Thoughts on the Therapeutic Style
Who is the “They” now in California?
How does one explain how California is broke, tens of billions of dollars in aggregate debt, despite having among the highest sales and income taxes in the nation?
We are naturally rich beyond belief—timber, oil, agriculture, a long sea-coast, wonderful weather, mountains, sea, and valleys—and inherited lucrative industries in tourism, computers and software, defense and great universities. Our grandparents left us a once wonderful freeway network, a tripartite higher education system, ports, airports, dams and canals.
So what went wrong, and why are tens of thousands of Californians leaving the state with bachelor degrees and above, while tens of thousands enter without high-school diplomas?
Many answers have been offered—incompetent governance, judicial intrusions, the ballot propositions, trial lawyers, unions, dysfunctional and politically-correct schools, or illegal immigration. But look at it in some sense as the long hoped-for end of the nebulous “them / they.”
For years the open borders lobby accused “them” (whites? The establishment? Conservatives? etc.) of racism in wanting the border with Mexico closed, an end to state entitlements to illegal aliens (remember the Satanic Prop 187?), and deportations of thousands of aliens in state prisons (a cost nearing $1 billion per annum). But now the state legislature is largely controlled by those who in the past argued for de facto open borders and an expansion, not a curtailment, of entitlements for those without legal residence. So whom to blame? There is no “they” anymore. The outsiders are insiders and own the state—and its contradictions they once helped to ensure.
Ditto environmentalism. “They” (fill in the blanks: right-wing employers, CEOs, national companies, etc.) were the villains to be overcome in order to stop drilling off our shores, and to put ever more of our timber and recreational and scenic areas into no-use wilderness areas. We were not to build dams. No more canals. Put aside more farm land. No more nuclear plants. Forget coal. Tax gasoline and make it expensive to refine. It is fair to say now that the environmentalist agenda runs the state, and so there likewise is no more “them” to blame—and we must live with the results. I cannot begin to count in my own personal realm of knowledge the farmers who went broke, the high-tech engineers who moved to Nevada, the small business owners who shut down or moved out of state.
Anyone with capital who wants to start business X, knows that he can be put out of business by one supposed sexual harassment suit, a racial discrimination complaint, trying to fathom 500 pages of state EPA applications, a 10% income tax rate, and now a 9% sales tax to come. In California we hunt out the misdemeanor and ignore the felonies. Drive down my avenue, drop five trash bags of wet garbage on the side of the road, and the chances are great you will never be held accountable (even if your receipts are found in the trash and turned over to the sheriff), but please don’t wire an outdoor light in the barnyard without a permit. You see, anyone who nods and obeys the law and pays, we hound; anyone who simply won’t or can’t, or causes too much trouble, we the state employee simply ignore.
Ditto unions and big government. Ever more high pensions, ever more strict work rules, ever more administrators and high salaries, ever more rules against firing and accountability—and ever fewer to pay for it all. The evil “they” who used to try to moderate unions and state spending are gone—dead, moved away, retired, zilch. And so we the taxpayers work for the unionized government employee rather than vice versa.
So now those who want unchecked entitlements, open immigration, restrictions on resource development, unionized work forces and ever expanded government won—and won big. The problem is, again, the evil “they” who were to pay for all this in ever increased income and sales taxes, to take the blame of being racist, or sexist, or homophobic or greedy, are pretty much gone (cf. the last stand of the 1% of the state that pays the majority of state income taxes). There are no more “greedy” left to pay money or emotional penance, and the therapeutic mindset is now screaming to high heaven as it looks for its awful, but missing mean parent to make it all right.
Well done, Dr. Hanson. However, would it not be more accurate to say that, having bankrupted the state, the people and organizations who got what they wanted now want the rest of the country, via federal tax bailouts, to pay for it all, and why not? Have they not learned for the past 30 years that they can always get their way? There is always someone to blame and tax if the world is not perfect for them, and if they run out of people to exploit in California there is always the rest of the country.
Another great article Doc,
Yes, I feel that if a new world was discovered that there’d be 47 million Americans (the “they” that you mentioned) who’d head off into the wilderness for new opportunities.
I find it interesting that many would become pioneers for the same reasons our ancestors did; freedom to practice religion, freedom from an oppressive government, and freedom to start a farm or run a business without beinbg taxed to death.
Yep, they won big against everyone else, but they still couldn’t beat lil’ ol’ reality. “Just give us more time and money! We can do it!”
You are surely a great man Mr. Hanson but you are “they” are you not? Have you not been a member of the Democrat Party? The very party for which nearly all this claims against “they” came from? Was it not your party that has made you “they” simply as you lament the Democrats have removed the evil Corp, Bigot/racist and made the law abiding citizen the hunted while the violent thug the praised, the only “they” left is the White male. Even as desperate as Californian is the “Democrat” controllers will not fairly milk their sacred cow of Hollywood or their next largest money maker in the pornography industry, it is you Mr. Hanson that has create this Monster, now it is too late…
So why, pray tell, are you still in CA?
Unfortunately, one must suppose that California falls into the category of “too big to fail.” The bail-out will come and merely postpone the day of reckoning. Before it’s all over California will lead the entire nation into the abyss.
We can only hope that the results will be no worse than what we suffered under Carter. Certainly the potential exists for worse. A restoration will require both fiscal discipline and moral rectitude in our leaders.
I try to console myself with history. The Eastern Romans held on for another thousand years after the fall of the west. There were occasional flashes of vigor from the old empire even in decrepitude. It seems some ebbs and flows are designed by nature, and there is naught we can do about it.
Doc, you’re killing me with all this bitching and moaning!
The argument is classic: “the individual versus the crowd.” isn’t it? The second question is always the same: “who controls or runs the crowd?”
It’s like pushing the string; going where one asks.
What about the natural life of a tree? Can societies have a similar fate?
Enter mass media. Spread the word fast…really fast. Forget reading, it’s become visuals dear boy. Allow others to add (their) words for you.
The new game is “spin” the tail on the donkey…who is you dumb person!
What happens when that great big fat teat of government runs dry? Easy answer: Revolution marches into your towns and cities.
At least you know how to grow potatoes, raise some chickens, and I suspect, shoot a gun to ward off poachers. Time to look for that Regis Debray book buried in the attic?
Imagine the former Majority Leader of the Senate not knowing how to pick the smart accountant or realizing he should always get his taxes right.
Who would have thought such simple mistakes come into the worlds of those who deserve to tell us how to live our lives (controllers of the crowd)?
Read your Tacitus, people.
Still the most popular way for despots to organize (neighborhoods?) is to create a scapegoat. And he’s the guy who’s making good money or the guy who lives somewhere else in another neighborhood.
Robert Lacey wrote a great biography of Henry Ford. Around the turn of the 20th century there were a few big stock market booms and busts. The farmers like Henry’s family in Michigan, losing money on crop prices, blamed it on the commodity traders in Chicago who supposedly were Jews. That caused Henry’s anti-semitism.
Some of us hear more and more about those greedy Wall Street _____(fill in the blank) and wonder if a tipping point will come and the classic scapegoat will again face danger.
Then it was the Leopold Loeb trial in Chicago and then it was Father Caughlin on the radio. Now Pat Buchannan, Zbignew Brzinsky, and Samantha Powers wait in the wings.
We rely on those Irishmen O’Reilly and Hannity and our very own man from Missouri Rush to say the right things. And of course, the very best commentator of them all, VDH.
Any bailout is fleeting. The Governor and the Legislature can lay off all State workers, but it won’t save so long as California doubles in population by 2050. Let alone a (once) major economy, as Doc wrote years ago we are becoming a country.
“How does one explain how California is broke… We are naturally rich beyond belief…”
In a word: socialism. The USSR had some of the richest land in the world and could not feed its population, having to import wheat.
As a classicist, you know that wherever the same ideas hold sway, similar practical results will follow.
California is yet another example, and one of the sadder ones given all the natural and human advantages you cite.
“How does one explain how California is broke”
Gosh, That’s a real easy question to answer. The majority of California voters are responsible. They are not victims. Nobody told them to vote for candidates who promised them a free lunch. It’s unfortunate that innocents like Victor Davis Hanson and Roger L. Simon have been dragged into their self-inflicted troubles. The sad situation may also be nearly irreversible. I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan and witnessed the rapid decline of that once great city. The idiots simply refused to listen—and they ran the show. Folks like me ultimately decided to move to another part of the country. I personally opted for Houston, Texas.
