Would Obama’s Second Term Complete the Californication of America?
“Obama Unloads Vicious Attack Ad: Romney ‘The Problem’ with America,” John Nolte writes at Big Journalism.
John’s post is paraphrased as “Obama Goes for Kill Shot With Nasty Anti-Romney Ad” on the Most Popular Articles leaderboard at Breitbart.com. When I read about the clip, I was reminded of the vicious ad that Jerry Brown’s campaign aired on TV (I saw it in the middle of an NFL game I was watching one Sunday) in late October of 2010 as part of his efforts to successfully destroy Meg Whitman’s candidacy in an otherwise remarkably favorable year for the GOP.
As Dennis Prager quipped after Brown’s election, “OK, riddle fans, here’s a toughie: What’s the difference between California voters and the passengers on the Titanic? The passengers on the Titanic didn’t vote to hit the iceberg.”
Hey, the Titanic couldn’t deploy high-speed rail to ram the icebergs. Which is part of the reason why Walter Russell Mead writes today, “‘Green’ Energy Bias Killing California”:
The destruction of California isn’t a victimless crime. Millions of low income California residents are trapped in decaying cities where, thanks in large part to narcissistic green unicorn chasers, the manufacturing base has withered away. And anything that blights California, blights us all. America and the world need California back on line; the Golden State has too much to offer for anyone to remain indifferent to its fate.
Not at all coincidentally, Communist China is no longer the only one-party state for Obama ghostwriter and golfing buddy Thomas Friedman to visit when he descends from his mansion. “Welcome to California: America without Republicans,” Conn Carroll writes at the Washington Examiner:
“I believe that if we’re successful in this election,” President Obama told campaign donors in Minnesota last month, “that the fever may break, because there’s a tradition in the Republican Party of more common sense than that.”
Apparently Obama believes that if he wins this November, Republicans on Capitol Hill will all begin to act like Chief Justice John Roberts by betraying their conservative beliefs and signing on to Obama’s unprecedented expansion of the federal welfare state. But what would America look like if the Republican “fever” did break?
We already know. It would look a lot like the state of California, where no non-cyborg Republican has been governor since 1996. Democrats have also enjoyed complete control of the state legislature since 1997. And they have governed exactly the way you’d expect Democrats to govern.
Spending has more than doubled, from $45.4 billion in 1996 to more than $92.5 billion today. Income, sales and car taxes have all been hiked. As a result, California has the most progressive income tax system in the nation, with seven income tax brackets, and the second-highest top marginal rate.
Even with all those tax hikes, California’s 2012 budget is still $15.7 billion in the red. So what does Gov. Jerry Brown want to do? Raise taxes again, of course. He has proposed a ballot initiative that would: 1) raise sales taxes on everyone and 2) raise incomes taxes on those making more than $250,000 a year (like Obama has proposed to do nationally). But even this $8.5 billion tax hike would still leave the state $7.5 billion short. Where will California get that money? Who knows?
Not even Obama’s paralegals can save this state. And that’s the question America’s voters have to ask themselves in November. Do they wish to transform the rest of the nation into bankrupt, reactionary California?
Quite frankly, at the moment, I’m not hopeful about which decision they’ll choose.
Related: From Bookworm, “Poor President Obama: If he gets re-elected look at the mess he’s going to inherit.”
Califronia will probably hold off any end-of-the-line Grecian-like total insolvency until after Election Day, but Team Mitt could make soe ay in the other 49 states (well, maybe not Illinois) by basically launching a preemptive strike and saying there will be no bailouts of profligate states, orat least none without federal control boards and draconian measures in reforming its economic system in exchange for any aid from Washington.
Then there’s the Munger Proposition 38 Initiative which “Increases personal income tax rates for annual earnings over $7,316 using sliding scale from .4% for lowest individual earners to 2.2% for individuals earning over $2.5 million, ending after twelve years” ostensibly for education. Whether it’s a tactic to scare voters into selecting Brown’s ‘reasonable’ tax initiative or not, it’s certainly more… democratic.
