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The Sad State of the State of California : Is the Golden State really beyond repair?
American Thinker ^ | 02/18/2011 | S. Fred Singer

Posted on 02/18/2011 7:10:35 AM PST by SeekAndFind

Many must be wondering whether the state of California is beyond repair.  This is particularly true after the November 2010 elections when its citizens voted for the same politicians that have brought them the same failed policies.  As deficits mount and taxes increase, productive people and enterprises are leaving California for more hospitable states.  Inevitably, there will be a tipping point when the state divides between a large welfare population that controls the vote and the rich who live in gated communities but whose tax revenues cannot support the state's obligations.

Good indicators of the outward migration are the prices of U-Haul vehicles.  To rent a 26-foot truck one-way from San Francisco to Austin costs $3236, and yet the one-way charge for that same truck from Austin to San Francisco is just $399.  Even so, U-Haul has to pay its employees to drive the empty trucks back from Texas.

According to CEI, California is a state where public employees have three times the pension benefits of private employees and 20% higher pay, in addition to secure jobs.  This becomes quite evident when one looks at the salaries paid to California's university administrators, where deans can make over $300,000 per year, according to the LA Times.  Keep in mind also that the California education system is super-heavy with deans, provosts, and other administrators.  Having served as a dean, I can vouch for the fact that deans are mostly paper-shufflers who have abandoned teaching and research. 

It is not surprising that the politics of the UC faculty is heavily skewed.  According to the LA Times, the ratio of political donations in 2008 to Democratic vs. Republican candidates was 800 to 1 for UC Berkeley -- and even higher for some of the smaller campuses. 

Wrote Jack Pitney, a professor at Claremont McKenna College, on the National Review's blog. "California voters approved of President Obama's performance by a 10-point margin, whereas the national electorate disapproved by nine points."  "It's a different kind of state," he said.  That may be the understatement of 2010.

A large part of the state's Democratic tilt comes from its massive Latino population, who voted for Democrats two to one. The Los Angeles Times noted that it made up 22% of the voting pool, "a record tally that mortally wounded many Republicans."

How bad has it gotten in the erstwhile Golden State?  According to Investor's Business Daily:


California is rapidly approaching bankruptcy, a new experience for states, with New York and Illinois not far behind.  According to the Wall Street Journal (Nov 8, 2010), California has $70 billion of general obligation debt -- and that does not include the $500 billion unfunded pension liability.  At some point, will it ask Congress for a bailout, and how likely is that with the new Republican majority?

Assistant editor of opinionjournal.com  Allysia Finlay (a lapsed Californian who still wears Birkenstocks) writes:

"...your government is run by a brothel of environmentalists, lawyers, public sector unions, and legislative bums...When you inevitably crash and burn, don't count on us to bail you out."

Columnist George Will has a few choice things to say in a Dec 26, 2010 essay: "80 cents of every government dollar goes to government employees' pay and benefits."  He cites an example: "A typical San Francisco resident with one dependent pays $953 a month for health care, while the typical city employee pays less than $10."  He too warns against any kind of federal bailout.

William E. Simon Jr. relates in the online Wall Street Journal:

"California faces its most serious budget crisis since the Great Depression.  Newly inaugurated Gov. Jerry Brown is inheriting a deficit that is expected to be at least $28 billion over the next 18 months.  Nonpartisan legislative analysts project a long-term structural gap of some $20 billion per year between revenues and expenditures in the state's general fund, on an annual budget that is now $93 billion."

I have just returned from a lecture tour of the glamour spots of Southern California: Pasadena, Bel Air, Newport Beach, La Jolla.  But there is also the other side: Victor Davis Hanson, who grew up on a farm near Fresno, describes the problems in California's rural heartland, which is beginning to look more and more like a Third World slum in National Review-online 2010:

"[I see] former small farms - the vineyards overgrown with weeds, or torn out with the ground lying fallow. ...  I don't think I can remember another time when so many acres in the eastern part of the valley have gone out of production, even though farm prices have recently rebounded. Apparently it is simply not worth the gamble of investing $7,000 to $10,000 an acre in a new orchard or vineyard.

On the western side of the Central Valley, the effects of arbitrary cutoffs in federal irrigation water have idled tens of thousands of acres of prime agricultural land, leaving thousands unemployed.  ... California coastal elites may worry about the oxygen content of water available to a three-inch smelt in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, but they seem to have no interest in the epidemic dumping of trash, furniture, and often toxic substances throughout California's rural hinterland."