Unfortunately, many of those fleeing California are moving to Arizona. Sadly, they didn’t learn any lessons from their actions, so they are acting the same here.
Fortunately for us, unfortunately for the nation, our Californiast governor was just appointed Head of Homeland Security.
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Dr. Hanson, another great piece!
I agree with Alex in #1. Hopefully there will be a Civil War II if the “stimulus” bill or any other bill bails California, Massachusetts or the NYTs out. And Californians, do not leave if you take your liberal voting mindset with you.
I must say that it is more than socialism or open borders. Those symptoms only belie a greater problem. There will be no revolution or blood of patriots and tyrants.All of the believers out there who think we can put humpty-dumpty back together again , better take a real look at the vanishing of America.
It is simply as a people we stopped believing in the truth, about ourselves and our country and began listening to liars and deceivers.
Who really believes anything that is reported or written today? Who expects anything of true significance or value to come from any government?
We have lost the trust and the truth and it cannot be restored. The agents of Satan now sit in power and they have no use for our silly truth. That giant pile of money from their printing press just purchased your truth. Enjoy it for a little while.
How many ILLEGAL ALIENS are in California? 3 million? Is the State going bankrupt? How much does it cost the State and California taxpayers to have the ILLEGAL ALIENS there? $19 BILLION? Well, the way I see it, if you get rid of the ILLEGAL ALIENS, you could save $19 BILLION a year.
Maybe it’s time for California to get a State Illegal Immigration Law like Arizona, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina and a few others.
ILLEGAL ALIENS have caused more problems than anyone could have ever imagined from the forged documents, stolen identities to the ANCHOR BABIES, (which needs challenged), to the schooling of the ANCHORS, medical care not only for the ANCHOR, but the parents, (parent), the crime and the list goes on, and on, and on.
This has got to end!
NO ILLEGAL ALIEN HAS A RIGHT TO BE IN THIS COUNTRY FOR ANY REASON! Clear enough?
The tragedy is that, instead of learning from the mistakes of California, we are now poised to repeat those mistakes on a national scale thanks to Pelosi, Reid, and Obama.
As usual Dr. Hanson hits another home run. As they say “as goes California, so goes the nation”. Something to think about. The only hope for those of us that produce stuff or used to produce stuff before retirement is to start withdrawing from the economy. The quicker the system goes down the quicker it can be rebuilt and it’s going to take constitutional amendments to keep this from happening again. But it may be too late. The entitlement class may be too much in the majority by now.
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Who is John Galt?
I like watching the car chases in California on TV. They’re better than the movies Hollywood “puts out”. What is happening in California is coming to your state. We white males better stand aside. Unless the standard liberal fare of being called a “racist”, “bigot”, etc. does not bother you. The fascist libs want to marginalize white American males to implement their socialist agenda. They got it in California. Live with it California.
John Moore writes:
“Unfortunately, many of those fleeing California are moving to Arizona. Sadly, they didn’t learn any lessons from their actions, so they are acting the same here.
“
John, as a seemingly like-minded conservative, please accept my humble apology for the liberal immigrants who escaped from here. It’s not enough that these dumb-assed bastards have polluted one state, they choose to foul up a neighboring one as well.
You have my permission to ride them into the dust.
California looks like one big social experiment. I feel it failed. Many think it just needs more money and support. I vote no. But, that won’t change the big government agenda. My grown children say they can hear the pity in my voice when I discuss this with them.
Thank you Dr.Hanson for eloquently penning why I left California for good. When I arrived in 1985, I thought I had found paradise. When I left in August of 2007, I knew I was escaping Hell.
There’s one nuance that Dr. Hanson didn’t pick up on, and which is influential here, to a great extent. Our problems don’t just stem from elected officials, though they are a considerable part of the problem. We have here in California, though, some of the silliest judges in the history of the human race, and they hand down some of the most absurd decisions. My wife worked some years ago at a business where one of the other women accused the boss and one of her co-workers of sexual harassment, after she’d been fired. In spite of the fact that everyone (including my wife, who will tell you proudly she’s a big feminist) thought that the incident never happened, the plaintiff won a large settlement from the company. Some time later her boyfriend was seen driving around town in a new full-sized SUV. The work force of the company went to completely meaningless seminars to warn them about what sexual harassment is and how to combat it in the work place.
On a larger scale, a decision that went almost unnoticed at the time has had a serious impact on the state’s budget concerns. Officials *at the time* said it would be catastrophic for our state’s budget, but no one listened to them, and now we’re reaping the benefits of it, so to speak. The state’s public employee unions took the state to court, claiming that when the state calculates a pension for a worker upon retirement, he or she should be credited with all overtime and bonuses earned in the last year. Since your pension is a percentage of what you earned that last year, if your overtime and bonuses are added, you get a lot more money. The judge interpreted California’s constitution to say this, and awarded the unions and their members millions, perhaps billions of dollars in pensions as a result. He made the decision retroactive to a date several years in the past, so that many newly-retired state employees got a large increase in their state pensions the next month. I’ve often wondered about the guy who retired just the other side of the deadline: didn’t he feel like a schmuck.
State and local municipalities, back when they had a bit of money and were more generous, also granted early retirement dates as part of the deals they made with the public employees during the period. What all of this means is that soon, Hanson and all of the critics who say that people who work in the state of California work for the public employees will be wrong. We won’t be working for those who work here now, we’ll work for public employment retirees, who will be collecting pensions and benefits at every one else’s expense. We have successfully built a generation of public service millionaires in our state, and most of them retire somewhere in their late 40s or early 50s with a full pension and health benefits that are the envy of everyone else. Soon, with people living longer, retiring earlier, and collecting more benefits, they will dwarf the people who actually work at the state, screwing up small business, harassing landlords who try to collect rents, bankrupting family farms, and all of the other useful functions they provide. You have to wonder when it will all end.
I think you have to live in California to realize how much there is still worth saving here. The red-blue county map of the state is instructive: geographically, the state is politically divided into the red exurbs and rural areas, and the blue “megalopolises.” Those of us who live in the more rural part of the south call the Tahoe-Sacramento-San Francisco axis — an artificial river of sanctimonious blue — the “I-80 mafia.”
But that is not the whole state. Even LA County, with its race victimization industry — and the industry’s Hollywood handmaiden — is much more politically bipolar than the I-80 corridor. Proposition 8 could not have won the state without LA County: and it got LA County.
I think — I hope — VDH knows the answer to his rhetorical question about how California can be so deeply in debt while having some of the highest taxes in the nation. The latter causes the former, as much as does the insider spending and regulating Dr. Hanson outlines. As he observes, you can’t prohibit industry, fee it to death, and tax its entrepreneurs into oblivion, and expect to keep your tax base.
But let’s not lose perspective on the biggest culprit in California’s state debt picture: entitlement spending. It is a rule of government accounting that wide variances in projected spending are a function of how much of your spending goes to entitlements. When the state came out in December and confessed that the deficit projection through 2010 was between $28 billion and $42 billion, that was a big, red entitlements flag. Only entitlements can produce such uncertainty about projected spending.
The effects of unbridled entitlement spending are everywhere. I live in a now-medium-size town in cenral Riverside County that was once mostly populated by older retirees. Since I moved here there has been an influx of young families — and, more importantly to our tale here, an enlargement of state health benefits, to cover families at higher income levels. This is an “entitlement,” if you don’t fully understand the term.
My optometrist, whom I first saw in 2003, used to get 90% of her business from the retirees, who paid for services in cash or, less often, used insurance. When I saw her last summer, she was rushed and overworked, her business being gradually overwhelmed by families bringing their children in to use their state-provided health benefits.
In three visits over the course of two weeks, I saw no one who did not appear to be an American citizen (you can tell, even among Latinos). In this particular situation, my doctor was not being overwhelmed by illegal immigrants, but by citizens using their entitlement. She told me that about 70% of her business was now children on state benefits — the children of middle-class families that, only three years before, simply used their private insurance or paid out of pocket for their children’s eye exams and lenses.
The optometrist has had to hire an additional clerk to process the state benefit claims, and because of this added expense, and the limited reimbursements from the state, she is now working substantially harder for no more income. She is accelerating her plans to retire to her horse farm, and says the main reason she has not retired yet is that she feels an obligation to her employees, and some of her long-time patients.
This is just one of many similar anecdotes; I happen to know the details of this one first-hand. It is quite true that illegal immigration is a huge problem for California, but even without it, granting entitlements left and right to us happy few would still be fiscally irresponsible and socially destructive. Entitlements metastasize uncontrollably no matter how limited you think you can keep your beneficiary population.
