I had to do it, I had to write something about the asinine diary regarding the imminent death of the great State of California (although I love the reference to "Dead Man Walking", Sean Penn made California proud by winning his Oscar for Milk and thanking all us Commie Homo Lovers). To say the least, it's demise has been greatly exaggerated.
Sure, the Governator declared a State of Emergency today because of our drought and our unemployment hit 10.1%, but hey, we've not fallen into the Ocean like some wingers were hoping (At least the leftyist part of Cali).
It's going to take a lot more than a drought and a cliff hanger of a budget battle to take California down, I mean we did survive Pelosi's Marsh Mouse and that damn train from Disneyland to Sin city.
I've said it before though, I think California is a symptom of a much bigger problem and that's the obstructionists we call Republicans who cling to their dogma to the point of being destructive. The other issue is that no one on the side of the Tax Revolt 2009 wants to admit that California has one of the lowest property taxes in the Country.
I mean come on, Warren Buffett declared the following in a great article called, The Anti-Tax Psychosis.
We all know what happened when Warren Buffett dared to criticize Prop. 13 during the 2003 recall election. (He contrasted his modest Omaha home, where his property taxes had increased almost $2,000 that year, to his $4 million Laguna Beach mansion, where the rate increased just $23. Clearly, he could afford more.) Arnold Schwarzenegger, whom he was advising at the time, threatened to make him do 500 sit-ups.
Yes, you read that right, the disparity is astounding and because this also effects commercial property, you've got a huge tax black hole which has been filled by State funding of Public Education.
The catastrophic impact of Prop. 13 on education in this state are well known and documented elsewhere in this issue. But here and in other states, the tax cap has also vastly increased the volatility of state revenues generally. Since the state can’t rely on significant increases in property tax revenue in good years, it has to fall back on income tax, which is much more dependent on the business cycle. Hence the sort of budget crisis that this state, and many many others, have seen in the past seven years.
When the economy is doing well, the state can survive. When it dips, everything from teacher salaries to university and community college fees to the number of available hospital beds is suddenly open to serious question. The budget volatility in and of itself makes it impossible to run a proper school system, say. The loss of funding arising from budget cuts only makes a structurally lousy situation worse.
Thankfully our Tax Revolt (Which is of course being spearheaded by a Republican running to replace Chuck DeVore who is termed out and running to be the Republican's nominee to run against Senator Boxer) is being balanced by sound changes through ballot initiatives to rid the State of the 2/3's rule in order to raise taxes and pass a budget, which allowed the State to be held hostage by Republicans who signed no tax pledges. The issue is this, they also refused to put forth their own budget solution, on purpose.
So as you can see, today was a bad day for California, in fact the whole month has been a clusterfuck, but there is hope and those amazing bloggers at Calitics has been covering this perfectly, from the budget gridlock to the Constitutional Convention Summit. California is alive and well it just proves something we need to remember, just a handful of very far right politicians can derail a whole economy with lies, lies and more lies and by sticking to their ideology to the point of pathological.
And as a side note, the Republican that my husband ran against last year has just been named to Hollingsworth's new leadership team in the California State Senate.
Senate GOP leader Dennis Hollingsworth, in his second week as Republican leader, has announced a trio of senators that will serve as part of his new leadership team:
Sen. Mimi Walters, a freshman from Laguna Niguel, will serve as assistant minority Republican leader.
A lot of the very radical, anti-tax Republicans start here in Orange County in our local city councils to work their way up to higher office. Progressive Democrats want to change this and The OC Progressive is attempting to fill the media vacuum for local politics that our local papers have all put abandoned. I'm proud to be part of a stellar team of not only bloggers, but two men who have worked in local Government as proud progressives. I'm so glad they tolerate me :)