Dan Walters makes no sense today:

What no one – not only politicians of both partisan stripes but the larger public as well – wants to acknowledge is that when it comes to state spending, there’s no free lunch.

If you filter out the cynical journalist-speak from this sentence from the paragraph before, you’ll see that thi sis actually exactly what Treasurer Angelides has been saying:

Angelides has uttered the usual bromides about closing corporate tax loopholes and imposing higher taxes on the rich but has been vague about fully financing what he and other Democrats are advocating.

So what Mr. Walters is really saying is “well, my back of the envelope calculations don’t match with what the State Treasurer has come up with. He must be wrong, and I must be right, and it’s better just to be cynical about these things anyway.” He mentions the Governor’s addiction to free-lunch thinking (lets $220 billion on the credit card! whee!) in passing towards the end, but wouldn’t that have been a better topic for a column?