Posted on 03/19/2012 8:50:11 AM PDT by I still care
Long a harbinger of national trends and an incubator of innovation, cash-strapped California eagerly awaits a temporary revenue surge from Facebook IPO stock options and capital gains. Meanwhile, Stockton may soon become the state's largest city to go bust. Call it the agony and ecstasy of contemporary California.
California's rising standards of living and outstanding public schools and universities once attracted millions seeking upward economic mobility. But then something went radically wrong as California legislatures and governors built a welfare state on high tax rates, liberal entitlement benefits and excessive regulation. The results, though predictable, are nonetheless striking.
From the mid-1980s to 2005, California's population grew by 10 million, while Medicaid recipients soared by 7 million; tax filers paying income taxes rose by just 150,000; and the prison population swelled by 115,000.
California's economy, which used to outperform the rest of the country, now substantially underperforms. The unemployment rate, at 10.9 percent, is higher than every other state except Nevada and Rhode Island. With 12 percent of America's population, California has one-third of the nation's welfare recipients.
Partly due to generous union wages and benefits, inflexible work rules and lobbying for more spending, many state programs and institutions spend too much and achieve too little. For example, annual spending on each California prison inmate is equal to an entire middle-income family's after-tax income.
(Excerpt) Read more at thereporter.com ...
Obamaville, here we come!
If Californians want to get rid of the corruption in the state, as in other states, had best start standing up to it. Nothing else will change it.
Even deadbeats like nice beaches and pleasant weather. And free stuff from the taxpayers makes it a paradise for them.
Did you know California is the most conservative state in the union?
Deficit and debt, whether on a personal level or on a state or national level, inevitably lead to bondage and slavery. Benjamin Franklin wrote about that.
America now stands on the brink of plunging itself backward into the Old World ideas which preceded its almost-miraculous beginning when, as Jefferson described it, the "People" became "enlightened." In his June 1, 1795, letter to Tench Coxe, he said:
"This ball of liberty, I believe most piously, is now so well in motion that it will roll round the globe, at least the enlightened part of it, for light & liberty go together. It is our glory that we first put it into motion, & our happiness that being foremost we had no bad examples to follow."
Now, for many decades, new generations of Americans, enjoying the freedoms protected by the "enlightened" principles declared in their Declaration of Independence from government's coercive power, under a written Constitution, and calling themselves "progressives," have been systematically attacking the principles essential to "light and liberty."
In fact, their ideas are counterfeit and regressive--not progressive at all.
They have done this by censorship, distortions of founding ideas, and departure from founding principles, accumulating power along the way.
"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39
"I deem [this one of] the essential principles of our government and consequently [one] which ought to shape its administration:... The honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801. ME 3:322
"I sincerely believe... that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:23
"[With the decline of society] begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia [war of all against all], which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:40
In all of history, wherever "wretchedness and oppression" have occurred, has any historian described that period as one of "light and liberty"? Or, has any historian recorded that heads of such states have been "progressive" in their leadership of the people?
The "battle of ideas" for 2012 pits against each other two competing visions.
One vision relies on a government-over-people arrangement of power and control over individuals in the society.
That arrangement, wherever it has been tried, and by whatever name it has been called, relies on coercive power wielded by imperfect people in positions of power, and it has failed, bringing darkness and oppression.
The other vision relies on acknowledgement of Creator-endowed life, rights, and liberty, with laws to protect them, under a "People's" written and binding Constitution--a people-over-government arrangement.
That vision was responsible for America becoming a destination for oppressed people from all over the globe who longed for "light and liberty."
Yes, California, may become an example of the consequences described by Jefferson, and if so-called "progressives" are allowed to continue their coercive impositions of power, the nation may well follow that path.
After enumerating the principles of his Administration, in his First Inaugural, Thomas Jefferson declared:
"These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and the blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety."
The heartland’s distrust of the liberals in California seems to be quite justified. If we can keep their stupidity from spreading outward like a plague under the current administration we will be blessed.
I just keep thinking of the SNL skit of the Greek Gods, trying to figure out which one of them is responsible for the economy. Strangely, there is no God of Ecnonomy ..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV98aRJ_IdQ
What is really tragic is that libtards are too emotionalistic to learn from their mistakes and will keep on creating hellhole after hellhole.
Yes, if you define conservatism as not wanting to change. :)
Outstanding public schools? I lived there in ‘85 and ‘86 and their public schools were anything but outstanding.
| Climate data for Mogadishu | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Record high °C (°F) | 34 (93) |
32 (90) |
33 (91) |
36 (97) |
34 (93) |
32 (90) |
32 (90) |
30 (86) |
32 (90) |
32 (90) |
32 (90) |
34 (93) |
36 (97) |
| Average high °C (°F) | 30 (86) |
30 (86) |
31 (88) |
32 (90) |
32 (90) |
29 (84) |
28 (82) |
28 (82) |
29 (84) |
30 (86) |
31 (88) |
30 (86) |
30 (86) |
| Average low °C (°F) | 23 (73) |
23 (73) |
24 (75) |
26 (79) |
25 (77) |
23 (73) |
23 (73) |
23 (73) |
23 (73) |
24 (75) |
24 (75) |
24 (75) |
24 (75) |
| Record low °C (°F) | 20 (68) |
18 (64) |
20 (68) |
20 (68) |
18 (64) |
20 (68) |
15 (59) |
16 (61) |
18 (64) |
18 (64) |
21 (70) |
20 (68) |
15 (59) |
| Precipitation mm (inches) | 0 (0) |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
58 (2.28) |
58 (2.28) |
97 (3.82) |
64 (2.52) |
48 (1.89) |
25 (0.98) |
23 (0.91) |
41 (1.61) |
13 (0.51) |
427 (16.81) |
| Source: BBC Weather | |||||||||||||
...in the end...”Greek Tragedy” could have multiple meanings...
I love the northern part of the state, it is completely different from the urban south.
Even Taxachusetts passed its own version, Prop 2½ (Proposition 2 in 1980 that limited property tax increases to 2.5% by municipal gub'mints, unless over ridden by ballot.
Still on the books after thirty years. Don't know how well Prop 13 is faring out West.
“The heartland’s distrust of the liberals in California seems to be quite justified. If we can keep their stupidity from spreading outward like a plague under the current administration we will be blessed.”
And just where to you think we here in California got them? Almost without exception, they “emigrated” here from the Northeast. So I guess it comes down to your frame of reference as to the genesis of this blight. I grew up in NorCal in the ‘50s. California had a very small minority population, the best roads, schools, you name it. Then these bastards like Boxer and Pelosi showed up to crap in our nest. But you better hope that somehow the decent folks here in California prevail because, having crapped up California, they are now looking to go elsewhere and “create” the same havoc.
I think we’d be money-ahead if we built prisons in Mogadishu. We could pay the locals to build them because the quality of workmanship wouldn’t matter anyway. Then, we ship all our criminals there. We could even leave the prison doors open. Just no outgoing flights.
Yeah, lets just ignore the glaring fact crime in LA has been dropping dramatically for 10 years, and continues to do so.
Some of you folks in Illinois might be a little slow, but compared to places like Detroit and Chicago, LA is the shinning city on the hill.
You should get out more.
That's because they weren't building $200M and $300M high schools back then...
You bet...Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, and many others like Maxine Waters, all born, raised and educated from the east coast, and places like Missouri.
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