Voters will soon be casting a horror movie we might call Saw III, in which the characters cut off appendages of the needy and oppressed.

Perhaps because the pay isn’t bad, there are quite a few characters seeking out these parts, be they Island County commissioners or State Representatives. All they have to do is get elected.

Because this will be the third year of cutting, we’ll need good actors in Saw III, those who can discern between something that really needs to be cut off, and something that can survive if only partially cut.

Once again the star of this latest Saw movie is Gov. Christine Gregoire, who for her own safety has been ordering cuts from China, with her minions back home actually wielding the saw. Here’s just a sample of what will be cut next: 6.3 percent across the board cuts for most of state government, meaning workers will have even more time to polish their yachts and stand in food lines; 30 beds will be cut from the Western State mental hospital, meaning more insane people will be locked up in local jails or just left to wander the streets; reduced services overall for mentally ill patients and cuts to nursing home; and cuts to programs that help homeless people.

In addition, thousands of kids will lose their health insurance and Medicaid patients will lose dental, vision and hospice care.

And these are just some of the cuts necessary to get us through the rest of this fiscal year. When the Legislature meets in January to start working on the next two-year budget, they’ll bring chainsaws, crosscut saws and hacksaws — whatever it takes to get the job done as tax receipts continue to plummet and the voting population is rebelling against onerous new taxes, like the one on soda pop.

The trouble with the Saw movies featuring the hacking away at poor people is that they’re not actually on film. The cutting is done through form letters and directives issued from China by the governor.

We’d like to raise taxes just enough to make a real Saw III movie, in bloody 3D, so viewers can see the helpless victims as they writhe in pain and agony. We’ll be comfortable in our theater chairs, knowing the insane, saw-wielding legislators won’t go after the middle or upper classes. They might be crazy, but they’re not nuts.