What can you do with $38 million? You can fund 577 teachers’ salaries for a year. You can fund the entire California Conservation Corps for a year and have a $3 million left over. You can even fund the operations of half of the state parks in California for a year to make the closure of state parks a problem for a different year… or you can fund two campaigns in the Republican primary for governor (well, some of it anyway).

When you lie and get caught, your integrity gets called into question, but you’re in serious trouble when the defense of your lie is yet another lie and people take notice. That’s particularly true when you’re a candidate for governor.

Veteran Sacramento observer, George Skelton, wrote an important and fascinating column yesterday about a billionaire gubernatorial candidate’s radio ads titled “Meg Whitman’s radio whoppers”. In the ads Skelton references, Whitman says baldly that “in the last 10 years, state spending has gone up 80%”. Skelton did some research and wrote: “It doesn’t take much digging to learn that general fund spending “in the last 10 years” has risen just 27%, according to finance department data. Adjusted for inflation and population growth, spending actually has decreased by 16.6%”. Skelton goes on to demolish Whitman’s ads and her credibility.