Thread: The Late, Great State of California

November 28, 2009

The Late, Great State of California

By Richard Reeves

LOS ANGELES -- California, contrary to popular opinion, is not broke. It's only crazy, mean and at war with itself.

You may have noticed that the governor and legislators of the Golden State finally produced a "balanced" budget with a deficit in double-digit billions. But, hey, who's counting?

Yes, the greatest public university in the world, home to dozens of Nobel Prize winners, has become a victim of a thousand cuts, and the students protesting tuition increases of more than 30 percent are trashing the buildings. Richard Mathies, the dean of the chemistry department at the University of California, Berkeley, a campus that has produced 21 Nobel winners, commented:

"Dismantling this institution, which is a huge economic driver for the state, is a stupendously stupid thing to do, but that's the path the Legislature has embarked on."

Sure, the state's chief justice, Ronald George, traveled to Cambridge, Mass., to tell the American Academy of Arts and Sciences that the state is "dysfunctional." His reasoning:

"California's lawmakers, and the state itself, have been placed in a fiscal straitjacket by a steep two-thirds-vote requirement -- imposed at the ballot box -- for raising taxes. ... Much of this constitutional and statutory structure has been brought about not by legislative fact-finding and deliberation, but rather by the approval of voter initiative measures, often funded by special interests."

He did not mention that many residents think putting the legislators in straitjackets is an idea worth considering, if anyone knew who the legislators were. Term limits and gerrymandered districts have turned the Legislature into a carousel for people who don't know how to ride and tend to fall off the wooden horses. On their heads.

Most of what is happening here is the state's own fault. Legislators and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger deserve the people of California and vice-versa. William H. Gross, who runs PIMCO, the world's largest mutual bond fund, based in Newport Beach, put it this way to Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times:

"The state's laws are almost tragically shaped by a form of direct democracy. Propositions from conservatives and liberals alike have locked up much of the budget, with Proposition 13 in 1978 reducing property taxes by 57 percent, and Proposition 98 in 1988 requiring 40 percent of the general fund to be spent on schools. Recently, much of the excess has been gobbled up not only by teachers, but unbelievably by a prison (guards) lobby that would be the envy of any on Washington's K Street."

All that adds up to gridlock. It adds up to endless culture clashes that go well beyond the old North-South clashes that once defined much of California's politics and governance. Public employees, particularly the unionized teachers and prison guards -- their numbers and the numbers of prisoners expanding because of simplistic "three-strike life imprisonment" laws -- have financed legislative candidates and then manipulated them to channel money to themselves.

The most devastating battle on California's political landscape has been old vs. young. And the old are winning big time. Because of Prop 13 and later corollaries, old folks pay lower taxes and receive more medical care at the expense of new schools, more teachers and smaller class sizes. California's public schools, elementary and secondary, once the best by test scores in the nation, are now among the worst.

That is part of a national struggle of young vs. old: The old get medical care and don't want to finance schooling for other people's children; the young get less attention and inherit more national debt.

So, what to do? No one in California has a clue. The most radical solution at hand is to elect the state's attorney general as the next governor. That would be Jerry Brown, who was governor 30 years ago when a lot of the state's problems began.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articl ... 99323.html

This is what the illegals population does to states, period.

The powers that be have the choice of where to make cuts and they know that we the people voted down new taxes because we wanted them to cut the dead weight and toss it off this ship, but we are being punished for that vote...instead of cutting the obvious uneccessary crap out of our budget, like ALL PROGRAMS THAT CATER TO ILLEGAL ALIENS, they (Sacramental) are aiming at the very backbone of the state...our educational system. This is being done on purpose. Why isn't everyone out in the streets demanding that programs for illegals be cut?

Unless all of those liberal, spineless whining masses on the UC Campuses stand up and actually utter what they know is the truth, they'll lose their cushy little lifestyles and access toward higher education in this state. Their educations are being taken away from them due to the huge blood sucking ticks that the students' socialist professors on California campuses are teaching them to embrace, coddle and provide for...at their very own demise!

