California Tumbles into the Sea

Pack your bags for Annandale, my Left Coast friends:

California will run out of cash by early March if the state does not take swift action to find $3.3 billion through payment delays and borrowing, according to a letter state Controller John Chiang sent to state lawmakers today.

Translation: Sacramento isn’t making its Visa card payments, while racking up additional debt on the MasterCard.

I watched this same stuff from up close, twenty years ago, when I was living in Northern California. Eventually, the tech boom came and papered over California’s chronic problem with taxes that are too high, spending that is out-of-control, and a regulatory behemoth that teeters between being laughably stupid and stupidly evil.

But then the tech bubble burst — but the taxes went up even higher, the spending went up, up, up, and the regulatory behemoth became even more behemoth-y. Meanwhile, the folks who brought you this mess — Democrats, mostly — have gerrymandered themselves into a permanent majority. They were helped along by two of the worst Republican governors in American history — Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger. They spent their combined 16 years in office either tarnishing the GOP brand beyond redemption, playing along with the Progressives’ malicious idiocy, or both.

The once-Golden State will end up as Michigan del Mar before this is all over.