In a letter to his children, Hanson suggests they prepare themselves for leaving California:

"-since the chance of political change is becoming less likely by the year: The recent election demonstrates that the voters simply refuse to face up to the task of throwing out the politicians who are directly responsible for the state's problems.  Hells bells, back in the 1970s, Jerry Brown was the governor who let state employees organize in unions, and set the state retirement system on the road to its present actuarial disaster.  Incredibly, he just got elected governor again, along with a complete slate of candidates who have spent their political careers furthering the policies which got California into the social, economic, fiscal and regulatory mess it's in right now."

On top of all this, California suffers from the activities and malfeasance of CARB, the California Air Resources Board, run by Mary Nichols, a former assistant EPA administrator in Washington.  Further, the unelected CARB governing board is democratically unaccountable.  CARB has worked to impose a cap-and-trade program for CO2 emissions, a tighter set of automobile efficiency standards, and to top it off, a renewable electricity standard requiring utilities to purchase 20% of their electric power from solar and wind by 2020.  Any of these programs if enacted, would raise the cost of living, and would affect primarily low-income groups -- except that those groups are all covered by welfare programs.  So guess who pays for all this? 

In addition, CARB has conducted a vendetta against whistleblowers who have exposed fraud and cover up at CARB; it has pressured UCLA to fire environmental health sciences professor Dr. James Enstrom, who has worked there for 35 years.  The specific dispute involves the CARB plan to impose an unreasonable pollution standard on Diesel exhausts, not backed by scientific evidence.  It would also put out of business California's trucking industry, a major part of the state's economy.  The CARB actions, and UCLA, have been criticized by California newspapers from San Diego to San Francisco.

The latest from CARB is their effort to impose a cap-and-trade policy that even the legislature has never been able to pass.  Just last week, a San Francisco Supreme Court judge issued a ruling that would stop CARB from implementing its plan.

As Conn Carol recounts in Energy and Environment (Feb 7 2011), the plaintiff was a group called the Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment.  They object to any market-based system of pollution control, believing that industries will be able to pay for pollution allowances and thus keep emitting "dangerous" CO2.

California also boasts an energy commission, created by Jerry Brown during his first term as governor.  Its lead website headline, as Schwarzenegger was leaving, was an FAQ about "new light bulb standards."  Chuck DeVore, 2010 Republican candidate for the US Senate, writes:

This says it all about Schwarzenegger's energy policies: completely beholden to environmental fantasy. ...  one of Schwarzenegger's self-identified "legacies" was his signing of AB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.  AB 32 will soon lead to further increases in California's already nation-leading electricity and transportation fuel costs.  The George C. Marshall Institute estimates that AB 32's low-carbon fuel standard and cap-and-trade scheme will hit California families for an additional $570 to $6,500 per year in higher transportation costs."

S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia.  He lectured in California on energy policy and climate change.



TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: california; sadstate
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1 posted on 02/18/2011 7:10:42 AM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

California should have been split into at least two states years ago.


2 posted on 02/18/2011 7:12:10 AM PST by dfwgator
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To: SeekAndFind

Brown is allowing the UNION cancer to fester, so we are pretty much doomed.


3 posted on 02/18/2011 7:12:53 AM PST by A CA Guy ( God Bless America, God bless and keep safe our fighting men and women.)
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To: SeekAndFind
Is California beyond repair?

I'm going to say...Yes.

4 posted on 02/18/2011 7:13:40 AM PST by Celtic Cross (Looking to escape to Idaho--Will work for keep.)
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To: SeekAndFind

All of this is a good reason to split the state in half. Let Southern California deal with their own problems and allow Northern California to prosper. Companies can move to Northern California without the dictates of Southern California.


5 posted on 02/18/2011 7:15:13 AM PST by RC2
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To: A CA Guy

While I oppose yet another June vote to again stop any increases, if we did it would tell Brown to stop spending.

The problem is, the state stops what we are paying for to fund the unions pensions so the tax will not be reduced and we will be paying for nothing except union benefits.


6 posted on 02/18/2011 7:15:31 AM PST by artificial intelligence (Your data will be processed by me for future input. Thank you.)
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To: dfwgator

RE: California should have been split into at least two states years ago.


How do you propose to partition it?

Northern California and Southern California for instance? Or Eastern California and Western California ? Where’s the demarcation line going to be ?