CA Treasurer’s Office
$58 B in debt issued in 2011, $20 B issued so far in 2012.
Funnny, it doesn’t list the total debt outstanding. Probably of little interest.
CA Debt Clock
CA GDP $2,007 B. Total Debt $390 B (19.4% of CA GDP)
Population 37.5 million. Last deficit $16 B ($427 per capita)
Greece’s economy is $309 billion.
California’s economy is $2 trillion (6.5 x Greece)
I actually think I voted for the train. It was sold to the state as costing $29 Billion, and taking 7 or 8 years to construct. Now it’s closer to 20 years, the cost has almost quadrupled, the first part completed will connect a town no one goes to willingly with a town no one’s ever heard of, and of course that portion won’t even be used as a result.
Back when I was a boy, in the ’60s, my mother used to drive me to military boarding school every Sunday afternoon (don’t ask, it was hell). We drove up the 605 freeway from Lakewood to Glendora, and on the way I would always look at these empty houses by the side of the freeway. My mom told me they were going to be torn down so that a freeway could be built through there, but nothing ever happened. Anyone remember the movie “Speed” with Keeanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock? Takes place on that partially-finished freeway in Southern California? That’s the same construction project, 30+ years later. They finished the dang thing around the turn of the century. It was eventually named the Glenn M. Anderson Freeway (after a long-time local Congressman, Democrat, who was a champion pork-fetcher for Long Beach and the South Bay) but the original name for it was the Century Freeway, after Century Blvd. (which it more or less parallels). By the time it was halfway through construction, wags were referring to it as the 21st Century Freeway, because that was when it would be finished, after they started construction half a century earlier.
Nothing happens in this state unless very powerful interests are in favor of it, and none are opposed. Otherwise things get dragged out in court past all reason, and it can take decades, perhaps even longer. My guess is that if they ever complete this thing, it’ll be somewhere in the middle of this century, maybe even later, and it’ll be obsolete by the time they finish it.
Proponents of high-speed rail keep ignoring the fact that it’s not cost-effective without effective mass transit at each city serviced by the high-speed rail.
For CA high-speed rail:
Suppose I have a week’s worth of important business meetings in Bakersfield, and I take the high-speed rail train there. Once I get off the train at the Bakersfield station, how do I get from there to my business meetings and my hotel? I would have to rent a car or take taxis everywhere. For a whole week, that’s much more expensive than my just driving my own car to Bakersfield and having it at my disposal.
The reason why Amtrak rail is a viable alternative in the Northeast Corridor is that Boston, New York City and Washington DC all have good mass transit systems to take you from the train station to your final destination.
Proponents of CA high-speed rail don’t even seem to realize this is an issue.
Nobody in his or her right mind would waste any tax dollars expanding, or even maintaining, mass transit in the US. Many reasons, among them:
1. Public transport, like all other public projects, always costs more than predicted. Ridership and revenue are always less.
2. Public transport feeds the pernicious public employee unions and provides other opportunities for local government corruption.
3. As the population gets older on the average, fewer and fewer people can deal with standing and waiting for public transit, even as a last resort. Older people suffer if made to to stand outside for unpredictable amounts of time in cold, snow, wind, rain, or hot sun.
4. Public transportation practically never takes you from your own doorstep to exactly where you want to go without having to walk some distance and transfer between buses and/or trains, often multiple times. This leads to a huge number of delays. You think your commute time is eating up your entire life in your car – just wait until you have to rely on buses to get around.
5. Even during ideal weather, public transport is totally impractical for passengers who must carry large amounts of heavy, fragile, or bulky items such as groceries, household supplies, garden supplies, power tools, luggage, or even things such as cases of computer paper that normal people carry in cars and trucks.
6. The biggest problem of all: Public transport is just that – public. The problem is that a large proportion of the public behaves in such a way to make the rest of the public want to avoid them, and for very good reasons.
In our own vehicle, WE get to decide who, if anyone, gets to ride along. We get PRIVACY. We can talk about what we want without anybody else eavesdropping or complaining.
