As of midnight this morning, the State of California is broke.  The government representing the eighth largest economy on the planet failed to reach an agreement to resolve an ever-widening budget deficit, forcing the state to issue over $3 billion in I.O.U.s to the dozens of creditors in the public sector and private enterprise holding California’s debt.

California is distributing $3.36 billion in I.O.U.s this month

Following Tuesday’s marathon session in the state legislature and no completion of Wednesday’s Hail Marys, the Controller’s office rolled out the promissory notes today to delay $3.36 billion in payments for at least 90 days.  The move is the first for California since 1992 and comes as the consequence of increasingly acidic relationship between the state’s Assembly and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The governor has taken a hard line of tax and fee increases beyond his recommendations, vetoing every package that has come out of the legislature that includes them.  Just gaining a simple majority in California’s dysfunctional General Assembly is a Herculean effort; overriding a veto is a fairy tale.  The governor’s refusal to compromise on increasing revenue is the obstacle, though you would never know it from his sound-bite ready releases.

Responding to State Democrats revenue increases, Schwarzenegger was derisive, declaring “They should forget about that” and accusing them of going through a “song and dance.  Let’s get to work and fix it.”

But, apart from issuing catch phrases reminiscent of a testosterone fueld action movie, the Governator has been light on details or leadership.  Schwarzenegger’s adolescent remarks and publicity stunts are throwing jet fuel on a church fire.  Just last month Schwarzenegger sent the Democratic Senate President Pro-Tem a pair of metal bull testicles with not saying “he would need them” for the coming budget battle.

Turning the already childish Californian political process into straight up pants-on-head retarded, Arnold has made a pissing contest out of an unprecedented financial crisis for the nation’s largest state. It would be bad enough if the hubris only endangered California.  However with the state constituting 14% of the nation’s GDP, Schwarzenegger’s showboating puts the entire country’s economy at risk.  The longer California’s fiscal house resembles the last season of Jon and Kate Plus Eight, the heavier an anchor the state drags on America’s recovery from the Bush Depression.

In moments this dire, the role of the chief executive in any organization public or private is to get the deal closed.  For real leaders, ideology, favoritism,  machismo, and gonad sculpture distribution get thrown out the window in crunch time in favor for that which works.  The ideal surrenders to the practical, dogma acquiesces to compromise, want gives way to need

Right now, California is broken.  And the entire country needs a real leader to fix it.

Today we kick off Warped Wednesday, a four-part weekly series of in-depth interviews and photo essays from our visit at the start of the 15th anniversary of punk rock’s traveling carnival, the Warped Tour.

First under our gonzo microscope are Mike Ski and Josie Outlaw, respectively frontman and keywoman of the Philadelphia upstart A.K.A.s. Dance music with substance, punk rock with boogie, The A.K.A.s are among the unique regional acts striving for national acclaim on Warped’s Skull Candy stage. Their new record Animal Summer dropped the same day Warped Tour kicked off, making them the fresh eggs at this farmer’s market of punk.

We catch up with them on their second stop to talk about the connection with Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra that almost didn’t happen, the artistic exodus from the Fueled by Ramen record label, and the green gifts they handed out to every band on Warped Tour.

—

Dream Not Of Today: We’re with the hard to define but easy to identify A.K.A.’s from Philadelphia and you’re here on your second stop on the Warped Tour in San Francisco. Now you guys already have a connection with one of San Francisco’s favorite illegitimate childrens, isn’t that correct?

Josie Outlaw: Um, is it Jello?

Mike Ski: Oh, right on. Yeah course.

(d)N0t: How did the spoken word with Jello Biafra come about?

Mike: Actually, it’s funny you should ask. We recorded with Alex Newport and his assistant on the record at the time was from San Francisco and he had recorded all the stuff that Jello did with the Melvins and a lot of his spoken word stuff, so he was friendly with him. And, you know, everyone in the band is like from our early days diehard Dead Kennedys fans.

Josie: Yeah.

Mike: And the reason it came up is because I had made a reference CD for Alex that was a bunch of bands that we liked the tones and energy and attitude of the sound of the record. That was really important, we wanted to capture the live feel.

(d)N0t: As kind of a reference for the mix.

Mike and Josie: Yeah.

Mike: So the first song was “Police Truck” by the Dead Kennedys.

(d)N0t: Ah, nice.

Mike: So, one day I was driving with Alex to Home Depot.

(d)N0t: [laughs] Home Depot. This is how it happens.

Josie: This is because the studio that we recorded our last record in, we helped him build it. Because he moved from California to New York, so we helped him build it. We were taking a lot of trips to Home Depot.

(d)N0t: So in exchange for your carpentry and your trips to Home Depot…

Mike: We got a little discount. [laughs] It wasn’t worth it though! [laughs]

(d)N0t: [laughs] Fair enough.

Mike: But yeah, he kinda brought it up. He was like, “Oh, you should just do this.” And I was like, “Yeah that would totally be awesome, but in reality how could we make it happen?” And he was like, “Oh, Drew knows him.” But what is interesting about the story is how exactly close to not happening that it was. Because we had the idea really early on and made the communication with him about it. But as you would probably know, he’s a very… interesting and unique fellow and was difficult to, uh…

(d)N0t: He is pure San Francisco, if I may say.

Mike: He is an oddity and that’s why he’s awesome. Basically, we told him what the song was about, kinda gave him a skeleton of what we thought he might say by himself. So literally the day that the record was going to mastering, which was the last possible day…

(d)N0t: The last possible second.