“They” versus “we”? When our entitlements exert a magnetic attraction on foreigners, who will do anything to qualify for them, it’s because we have voted the entitlements for ourselves in the first place. When our entitlements overwhelm our state budgets, it’s because we have them, not because Mexicans seek to batten on them.
It’s the entitlements, people. Someone has to say that at some point. The entitlements are the central source of our fiscal problems, and the one thing that, if we fixed it, would take care of just about everything else.
Figure out who is to blame.
Hang the guilty persons at high noon on the town square.
Televise the event and sell tickets. Make it THE media event of the year.
Make EVERYBODY watch what happens when you steal.
Bad things can happen to bad people.
Everybody dies, some just more miserably and sooner than other.
When a nation decides that it can afford to give away self-determination to people that are not held to account, merely by the fact that they hold the “politically correct” credentials of the moment, suddenly they wake up one day, and they find that “they” were not meant to be suffering like this! “They” also find out that “they” no longer have any power to do anything about it!
One would think that “they ” would have the ability to foresee this, but I guess not!
California started downhill after prop 13 in 1978. Howard Jarvis and the Republican party are to blame.
California’s biggest contribution may be to serve as a vaccine to keep the rest of the country from going the same way. Funny, I always thought Europe was going to serve that function, but California got there first.
I think VDH didn’t dig quite deep enough here.
There are two ways to acquire wealth: create (make) it; or take it.
When there is huge wealth, as there was (and really still is) in California, it makes it a very ripe target for the takers. And the makers don’t want to bother fighting against the takers, because it’s not worth the effort. After all, even if they’re a bit less rich, they’re still doing reasonably well.
After the parasitic takers take so much that their host is no longer the wealthiest, some move to other states to do their taking there. More and more see that taking is more lucrative than making and this natural progression will continue until there is so little left to take, and what is left is defended so vigorously, that it becomes at least as lucrative to be a maker rather than a taker again. I don’t see this happening again in my lifetime (at least not in California where I work and live), so I think I’m going to soon retire (at 50) and become a taker myself. If you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em. If taxes are somehow miraculously lowered and the environment somehow becomes more business friendly, then I’ll start working again.
I am glad that this administration has come right out with their socialist beliefs. i really thought they were smarter , and would hide their true intentions.
closing gitmo, appointing tax cheats, appointing socialists, and cutting the Defense budget by 10% is waking everybody up. It is us against the facist liberals.
And I am not even going to mention FOCA. I went to Church yesterday and we spent 10 minutes filling out post cards to all of our representatives giving them the chance to do the right thing. i have been a Catholic for 56 years and have never seen that done.
I was embarrassed so many Catholics voted for Obama, but that worm is about to turn.
So basically, Atlas has shrugged in California and The looters now have to turn to the rest of the country to bail them out. Soon there will be no one left anywhere to do the bailing.
Alas, all too true!
It looks like John Galt has spoken in CA.
Or, maybe it is just a plague of (human) locusts. They will soon be migrating to a State near you.
Who is responsible? the DEMOCRATS, of course. The whole country will be like this in 3 or 4 years if we do not get them out of power.
California is still an attractive destination for immigrants since ethnic minorities are well entrenched and connected here. You can live in most parts of CA speaking your own native language.
State workers blame Arnold (a republican in name only) for the state’s woes. I’m almost certain that a big name lefty will replace him in about 2 years. For all his faults, Arnold did try to limit union influences and some programs.
When I was a kid on the farm in OK, we used to joke that they would eventually figure out a way to tax the air that we breathe. Of course we knew this would never happen, but then it did (cap & trade).
Now, I have moved my company from CA – the corp is in NV and the servers are in OK, the programmers are in India. The only thing left in CA is my brain. Waiting for them to figure out a way to tax that and then I will move back to OK.
But CA did lose first my corp, then the tax payments, then the highly paid programmer employees. CA got what it deserved by regarding business as a chicken to be plucked – they ate the goose that laid the golden egg.
The late great State of California is most certainly dead. It is now the liberal utopia, the canary in the coal mine warning the rest of the nation as to what will come should America go down the same road.
American citizens are fleeing the state in droves. The tax base is moving away. California is the full embodiment of the results of far left politics.
Beware!
We have met the enemy, and he is most assuredly us.
I don’t feel sorry for California. It embraced the culture of Soft and Hard Leftism decades ago and the whole project of social engineering and cultural Marxism has been going forward. Plus, many of the Californians who left that state have been filtering into other Western and Mountain states, changing those states from conservative and Republican places into blue states.
The rot that is California affects not just California, but the rest of the West and even the country itself. God damn them to hell for it.
Regarding California, John Steinbeck and the Bible were wrong. The mindless, not the meek, shall inherit the earth. Or what’s left of it.
Francisco D’Anconia has been whispering in peoples’ ears.
“I think you have to live in California to realize how much there is still worth saving here.”
I don’t think you are quite getting it. The minority of Californians who have their heads on straight will likely continue to be victimized by the voting majority who demand their goodies. It might behoove you to learn more about what happened to Michigan—and especially its largest city, Detroit. California may have very reached the point of no return.
Any group that keeps adding people at the less productive end of the scale will never raise the ‘average’.
That’s not racism, that’s math.
California has spent the last 50+ years welcoming people who consume more then they produce (in this I include the young and the young family as much as the new immigrant ) who then ( for various reasons from culture to taxes ) chose to leave at or before the point they become ‘contributers’ (In this I include Mexicans heading back to their homelands no more than movie stars buying ranches in Montana.)
When people supported themselves young labor was desireable, but now that the bottom 50%+ lives in part or in whole off tax money?
Like I said – it’s just math.
I’m not so optimistic about anyone learning their lessons as a lot of commenters are. Just like the hippy left ruined Vermont, and then decided to move to move to New Hampshire, and then proceeded to ruin New Hampshire, the Californian diaspora is moving to the Rockey Mountain states, and bringing with then a lot of leftist ideas, and totally upsetting their demographics, with no clue that it was their leftist ideas that ruined the state that they left.
In the process, they’re also permanently altering the electoral makeup of the country. I have no doubt that if you took the Californians out of Colorado, it would have gone for McCain.
So they leave a trail of broken states behind them, but that only makes them win more. The Democrat party thrives on dysfunction. That’s why they win.
John, You have not a clue. California is the 9th highest taxed state in the nation. Lack of money is not the problem. Lack of self-control is.
I had to live two years in California when my wife was stationed there. 12 years later, my wife and I have an understanding. If she gets orders to a hell hole like California again, she files her paperwork and we bail. I will never live in a communist state with only 50% of normal American freedoms and institutionalized racism again if there is anything that can be done about it. The only parts of California I found appealing, were those without people. Snowy mountains pretty much. Anytime you saw someone, it was not pleasant.
I was born and raised in California and it kills me to see what has happened to the most beautiful state in the nation.
We should rename it “Cancerfornia”. Everyone who lives there will get exposed to it. Some leave before they get it or they leave when they catch in its early stages and go somewhere else far away so it wont come back. Others get it and its too late to treat it and they die. Others get it, see they have it, are in denial, and die without doing anything.
Now mind you there are people with money who use their money to prevent cancer by building a wall around themselves and only letting those like them inside. They make fun of other Californians who cannot afford to stay. VDH falls in this category so he can stay and enjoy the best the state has to offer while speaking out about what has happened to his state.
“I’m not so optimistic about anyone learning their lessons as a lot of commenters are.”
That’s because the moochers have virtually nothing to gain by “learning their lessons.” As a practical matter, why should they care? Why should they worry about the future? In the long run, they will be dead. Youngsters who presently are not old enough to vote will ultimately pay the price tag. No sweat off their brow.
#42 Self-hating Boomer,
Yep, I live in New Hampshire and Vermonters have had some influence here. Some of it is the diaspora from Massachusetts, but in all fairness not all of them, because in the last few elections at least a very large minority of Mass. transplants voted Republican and they are fiscally conservative.
The changes are mostly due to changing demographics. The older Greatest Generation in our state is dying off and what’s replacing them are the kids who have been well-indoctrinated by our useless education system.
They show the same entitlement mentality that is destroying California. They don’t want to contribute, but they want to take from the taxpayer. This disease has metastasized all over the country.
Remember, when California was golden? The freeways worked, the people worked, improvised and led the world in just about everything.
