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To say things are a mess in Sacramento right now is an understatement. The budget is being attacked by all sides. Usually that is an indication of a good compromise, but sometimes it leads to HillaryCare and everything goes down in flames. Here is a status update.

The Assembly passed the budget in a late night session then said it was going on recess for a month. The trouble started in the Senate before the Assembly even started. Senator Perata was not happy with a package of tax cuts that the Republicans wanted. Then the Senate Republicans started moving the goal posts. They went back to demanding even more cuts, without spelling out what they meant.

Meanwhile, advocates for the poor, elderly, education and transportation expressed their disappointment at the budget that passed the Assembly. George Skelton today went after the cuts to the poor.

Anyway, it was about the time of the wine-tasting that the legislative leaders hatched their plan to roll California's most vulnerable.OK, maybe I'm guilty of a cheap shot. But it's no more a cheap shot than picking the pockets of the poor in order to bring spending and taxes closer into balance.

The victims list includes 1.2 million impoverished aged, blind and disabled, plus 500,000 welfare families, mostly single moms with two kids.

Skelton then reminds us of the comments made by Nunez and Perata earlier on these type of cuts.

Check this Perata comment to reporters after a July 12 negotiating session with GOP leaders:

"They want us to cut in places that Democrats just didn't get elected to come up here and cut. So for any program that involves the elderly, people who are disabled, people who are mentally ill, our mantra is kind of, we're here to protect those who can't protect themselves."

Nuñez was even more adamant: "We're not going to take the canes away from the blind. We're not going to kick people out of their wheelchairs … kick poor kids into the street. We just refuse to do that under any circumstances."

Guess he was speaking literally. Could have fooled me. I and virtually everyone around the Capitol thought he was promising not to buy Republican votes with poor people's pocketbooks.

Look, they managed to restore most of the cuts that Arnold had proposed, but not all. But then they went and cut taxes, which opened them up to new criticism. This has opened them up for criticism for both their previous comments. It's hard to justify the tax cuts when they had said they were not going to cut aid to the most vulnerable and then they did just that. Then Nunez made it even worse.

For 20 months now the CSU faculty has been negotiating with the CSU Chancellor's office for a new contract. They have reached an agreement on everything but salary increases. CSU faculty lags well behind the national average for similar state institutions. They have even fallen behind the Community College faculty members' salary. The inequity is causing a dispiriting, but predictable brain drain from the faculty.

Last April, 40 percent of junior faculty members at California State University, Sacramento, with less than six years of experience said they were considering quitting, according to a campus survey. In November, it rose to 54 percent.

Several have already found new jobs.

"A lot of it was driven by being fed up with Sac State, to be honest with you," said government professor Chris Witko, who is taking a better-paying job at St. Louis University in the fall after only a few years at CSUS.

CSU pays 13 to 23% below the average of 20 peer academic institutions. The proposal by the CSU Chancellors office would not even approach the closing that gap.

The strike vote starts today and will continue through the next two weeks. There is an independent fact-finding report currently being compiled. If it does not bring both sides back to the table and the strike authorization vote passes, then we may see rolling strikes by professors in the spring. They would occur campus-by-campus basis. It is the last option for these professors. They would much rather teach their classes than be on the picket line, but they may have no other choice but to exert that sort of leverage on the Chancellor's office.

There is much more over at the California Faculty Association page, including a set of illuminating charts and graphs. Lucas also has a post up on Calitics. The SacBee has a good chart of what sort of an increase CSU faculty would need to receive to equal the average salary of peer institutions.