In 2010, Little Arnold, sat down at his Apple computer. It was a G-22, way better than the clunky G-5 of the early 2000s.
There were a lot of other children in the kindergarten class. Most of them were named Arnold. Some were called “Arnie” and a few went by “Termy,” short for Terminator.
The reason was that in the year 2003, a famous actor had run for governor of California. During his campaign the famous actor had sex with a lot of adoring fans. He said that if they would vote for him, he would satisfy them. It turned out that neither the fans nor the actor delivered on their promises.
Nevertheless, nine months later, there were many “Arnolds” born in various under-funded hospitals. (By the year 2010 all hospital and medical care was free.)
Soon it would be lunch and little Arnold would have milk and cookies and his choice of many kinds of tasty steroids. Little Arnold was working on his biceps this semester.
As little Arnold waited for lunch, he wondered for the umpteenth time, how in the world California could afford to give everyone such a great education. There was one teacher for every three children in the air-conditioned, color-coordinated DSL-wired classrooms. Each child had a personal chauffeur to drive him or her to school.
A few days earlier, Arnold and all of his classmates had flown on the new Concorde to Greece when the kindergarten kids did Show & Tell on ancient democracies.
One of Arnie’s teachers, Bill Clinton, asked the young boy what he was thinking.
“Where does all the money come from to pay for education, Teacher Bill?” asked the young scholar and body builder.
“Well,” said Teacher Bill, who spent most of his time helping 14 to 17 year old young ladies with career decisions, “the money for education and all the other good things we have in California comes from a system developed by a very famous actor who was an inspiration for many action figure toys at the beginning of the century.”
“I don’t understand,” said little Arnold.
“It’s quite simple,” said Teacher George Bush, another splendid educator who had failed at politics when he invaded China, Russia and Switzerland on the same day. “The famous actor and 134 other people ran for governor of California in 2003. Each one had to pay a fee of $3,500 and it’s those kind of fees that were used to offset the state’s budget deficit of a trillion billion zillion dollars.”
“Wow,” said another small Arnold at the back of the room.
“Yes,” said George Bush and Bill Clinton together. “Wow is right. Besides a state fee to become governor, it also costs tons of money to run a campaign. At least ten million dollars. With everyone running for governor, there was a lot of spendable cash in the Golden State.”
A bell rang.
“Is it lunch time already?” asked little Arnold.
“No, silly,” said the Arnold at the back of the room. “That means there’s going to be another recall of our present governor.”
“Fancy that. That’s the fourth time this week that the governor has been recalled,” said the first Arnold.
“I know,” said Teacher Bill Clinton. “And it’s only Thursday. At this rate we’ll soon be able to fund fifty more universities.”
