Yes, New Mexico’s budget is in the toilet, but California is the poster child for dysfunction. With a multi-billion dollar shortfall, a Legislature often stymied by bickering and The Governator at the helm, California keeps its capital reporters busyBut dullness might be a greatly appreciated commodity about now for Californians, not to mention that state’s Capitol press corps. The state had to close a $26 billion shortfall for this year, and already is looking at a $15 billion shortfall. Yes, you read those figures correctly.  It’s bad, very bad in the Golden State. But a recent poll shows that California voters don’t want to tweak Prop 13, overhaul the state’s tax code or change the constitutional mandate that requires a two-thirds majority of state lawmakers to support a state budget as ways to respond to the budget crisis.

Meanwhile, jumping to the Midwest, there’s more bad news for Michigan as well. Gov. Jennifer Granholm is asking state agency heads to put forward ways to cut 20 percent from their budgets for fiscal 2011, which starts next October, the Lansing State Journal reported this weekend. If those cuts become reality, it could mean more prison and state park closures, massive layoffs among Michigan State Police troopers and drastic reductions in welfare services, the paper reports. The request is already provoking a wide-ranging discussion not only about how to close the state’s budget gap — spending cuts vs. tax increases — but about something deeper: What is the role of government in the 21st century?

Spiraling costs and millions uninsured. Congress is trying to tackle health care reform amid a maelstrom of encouraging and dissenting voices that sometimes ratchet up the conversation to it’s-so-loud-I-can’t-think level. But David Leonhardt in the New York Times magazine takes a moment to tell a quiet story about several researchers, and a growing list of hospitals and medical providers, that are adopting a new way of practicing medicine that could very well serve as a model for the future.

In the aftermath of last week’s mass killing at Ft. Hood, federal investigators are examining possible links between Fort Hood shooting suspect Maj. Nidal M. Hasan and an American-born imam who U.S. authorities say has become a supporter and leading promoter of al-Qaeda since leaving a Northern Virginia mosque, according to the Washington Post. But this investigation is a delicate matter. As the Post notes:

A challenge for investigators is sorting out a potential thicket of psychological, ideological or religious motivations behind Hasan’s alleged actions. Hasan’s possible contact with extremists such as Aulaqi would complicate matters, suggesting that U.S. authorities may have missed chances to prevent the cleric from instigating this incident and others. But if it turns out that Hasan acted in the throes of an emotional breakdown, his questionable ties could be misinterpreted in ways that damage U.S. outreach to the Muslim world or provoke an overreaction that divides Americans.

The working theory is still that Nasan worked alone, the Post notes.

As Germany, most of Europe and every single major news outlet in the U.S. celebrates the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall  today (do you remember where you were when you heard?), this Der Spiegel story gives a different perspective on life behind the Wall during the Cold War. It’s about East Germans who rather than try to escape to the West during the Cold War chose to seek out forbidden adventures in Soviet Russia and elsewhere in the Eastern bloc.  It’s interesting reading.

Another update on S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford. The more time that goes by, the less likely Sanford will face possible impeachment, reports The (Columbia, S.C.) State.