Not in my little happy place today.

6 Degrees has been distracted by school for the past few weeks. And by distracted, I mean, freaking overwhelmed with trying to stuff my head full of book learnin’ and remembering what it’s like to be a student. I am also proud to say I managed to eke out an “A,” but barely.

Going to school had a side benefit in that it kept me from paying much attention to the national hysteria over the economy and the antics of our elected officials.

But this morning I woke up with politics on the brain, today’s Bee waiting on my doorstep to catch me up on what I’ve been missing. And I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry at this point. The past few weeks in politics have illustrated perfectly one of my favorite H.L. Mencken quotes:

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

So, Schwarzie is giving it to us good in the form of cutting the jobs of thousands of the lowest-paid public servants and proposing a most-unRepublican tax increase, the Dems and Reps in the Legislature are naturally blaming each other like tiny tots fighting over the Tonka dump truck, and who-the-hell Chiang is looking like David v. Goliath (go you, Chiang). And, way to stick it to the little guys, Arnie. If you *really* want to motivate the Legislature, wouldn’t it be more effective to cut all the salaries of your highest-paid workers? That is, cut off all the pay for every top-level appointee in every state department. Frankly, you’d save considerably more money and you’d have the big dogs on the phone putting pressure on the Assembly and Senate.

More locally, our myopic leaders continue to wring their hands over the budget while approving noncritical expenditures and freaking raises for city staff. You have got to be sh***ing me, right? Can this get any more ridiculous? (No, don’t answer that. First, it’s rhetorical, and second, it can get much worse and we all know it.) Seriously, does a city manager making more than $200k a year really need a raise? Oh, sure, considering the *stellar* job he’s been doing, when he’s not busy with the Dalai Lama’s people making sure Sacto gets a tour stop for the Lama-palooza ‘09. And, as Joe Sac says, “I hope they count them trees better than they counted them water meters.”

6 Degrees is impatient, cranky, and undiplomatic, which means I can never run for public office. The few times I have had to sit through council meetings, I have alternated between wanting to throw things at people or throw myself off the nearest bridge (fortunately, the two opposing urges created a form of stasis and prevented me from taking either action, and I just ended up going home and drinking a bunch of tequila).  If it weren’t for these darned character flaws, I’d totally run for public office…although as I write this, it occurs to me that character flaws don’t seem to be stopping anyone else from running for office…in fact, it appears you can be insane, unethical, criminal, and/or just plain idiotic and still hold public office. (Still, there are certain events from my undergrad years that I’d prefer kept out of the papers.)

With “leadership” like we’re seeing now, it’s no wonder our state and city budgets are in the crapper. I heard a snippet on the radio the other day (don’t remember the show or the speaker), but the person called it “malfeasance in office.” I couldn’t agree more. Seriously, from Arnie on down, our elected officials are just behaving like clowns–the evil, scary-type clowns with too much makeup and a dangerous sense of entitlement.

And on that note, I am going to go sign up for my fall classes–I could use the distraction.