On the other hand, city buses are all too often a rolling version of “Occupy” and commuter train stations aren’t any better. Both are plagued with denizens who are not only smelly and unkempt and sometimes incontinent, but also might be carrying insect pests or communicable diseases. There are also gang members who flash signs back and forth. Who wants to be caught in the middle of an impromptu gang brawl? And then there’s predatory crime: pickpocketing, purse- and computer-bag-snatching, armed robbery, sexual assault, homicides, and, as already happened in Spain, a very real risk of a successful Islamic terrorist attack. The real effect of public transport is to concentrate a large number of unarmed potential victims in a small area where criminals will have the easiest possible time preying upon them. No thanks!
California voters can get information on a petition to block the sale of transit bonds to pay for high speed rail here http://www.revoterail.com/
““I believe that if we’re successful in this election,” President Obama told campaign donors in Minnesota last month, “that the fever may break, because there’s a tradition in the Republican Party of more common sense than that.”
Obama is such a turd. The only thing preventing this country from jumping off the fiscal cliff IS the Republican party. If Obama still had control of Congress like he did during his first two years in office, we would be bankrupt by now. Instead, we at least have one last shot in November of actually salvaging something of both our country and our economy. And with the passage of ObamaCare and his “stimulus,” we see that far-left socialists like Obama represent nothing but bigger spending and more taxes. All they know how to do is spend money to keep their parasitical base happy. By fighting this madman on a regular basis and preventing him from spending us into oblivion, I think we’re showing that we have the only common sense left in this nation.
There already is a “state” that looks like what America will resemble if Obama gets a second term; Zimbabwe.
Complete with our own Mugabe.
Obama’s going to turn the entire United States into a ghetto state, complete with gangs and crime. There’s not been a movie made yet that approaches the plague Obama has created already.
Not if the GOP has any cojones.
Which is an open question.
Yep, California legislature: the dumbest and most incompetent legislature on the planet. The true laughingstock of the nation.
Yet, while asking for increased taxes Brown has proposed a budget which increases state spending 7 Billion dollars (but that’s a cut, because it’s a cut to the initially planned increase of 14 billion).
More and more the CA legislature, and other Dem controlled state bodies around the country, remind me of the late Confederate Congress in the waning days of the Civil War.
‘A BILL to immediately raise and ARM 20,000 men to reenforce Gen Lee.’
‘A BILL to build, man and launch 10 Frigates and 10 Modern Iron Clads to break the criminal blockade’.
‘A BILL to authorize a writ of Manumission, at the successful conclusion of hostilities, for any male Slave who will take up arms in defense of the Confederacy.’
‘A BILL to Authorize the issue and sale of $20,000,000 in Bonds…’
Etc., Etc…
I swear I see the same things coming out of Sacramento. And Albany. And Springfield. And…..
In Case anyone wanted Background on the Legal System in Kalifornia that gave rise to such pogroms…
– One need look no further than the current Demicrat Treasurer of a Bankrupt Enterprise – ‘Wild Bull’ Lockyer – notorious as the most foul mouthed ogre ever to be termed out of a legislative body in itself truly unfit to pass gas.
He is now divorcing, but will no doubt continue wooing the Twysted Systerhood of the Pelosi-Rat Pak as usual
……………………………………………….
‘Hi, My Name Isn’t Justice, Honey,’ and Shame on Lockyer
by Tom G. Palmer – senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington. http://www.cato.org/pubs/papers/palmer-06-06-01.html
Here’s what California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer said at a press conference about Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth Lay: “I would love to personally escort Lay to an 8-by-10 cell that he could share with a tattooed dude who says, ‘Hi, my name is Spike, honey.”‘
Here’s why Lockyer should be removed from his office of public trust:
First, because as the chief law enforcement officer of the largest state in the nation, he not only has admitted that rape is a regular feature of the state’s prison system, but also that he considers rape a part of the punishment he can inflict on others.
