Weeks went by and the media forgot that the state legislature was still in session. At least it seemed that way on April 27th, when the legislature finally passed a budget. Headlines suddenly popped up, saying that the new budget plugged the holes left by I-695, and, gosh, wasn't it neat that the legislature got something done. Excuse me? This was pitiful political compromise. Frank Chopp, the leading Democrat in the House caved in to election-year pressure and refused to play hardball to get a decent budget passed. Last year, the Dems were quick to recruit moderate Republicans to vote for their budget, but this year they made noises about "playing fair." And we got a bad deal in the process. The legislature and Gov. Jellyfish passed a law backing the $30 license tabs, but refused to go the whole route and spend the emergency reserve money--a key, unwritten requirement behind I-695's logic. Only $400 million of the over $1 billion in reserve money will be spent. It will fund one-third of the transportation construction projects under Referendum 49, a little more than 50% of the money local governments lost from I-695, and only a measly one-fourth of the funds transit lost to I-695. These are one-time-only fixes; it will be up to next year's legislature to really clean up the mess, while we suffer cutbacks in the meantime.--Maria Tomchick

On April 13th, the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress passed a $1.8 trillion federal budget that, as usual, includes big cuts in social spending, tax cuts for the wealthy, and a big increase in the Pentagon's budget. While the budget provides a simple outline of how much money should go to each department, the details will be hammered out in various spending bills that will be voted on in the coming months. We can expect that a big portion of the Pentagon's budget increase will be spent on the Star Wars ballistic missile shield so beloved of the Clinton Administration and Boeing. Meanwhile, a panel of respected scientists from MIT concluded in late April that the antimissile shield is a useless boondoggle that would be easily confused by any number of common and simple scenarios. For example, it won't be able to handle a single warhead that could split into hundreds of little bomblets (i.e., a chemical or biological weapon) or a warhead that uses liquid nitrogen to cool its nose cone to avoid heat sensors. Nearly any use of mylar balloons would render the anti-missile system completely useless. Lisbeth Gronlund, a missile defense expert at MIT, explained the panel's report: "This is basic physics, and it's airtight. It's as close to a proof as you can get that the system won't work." Pres. Clinton will decide this summer whether to approve construction of the anti-missile system, and the projected price tag is $30 billion over the next 25 years. But the scientists noted that the system is not being designed to address countermeasures; last fall it was discovered that China had already developed countermeasures to this system. It's pure pork for Boeing.--M.T.