bleak

Democracy4Sale wrote: From what I read of the original "content", you don't like the way California runs its state.

My comment: Don't live there.

I don't like the way Utah runs their state. I won't live there.

Are we done?

No, because California, being such a huge part of our economy, will eventually need $$ from the feds to bail out all these unsustainable programs. The feds don't have any more $$, so the only choice is to rob from future generations to accommodate this.

RenegadeCJ wrote:

Democracy4Sale wrote: From what I read of the original "content", you don't like the way California runs its state.

My comment: Don't live there.

I don't like the way Utah runs their state. I won't live there.

Are we done?

No, because California, being such a huge part of our economy, will eventually need $$ from the feds to bail out all these unsustainable programs. The feds don't have any more $$, so the only choice is to rob from future generations to accommodate this.

Great point. Pretty sad that people in Colorado earning 50% of the wages of public employees in California will be bailing them out.

Like LJ says, we are driving on those California roads and having those well paid California firefighters protecting our homes. Oh wait, I haven't been in California in decades but I will be paying for their caviar and champagne retirements.

Let me know when it happens... Until then, :Snooze

More of "the sky is falling" hysteria.

Democracy4Sale wrote: Let me know when it happens... Until then, :Snooze

More of "the sky is falling" hysteria.

Exactly why we are in the situation we are today. Our politicians from both parties have that same thought you do. Why deal with anything today if we can kick the can down the road (while robbing unborn children of their future...but who cares, we won't be in office then!).

I like to think about the next generation, and what we can do to help them not be in indentured servitude to the nation's debt.

I believe the larger point is that the democratic policies that are destroying Ca are the same democratic policies that will destroy us nationally. There is no one to bail us out.

"Don't live there" is a complete straw man.

FredHayek wrote:

RenegadeCJ wrote:

Democracy4Sale wrote: From what I read of the original "content", you don't like the way California runs its state.

My comment: Don't live there.

I don't like the way Utah runs their state. I won't live there.

Are we done?

No, because California, being such a huge part of our economy, will eventually need $$ from the feds to bail out all these unsustainable programs. The feds don't have any more $$, so the only choice is to rob from future generations to accommodate this.

Great point. Pretty sad that people in Colorado earning 50% of the wages of public employees in California will be bailing them out.

Like LJ says, we are driving on those California roads and having those well paid California firefighters protecting our homes. Oh wait, I haven't been in California in decades but I will be paying for their caviar and champagne retirements.

Actually, what is destroying California more than anything is the policies enacted by the anti-tax crowd:

1)

The Legacy of Proposition 13

The financial crisis in California grew worse this week as state controller John Chiang warned that if legislators and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger fail to come up with a budget-balancing package, he would begin paying California's bills with IOUs on July 2. The state has only done this once since the Great Depression.

What has brought California to such a perilous state? How did its government become so wildly dysfunctional? One obvious cause is the deep recession, which has caused tax revenues to plunge for all states. But California's woes have a set of deeper reasons: direct democracy run amok, timid governors, partisan gridlock and a flawed constitution have all contributed to budget chaos and people in pain. And at the root of California's misery lies Proposition 13, the antitax measure that ignited the Reagan Revolution and the conservative era. In Washington, the Reagan-Bush era is over. But in California, the conservative legacy lives on.

Proposition 13 was the brainchild of the late Howard Jarvis. The antitax crusader was a policy genius not unlike Franklin D. Roosevelt. Both shared an affinity for designing deep structural change that, once embedded in the political system, is nearly impossible to alter without a massive change of heart by voters. Social Security is the lasting legacy of the New Deal era because F.D.R. understood that workers who contribute payroll-tax deductions from their paychecks would not want politicians tinkering with their retirement dollars. Conservatives have mounted assaults on Social Security through the years but to no avail.

Jarvis created a similarly impregnable institution. When he rode the wave of anger over skyrocketing property-tax assessments to pass Proposition 13 in 1978, he also included a two-thirds vote requirement for the passage of any new taxes in California — an insurmountable obstacle built on populist allergy to any kind of new levy. Beholden to a tax-averse electorate, the state's liberals and moderates have attempted to live with Proposition 13 while continuing to provide the state services Californians expect — freeways, higher education, prisons, assistance to needy families and, very important, essential funding to local government and school districts that vanished after the antitax measure passed.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article ... 38,00.html

2) Eighteen years later, in 1996, voters enacted Proposition 218 to strengthen the provisions of Proposition 13 and ensure that the people have a right to vote on taxes.ii Local districts were using special assessments to try and go around the requirements in Proposition 13 for a two-thirds vote of local voters to pass local tax increases. It was argued that this had led to a de facto situation where there were no real limits on property taxes or requirements for a vote of the people. Proposition 218 firmly established in the State Constitution that there are limits on these assessments and they must be approved by the voters in the affected communities.

3) Proposition 26 requires a two-thirds supermajority vote in the California State Legislature to pass many fees, levies, charges and tax revenue allocations that under the state's previous rules could be enacted by a simple majority vote.[2] Supporters of Proposition 26 called it the Stop Hidden Taxes initiative, saying that fees, levies, and so on imposed by the California government amount to taxes, and should therefore require the same supermajority vote required to enact income or sales tax increases.

4) Proposition 25 ends the previous requirement in the state that two-thirds of the members of the California State Legislature had to vote in favor of the state's budget in order for the budget to be enacted. Proposition 25 also requires state legislators to forfeit their pay in years where they have failed to pass a budget in a timely fashion.

These are basic reasons why California is in the shape it's in. Like Colorado's TABOR laws, the anti-tax crowd thinks if it "starves the beast" by eliminating the power of the state to cover it's obligations and obtain new revenues, that the requirements of the citizens will shrink. (And, hey, if a few kids don't have a roof over their heads, or food in their tummies, or if some mentally-ill folks get turned out into the streets, it's their own fault... And "it's not [our] job to worry about those people." -- Mittens)

Unfortunately, cutting the money doesn't eliminate the need. But, again, hey, the Randroids love it; the 'baggers love it; the sociopaths must be jumping up and down.

But this constant blaming of California's woes on "the Democrats" is pure bull-pucky. If Republicans were so good for the economy, they had how many years of Schwarzenegger? (Oh, yeah...Insert standard "RINO" phrase here: __) The reason "Ahnold" couldn't get anything done either was the requirement that anything they did had to have a 2/3 vote to pass. GOOD THINKING!

I repeat...If you don't like California...Don't live there.

I don't live in California but I am already bailing it out, paying for high priced police, infrasturcture projects doomed to fail like the trillion dollar high speed rail project between LA and San Francisco, and the golden pension plans.

And they are paying for Colorado's light-rail projects.

And we're paying for AmTraK improvements.

And we're paying for the replacement I-35W bridge in Minneapolis/St Paul that fell down because funds weren't supplied to maintain the old one. (Only 13 people killed, and 145 injured)

This is called "government", and it is supposed to be for the "general welfare." Get over it. You don't like it? Move... (Please...)

Tryanny of the majority. California can't fail, so it will be propped up like other socialist hellholes like Detroit and Chicago.