Now, California sucks. Windshields get cracked from broken freeways, the schools suck and produce functional illiterates at best.
The tax base is leaving and you probably won’t be able to have a smoke or a beer on a beach. We are being castrated by the product of the 60′s – Between the State and the Feds the Trial Lawyers seem to reign supreme and class action suits are more popular than levis.
Schwartzenkennedy is the worst thing that has happened to Cal. Why did we dump the lousy gray davis?
All this is great and well-thought out. But: what do we do about it?
I left California to retire in Nevada for all the reasons you mention. There are so many people that have left with their wealth there is actually a surplus of high end real estate.
It is very sad.
How about starting to use their own techniques. First up is a well funded lawsuit against unions. The charges are many : restraint of free trade, anti-trust behavior,
collusion and conspiracy to fix (labor) prices, non-merit based wage rates, etc. etc.
It’s obvious, or should be, to any thinking person that Liberalism has killed CA as well as MI, NY, and many other Blue states. But have the ex-Californians learned anything or will they maintain the same ignorant, Utopian voting patterns they practiced in CA and soon bring ruin to their new home states? North Carolina is a good example of what can happen when a Conservative, business friendly government runs that state. NC has been booming economically in high tech and has a lot of talent and a great economic base. This business friendly environment is responsible for NC’s booming economy which has subsequently attracted talent from sinking northern states like NY, MA, PA, CT, et al.
The result? NC voted for Obama and a Dem for Senate in Nov. It seems obvious that the new NC residents learned absolutely nothing from their voting back home and will in time reduce NC to the condition if NY. Hostile to business, union friendly, high tax, and tied down by litigation.
Yes people are abandoning CA but many are unable to make the critical connection between their OWN Liberal beliefs and CA’s failure and will in time cripple their new homes. Conservatives should act to solidify Conservative laws to prevent their states from being ruined.
CA has its conservative spots, and they’re not confined to Orange County. But Los Angeles and the bay area are enough to color the entire state blue.
I live in the outskirts of LA but I’m actaully closer to Orange County. OC is supposed often ridiculed as a right wing hotspot, but IMO there’s no comparison between the OC and LA. LA is dreadly overrated. The more south you go (San Diego is a real nice city) the better California gets IMO.
“Or, maybe it is just a plague of (human) locusts. They will soon be migrating to a State near you.”
Swarms of Californicators have destroyed Washington State, turning it into an over-taxed, over-regulated cesspool of liberalism. Funny how they leave California despising the changes that ruined that state, then (by their sheer mass) proceed to mandate those same destructive policies in their new home state.
How about everyone in California do us a favor and start working in the hemp industry there are endless possibilities and I am thinking it should be completely decriminalized in order to produce the best results. Economic, agricultural, immigration issues, improved air quality, less judicial strain, I could go on and on. Many others feel the same way but nothing is being done on the national level and that is where it needs to reform the most. The states that have medical laws still often are trumped by federal law which produces an endless cycle of crime-criminal production in order to sustain or thrive. When will the prohibition on Marijuana end? I would love to see it in my lifetime.
#55– Saltherring: oh, sure– Seattle was a hotbed of conservatism before about 10% of OR and WA immigrants came from CA. Hmmm, since CA has more than 10% of the nation’s population and it is proximate to the Pacific Northwest and mountain states, shouldn’t the percentage of CA expats be higher than what we see? Or perhaps it’s your own leftist infected systems that are producing the same sad results as CA? Nah, that would mean we’ve a problem ourselves! Best to blame it all on the Californians…
Leftists have ruined my home state, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have your own crazies… watch out or they will ruin your state as well.
Arnold tried hard to contain unions and pension bloat right after he was elected. The nions went to town with a TV blitz and the media here–the LA Times included–suppported the unions. We now have workers retiring from behind that onerous desk at age 55 with full pensions. The state keeps hiring and paying workers to retire early.
And illegals have been a huge drain: we tried to contain that too, but federal judges killed those laws. Now we have no choice but to educate and tend to millions of people everyone’s US Congress let into our state.
No, the voters here are not responsible. The Feds are. The media is.
John: Prop 13 saved most voters that owned a house. The governemnt’s greed made Prop 13 happen. They have just turned their greedy sights on earners and business.
Prop 13
Our founders warned us many times about the loss of freedom-
http://thenma.org/blogs//index.php/libertyforusa/2009/02/01/anyone-watching-the-blessings-of-freedom
We need to guard it as we do our children!
“Why are they cutting my pay check when I have five children at home to feed?”
I saw that quote from a state worker in a SacBee article last week. These people are absolutely oblivious. We’ve reached the tipping point.
Amazing the level of vitriol and bile directed at California. News to you people: California pays your bills both in terms of the disproportionate share of federal taxes sent to D.C. (and distributed to states with less diverse economies and more rural areas) and in terms of the outsized contributions of California entrepreneurs to the U.S. economy.
There budget crisis in California stems from the decline in the financial and real estate markets, as well as the tendency of voters to approve ballot propositions with bond financing attached, but vote other methods of financing state government. Believe it or not pajamasmediawingnuts, but the California electorate is anti-tax.
VDH sits in his ivory tower at Stanford benefiting from the great wealth and cultural heritage of California. And all he wants to do is urinate on it.
The same can be said for the rest of you so-called patriots.
If you substitute “Ohio” for “California” Dr. Hanson’s article fairly accurately describes the Buckeye State as well.
Ohio is now the fifth highest-tax state in the Union. We have a comprehensive entitlement program based on that of California. In fact, most of our statewide statutes since the John Gilligan administration (1974-78)were first “test-flown” in CA. And like CA, we now have a (corrupt) state government that somehow manages to stay perpetually broke in spite of ever-higher taxes, a crumbling infrastructure, and environmental regulations that have paralyzed any attempt to improve our power grid for decades. (We even converted a nuclear power plant under construction, Davis-Besse, to “clean coal” to please the UMW and Sierra Club; it has been dumping the sulfer-filled waste water from its stack scrubbers, uncleaned, into a river since 1987.)
And as you might guess, as fast as someone graduates from college with a degree in something worthwhile, they leave the state. And never come back.
As a retireee, I tend to take the view that I’m more or less on the sidelines observing. And what I see here in Ohio looks enough like what Dr. Hanson sees in California that I fear our nation as a whole may soon reach the point of no return. If, in fact, it has not already done so.
Who is John Galt, indeed.
clear ether
eon
Had to read the lead in twice….the word “Left” should have been capitalized.
How could the Spanish Empire, the richest in the world with the gold of the New World, be bankrupt? Maybe from focusing their ambitions in venues that dissipated that wealth. Whether the expansion of their brand of Catholicism in the 16th Century or the Californian neo-socialism of the 20th Century, the ruling class pays no head to accounting books and what is responsible for putting the income ‘in’. We’re all too modern, too wise, too adult to remember the admonitions of an ancient Greek, “Don’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg”, “Don’t count your hens before they hatch”. So how has it all worked out for those modern, wise, adults in California?
I have a couple of comments. The person who blamed Prop 13 probably is too young to know the reason for that revolt. Had the taxpayers not rebelled, property taxes would have increased so rapidly that the value of homes would never have risen as they have the past 30 years. In 1978, the property tax on a $250,000 house in Orange County was $7,000. Since then, the vast majority of houses have been sold several times with a revaluation with each sale. The Prop 13 story is one of the Democrats’ flights of fancy.
Texas handles the illegal immigrant situation by funding state government with sales tax. That causes every resident, legal or not, to pay a share. California has funded the state government with income tax but will not be able to do so much longer. It narrows the tax base and that tax base is leaving.
For the Arizona patriots, my daughter attends the U of Arizona. Her freshman course in American History since 1877 teaches that the white male is the source of all evil. Her textbook (!) for that course is called “Privilege, Power, and Difference” by Allan G Johnson. Look it up on Amazon and read the reviews. It is principally about “Whiteness Studies.” That is American History in Arizona. I might add that auto insurance rates in Tucson are about 50% higher than California because of auto theft. A friend in Tucson had his car stolen. By the time they activated the Lojack device, the car was in Mexico.
California is lost but the rest of the country had better wake up soon as it is not far behind.
Well, why don’t you move the hell out?
There are plenty of excellent places to live in this country.
And after the place collapses, move back. It will probably take 30-40 years for them to screw it up again.