Mike: I got a phone call on my cell phone and I answered it and I’m like, “Hello.” He like, “Oh, can I speak to Mike.” And I was like, “This is Mike.” And he’s like, “Oh, this is Jello.” And I was like, “Yeah right, dude.”

Josie: [laughs]

Mike: And he was like, “So anyways, blah blah blah.” And I was like, “Wait a second. This is Jello Biafra.”

(d)N0t: Like he’s known you this entire time, like he’s talked to you like twenty times.

Mike: He like, “I’m in the studio right now and I just wanted to make sure that I understand what we’re doing.” Later that night I got a seven minute long streaming WAV file that was just the most mind-blowing thing of him just sitting and changing characters [snaps and snaps again]. It was awesome. We were so proud to have that happen because we love him and it definitely took the song to another level, because it was so good.

Read the entire interview here…

Just Press Play

As it usually goes with these things, the Associated Press reported today that the well-publicized affair of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford was even more lurid than he previously admitted.  What had been confessed in a painful press conference last week as a one year relationship is now discovered to have started in 2001, turning up the heat on the already boiling, bizarre case of the unfaithful governor.

Over the weekend, the increasingly few Republicans not fighting a scandal were on damage control.  With Sen. John Ensign and Sanford getting exposed for adultery and the Larry Craig incident still fresh in the public mind, the GOP was out to combat the impression that the sexual misconduct was a trend.  The party’s self-proclaimed title as the center for “family values” was in danger and it was all hands on deck to keep another ship in the Republican fleet from sinking.

On Sunday’s Meet the Press, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney managed to sew a shot at the gay equality movement with his defense of the party’s integrity (emphasis added).

I don’t think there’s any question but that we aspire to the highest standards of ethical conduct and that we aspire to values that’ll make America stronger.  There’s no question.  But the best think you can do for raising a child is to have a mom and dad love each other in a home.  And, and to say that and to say we want to see marriage between men and women, that we want to see families raised with the benefit of people who are married, that’s a, that’s a very important part of our culture.  It’s part of what our, our parties believes.  We believe in life.  These features are important.  And do we have people who don’t live up to those standards?  Absolutely.

By this point, the Republican spin machine has gotten really good at handling adultery, allowing for opportunities for folks like Romney to exploit emergency to the party’s advantage.  But, a decade after the GOP went batshit crazy over an extramarital affair in the White House, are they guilty of hypocrisy?

Romney’s partner on the Sunday news show was Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) who was quick to point out that the “high crimes and misdemeanors” that President Clinton committed had nothing to do with the affair, but with the conspiracy to cover it up.  Graham drew a subtle distinction between that adultery and this one, claiming Sanford had done nothing wrong.

But the governor did do something wrong. By focusing so much on the “heartbreak” and “love factor” of the affair, Republicans are safely evading the real issue with Sanford’s irresponsibility: no one was in charge of South Carolina for five days.  Not even his wife knew where he was when he ran off to Argentina for one final go with the mistress, and without delegating power to the lieutenant governor, South Carolina was operating without a commander-in-chief.

When impeaching President Clinton, the Republicans said the trial wasn’t about sex – it was about lying.  Now a decade later, already on the ropes when the tables were turned, they are deliberately making the Sanford affair about sex, to avoid the real questions about the governor’s absence.

It is a deliberate hypocrisy; a calculated P.R. juke to latch on to the little power the Republicans have left.

Like many popular websites today, (d)N0t did experience a brief outage today. According to our upstream provider, the network issue should now be resolved, allowing our fight against the future to continue without timeouts.

Many thanks to the alert readers who brought it to our attention.

Back in the halcyon days of my youth, I spent countless hours the way I suspect many only children spent countless of their hours: running around the neighborhood aimlessly looking for fun. I was particularly fond of taking my bike down to the zoo in Riverside Park, just a block from my house, where a curious child like myself could find all manner of fauna indigenous to Wichita- which was basically a couple of ducks and a beaver named Webster.

But eventually I became jaded with the constant wood-chewing, and sought stimulation of a higher magnitude. I took to using my dad’s walkman, playing all manner of cassette tapes. NKOTB (that’s New Kids on the Block to those of you who weren’t a six year old girl in 1988), Paula Abdul, Janet Jackson, the soundtrack to the London production of Man of La Mancha, Phil Collins. I memorized all the lyrics, I created elaborate dance routines in the backyard, rocking out in my Garanimals as day became night. All music was equally loved by my undeveloped ears, but none quite as much as Michael Jackson’s Bad. 

Every song on that tape made me want to dance, even the maudlin Man in the Mirror (to which, if memory serves, I crafted a giant Lego building-block masterpiece in the shape of a peace sign). I wasn’t an MJ fan; I didn’t run right out and buy any of his other music like I would do whilst in the thralls of later musical love affairs. But I loved that tape. Listening to that tape made me feel good, for reasons I couldn’t articulate then, and can’t articulate now. Music is like that.  

So when I turned 27 on Wednesday, and Jackson died on Thursday, I didn’t think much of it at first. He was a freak-show, to be sure, a man who was tormented and quite possibly tormented others. And in typical American fashion, a man vilified on Wednesday became a martyr for art by Friday.  His death pushed aside all the terrible things we said about him.  We could safely focus only on his music, now that the grave separated him from our children. 

But that night, as I laid in bed watching the shadows on my ceiling, I kept thinking about the Man in the Mirror. I wondered about what happened to the little boy who sang about love before he could possibly know what it was, whose talent couldn’t save him from the hungry world, or whatever darkness grew inside him. And I wondered about what happened to that little girl, singing full-throated and unafraid, chorus-line kicking her way into the early evening, with only fireflies for backup singers.