superpunk

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Modern movement conservatism, which transformed the G.O.P. from the moderate party of Dwight Eisenhower into the radical right-wing organization we see today, was largely born in California. The Golden State, even more than the South, created today’s religious conservatism; it elected Ronald Reagan governor; it’s where the tax revolt of the 1970s began. But that was then. In the decades since, the state has grown ever more liberal, thanks in large part to an ever-growing nonwhite share of the electorate.

As a result, the reign of the Governator aside, California has been solidly Democratic since the late 1990s. And ever since the political balance shifted, conservatives have declared the state doomed. Their specifics keep changing, but the moral is always the same: liberal do-gooders are bringing California to its knees.

A dozen years ago, the state was supposedly doomed by all its environmentalists. You see, the eco-freaks were blocking power plants, and the result was crippling blackouts and soaring power prices. “The country’s showcase state,” gloated The Wall Street Journal, “has come to look like a hapless banana republic.”

But a funny thing happened on the road to collapse: it turned out that the main culprit in the electricity crisis was deregulation, which opened the door for ruthless market manipulation. When the market manipulation went away, so did the blackouts.

Undeterred, a few years later conservatives found another line of attack. This time they said that liberal big spending and overpaid public employees were bringing on collapse.

And the state has indeed spent the past few years facing a severe fiscal crunch. When the national housing bubble burst, California was hit especially hard, and the combined effects of the plunge in home prices and the economic downturn led to sharply reduced revenue. Once more there were gleeful pronouncements of imminent doom: California, declared one pundit after another, is America’s Greece.

Again, however, reports of the state’s demise proved premature. Unemployment in California remains high, but it’s coming down — and there’s a projected budget surplus, in part because the implosion of the state’s Republican Party finally gave Democrats a big enough political advantage to push through some desperately needed tax increases. Far from presiding over a Greek-style crisis, Gov. Jerry Brown is proclaiming a comeback.

Needless to say, the usual suspects are still predicting doom — this time from the very tax hikes that are closing the budget gap, which they say will cause millionaires and businesses to flee the state. Well, maybe — but serious studies have found very little evidence either that tax hikes cause lots of wealthy people to move or that state taxes have any significant impact on growth.

So what do we learn from this history of doom deferred?

I’m not suggesting everything in California is just fine. Unemployment — especially long-term unemployment — remains very high. California’s longer-term economic growth has slowed, too, mainly because the state’s limited supply of buildable land means high housing prices, bringing an era of rapid population growth to an end. (Did you know that metropolitan Los Angeles has a higher population density than metropolitan New York?) Last but not least, decades of political paralysis have degraded the state’s once-superb public education system. So there are plenty of problems.

The point, however, is that these problems bear no resemblance to the death-by-liberalism story line the California-bashers keep peddling. California isn’t a state in which liberals have run wild; it’s a state where a liberal majority has been effectively hamstrung by a fanatical conservative minority that, thanks to supermajority rules, has been able to block effective policy-making.

And that’s where things get really interesting — because the era of hamstrung government seems to be coming to an end. Over the years, California’s Republicans moved right as the state moved left, yet retained political relevance thanks to their blocking power. But at this point the state’s G.O.P. has fallen below critical mass, losing even its power to obstruct — and this has left Mr. Brown free to push an agenda of tax hikes and infrastructure spending that sounds remarkably like the kind of thing California used to do before the rise of the radical right.

And if this agenda is successful, it will have national implications. After all, California’s political story — in which a radicalized G.O.P. fell increasingly out of touch with an increasingly diverse and socially liberal electorate, and eventually found itself marginalized — is arguably playing out with a lag on the national scene too.

So is California still the place where the future happens first? Stay tuned.
 

iceberg

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it's plain to see sp can't see people.

just labels.

kinda sad, to be honest.
 

dbair1967

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People (and employers) are leaving California in droves because of the ridiculous tax rates.

How many cities there are "under water" financially now?
 

dbair1967

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State auditor: California's net worth at negative $127.2 billion



RB_Prison_Construction_2009.JPGWere California's state government a business, it would be a candidate for insolvency with a negative net worth of $127.2 billion, according to an annual financial report issued by State Auditor Elaine Howle and the Bureau of State Audits.

