Should California “Succeed” From the Union?
It’s pretty simple to figure out when a news story has jumped from the wire services to the Popular Press. Just reading through the online comments will tell you, minute by minute, when an article has crossed over from journalism into the murky realm of The Mainstream Media.
The first few responses to any posted article will usually be tame, even thoughtful, perhaps arguing some relevant citation, or maybe complimenting the author on a well-written piece. Soon the talking-head brigade starts posting and the comments rhetoric begins to parrot the same talking points over and over –usually noted in the same order, and all with the same wording and catch phrases.
By the time you start to see the deleted-by-administrator flags popping up willy nilly you know the tablogs have picked it up. And when the story hits Drudge, they just give up and close comments altogether.
In short, the concentric rings of a story’s dilution bring a corresponding degradation of critical thought. The public’s reaction becomes the story and what the author said is rendered largely irrelevant. Such was the case in last week’s provocative essay by The Guardian reporter, Paul Harris; Will California Become America’s First Failed State?”
It was a compelling thought, and my first answer was Yes, it’s already failed. The question is what are we going to do about it? Bail it out like we did New York City? Fire everyone and put the perps in jail like we did in Orange Country, CA?
Then I thought, Nah. They’re probably going to let Goldman Sachs take it over, sell off the assets to the FED and let Treasury buy it back—or was it the other way around?
I noticed a huge number of comments after the article, and lacking anything better to do now that I’m officially classified as hardcore unemployed, I took it upon myself to read all 734 of them so you wouldn’t have to. (Actually, I did it for aladinsane. He would have loved this stuff.)
By my estimate, 80% of these surprisingly lucid and well-spelled essays (The Guardian is a Brit news journal after all,) mentioned two or more of the following factors in California’s incipient collapse:
-Illegal aliens! -Liberals! -Socialism! -Proposition 13! -Taxes!
-Proposition 98!* (*fairly obscure amendment that mandates a minimum 39% of the state budget be allocated for education. When I began seeing this reference, I knew the Americans had hijacked the thread.
-Collective bargaining rights for public employees!
-Moral Degeneracy! -Nancy Pelosi! -Delta Smelt!
Note: Barbara Boxer!, Arnold Schwarzenegger!, Diane Feinstein!, Moral Degeneracy!, and Green (anything)! accounted for another 19% or so of the reasons why The California Dream is dead.
Pretty standard stuff.
But somewhere down around the six hundredth comment I saw this– writ large in caps.
CALIFORNIA IS NOT BROKE. BIG GOVERNMENT OF CALIFORNIA IS BROKE.
And that got me to thinking.
It’s pretty obvious the State of California is going to have to come up with a new Constitution; the one we have now is literally unworkable.
At issue are The Scylla and Charybdis of the California legislative process. California’s democratic initiative process allows anyone with enough money to pay street persons a-buck-a-name to gather signatures, to get any proposition before the voters. It’s a nice idea, but it aptly demonstrates why we Americans have a representative democracy. I’ve personally seen propositions guaranteeing lifetime pension benefits for school janitors and “landscaping technicians” who have worked in that capacity for 18 months, marketed as the “Clean School Bathrooms For Children” initiative. It’s painfully obvious that the people standing in front of the grocery store soliciting signatures are likely incapable of even reading the petition they are asking people to sign, let alone understanding what it says—or who it might be behind it.
The second impediment to getting anything through the State Legislature is the 2/3 supermajority rule—which requires a two-thirds vote to pass any tax or reapportionment bill.
With an entrenched State Democratic majority controlling the ways and means scheduling, and a State Republican party that refuses to pass any tax increase as a matter of party platform, it’s a recipe for instant procedural gridlock. And on the off-chance that something should make it through the legislature, the sheer number of amendments already added to the Constitution make it likely that new legislation will be in direct opposition to at least one existing law or apportionment, and thus held up in the courts for years– if not decades– while the various faction$ battle it out.
Actually, for the electorate, it’s a pretty good system– it keeps our elected and appointed officials so busy squabbling among themselves, that it does its own damage control by keeping them and their legislative mischief out of our hair.
But to an increasing number of disaffected citizens, it’s a crony-ridden system that’s left business owners disgruntled, our middle class over-taxed and underserved, an environment that’s too “impacted” to get anything accomplished, and a host of early retirees who know a sinking ship when they’re drowning on one.