Who’s to blame? Who knows? Everyone, no-one. When actors without a high school education receive a bullypulpit worthy of presidents (of course without any accountability) then probably the blame lies in the media consumers as we’re the ones allowing the talking heads to continue their blather.
My grandfather used to say that every stupid idea in his life time seemed to come out of California and then spread like a disease across the country. The fiscal maddness that has been CA for the last twenty years is now in charge of DC.
It is as if we have been given a time machine and can look into our future. It isn’t pretty.
You omit only the potential bonanza from offshore oil and gas drilling that would serve to both replenish state coffers and clean up the beaches.
I wonder how long it will take for the absurd policies to result in true bankruptcy where the obvious truth of your piece becomes inescapable.
Residents of states to which Californians are migrating need to be on guard against the poisonous progressive ideas the Californians carry with them, lest they replicate the very thing they flee in your community. Someone used term ‘locusts’ in thre comments above. It seems fitting.
California may, indeed, be ‘anti-tax’ but they sure, as hell, aren’t ‘anti-spend’ to say the least.
By the majority voting to spend themselves into debt, the minority pay – that minority being the rich, well-off, working man and woman. When those people decide to move you are left with lots of spending and nothing to fund it with, and so that eats further outwards as government desperately searches for anything to sustain itself, save cutting off the festering and gangrenous limbs of government itself. And even there, the idea that State government is ‘better’ at somethings, needs to be looked at, just as it is at the Federal level.
The idea that ‘the most important’ issues require the ‘highest level’ of government to address them is contrary to self-governance and accountable government. To achieve the latter you need, even require, the most local of government as it is the closest to the citizenry. Yet time and again things that our grandparents saw as perfectly reasonable for local government, schooling, health care, roads, sewers… has been handed upwards. The result is more ‘oversight’ and less accountability at the most local of levels. You pay dear overhead not only in money, but in lack of accountability by government which grows officious, distant and no longer sees you as an individual citizen but as a subject to its rules.
Now California and, indeed, the Nation will reap what it has sewn from the drear seeds of ‘its such a good thing to do’ we will learn that the necessary evil of government, that restricter of vices and protector of society, becomes hard taskmaster and true evil when given ‘good’ to dispense at the whims of those few in power who have grown so distant that fewer vote for them now than ever before. The Anti-Federalists warned of this, and many scoffed at their points of history… now those skeins return, to be woven into the restraints of those who wish us no ill and so much good that we must be forced to accept it. We have forgotten Franklin and will soon lose the Republic to those with such good hearts that we must all obey them… until it turns on those doing the pushing, and by then it will be too late.
Dr. Hanson’s introduction about California’s positives (abundant natural resources, good schools, infrastructure etc.) and what happened to them, reminded me of PJ O’Rourke’s famous observation as he visited former East Germany. You gotta give communism credit for one thing. It was the only thing that could take a nation of 30 million GERMANS and make them POOR!
I was raised in Compton, CA. During my career with the railroad I ended up in Oregon, post McCall. Although they refused to give my wife a full-time teaching job, being from California, she was allowed to sub. Those pesky teachers there still like their 3-4 day weekends.
It came time to transfer back to California so I was given a $15,000 cost-of-living incentive to move back. We didn’t want to move but that is business. We left Diamond Bar a soon as possible because of the smog, traffic, earthquakes, taxes, environmentalists, brown-outs, and the rest who treated taxpayers like a cow to be milked.
We went to Tucson, AZ. while my brother closed his business in Orange County and moved to Las Vegas. Instant pay raise, no traffic, no smog, clear skies and sunny weather.
Fast forward to summer 2008. Unfortunately, we still have friends who are struggling in Orange County. We are actively engaged in convincing them to pack up and leave California. We went for a visit in our RV to Orange County. On day two of our trip we were reareanded by an 18 wheeler carrying 30 tons of tomatoes for Portland, fittingly a Peterbilt, while stopped in traffic on I-5 under the 605. Our RV was destroyed. We survived because our propane tank was well-constructed.
Mayor Villaraigosa was attending a GLBT rally in nearby Whittier, the CHP latino officer refused to issue a citation because according to him, the insurance companies would establish fault, the truck driver provided paperwork with an insurance company in San Ysidro. He provided an insurance card which I promptly called into our insurance company. They called back a short time later saying the insurance had been cancelled by the driver. The driver was gone by then.
That is why we carry uninsured/underinsured/theft insurance protection because we have insurance that will protect the rest who don’t. Bottom line, we don’t travel in California anymore. It is not the Golden State anymore but a beggars cup being rattled by those who live off the efforts of the gainfully employed who live by their wits and hard work.
Adios
The scam is for unscrupulous drivers to buy insurance then immediately cancel it upon receipt of a computer generated proof of insurance. Of course, nobody in authority whether weigh stations or CHP ever verifies anything other than mere possession of the required papeles, por favor.
What the left has done to California may be the extreme that will save us from that same fate Obama and the ‘trons are so eager to give us. California will require massive aid to prevent collapse or a violent contraction in entitlements. As ineffective as bailouts are for business, bailouts for governments are orders of magnitude less efficient and effective. Business at least can create wealth, government can only consume it.
Regardless of the path taken, it will be a glaring and immediate lesson to the rest of the country. If the federal government attempts to bail them out it will be a never ending money pit in which the liberal denizens will make no effort to change their ways because in their primitive world view that is the function of government; give them money to spend, all will be right with the world.
If California is forced to cut entitlements, enforce immigration, cut taxes and other evil and onerous methods of living within their means the immediate and stunning success of these measures will stand in stark relief to the stated goals of the Obama administration in their push to do to the country what the left has done to California.
The great good of California’s devastating problems are their immediacy. There will have to be a solution attempted and in my view the attempt can only be beneficial for the rest of us.
Blaming lawyers for sexual harassment suits is a little far-fetched. Do you really know of any business that were bankrupt for frivolous sexual harassment allegations? Anecdotal evidence rather than hgard evidence. Otherwise, great piece, as usual.
MIke_K – Texas is primarily funded by property tax which taxes everyone. We also have a very sane Torts law, a strong energy sector, courts that side with the citizen, the Right to bear arms, and a very pro-business/right to work tradition. There is very little regulation of anything.
The problem with California is that its leaders have a fundamentally unjust vision for their state.
All large states luxuriate in the “good times” when they can leisurely expand their ideals and limit anything they feel they ought not to like, be it fashionable or political or preferably both. As these good times last for a number of years the growth-limiters-and-regulation-enhancers feel more emboldened by each other’s ‘success’
The causes these people espouse grow rapidly in imagined importance and the realities of everyday life – the practicalities, the wealth generation and the careful stocktaking – become irritants and are swatted aside in favor of exciting ideals.
So what California has become is what all such places must become; a home for inward-looking theorists who are anxiously engrossed in vague thoughts and opinions that would be appear ludicrous under rational examination. The solution then is to avoid any examination at all, so there are no threats to these happy people’s comfort zones.
The economy will move underground. Plenty of people, illegal and legal, already get paid off the books. I expect California will see the whole economy moving back to cash. The survivalists are stocking gold now, but we’ll move to hard currency first. No more checks, no more credit cards, no more paying sales tax or income tax. You’ll see small shops with ‘cash only’ signs, then resturants, then gas stations. Inventory will be ‘stolen’ to get it off the books. Records will be ‘lost’. The true breaking point will be when the state regulators, trying to collect taxes and audit, start ‘disappearing’. There are already too many places where cops won’t go. Those areas will expand.
reiterate:
“The trouble with socialism,…..”
DB @ #15,
Stated somewhat differently, there are around 30 million illegals in the US. For the 90% that aren’t criminals, each still requires a court date and a deportation hearing.
If we had 5,000 such hearings per day, and they only lasted 2 hours, it would take 60 million hours to clear the docket and 12,000 days. And, we’d have to pay for a lawyer for each hour.
The border fence remains unfinished. If Mexico explodes, as many predict, then we could face up to another 30-50 million illegals rushing across our border, all wanting to claim asylum. That’s just from Mexico. Now that’s a problem that we surely bring us down.
Did you know the little advertised fact that the US government deported 10 million people at the beginning of WWII?
I am not sure why there is any mystery? There is a certain amount of revenue coming in and the natural inclination is to spend it (on something). When the revenues decline, the expenditure of that revenue does not decline at the same rate or necessarily at any rate.
As oppposed to personal expenditures which were more amenable to reductions and only require a personal decision, government expenditures have many different hands in it and very few of those hands would willingly volunteer to see their program reduced as compared to others.
