If California hints at America's future, we're in big trouble
E. Thomas McClanahanJust finished reading another gloomy piece about California, this one at Powerline. A few days ago, there was a long article about the once-Golden state in The Weekly Standard, for which I can’t find a link. It was even gloomier.
No matter. The themes are all the same: California is in the midst of slow-motion economic suicide at the hands of the Democratic Party and its union allies, who have dominated the state’s politics for decades.
I can’t help but worry that with the last election, the nation took big step toward Californifying itself, given the looming costs of Obamacare, our unrestrained entitlement state and the taxes needed to pay for it all.
Powerline’s John Hinderaker: “Today, California is the most spectacular failure of our time. Its government is broke. Productive citizens have been fleeing for some years now, selling their homes at inflated prices (until recently) and moving to Colorado, Arizona, Texas and even Minnesota … The results of California’s improvident liberalism have been tragically easy to predict: absurd public sector wage and benefit packages, a declining tax base, surging welfare enrollment, falling economic production, ever-increasing deficits.”
Under the new federal poverty measure, California leads the nation — 23.5 percent of its population is poor, or below the poverty line. Unbelievable. The state is becoming a museum of liberalism’s consequences, following the path tread by other one-party jurisdictions like Detroit, Washington, D.C., or Illinois.
This is a gloomy rumination the day before Thanksgiving, so I guess one thing we can be thankful for is that for the rest of country, the die is not yet cast. There’s still an opportunity, however diminishing, to steer a different course.
George Hunsucker
Northland
6 months agoHere is the article I think you were referring to ET… It is 3 pages and details how CA is screwed….
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/decline-and-fall_662233.html
David Fruits
6 months agoCleaning up the mess is hard work. At least California takes in less Federal dollars than they pay out. Kansas, Missouri can not make the same claim. But Keep calm and sour grapes on…
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/11/states-federal-taxes-spending-charts-maps
http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2011/04/04/state-finances.html#slide35
George Hunsucker
Northland
6 months agowhich mess David? The years of lib rule or the public sector unions?
Mark Hastert
6 months agoWell….then there was Jarvis & Prop 13..
George Hunsucker
Northland
6 months agoProp 13 tried to slow the lib spending, which it did for a while…
Now, public sector unions have overrun CA’s ability to pay… It will be nice to see their pensions dissolve, just like Greece!!!!
Tony Young
6 months agocalifornia has problems that go back decades from republican rule. take a look at a list of Governor’s-staart with the disaster ‘Arnold’and before that the Enron debacle,that have little or nothing to do with the demoratic party or unions.