7 posted on 02/18/2011 7:20:06 AM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: RC2

Actually, the better proposal I’ve seen is to split off the East/Central (including Fresno and the ag. belt), far North and South (San Diego, Orange, Riverside and San Bernadino) counties which are conservative and leave the West coast from LA to SFO as a separate state that can do all the kooky left-wing things they want to.


8 posted on 02/18/2011 7:24:37 AM PST by laconic
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To: RC2

You’re kidding...right? Northern California is dominated by ultra LIB leaning San Francisco. Visited there lately? It’s a wonderful place to visit...providing you don’t trip over the homeless sleeping on the sidewalk or taking a dump at the entrance to a retail shop.

Orange County is about the last bastion of conservatism left in the golden state.

You can have Norcal to yourself.


9 posted on 02/18/2011 7:25:01 AM PST by Herodes
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To: RC2

RE: Companies can move to Northern California without the dictates of Southern California.


I don’t think the relatively conservative people in San Diego will like what they read above ....


10 posted on 02/18/2011 7:25:17 AM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: dfwgator
California should have been split into at least two states years ago.

I doubt you would want that -- we'd then have TWO blue states instead of one, and FOUR leftwing crazed socialist U. S. senators instead of two.

The North is DOMINATED by Bay Area liberalism in the voting booth and the South by L.A. County liberalism in the voting booth.

It's a mess everywhere except inland, but far fewer people live there, and their voices are overpowered by the noise coming from both the north coast and south coast.

I'm glad I left many years ago.

11 posted on 02/18/2011 7:27:15 AM PST by Flycatcher (God speaks to us, through the supernal lightness of birds, in a special type of poetry.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Yes Henry California is beyond repair. It is a state where the many live off the few, the ignorance of altruism governs politics and the american culture is fast disappearing.

Rest in pieces California you once represented the dreams of American now you represent the fate.


12 posted on 02/18/2011 7:31:27 AM PST by Breto (never accept the premise)
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To: artificial intelligence
Republicans were elected to stop the madness and they would not be doing their duty IMO if they allowed Brown to put increase taxes to the vote on the ballot.
It is the Republican’s duty IMO to block that move.
Better Brown deals with reality rather than put it off.

Someone also needs to pull the cork on all the unions and the great society programs should only be for a few months unless they are severely disabled.

13 posted on 02/18/2011 7:38:46 AM PST by A CA Guy ( God Bless America, God bless and keep safe our fighting men and women.)
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To: SeekAndFind

California is beyond repair as long as progressive democrats rule it,they caused the mess the states is in.


14 posted on 02/18/2011 7:40:53 AM PST by Vaduz
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To: Herodes

San Francisco is not a representation of Northern California. Most of NorCal is conservative. Where we live, it is just about totally conservative.


15 posted on 02/18/2011 7:43:19 AM PST by RC2
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To: SeekAndFind

Divide up California between Arizona and Nevada, nothing for Oregon since they’ve been infected by California types already.


16 posted on 02/18/2011 7:49:15 AM PST by aruanan
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To: dfwgator

Exactly what I was thinking. Carve it up into three states... after it goes belly up.

This is historic, watching a State turn into a Lawless Mexican territory. It will explode when the welfare dries up.


17 posted on 02/18/2011 7:49:51 AM PST by PA-RIVER
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To: SeekAndFind
Temporarily carve it up into three states, and give one to the Conservative, one the the liberals and one to the Mexicans.

At the end of five years, see who does best and give all three to them.

18 posted on 02/18/2011 7:50:34 AM PST by Tanniker Smith (I didn't know she was a liberal when I married her.)
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To: RC2
Most of NorCal is conservative.

Only in the same way that most of Illinois is conservative. Check out that state. Practically every county in Illinois is red -- EXCEPT the HUGE population center of Chicago and its near environs. They dominate the polling booths and make Illinois a very LIBERAL state.

Now in northern California, you may live in a conservative, rural county, but the voters in EVERY county in the Bay Area, and Sacramento County, vastly outnumber you. So where it counts - at the voting booth - northern California is a liberal bastion.

Sorry.

19 posted on 02/18/2011 7:54:27 AM PST by Flycatcher (God speaks to us, through the supernal lightness of birds, in a special type of poetry.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Our house goes on the market Mar. 5.

We’re outta here.
Lived in California for 58 years. Nothing left to fight for.
Nice weather is not a lifestyle.


20 posted on 02/18/2011 8:05:59 AM PST by super7man
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