In addition to the fiscal meltdown going on in California, Governor “Ahnuld” has been talking up a water shortage that largely does not exist so that his billionaire friends can make a profit from a manufactured crisis:

We’ve been lied to for years now about the severity of California’s water shortage. The media and state officials have been ringing the alarm, warning that the state was in the grips of the quite possibly the “worst California drought in modern history,” when in fact the state nearly pulled in its average rainfall in 2009. The fearmongering is about to go into overdrive, as powerful interests start whipping up fears of drought to push through a $11 billion bond measure on the upcoming November elections, setting up the Golden State for a corporate water grab.

One of the big boosters promoting the drought scare is Gov. Schwarzenegger, who declared a state of emergency in early 2009, and promised to reduce water deliveries across the state by a whopping 80 percent.

Basically, 80% of water consumption in California is by agriculture, and this water is largely controlled by corporate farm cartels, and these get supplied water from the government at below cost prices, and frequently sell this resell water to the taxpayers at a significant markup.

Making farmers pay something approaching the real cost of supplying the water would solve this problem, because much of the shortage has been driven by corporate farms that have turned to water intensive crops, because they believe that they have the political pull to continue their back-door subsidy.