The report, which covers the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012, says that the state's negative status -- all of its assets minus all of its liabilities -- increased that year, largely because it spent more than it received in revenue.

During the 2011-12 fiscal year, the state's general fund spent $1.7 billion more than it received in revenues and wound up with an accumulated deficit of just under $23 billion from several years of red ink. Gov. Jerry Brown has referred to that and other budget gaps, mostly money owed to schools, as a "wall of debt" totaling more than $30 billion.


Last November, voters passed an increase in sales and income taxes that Brown says will balance the state's operating budget and allow the debt wall to be gradually dismantled.

About half of the $127.2 billion in accumulated red ink came from the state's issuing general obligation bonds and then giving the money to local governments and school districts for public works projects, the auditor pointed out. The assets built with the bonds remain on local balance sheets while the bonded debt accrues to the state.

The remainder, however, is all on the state's ticket. "Expenses that exceeded revenues and increased long-term obligations resulted in an 81.4 percent decrease in the total net assets for governmental and business-type activities from the 20-10-11 fiscal year," said the report.

The report listed the state's long-term obligations at $167.9 billion, nearly half of which ($79.9 billion) were in general obligation bonds, with another $30.8 billion in revenue bonds, many of which were issued to build state prisons, whose "revenue" is lease payments from the state general fund.

The list of long-term obligations did not include the much-disputed unfunded liabilities for state employees' future pensions, nor the $60-plus billion in unfunded liabilities for retiree health care. The Governmental Accounting Standards Board and Moody's, a major bond credit rating house, have been pushing states and localities to include unfunded retiree obligations in their balance sheets and were they to be added to California's, it could push its negative net worth down by several hundred billion dollars.

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolaler...th-at-negative-127-billion.html#storylink=cpy
 

superpunk

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ITT a bunch of people who didn't read the article LOLing over numbers they are too stupid to understand.
 

Dodger12

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ITT a bunch of people who didn't read the article ing over numbers they are too stupid to understand.

I'm absolutely convinced you're just pulling everyone's leg just to fuck to fuck with them. No one can possibly be this oblivious to the economic issues facing California or pimp and article from a left wing NY Times columnist that California is coming back when cities in that state are going bankrupt. The Democrats have ruled that state at every elected level for years and the article's attempt to blame the Republicans is insane.

This is the football equivalent of you supporting an article that Doug Free played at an All-Pro level in 2012 and I just don't believe you're that crazy.
 

JBond

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I'm absolutely convinced you're just pulling everyone's leg just to fuck to fuck with them. No one can possibly be this oblivious to the economic issues facing California or pimp and article from a left wing NY Times columnist that California is coming back when cities in that state are going bankrupt. The Democrats have ruled that state at every elected level for years and the article's attempt to blame the Republicans is insane.

This is the football equivalent of you supporting an article that Doug Free played at an All-Pro level in 2012 and I just don't believe you're that crazy.

He has issues. I think I am going to stop picking on the handicapped. Not much sport to it.
 

Dodger12

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He has issues. I think I am going to stop picking on the handicapped. Not much sport to it.

I still think the guy is just trying to get a rise out of people. I like SP and even think he's too smart to believe the lunacy he's posting.
 

superpunk

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Frankly it's insulting that you people drop that shit all the time. Either discuss or don't but stop questioning my motives. I've been running this place long before any of you got here.
 

JBond

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Frankly it's insulting that you people drop that shit all the time. Either discuss or don't but stop questioning my motives. I've been running this place long before any of you got here.

:lol Queen spunk has spoken. All bow down.

For lesson on bowing Google Obama bowing.
 

JBond

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I still think the guy is just trying to get a rise out of people. I like SP and even think he's too smart to believe the lunacy he's posting.

No...he is not that bright. You are giving him far too much credit. I used to think the same thing, but over the years he has proven that he is just clueless.
 

iceberg

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Frankly it's insulting that you people drop that shit all the time. Either discuss or don't but stop questioning my motives. I've been running this place long before any of you got here.

i've tried to discuss them with you.

you run away and hide and pretend i'm no longer here.

kinda cute, in a shithole pathetic sort of way.
 

superpunk

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what's CA's GDP? Something like 1.7 trillion? One of the largest economies in the world?
 
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