign, in a newspaper interview this week.

But Callan sees California in a unique position. “There is a kind of hubris on the part of the state and the university” embarking on costly missions when times are worst, he said.

UC Berkeley student and organizer Ricardo Gomez sees the state moving away from conservative economic policies and toward goals like free higher public education.

“These crises are going to offer the electorate and people of California an opportunity to once again to stand up for what we believe in,” he said. He plans to march on Thursday.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Stern in Chicago) (Reporting by Peter Henderson)

Without making those cuts — which Chiang says will pump $1.3 billion into the state’s checking account — California would be broke by April 1, no fooling.

The state wouldn’t climb back to what’s considered a safe level of cash on hand, $2.5 billion, until later that month, when tax revenues are expected to begin flowing into Sacramento.

“While our current cash condition is marginally better than it was one year ago,” Chiang wrote to leaders, “it is still precarious.”

Even with the budget cuts, the state’s cash reserve would still be far below that cushion in March and April.

To that end, Chiang is calling for an additional $2 billion in cash-flow “solutions.” Looking at previous cash crunches, that could mean some payments, like income tax refunds, would be delayed for a few weeks to keep the cushion intact.

“Call it overdraft insurance,” said H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the state Finance Department. He stressed that officials are still huddling over specific solutions.

If the budget gridlock lingers all the way to July, then IOUs could come back into play.

And because many budget cuts require months of ramp-up to take effect, delaying action on a new budget could inflate the state’s overall $19.9 billion deficit by $2 billion, Palmer warned.

“Inaction ignores the projected cash shortfall which we face in less than 70 days,” Chiang wrote. “Only you can prevent history from repeating this year.”

On Monday, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California will host a rare Congressional “Field Hearing“. A Congressional delegation will venture out of the beltway and actually devote time to a problem in our country. Better yet, they will be listening to real citizens. Sort of.

At issue is what residents are calling a government-made drought in the Central and San Joaquin Valleys of California. Legal and environmental regulations in the Endangered Species Act has resulted in the diversion of 200 billion gallons of water from the agricultural heartland of California into the Ocean. According to California farmer Rose Corona,

“Potentially over $20 billion of California’s $43 billion of agricultural revenue could be decimated in America’s greatest breadbasket as farmers lose their farms and residents are forced to import food from China. While the solutions are not simple, local government officials are not even able to attempt them.”

Two thirds of California’s water is in Northern California, but two thirds of the people live in Southern California. Over the last generation, a series of aquaducts and canals was built to divert some of the plentiful water in the North so that instead of raising the sea level (as Al Gore warns us is imminent) the fresh water will irrigate incredibly productive land. The five counties effected provide tens of thousands of jobs and a stunning $20 billion of food output.

So why would politicians in California, a state that is already bankrupt, do anything other that mount a united battle to find a solution? That is hard to say. Instead there are deep and often ugly divisions and battle lines such as radical environmentalist on one side and farmers and migrant workers on the other.

Officials are perplexed to find an explanation for the declining population of the delta smelt, a small bait fish. It is also true that the salmon industry is concerned. So it is understandable that regulators would force action. What is not understandable is why the game of man vs beast is tilted at every turn toward the beast.

Consider that the judicial solution holds that if the fish population is declining, we will leave more water in the river and see if that works. No one knows if it will. Maybe there is a chemical or biological explanation, but we will take a chance because the lives of fish are at stake.

So when a compromise solution is proposed, called the “Two Gates” project, that would restore water and possibly protect fish, the Obama administration’s Interior Secretary, Ken Salzar put the brakes on it. So we will experiment to put fish over people, but we will not experiment to put people over fish. How is that Hope and Change working for you?

As for the rest of us, the implications are huge, not just for our food bills, but for establishing the precedent of allowing the Federal government this level of control over water. When government takes your water, they take the value of your land nay, they steal the value of your land.

Missouri lost this battle over the last several years and unlike California, we have to drive hundreds of miles to find anything that looks like a desert. Nevertheless, the Government used the same Act to withhold water from the State after which the river is named, favoring the pallid sturgeon over farmers. Get the pattern?

Now consider for a moment that we are not just talking about California farmers, nor just our food supply, we are talking about who controls the food supply.

This area of California is some of the most productive in the Country producing nearly half of America’s produce including 55% or our asparagus, 90% of our strawberries and 100% of our olives. When the 35,000 unemployed residents of the region look for help at the food pantries they drive past idle asparagus fields to get their canned asparagus from China. So we depend on Islamists for oil and now China not just for cash but for food!

So residents of California, and really the rest of us, have no other hope than Congressional action. They need Congress to immediately pass Congressman Devin Nunes‘ Bill, the aptly named “Turn the Pumps on Act“. Amazingly, the legislation to help California out of this crisis is bottled up in Committee by a Californian–Nancy Pelosi. Nunes is asking his colleagues to sign the discharge petition. Is your Congressman on the list?

Although Rose Corona and others are pleased with the leadership of Congressmen Nunes and McClintock who have pursued the “Field Hearing” that will take place Monday, they remain angry about several points including:

• Why the hearing is located in Los Angeles, over 200 miles from the effected area?
• Why Democrats get five witnesses and Republicans only one?
• Why was the “Two Gates” solution postponed indefinitely under the radar last week by the Obama administration?
• Whether California’s Congressional Democrats are willing to move the majority Party in Congress to act?

Because the travel distance is such a strain on both the farmers and the concerned citizens in that area, Corona and other Pro-water coalition groups are calling on all Patriots and Tea Party Activists to come and show their support for a solution in two locations. A Town Hall meeting with Representatives Nunes, McClintock, McCarthy and Bishop (R-Utah) will be held on Monday:

8:30am-10:30am
Fresno City Council Chambers
2600 Fresno Street, 2nd floor
Fresno, CA 90012-2944

The Oversight Field Hearing will be held:

1:00pm
700 N. Alameda Street, Los Angeles, CA

If you will be anywhere in Southern California on Monday, please make one of the meetings. If you cannot, please be sure your Congressman is on the discharge petition. The administration that wants to control your health care, your energy and your bank, now wants to control your water.

The lien was filed May 11 at the Los Angeles County recorder’s office for $79,064, according to a record in an electronic database that includes lien filings. The record does not indicate what property the lien was placed on, but it lists the debtor as Arnold Schwarzenegger with the governor’s home address in Brentwood.

Schwarzenegger’s spokesman, Aaron McLear, said in a statement that the “governor has paid his taxes in full and on time.”

“No one, including the IRS, has notified the governor of any issues whatsoever with his taxes,” McLear said. “We are contacting the IRS to determine if the document in question, which appears to be a penalty for missing info and not for unpaid taxes, is legitimate and if there is any discrepancy to resolve.”

L.A. Times

The newspaper said California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office would issue an official report on Wednesday with its shortfall estimate.

The projection comes less than four months after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers agreed to a budget plan that closed a deficit of more than $24 billion largely with deep spending cuts to respond to plunging revenues amid the worst economic crisis to hit the most populous U.S. state since the Great Depression.

Schwarzenegger said last week he expects a budget gap for the rest of the current fiscal year of between $5 billion to $7 billion. His finance advisors had previously said the state government would see a $7.4 billion gap in the next fiscal year beginning in July.

But next year’s budget shortfall will be much larger than initially forecast, the Los Angeles Times said. Citing sources briefed the upcoming report, it said the deficit will be $14.4 billion. (Reporting by Jim Christie; Editing by John O’Callaghan)