While it is gratifying to put 2008 behind us, 2009 cannot be expected to be significantly better-especially in California. We are financially ruined and our state will be urinating red ink and shedding jobs for years to come. But greedy lenders, unqualified homeowners and a credit crisis cannot bear the full burden of blame for our state’s economic incompetence.

We have thrown our wealth around with reckless abandon, and it finally is starting to hurt us. What’s most horrifying in all of this is that rock-bottom is nowhere in sight.

Sadly, the state potentially running out of money on Feb. 1 isn’t the floor of the abyss. Even if our diligent leaders in the state capitol manage to put partisan minutiae aside and bridge our budget gap, it only amounts to an overdue bandage. There is no way to completely and agreeably solve all of our state’s issues in a matter of weeks.

California’s size alone makes it a logistical nightmare, not to mention how we’re vulnerable to a wide host of unpredictable natural disasters that can easily destroy any economic plan we may scrap together.

At any rate, anything legislators hammer out in the next month will only move the burden of debt deeper into the future while ensuring they aren’t issued IOU’s on payday.

Although things are bleak at home, there is one slight aspect of economic relief that we should all be able to look forward to in 2009: Susan Atkins, a.k.a. Sadie Mae Glutz, finally dying.

It’s morbid, but it will take a slight burden off our backs and wallets. Even though her assorted bills are proportionately small, considering our financial crisis, every penny saved helps.

As of July 2008, the California taxpayer had already shelled out over a million dollars on her medical bills. It costs roughly three grand a day for guards to protect her, according to her lawyer’s statements.

She is a miserable shrew who has earned every horrific thing that has happened to her. She has been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and recently had one of her legs amputated. She was denied a compassionate release in July of last year.

She has been lounging in our state’s prison system since 1971. No woman has been incarcerated in California longer. She was initially sentenced to the death penalty, and she easily earned it, but California’s Supreme Court outlawed the practice in 1972. The frumpy former stripper was one of the cult members who participated in the grisly Tate-LaBianca murders in 1969 due to the brainwashing abilities of Charles Manson.

My word count for this column is too low to report all the despicable actions of Atkins and the rest of the Manson family. Suffice to say she does not deserve to be afforded the slightest bit of human dignity, especially during our economic hardships. The idea that she has a dry place to sleep at night and better healthcare than hordes of us is infuriating, considering the financial headaches state-run daycare centers and infrastructure projects are having.

Yes, Atkins has converted to Christianity and has tried to mentor other inmates. She says that she is truly repentant and has begged for mercy. But that doesn’t bring her victims back. It also doesn’t change the fact that she committed these murders because she wanted to spark and apocalyptic race war.

Most likely, she spends her days drooling and waiting for caretakers to wipe caked filth from her crevices. We have paid handsomely for her cancer treatments as well as protective custody and will continue to do so until she needs embalming fluid. But she almost assuredly will stop breathing this year, that’s something to look forward to.

Jordan Guinn can be reached at [email protected]