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Comment by TomOfTTB | Hacker News Reader

This is more politics than anything else. The Governor is trying to cut visible things so people will accept the Tax extensions. The truth is, as the the article says, these parks only cost $33 million. In a state where the top 5 highest paid employees make over $10 million in salary (http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/) keeping those parks open wouldn't cost that much.

Plus we just found we've got $2 billion in tax revenue we didn't expect (http://tinyurl.com/3cv3t4k)

Also, for the record, California has a corporate sponsorship program for parks: http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=25426.

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Yep, those salaries are obscene. Does the state pay $1 million bucks to the head coach of each of the UCs just so they can beat each other in football? That's an excellent place to start. No coach should be paid more than $60K a year.

When you look at the map linked in the article, http://goo.gl/adHC3, it's remarkable how such fantastic places in the state can be kept open for only $33M.

What this really means, I assume, is that it costs almost as much to keep a state park closed as it does to keep it open.

Given that they still need to employ maintenance services, for reduced but not non-existent needs, park rangers, etc., you're probably right.

> The Governor is trying to cut visible things so people will accept the Tax extensions.

Good! I've been publicly arguing for a while now that the only way to stop the Tea Party in its stupid tracks is to start cutting all the things that people actually see. We keep getting all these atrocious cuts to education and public services, and they keep managing to muddle along anyway, which keeps reinforcing the idea that there's still more left to cut from education and other public services.

It's time to start cutting things that people care about.

Nice. We don't have a few million. But paying $3 trillion to kill innocent Iraqis and Afghanis is cool.

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