The state of California has long been driving at unsafe speeds towards the cliffs of fiscal insanity. Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger came in and just stepped on the gas a little harder.

Now, instead of searching for spending reductions to close the widening fiscal gap due to the drunken spending spree, California has decided to remedy their out of control fiscal policies by…wait for it…punishing families.

According to SF Gate:

California parents beware: Those little tax deductions running around the house are now worth less (in a strictly financial sense, of course).

To help balance its budget, California has reduced the state tax credit for dependents. The change will increase a family’s California taxes for 2009 by about $210 per dependent compared with 2008.

So let me just get this straight. Isn’t this the same state that funneled $3 Billion of taxpayer funding on embryonic stem cell research just last year? So the state must think it’s in its long term best interests to fund killing human beings by punishing live ones.

California’s stem cell program is referred to as the largest source of embryonic stem cell research funding in the world, mainly because everyone in the private sector saw the research as fruitless and with little to promise that wasn’t already being delivered by adult stem cells.

These kind of bloated budget maneuvers has California taxpayers fleeing the state for Arizona, Nevada and other states. I wish the embryos could do the same.