Time For Tough Choices: California

May 22, 2009
Karl Denninger

From the LA Times:

Reporting from Sacramento -- With deficit forecasts growing darker by the day, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is considering a plan to slash California's safety net for the poor by eliminating the state's main welfare program, health insurance for low-income families and cash grants to college students.
Of course California is known for having "sanctuary cities", $200,000 pensions for firefighters and in general providing largess to everyone - even those who aren't citizens.

This is a problem, of course, but it didn't bother all the bleeding hearts so long as all the high-flying people out there were flipping houses and running up their credit cards.

Now, of course, the credit card is dead and the home is being foreclosed on, much like the rest of the nation as a whole - but of course the Federal Government can run deficits so long as it can con China - California can't.

Its time to set an example here folks:

•No more "freebies" for illegals. Period. No free medical care, no free schools, not even jailing people - you get caught here illegally you get sent home. Period, end of discussion, full-stop. Start right now and enforce the damn law; a HUGE percentage of California's prison population are in fact illegal aliens. We pay twice - first for the crime, then again to jail them. Stop being stupid.
•Stop paying civil service jobs (firefighters, teachers, etc) $100,000+, more than twice the per-capita income.
•Fix the pension system so it can't be gamed and double-dipped to the tune of $200,000+ for that same firefighter when they retire.
•Stop subsidizing people who want to have 8 embryos IVF'd into their uterus when they can't personally cover the cost of BIRTHING those eight new mouths, never mind attempting to raise them.
•If you're "poor" and need help, make receiving that help conditioned on working. If nothing else I bet there's a bunch of trash alongside roads that needs to be picked up. If you're able-bodied, no help without working in exchange - for the general benefit of society. Period.
What's happening here is entirely predictable and in fact has been predicted. You can't spend more than you make for very long; eventually your credit card comes back "declined."

California is first in this regard but won't be the last.

Wake up America.

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