Hey Berserkeley Students...it's okay to tell yourself the truth now...yes... illegal immigration is wrong and YES... it does lower YOUR quality of life and it sucks a society dry to hand out freebies to ungrateful criminals who have come here to STEAL YOUR AMERICAN DREAM! Do what Berserkley students do best....STAND UP AND PROTEST ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION! YOU'RE FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT!!

It's not just illegals on this one. These fiscal policies they have are too goofy. The teachers union and prison guard union are causing a lot of unnecessary issues with what they demand.

Originally Posted by Hylander_1314

It's not just illegals on this one. These fiscal policies they have are too goofy. The teachers union and prison guard union are causing a lot of unnecessary issues with what they demand.

How about the corrupt government stealing the Wakeen (sp) Valley putting all those farmers out of work because of a damn minnow??? This person that did that needs to be shot.
I think it's so that all the farms go into forclosure and the Liberals want it for solar panels, YOU WATCH!!!
The corrupt government also want us to have less food to experience the famine in Africa, I guess???

Yeah Worried, that too. But it is just another point in a long list of things that the government has done to the people. A fine example is the TVA back in FDR's day. Flooded more good farmland for a pet project than the good it has done. As it was and still is from what I understand, heavily subsidized.

Here's a short list of what FDR did that should have caused Congress to call for his impeachment:

FDR tripled federal taxes from 1933 to 1940. Excise taxes, personal income taxes, inheritance taxes, corporate income taxes, dividend taxes, holding company taxes, everything went up.

FDR discouraged private investment with his frequent tax hikes (1933, 1934, 1935, 1936) and with his denunciations of investors and employers ("economic royalists").

FDR channeled government spending and loan programs AWAY from the poorest people (who lived in the South), thereby undermining claims that the New Deal was compassionate. The bulk of New Deal spending and loan programs went to political "swing" states in the west and east, where previous election returns had been close. From FDR's standpoint as an incumbent, there wasn't any point giving a lot of money to the South, even though it was the poorest region, since voters there were already solidly Democratic.

FDR forced food prices, as well as the prices of manufactured goods and services, above market levels and outlawed discounting. People were fined and even jailed for cutting prices during the New Deal. Such policies penalized over 100 million American consumers and discouraged buying.

FDR promoted the large-scale destruction of food when millions were hungry, by paying farmers to plow under some 10 million acres of crops and slaughter and discard some 6 million farm animals. This program enriched big farmers who had more food to destroy than small farmers. Black tenant farmers, who depended on work, were devastated.

FDR broke up the strongest banks, with the lowest failure rate, namely big city banks like J.P. Morgan that diversified by engaging in both investment banking and commercial banking. FDR didn’t do anything about unit banking laws that accounted for 90% of bank failures by preventing small banks from diversifying with branches. Federal deposit insurance failed to stop bank failures – it transferred the cost of bank failures from bank shareholders and depositors to taxpayers.

FDR promoted government monopolies, the biggest of which was the Tennessee Valley Authority, subsidized by 98% of American taxpayers who didn’t live in the Tennessee Valley and exempt from state and federal taxes and regulations. Despite such monopoly power, income in the TVA southern states lagged income in the non-TVA southern states (like Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia) by widening margins, and the TVA flooded more land than it saved!

Touted as a champion of democracy, FDR amassed vast arbitrary power, and even though the Democratic party controlled the White House and both houses of Congress, FDR issued 3,728 executive orders – more than all his successors combined.

From the beginning to the end, the New Deal was an attack on economic liberty, telling businesses how much they could produce, how much they had to pay people, how much they could charge, making it illegal to sell certain products (like milk) across state lines, suspending the rights of creditors, breaking up lawful businesses, dispossessing thousands of people to make way for government TVA dams and other projects, denying workers the right to choose whether to join a union, seizing the gold of peaceful citizens, using the tax code to punish some people and favor others, on and on.

Yet Congress turned their heads the other way, and have kept it there so darn long, that I think the bones have arthritically locked and they can't turn it back. It is worrisome when the Congress doesn't have the stomache to stand up and do what is right.