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Opinion: California state garage sale: Many things must go

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Well, the countdown is continuing for the Great California Garage Sale this Friday and Saturday.

The Golden State is in so much financial distress that it lost its lease and everything must go. Not really, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger decided to mark the end of soft news summer days with a sale of surplus, unused or wasteful state property.

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To enhance interest and bidding, the ex-movie star even autographed the sun visors of some vehicles for sale.

They’ll be selling hundreds of items, including highly used state cars, computers, BlackBerrys, desks and even some CHiPs motorcycles (see photo).

To get the buzz going, the state has listed some stuff on EBay and Craigslist so the online world can have a hand in raising money for the beleaguered state. [Note: An earlier version of this post incorrectly referred to Craigslist as Craiglist.]

Some of the cars are fixed price, some auction. All will be operating with the goal of reducing the state fleet by 15%. The event will take place at a warehouse in Sacramento.

It’ll be a great story for television news at week’s end.

But perhaps the more interesting untold stories are how in the world the state of California ever came into possession of some of this stuff. The surfboard for sale, no doubt, was used by Gray Davis during one of his wild days.

But what about the diamond and gold rings? Dentist chairs? A fishing boat? Or an antique piano, an Xbox 360 with Halo 3 cover and a racing bicycle?

-- Andrew Malcolm

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