UPDATE: We just received an email from Gil Duran, the Governor’s Press Secretary, who claims that this is an anonymous Tweeter posing as Brown’s dog and selling the items. It looks like this is similar to the anonymous Tweeter who pretended to be Rahm Emanuel during his race for mayor of Chicago.

“Governor Brown has nothing to do with the anonymous Tweeter who is posing as his dog. Therefore, he has nothing to do with the campaign to sell products to help the budget. Please correct the record. We have asked the TV station that did the erroneous story to run a correction as well.”

Gil Duran

Press Secretary

Office of the Governor

UPDATE 2: Here are the links to the fake Twitter account of the Governor’s dog. Sacramento CBS13, which originally ran the story has already pulled it from the internet, as you can see with this link.

When Jerry Brown ran for governor of California last year, he said he had a plan to balance the budget. He was noticeably absent on the details. Most political observers figured that was because drastic cuts would need to be made and the political fallout would be heavy if Brown made it public before the election.

Now we know the secret plan.

Jerry Brown

Brown is selling T-shirts, coffee mugs, tote bags, sweatshirts and water bottles with a picture of his dog, Sutter, on them. The shirts are sold through Café Press. A $3 profit from each shirt goes to the state to balance the budget.

Let’s see, the state has a $26 billion deficit. At $3 an item that means 8.67 billion items must be purchased. With 37 million Californians that means 235 items would need to be purchased to give a slight surplus.

A tote bag is only $15.99. A coffee mug is $13.99, which at that price should come plenty of free coffee. A T-shirt is $17.99 and an organic baby bodysuit is $21.99. At these prices it is going to cost every Californian about $4,000 to get the state budget balanced.

On the other hand, every Californian could just send $800 and the state would have a $4 billion surplus.

Hopefully, Brown has another idea for balancing the budget because this one is not going to work.