POSTED BY BILL
Ed has asked me to help out with posts - I hope this is the right week, Ed.
Anyway, I visited the coast of California with my wife for the first time ever a couple of weeks ago. She had always wanted to drive down the Pacific Coast Highway, and it lives up to every bit of its billing for spectacular scenery. Wow!
We also drove back to catch our plane through the Salinas Valley. In case you don't know, much of the fresh produce you see in your grocery store comes from there. Imagine mile after mile of fertile fields, irrigated by a vast underground aquifer, and ideal climate. Plus, oil wells!
California really has a lot going for it. Climate, resources, tourism. Forget the earthquakes for now. So, the question is, why are the state's finances in dire straits (nautical term), even by the standards of the Obama economy? The answer of course is that liberals run the place lock, stock, and barrel (that's a firearms term by the way). Just this past year, voters there returned the egregious Barbara Boxer (call me Senator) over the well respected businesswoman Carly Fiorina. They returned the retread Jerry Brown to the governors office over talented Meg Whitman, who had made e-Bay into a powerhouse. The Democrats run every aspect of California politics. The projected 2011-12 deficit is $19 billion. Taxpayers are fleeing every higher taxes, and everyday people find it hard to afford to live there.
They used to say California was the future of America. I pray it isn't true.
If you know more about California than I - and you probably do, please let me know where my analysis is wrong.
5 comments:
Thanks Bill. I am out until Thursday of this week doing traffic work, but I'll definitely be gone all next week on vacation. If I can find an internet coffee shop at the beach, I'll try to check in from time to time when I've had enough of the sun.
If California is in trouble because it is a blue state, does it follow that Arizona, Georgia and Kentucky are in trouble because they are red states?
Can't speak for the others, but Georgia has a small fraction of the natural resources California has - no oil or gas for example - and is in far better fiscal condition.
The point is that 43 states are facing a budget shortfall. Some are blue states, some are red states and some don't settle into either camp for long at a time.
I can't help but think that the explanation for their similar financial woes lies somewhere beyond the left/right misdirection.
Excellent post Bill. California has a lot going for it as you've written. However the criminal government officials are looting it before our eyes and will ultimately destroy it. (Notice, there was no mention of Democrat/Republic or any color on the color wheel.) Corruption is corruption and no one is immune but it does just happen that Californian is a Democratic stronghold as was Michigan - another raped and pillaged shadow of itself.
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