Across-the-board" cuts are the most stupid conceivable way to make budget reductions, because they treat the highest of state priorities the same as the lowest. Instead of making 100 percent cuts in utterly indefensible expenditures, like tuition subsidies for illegal aliens and a vast array of duplicative or obsolete state programs, the governor proposes throwing the prison doors open.

Yet he refuses even to consider the obvious question: Why has the average annual cost of housing a prisoner climbed from $32,000 to $42,000 during this administration, while Florida spends only $19,000 and even the federal prison system costs just $25,000?

Last April, Schwarzenegger ignored pleas to save $7 billion in prison construction costs and $1 billion in annual operating expenses by contracting out 50,000 prison beds - a common practice in other states,

including Florida, New York, Texas and Michigan. Instead, he approved a law that very cleverly makes it impossible for California to contract out more than a few thousand beds.

So just whom does the governor think he's kidding? Californians have given him an entire finance department to prepare serious budget reforms, and yet we're expected to believe that a preposterous threat to release thousands of dangerous felons is the only solution to the state's run-away spending.