Second, because he has publicly stated that he would like to personally arrange the rape of a Texas businessman who has not even been charged with any illegal behavior.Lockyer’s remarks reveal him to be an authoritarian thug, someone wholly unsuited to holding an office of public trust.
But his remarks do have one positive merit: They tell us what criminal penalties really entail.Contrary to some depictions of prisons as country clubs, they are violent and terrible places.
More and more politicians propose criminal sanctions for more and more alleged misdeeds, and as a result ever more kinds of behavior are sanctioned by criminal penalties, perhaps now even selling electricity.
Those found guilty of such crimes are put into cages, where they are deprived of their liberty and dignity and, as Lockyer so clearly acknowledged, raped and brutalized.
What’s worse, Lockyer has indicated that he believes that rape is an appropriate part of the system of punishments he administers.
- Imagine the outcry if the head of Enron were female. What would Lockyer’s fellow Democrats have said to that?
Should it matter… – the man who, as a state senator, sponsored California’s 1984 hate-crimes law. Evidently the crusader against intimidation on the basis of race, religion and sexual orientation feels no hesitation at all about intimidating someone and threatening him with the brutal use of physical force…
An Enron spokesman said that Lockyer’s chilling stated desire to arrange the rape of Lay does not merit a response.
The spokesman is wrong. Lockyer’s remarks merit public disgrace and removal from office.
After all, rape is not a form of legal justice in America– is it?
This article originally appeared in The Los Angeles Times, June 6, 2001.]
*** http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-politics/2012/07/treasurer-lockyer-files-for-divorce.html
SEE Also:
http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/HIV-transmission-case-tossed-out-Man-didn-t-2525277.php
HIV transmission case tossed out / Man didn’t intentionally infect, judge finds
If Obama is re-elected, the US will split like it did in 1860.
On point! And even if Mitt wins, there may still be a split. The left will NEVER let Mitt run the government in a manner to save her from disaster. They will fight-literally-at every level and manner to defeat every move he makes.
This cannot end well-for them. I am heartened that slowly readers here are waking up to what the future brings us.
Trains are great if you need them. From what I read, this is just a giant science project.
Going to Cali next summer. Spending 3 weeks seeing it. Any suggestions where a Libertarian/Conservative might enjoy and or avoid?
“Going to Cali next summer. Spending 3 weeks seeing it. Any suggestions where a Libertarian/Conservative might enjoy?”
Texas? Arizona?
I have spent the past year and a half trying to educate people that if they like what they see happening in kalifornia, just reelect the divider in chief and it will be coming to your neighborhood soon throughout the entire country.
My worst nightmare is a second term for ObamaRx. IMHO we as a nation are at a critical crossroads. If ObmaRx is re-elected we go down the road as a nation to Commufornia and oblivion. The other path may or may not lead back to greatness, but at least its a chance.
Published on May 13, 2012 by MisterBees This was filmed in Elgin, Illinois about 40 miles from Chicago. I assume it’s for the NATO summit this week as a security measure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzrS0BVJynM&feature=player_embedded
The short answer posed by the title of this article is “Yes.” Today Stockton – Tomorrow the World (or at least the U.S.)
I used to think that those who claimed that the Left is consciously following the Cloward/Pinven strategy for destroying capitalism were themselves dangerously deranged. Now – I’m not so sure. The blindness shown by the Left to basic economics can’t possibly be accidental or the product of good-faith analysis. (At this point cue somber “Law & Order” background music.) I’m really starting to believe that this is all a long-run strategy.
“The passengers on the Titanic didn’t vote to hit the iceberg.”
And the iceberg wasn’t there to be seen 5-10 years before the Titanic hit it.
Well, one thing we can be sure of, the Obama’s are not going to head to California once they get retired. Probably someplace like one of the extremely cultured New England states where they can be reasonably safe from marauding mobs of folks bearing grudges and resenting them living like an imperial family on an ill-gotten presidential pension.
Please stop using the enemy’s terminology.
There’s nothing “progressive” about a tax system that is designed, with malice aforethought, to destroy progress.