Instead of accepting responsibility California Democrats are willing to blame just about anyone for California’s imminent bankruptcy. In a brief reality check, here are just a few more reasoned arguments concerning Who Killed California.
Joel Kotkin of Chapman University and editor of newgeography.com, lists his top five culprits for who cooked the Golden State’s Goose: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Public Sector unions, the Enviormental movement, the Busines Community(!), and Californians in general for not voting the nitwits out.
Dan Walters counters the crocodile tears of Senator Mark DeSaulnier and others of his ilk that it’s all Prop 13’s fault. Walters notes that California’s issues are political, “Proposition 13 has had a big effect, but it’s not so much its slowing the growth of property taxes as its inadvertent concentration of decision-making in a Capitol political culture that’s utterly incapable of acting responsibly.”
And finally, Bill Whittle runs down a long list of how California is issuing IOUs to the needy, but cash to legislators, its bloated workforce, and retired UC California professors.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
@Edi, except that if you “went back in time” to change some of those taxing and spending policies, the economic landscape would be much different, and it’s not exactly clear how. One might say that less taxes back then would’ve kept more sustainable businesses here, lessening the impact of the global economic problems locally. Looking at the comparison between our economic problems and the global ones, the federal “income” certainly hasn’t taken a 40% hit…
A little interlude:
Let me see… we take an organization that is run tight relative to revenue and expenses, then we remove 40% of the revenue…and things fall apart.
Before we go nuts about having ‘rainy day funds’ or reserves. It would be politically impossible for the state to have had a 40% reserve (about 48Billion) and even then that would only last one year of this multi year problem.
If we jumped in our time machines and went back and lowered revenue (taxes) and expenses say 10 years ago so that now we say had a 60Billion dollar budget, well guess what… a 40% drop in income still results in things falling apart.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled combinations of screeds and mutual recriminations.
Beep may be the sound of the truck backing up, as you dump a thousand nettles into the wrong lap. Republicans hate the poor and sick; really?
Then please explain to me why the Democratic legislature is sending IOUs to the needy but paying cash to legislators and their cronies?
BTW, Mixing the Sermon on the Mount, voodoo, and tasteless scatalogical references are not the best way to complete an argument or influence behavior.
And since when does the biblical call for economic justice mean running unsustainable deficits and winking at corruption and treating union members and government employees better than the kleine leiden or little life (Kuyper)? If anything, the Democratic Majority is in charge and its irresponsibility is clearly the devil you know.
Seen one Democratic Legislator, seen ‘em all? As if Joan’s hands are clean in this mess. Puhleaze.
I don’t understand this article. Why is Joan Buchanan’s face used if the article isn’t about her. Did you intend to use Mark’s picture here?
Why are Republicans more interested in fixing blame than in saving the poor, the sick, the frail elderly, and children from harm in this time of economic crisis? Certainly they never foresaw this dangerous recession; if they had, their leaders at the national level shouldn’t have done things like cut taxes on the wealthy, leave banks too loosely regulated, and finance a war on the credit card. It is the Republicans in CA now who are behaving strangely, refusing to compromise even on passage of a FIFTEEN DOLLAR per YEAR fee to save our parks! When the parks contribute more to our economy than they cost us! Do they know our economy is not doing very well? Have they seen the unemployment figures? Don’t they know that unfortunately shrinking government further and cutting funds to the poor and middle class reduces demand much more than having our wealthier citizens contribute more in this time when we should all be caring about our state and our country than our partisanship? I’m not talking about being a bleeding heart; I’m talking about having taken some basic economics classes. Does anybody out there think our economy can take much more contraction? Republicans were once the party of fiscal responsibility. Now they just want to make promises (we can solve the economic crisis AND keep taxes at a historical low! Heck, let’s cut them even further!) which cannot be kept without turning the Great Recession into something worse. Brother. Can you spare a dime. Even the Democrat’s budget has too many cuts for a time when the economy is circling the drain, and the cuts are not in the right places. Instead of slashing social programs we should be looking at things like the more highly paid government staff and politicians, as well as their perks. Does anyone know if we still have the highest paid legislature in the country? What about duplicative administrative positions and paperwork? Does anyone making more than the median income for where they live really NEED a free car at taxpayer expense? But the Repubs would rather hate on the poor and the sick. While being supported by supposed Christians! Whatever happened to the Sermon on the Mount? Finally, is there anyone out there who thinks that voodoo economics worked well in the long term? Did “trickle down” really work? (No, I don’t want to hear people’s ideas for imagery of what actually trickled down.)