Most any State that does not practise, what would truly be, an enormous amount of restraint would be in a similar situation — spend as the good times will continue forever. It may be just that California’s is the worst.
Even during the “good times”, I think that expenditures were probably pushing the “limit” of incoming revenues. Is it any wonder that when “bad times” roll around that the strain becomes that much greater?
As a native so. Californian and a former business owner, I admit, I folded and have been a state employee for the past decade +.
The state should FREEZE all approved increases that are currently scheduled in the budget. I am including a 2.5% salary increase I began receiving on Jan.1st. The governor should ask the state employees directly instead of negotiating with union reps who rarely, if ever really rep all of us in a manner we might agree to. Do remember that just because a union presents one point of view, probably half of the members are a different political viewpoint. Unfortunately whenever we hear that the educational or social service systems are being “cut” it is that a scheduled increase has been stopped. That’s not a cut in my book!
Also, how many people in the private industry celebrate Cesar Chavez’s birthday with a paid holiday? Just cutting this one new state holiday would save a lot of money, but of course that would be identified as “racist” to cut the only recognized Hispanic holiday.
The public schools where I reside are very decent with many, many outstanding teachers. But I was able to have my two children enrolled in private schools their 1st 7 years at a lower cost per year than what we pay for one single public school student! Give each teacher 3/4′s of the $7300 per student to run their classroom, including their salary and we will discover an amazing improvement in the education.
Unfortunately even though I am politically active and involved I can only impact local issues… our state district lines are drawn in a manner that there are no meaningful changes. Nationally, I donate to other candidates in other states.
Why don’t I move? I love the ocean, the mountains and the desert…all in relatively short driving distance.
for once I have to agree he brings up salient points
Excellent analysis of what happens when liberals(soft stalinists) take over.This is pretty much the present or future situation in blue states;Michigan and New York are not far behind.What is terrible, is that this country,in a fit of hysterical stupidity, has just elected a president and a congress that want to run the nation just like California.It’s time to mobilize resistance to the pig state, its ideology, and its thugs.
Doc is correct to point out CA is blessed with abundant natural resources – few of which can be utilized anymore. One by one, use of each one has been taken off the table – thank you Environutjobs. Can’t drill of oil, can’t harvest timber, can’t build water resevoirs, can’t have nuclear power plants for cheap energy – on & on.
Adults manage resources responsibly, with an eye to the future. Envirofascists are utopian children who can’t figure out how manage responsibly, so their solution is to touch nothing. Plenty of goodies waiting to be tapped are still sitting there – it’s the human will to engage them that’s missing in CA.
Red Blooded American at #61 — perhaps you would benefit from taking a course in logic and rhetoric. Your citation of the accomplishments of California’s people — industrialists, workers, farmers, etc — is no logical argument for California’s state spending policies.
The state of California can certainly take no credit for the Hoover Institution. It can, however, take ALL the credit for awarding state health benefits to people who make upwards of $70K a year. No, California voters don’t like seeing their taxes raised. That doesn’t matter, which you would know if you both lived here and accepted reality. Spending keeps going up, and the taxes are likely to be raised anyway, once the state Republicans finally cave, in the budget battle.
There is a glimmer of hope. The big problem for the direction of government policy in California is that state electoral districts remain drawn in such as way as to guarantee a Democrat-left majority in Sacramento. However, population has shifted dramatically since the current lines were drawn, many voters from the reliably blue urban districts having fled to the redder exurbs.
Ahnold finally got his ballot proposition passed in November for an independent commission to redraw the lines for the state senate and assembly; and an updated, honestly drawn set of districts would put the seats of many safe-seat Democrats, from SF and LA, in jeopardy.
It remains to be seen whether the commission will be able to achieve what supporters of this effort hope. We can expect the heavy artillery from entrenched state legislators: they will seek to prejudice the commission at the outset, will hold implementation of any new districts hostage in the legislature as long as possible, and bring lawsuits to prevent new districts from taking effect.
But they rallied the unions to defeat Ahnold’s proposition the first time it was on the ballot, and it was still passed the second time, in November 2008. I would argue that today’s California is not the California of the 1980s that awarded a majority of safe seats to Democrats from the Bay Area and LA. The population has shifted to the east, and (especially around LA) north and south along the coasts from the major urban centers — and many, many of those voters moved for precisely the reasons that make people vote Republican. Geographically, California is just like the US as a whole, in terms of political divisions: blue on the coast, with red pockets, and red in the heartland, with blue pockets.
It’s easy to tell people to just move out. You obviously aren’t upside-down on your mortgage, if you think that’s a realistic possibility for a lot of Californians. The vast majority of people who are upside-down didn’t “buy stupid,” nor are they in default. But between taking an unsecured loss in the thousands of dollars, and staying in California a bit longer, most will choose the latter.
As VDH himself likes to point out, and as his beloved Greeks understood, much of life — as well as war — is a matter of choosing among bad and worse choices. It wouldn’t be any fun to rein in the entrenched political left: to rouse ourselves to target it accurately, gain the knowledge to counter its opportunistic arguments, consciously choose to defeat it rather than compromising with it. Most people don’t want to be that involved in politics, and would prefer to think their fellow Americans were contented, rather than defeated.
But we will have to learn at some point that compromise with the statist left is tantamount to admitting a virus. We are already letting the state run our lives, and the economic and social problems we see around us are the result of that. I’m not sure when enough Americans will see that clearly to really matter, at the voting booth. But that is what will have to happen.
I could care less if Mexifornia falls into the Pacific, but if any of you liberal sissys think about polluting SC, you better think twice. Keep in mind the swamps, and gators, it might be better for your well being to look elsewhere. Just a thought!
#77-Austin
Surely you jest—Texas has one of the worst records for a “victim-oriented” judiciary that can be found. And the big problem facing it, like New Hampshire, is that more and more of the people who live here don’t actually come from Texas, and the political climate is changing.
I used to live in Austin, and it has changed a lot over the years. As the years went by it became harder and harder to find anybody living there who was actually born in Texas, and today it is a “blue city” in a red state.
Read this very complementary article about how Silicon Valley is about to be permanently killed by leftist governmental parasitism.
Remember that conservatives always outbreed leftists. Hence leftism is self-defeating demographically.
Where this falls apart is when you have a high-breeding foreign group that can be easily indoctrinated into leftism, so that they fail to assimilate. Mexicans getting exposed to leftism is what ruined CA.
There is NOT ONE Hispanic Republican politician in CA. NOT ONE. Despite 40% of the state being Hispanic.
California’s economy will converge with that of Mexico, period. The only hope is if somehow Mexico itself dramatically undergoes some economic miracle and achieves parity with the US. Yeah, right.
Didn’t far south California forty years ago have a lot of furniture factories?
Steel mills?
Isn’t California’s blind pursuit of a pure ecology (and the taxation to purse it) driving work out of California?
Consider reading Andrew Breitbart’s commentary in the Washington Times: The true face of Hollywood (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/02/the-true-face-of-hollywood/)
#23: “The red-blue county map of the state is instructive …”
#38: “… changing those states from conservative and Republican places into blue states.”
#53: “… Liberalism has killed CA as well as MI, NY, and many other Blue states”
Whoever made up this arbitrary color assignment of BLUE=Democrat, RED=Republican, anyway?
Democrats should be the red party since they are always angry and are ideologically much closer to communists.
Todd #96,
The problem in CA is that no one even tries to proseltyse (expose) the conservative religion to them there beaners. Expose them (the long-timers and legal ones) to righism! Instead, they’re writ off. Maybe the Mexicans just plain dont feel welcome, hence no takers, and everybody stays in their group and votes feelings instead of pocketbook (the gays do this over gay marriage; a reasonable conservative should ditch the opposition to Gay Marriage if it means the gay community would ditch their log-rolling alliances with Latino politicians and effect a more anti-illegal immigration stance). Try to grab a D to R convert – Lee Baca, a slightly more reasonable man then Villar-Raigosa-would be an ideal target. I’m not saying give an inch off the agenda, but there’s always a Mexican hate to the extent that I’d rather face 20 below winters here in IL, than the sunny weather over there in CA. You dont need us all, just the 4th and 5th out of the 9 (national figures, so that would be about 40-45% of the hispanic pop there).
And when someone Hispanic does run on the right in the heart of LA, they dont get the support, also in the Breitbart piece.
It is interesting but not unpredictable that those states that seem to be basket cases, California, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, all are slaves to the politically correct and socialistic model that Democrats espouse. Sad to say our federal government is now working from the same paradigm. Hope enough people and candidates come to thier senses.
