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To: grey_whiskers
There are many arguments going around, and around, and around, about who is to blame for this: is it the State Employees' Union, with the horror stories of people retiring at age 50 on 90% of their pay? The fire chiefs who make $250,000 a year with overtime their last year, to inflate their baseline salary when it comes to retire? The flight of business to lower-tax, lower-regulation states? Competition for jobs from the Third World? The influx of illegal aliens? All can be said to have played a part, but in the end -- it doesn't really matter: solving the problem is more important than assigning blame.

I agree with your last sentence. Liberals like to assign blame and conservatives like to solve problems. To solve the problem, you must first understand it. Simply solving a $42 B deficit over two years doesn't solve the real problem. Two years later it will be the same debate all over again. The on-going, chronic problems must be addressed. Throwing CA out of the union does not solve that problem -- however, letting them go through bankruptcy (or become insolvent) would be a big step.

On a "writing style" note: you do a good job of writing and you explain things fairly well. Even dumb old me can understand your explanations of complex problems. It seems, however, that your target market is the right, and your partisan writing style appeals to the right. You have a lot of tools and gifts at your disposal. If you targeted the middle, you could do conservatism a big favor. Unfortunately, however, to appeal to the middle you would have to tone down your partisanship. I do appreciate your posts!

4 posted on 05/23/2010 6:44:49 AM PDT by mlocher (USA is a sovereign nation)
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To: mlocher
Thanks for the criticisms. Let me respond.

I had two reasons to write this piece, one serious and one not-so-serious.

The not-so-serious is that (as Alinsky said) ridicule is an effective weapon. And the left has gotten away with snide comments and raised eyebrows for decades, as though merely slandering the right is sufficient. It's time we returned fire.

The serious one is that I don't want California to be like someone who takes out a home equity loan to "consolidate their debts" but who doesn't cancel their credit cards : and so just runs them up again, AND loses their house for so doing.

They can go hang themselves as far as I'm concerned: but I don't want them sinking the US Treasury while they're at it; the gunwales are already awash without it.

As far as writing for the middle: I'm more likely to gain their approval by writing in a sarcastic vein than by writing learned policy papers. We've had enough of rule by the Ivy League self-annointed anyway. Recall that Wilson was President of Princeton University back when that meant something.

Cheers!

5 posted on 05/23/2010 7:03:09 AM PDT by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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