And they are leaving the state in droves. The Census Bureau projects that California will fail to gain a seat in the House of Representatives for the first time since 1920. We’re EVEN seeing a net population loss as people give up the “Golden Dream” and pack it up to go home— back where the houses are cheaper, the necks are redder, and the streets aren’t filled with, as one poster put it, Green Obamessiah-worshipping lunatics.
The outward migration has gotten so pronounced that Nevada has even launched a coy advertising campaign in an attempt to lure the few Californians who are still solvent over to Nevada’s own decimated tax base.
“Don’t Lose Your Assets,” taunts the tag line.
Maybe California should retaliate with a corollary ad campaign of its own:
“Take Your “Assets” and Leave.”
Those of us who have multi-generational roots here in California have watched in horror as our once-Edenesque utopia has turned into a bilious, economically and environmentally mismanaged cesspool. Although bankrupted, we see this new development in the California State Soap Opera as wonderful news.
For along with all the defunct car dealerships, fast food franchises, and dog-washing emporiums will go the moralizing “family values” bigots, the Midwestern bureaucrats and Eastern speculators, the southern trailer trash, the neo-Oakie illiterati and the host of smug CALPERS welfare kings and queens who think their cushy pensions are “ironclad” and that the rest of the country is going to cheerfully pick up their retirement when the state fund goes belly up.
All the double-dipping prison guards and fire captains, the city law-makers and grammar school teachers who can’t spell grammar; all the low-level civil “servants” with vacation homes and underwater mortgages, are more than welcome to submit their early resignation and leave –with our blessings. We’ll try to get by somehow.
Better yet, with them will go many of the millions of people here– not always legally– “for the jobs” that support the “support” structure.
Now that California’s underclass is seeing our monthly stipend from the state and federal government reduced by a sneaky 7% every few months or so, it is only a matter of time until someone who knows how to do arithmetic calculates that by the end of next year our subsidized incomes –even for an extended household of twelve– will be down to even more unlivable levels than they are now.
Add to this the drastic cuts in public health services, child “wellness” programs, and food, educational and housing subsidies, and we’ll likely see an ever-further “quantitative easing” of California’s massive influx of illegal immigrants.
What’s not to love?
Frankly, I’m astounded that some enterprising politico hasn’t cut a deal with Baja to lease part of the place for 100 years and turn it into an “economic free zone—an autonomous stateless retirement resort for California civil servants who are willing to give up a percentage of their government pension in exchange for a beach condo in which to live out their days.
In return Mexico would get a relatively affluent, educated, and managerially skilled population base to prop up its economy, and California gets a much-needed break in its pension obligations and demands on its infrastructure. Also a lot of retired public service union members who don’t vote.
As Mexican locals and American expats interact, a discrete new regional entity would develop bringing in investment and employment opportunities. With a bit of luck and judicious firepower, everyone could end up a winner.
Back at home, California needs to face up to reality, declare bankruptcy, and turn itself over to federal receivership. Since we’re going to have to trash the our State Constitution and start over anyway, why not go all the way and come up with a whole new state to go with it?
One possibility would be to split California along ideological lines, with the “libs” and all their expansive social engineering, venture capital, and globalist dream factories concentrated in the north and west, (and probably including the Central Valley,) and the more insular US vs. Them populations congregated in the service economy to the south and east (including rural Eastern CA.)
By dividing the State, the diverse economic and social needs of two very different ideologies could be more fairly addressed, and tax monies (and Congressional representation) apportioned in a more just and reasoned distribution.
Faced with finding its own water supply, SoCal would finally have to address its rampant overdevelopment and figure out a more rational use of the water that is available to it than growing rice and watering golf courses in the middle of the world’s driest desert. And NorCal would have to come to painful ethical grips with its dependence on the SoCal markets and cheap foreign labor.
Secession and restructure would be a perfect excuse to break the special interest stranglehold on the state economy and governance. And incorporating Baja as an economic transition zone between the US and Mexico could allow Mexico to deal with their own complex social and economic issues instead of shunting them off to California’s social services sector.
Last weekend I heard an “edgy” comic who thinks he’s a lot smarter than he actually is tell his audience that Texas wanted to “succeed” from the United States.
Maybe, if we all put our minds together California could do the same?
by ahansen