Leftist ideology has run free in CA for decades, and now that the consequences are killing the state, Californians are leaving. Do us a favor, stay there and deal with your own problems. We don’t want you and your leftist cancer infecting other states.
California is suffering from a systemic weakness in too much democracy, first noted by Aristotle:
Tax eaters will seize power from the tax payers as they have a more direct interest in the government that feeds them.
Plus, California is highly media-oriented politically. By having a leftist media, one hands the tax eaters a big hammer.
In the larger scheme of things, we are suffering from a failure of our elites. Time they were replaced by another set who have their head screwed on right.
#43, Self-Hating Boomer
Spot on. Californians are like roaches. Or like the aliens in “Independence Day.” When they’ve consumed everything were they are, they look at the map, see what’s booming, and go consume that. Roaches.
Appears to be so true, we are feeling the pain here now, the responsible ones who actually try.
California, here I come right back where I started from.
Where Bowers of flowers bloom in the spring.
Each morning at dawning, birdies sing an’ everything.
A sunkist miss said, “Don’t be late” that’s why I can hardly wait.
Open up that Golden Gate,
California here I come.
All the leaves are brown
And the sky is gray
I’ve been for a walk
On a winter’s day
I’d be safe and warm
If I was in L.A.
California dreamin’
On such a winter’s day
Well east coast girls are hip
I really dig those styles they wear
And the southern girls with the way they talk
They knock me out when Im down there
The mid-west farmers daughters really make you feel alright
And the northern girls with the way they kiss
They keep their boyfriends warm at night
I wish they all could be california girls
I’m out of work, I’m out of my head
Out of self respect, I’m out of bread
I’m underloved, I’m underfed, I wanna go home
It never rains in California, but girl, don’t they warn ya?
It pours, man, it pours
Twentieth Century Motor Company? And I ain’t just talking about California.
Yes, taxes are very high in California, and (surprisingly enough) revenues have consistently increased as a general trend (I wouldn’t want to try to follow that trend over the past few years, of course). The problem is that as revenues increased, politicians made the mistake of assuming that revenues would always increase, and so they made a bunch of long-term spending commitments above and beyond the revenues they were getting. These commitments were dependent on the continuation of plainly unsustainable growth; once the growth failed, everything else did.
The ballot proposition system needs to go. Most of what is proposed is ridiculous and unnecessary and the funds committed leave the government with virtually no discretionary funds at its disposal. Not even a competent legislative body can govern with that handicap.
The dumb people commenting here think 100% of Californians are leftists.
NEWSFLASH :
It is the CONSERVATIVE Californians who are leaving. The left-wing ones are STAYING, as they think CA is still a million times better than South Carolina (and it is, but anyway…)
Stupid people here think that all Californians are gay hippies, just like Californians think everyone in Texas is a redneck who wants to lynch blacks.
Ignorance abounds on both sides….
America arose in a revolt against entitlement.
California has thrust entitlement upon us.
Our entitled society is perched on a volcano ready to explode.
Great great piece and also excellent comments by the readers.
Today in CT the governor said “We’re broke, don’te expect a bail-out because we’re one of the wealthiest states in the nation [next to NYC]”
Yes, its all true. What California needs is a new wave of immigrants, from old New England. Understand that the way you save money is to CUT SPENDING.
Lots of rhetoric here on all sides of the issue, but one thing you can be certain of: The people responsible for this debacle will move on and everyone else will struggle for years to clean up their mess.
The parasites have overwhelmed the host. California is merely a preview of coming attractions.
And now with an executive branch shaping to up to be one of the most corrupt we’ve ever seen, legislatures of foxes guarding the hen houses, and a judicial system that increasingly usurps the legislative process, expect the California experience to replicate itself nationwide.
America has tuned over the reigns to a generation of incompetents that seek to punish the good and reward the bad.
I hope for the best, but expect the worst.
“The Historian:
The late great State of California is most certainly dead” yes and my beloved Arizona and Country are chomping at the bit to join her. What is to be done? Perhaps some younger people have answers; after this last election I just do not care anymore. My people America want to be nanny state Europeans and live on the dole. There is nothing left to love.
Sad. Blame media, schools, unions whatever. It is soul sickness and weaklings writ large that has destroyed us. Short of open civil war I see no answer. Sad.
It’s all George Bush’s fault! Not to worry: the messiah has promised change,and all that debt,will disappear,and the glory of his wisdom will be revealed.
I’m with Mike2(mid-scroll from top down)…Who is John Galt???
Take a lesson from Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’ and walk away from feeding corrupt and irresponsible politicians and fat cats.
Why should you pay taxes when the Treasury Secretary doesn’t? What do you really get from those taxes you paid? Claim the maximum amount of deductions you can for starters, at least!
Lastly, please read some History out there. This has all gone down before and we know the outcome, so hold on tight.
Anton: You don’t need a time machine, just a copy of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”.
Ken @ 57:
Sorry for the belated response. Washington state had a population of less than 3M in 1970. It has more than doubled since then, with far more immigration from California than any other state. I agree with rrr @ 106, Californians have either consumed or detroyed everything in their paths, out here in the west. And as such, they have earned the distain of the locals in every state they have swarmed over. Californicators: STAY HOME! WE DON’T WANT YOU OR YOUR WAYS!
“You see, anyone who nods and obeys the law and pays, we hound; anyone who simply won’t or can’t, or causes too much trouble, we the state employee simply ignore.”
VDH hits the mark again.
Take heart, Californians: we still live in a democracy, and as resilient as people are, we have heard enough from our state politicians to act upon our will to elect better representation. It would be shameful if there is no great turnover and people forget all the constultatory party officials who led them here next voting time. California is still a beautiful state with an unfortunate minority of those who want change to become fiscally responsible. Until then, honest folk will keep working on their farms and striving to improve what politics has decimated…
112. Toads
“dumb people commenting here…”?
You’re toads.
After watching all of the governator’s ballot initiatives get shot down, I bailed out of California. I am now must admit to a feeling of schadenfreude as I watch this predictable train wreck from a safe, red-state distance here in Utah.
Who is John Galt, indeed.
I am beginning to wish that I had an option of *country* like I do with state…
NO MORE TAXES!!
They cannot spend what they do not have. There is enough money in the government coffers to pay Social Security. Recovery.
Toads are smarter than you think.
It sure would be nice if people would dispense with the name calling, childish insults, and meaningless rhetoric in these threads. Where are the problem solvers with constructive ideas for repairment of this situation in California?
Also, it would be a very good idea if everyone looked very closely at this issue: what you are seeing, on a smaller state scale, is potentially what will happen, on a larger nation-wide scale, when the “stimulus” package is passed.
You simply cannot keep spending money when you don’t have the money to spend. I’m not a degreed economist, but I know that programs cost money, from the cost of paying employees right down to the smallest thumbtack. The money to pay for programs has to come from somewhere. How much more are we supposed to give the government to fund some of these well-intentioned, if completely impractical, programs?
At what point should the American people throw the tea into the ocean and demand no more taxation without representation? Our government officials are representing their own self-interests and the demands of their giant contributors. Rarely do they give pause for the needs of their constiuency, unless in doing so it shines a light of godliness upon them.
As Albert Finney would say “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
79. dusty:
“The economy will move underground. Plenty of people, illegal and legal, already get paid off the books. I expect California will see the whole economy moving back to cash. ”
How about increasing IRS investigators or whoever tracks tax evaders? We are talking billions $ here.
100. urbanleftbehind:
“The problem in CA is that no one even tries to proseltyse (expose) the conservative religion to them there beaners. Expose them (the long-timers and legal ones) to righism! ”
Hispanic, Latinos, Chicanos, whatever you call them are as DIVERSE politically as anybody else: rebid right-wingers, fringe extremists, centrists, and whatever the political soup has. My guess is that their values are more conservative than liberal, but they vote with their pocket in mind. Give them fiscal stability and they’ll flock your church.
111. LaurieK:
“The ballot proposition system needs to go.”
That’s right! Aren’t we supposed to elect brilliant legislators that prevent and manage crisis? And who elects these people?
I wish elections were eliminated and instead a State-Bar-like exam was done . . . The highest passing grade wins the post! It’s a job after all.
112. Toads:
Worth repeating:
“The dumb people commenting here think 100% of Californians are leftists.
NEWSFLASH :
It is the CONSERVATIVE Californians who are leaving. The left-wing ones are STAYING, as they think CA is still a million times better than South Carolina (and it is, but anyway…)
Stupid people here think that all Californians are gay hippies, just like Californians think everyone in Texas is a redneck who wants to lynch blacks.
Ignorance abounds on both sides….”
Remember, California could be two countries all by itself, geographically and politically.
Truth is California is far from business friendly. California’s labor board forces business to flee. Look in any business. A wall is dedicated to labor laws. One such sign encourages employees to drop a dime on employers. A business partner was ordered to set aside a room for lactating employees. Even though he had no females on the site. Another fined for not supplying floppy hats and sunscreen to employees. It’s just to much work to run a business in California.Why stay here when Nev Or Utah want your business and treat you with respect?
I was borned and raised in CA. I saw it ran into the ground, I escaped to Texas almost 2 years ago. Not to spread leftist political ideas, but to escape them. But I think California is only the canary in the Mine. People on this forum have made it sound isolated, are you people not reading the news? The bailout being pushed by washington is being pushed by the same crowd that devestated CA. The politicians are having a free for all right now!! 300 billion already and not a clue as to where it went??? now 800-900 billion more? These people are insane.
#128 Moogie – You want solutions? Okay.
1) Declare a State of Emergency. Thus, you can suspend all contracts;
2) Have the Feds prosecute the Mayors of sanctuary cities;
3) Close the danged borders, then drive out the illegals. They are an incredible drain on resources while adding very little to the tax base. they are tax-consumers, not tax-producers;
4) Empty the jails as much as you safely can. The hispanics get sent home after the borders are closed. 10% of California’s budget is jails. 10%! $10,000,000,000/yr;
5) Cut taxes and cut government. Kill every touchy-feely job in the government. If it is not absolutely essential, it dies.
6) Just declaring the Emergency and your intent to do these things will get you the temporary funding you need.
I could go on, but you get the point.
When I visited California 25 years ago and I saw the beautiful scenery and met the people, I came away with the conclusion that California should be fumigated with neutron bombs — you remember, the ones that kill all the people but don’t hurt the birds and bushes?
Texas to California: You know why you’re broke? Cuz fools and their money are soon parted. ;)
125. Adam said,
After watching all of the governator’s ballot initiatives get shot down, I bailed out of California. I am now must admit to a feeling of schadenfreude as I watch this predictable train wreck from a safe, red-state distance here in Utah.
Really, the nation should build a wall around California to prevent the contagion from spreading. If you come to Texas, though, you won’t have to pull jury duty. There’s an unwritten rule in Texas courts to permit no former Californians to sit on a jury. The reasons should be obvious.
134. Brian said,
I was borned and raised in CA. I saw it ran into the ground, I escaped to Texas almost 2 years ago. Not to spread leftist political ideas, but to escape them.
Yeah, and Typhoid Mary just wanted a job as a cook.
Sorry, Brian, californism is in your blood, as incurable as AIDS. There may be hope for your Texas-raised children though.
To “Anonymous” on NC’s rise and possible demise:
I’m with you. And it breaks my heart to see that happen to my home state. There’s a particular little bastard now working to empower unions there. Smug bastard, too. He was with the Edwards campaign before that blew up, and now he’s returned to his hometown to tear apart NC from the center out. Ugh. I feel sick. I pray his work comes to no profit.
TexasRacistSexistHomophobe: Neutron bombs! Yes! Then I could return and visit all the trails and not run into a single sanctimonious liberal screaming that my bootprints are HURTING Mother Earth! Yes!
The stupidy of most commentators–non-Californians I am sure–amazes me.
Every one of the 50 states has the same boring beetles eating away at them: public employee unions is the first one. They have Union reps “negotiate” with elected officials who both agree that public employee pensions start at age 55, can’t be cut, increase each year and so on. Want gall? Our gov is trying to furlough state workers by cutting their jobs 2 days each month. In the middle of a blizzard of pinks slips the private sector and a 40 billion budget gap what do our unions do? (A) agree to the furlough? (B) ask for make up days later? (C) sue.
They sued to prevent the furlough. Because for unionized state wrkers, there is no risk, no pain, no loss, no accountability. Ever. Illinois has a big problem there. So do lots of other states. If you don’t think you’re close behind us, you’re wrong.
The second problem is illegal imigration. The congress you all elected has done zero to stop it. Its worse here than anywhere. We tried to pass laws a decades ago that would have mitigated it. Federal judges killed them. Congress hasn’t even built the bloody wall at the border. Thanks for the help.
Oh and by the way, we send more money OUT of here to D.C. than amny states that receive it.
Obama’s administration is pushing the EPA to crack down even harder which will denude jobs from states without Hollywood to lean on. NAFTA is killing us all.
I suggest that the carping masses writing these ignorant notes get off their barcoloungers, read their papers, call their elected officials and try to slow or stop the same process happening in your states. You’ll be there soon enough.
#14 Surf’s Up – You’re right about everything but the part about us carping masses. Note that we’re on a conservative blogsite. Many are well-informed. We do call our Congresscritters. It does me no good, however, because I live in Western Washington. We’re deep Blue, here. Mine is a lonely voice in the wilderness. It’s all demographics. My Congresscritter cares not what I say, because he’s untouchable by Republicans. Also, in case you haven’t noticed, reading the papers does no good, because their Leftist propoganda rags.
I’m saying, don’t lash out at everyone. Many here are on your side.
Marc Malone: I too live in a deep blue state,dying from liberal syphillis,and like you sans representation.Take heart! we are seeing the last days of the USA as a “stable ” society;think Spain in 1936. Remember; there are better ways of making oneself heard,than are dreamt of in our “democracy”.It can happen here.
@57 Ken: I lived in Portland off an on for about 14 years. I did a lot of travel to Seattle as well. The mentality I found, at least in the Tri-Counties area and Sea-Tac is this: if one trips on a crack in the sidewalk, a Californian is to blame. Your daughter gets pregnant, a Californian probably did it. In short, I never met a bigger bunch of pants-wetting, sniveling crybabies in my entire life. Most of my fellow ex-Cals left California in our rear view mirrors, only to find the same mentality we thought we had left.
For many of these people, life begins with the newest drink at Starbucks, and end with them laing awake at night wondering where they can find a good SAAB mechanic.
This is so wrong. Those he suggests blaming, and those he blames, are far from the problem. The problem is a system out of wack … a system modified over decades to serve special interests. Which special interests? Those belonging to what’s known as the “growth machine” … those with shared interests who profit from growth (developers, home builders, realtors, banks, newspapers, etc.)
The costs of growth are externalized onto the public in that new development doesn’t pay for long-term infrastructure requirements to support the new development. Government seeks to pay for the infrastructure by raising property and other taxes. People in CA didn’t like their taxes raised and passed Proposition 13 to limit tax increases. They also don’t like what it’s doing to the environment and pass laws limiting the private sector’s ability to externalize the costs of pollution onto the public. But growth and development continue and infrastructure backlogs continue to increase. The insanity is that they think even more growth will fix the problem.
That same thing is happening in pothole-heaven Colorado Springs. It’s no accident. Colorado’s TABOR is a Proposition 13 clone.
Those on the economic “right”, like Victor Davis Hanson, blame the environmentalists. He states, “It is fair to say now that the environmentalist agenda runs the state …” This is absurd beyond belief. The only way an “environmentalist agenda” could run the state would be if there were a profit in it. There’s not.
It’s the “growth machine” that runs the city and the state. Look at the majority of those on city council here … they clearly represent developers and home builders who contribute heavily to their campaigns. They keep council pay low, so people who don’t profit from growth can’t afford to hold the office.
When problems are what’s known as “dynamically complex,” humans are downright mentally impaired … for the same reason we don’t allow drunk drivers on the road.
I explain in detail. Google “Growth Facts of Life”.
I’ll bet that at this moment, there are so many people suffering from a severe case of schadenfreude that the WHO could rightly call it a pandemic.
The beauty of this is that once all the cuts are made … what, with the welfare creeps running around, now faced with survival on their own, all the prisoners let out of jail en mass, all the newly unemployed and deep in debt, pissed-off workers not mention all the illegals now also unemployed and cut loose … the home of the tinsel town elite Liberals and the elite commie scum in San Fran … will be in jeopardy. The streets will NOT be safe and crime will be beyond the pale. …. Looks good on California.
You might say the the state has californicated itself.
Arnold & co has managed to Terminate the golden state.
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