Even after his allies outspent opponents ten to one, five of the Gubernator’s six “reform” propositions went down to defeat yesterday, as Californians threw the issue of state budget deficits back at legislators to solve:
Despite a big advantage in cash and manpower, the campaign failed to gain traction from the start. Polls throughout the race showed all the ballot measures — except Proposition 1F — losing badly, as voters expressed equal parts confusion over the package and disdain for the Sacramento politicians who crafted it.
Californians seemed upset partly by Sacramento’s call for more money at a time when employment was sagging, retirement accounts were plunging and the average resident was struggling. Others expressed irritation at being called back to the polls just months after a presidential election.
Proposition 1F, by the way, prevents legislators from voting themselves pay raises in deficit years.
Jules gives us an example of how another state is managing its own financial crisis: Mugging the taxpayer.
Rounding it out, CNN’s Anderson Cooper admits that his “teabagging” jape in response to American citizens exercising their constitutional right to protest was poorly thought through.
The question now is whether this is a true sea change in voter sentiment, or mere petulance on the side of those who refuse to vote themselves tax increases as easily as legislators used to vote themselves pay raises.
Update: Megan McArdle says that the rest of you shouldn’t go all smug on us.
California will go bankrupt, muni and state debt will spike, the federal government will backstop humanitarian programs and very possibly all state and local debt, and eventually, California will figure out whether it wants higher taxes or lower spending. But we will not actually make the world a better place by enabling the lunatics in Sacramento to pretend they can have both.
[...] Neptunus Lex with an update on California’s tax revolt. [...]
The money line was in an LAT parallel analysis piece:
Reality is probably, as it always is, somewhere in that gulf between me and Flit (as local proxies for the two philosophical camps). Flit has said the problem started with Prop 13 — I would say the problem is not cutting services to match revenues. The enablers are the citizens that continue to believe the charlatans that promise it all.
Are those roosting chickens, returning home, that I hear?
Why, yes, Scott, yes it is. Your hearing hasn’t betrayed you–only they’re ALL coming home to roost SIMULTANEOUSLY.
PS: Why this should be a surprise to anybody I don’t know–they’ve all been in the holding pattern for years.
“.. .the federal government will backstop humanitarian programs and very possibly all state and local debt …”
In other words, the rest of the country will pay for California’s excesses.
I’m a native Californian. I don’t and never have voted democrat. I support conservative causes and values. But this is, for all intents and purposes, a one-party state since the “bi-partisan” decision by the dummies in the State Republican Party to allow the gerrymandering of legislative districts to make the democrats a permanent majority party.
Then you also have the failures of our school systems to teach true American values (hint: it is not a correct value to automatically look to government for everything) and the failure of our governments, State and Fed, to control the influx of the poor illegals. What these two failures have accomplished is to have made home-grown drone underclass who don’t understand the need for education and hard work and make success in their own lives, while at the same we have ‘doubled’ the percentage of poor people (admittedly, the illegals generally come to work and do work hard). But both classes require and use a lot of public assistance.
Prop. 13 saved our homes, folks. The State overspending that is as obvious as the Governator’s accent, is not a new thing. It was present back when Prop. 13 was voted in and, had it not happened, the State government would have continued to spend / give away money and paid for it with our homes’ “values” based upon their estimate of what those values would be IF we sold them….it didn’t bother them that we were living in them at the time with no need to sell until they taxed us out of them.
Look around. Which states and cities are in the worst condition? Are they run by Republicans or Democrats? And if Republicans, are they conservatives in any way, shape, or form? The answer is darned clear to that last question.
As a California resident of more than 50 years, I marched down to the lightly visited polling place, and cast my vote. I also read this morning’s Los Angeles Times, noting the piece that the state’s voters bear some of the responsibility for this current mess.
A good part of the vote was disgust at Sacramento; a good part of the vote was disgust at the initiative and referendum process. The “yes” people outspent the “no” people 1o to 1. But you can’t fool all of the people all the time–and the initiative advertising process has become so corrupt that even we rubes have figured it out. As to voter responsibility for this, I can only hark back to the recent initiative where Californians committed either $4 billion or $6 billion of taxpayer money to fund stem cell research. Hollywood supplied the funds for the advertising campaign, and we’ll all get to pay for a few folks’ vanity “feel good about myself” boondoggles.
But it is a little bit late in the day for all of that. Obama and his Peronista wolves are lurking at the edge of the political forest, looking for a weakened critter to swoop down on. The Governator is going to fall into their clutches, take the federal money and we’ll have Reconstruction policies in California. As Rahm Emanuel says, “A crisis is a bad thing to waste”. Federal power–or at least Obama power–is all important, and they’ll do what they have to do (using taxpayer money of course) to get it.
I do recall the lyric sung by Juan Peron in the musical “Evita”. He said he could find happiness in Paraguay. Well heckfire, compared to what’s going to happen in California, I could probably find happiness in Paraguay myself–a better alternative.
[...] Neptunus Lex, Megan McArdle rather uncharacteristically nails it: California is completely, totally, irreparably [...]
Obama and the Democrats may try to bail out California, but I think the rest of the country will take it very, very poorly.
Personally, I like the idea of bankruptcy and reversion to territorial status. For California and any other state that can’t run its own affairs like adults. Lose your Congressional delegation, get an appointed Governor with complete authority. Ten years after the debts are paid, you can try for statehood again.
Life is hard. Stupidity has a price.
Best part of all this? Revealing Colin Powell as the out of touch member of the Wisconsin Avenue cognoscenti that he is. Might be the consensus over loup de mer at Citronelle — not so much where real people live.
California will go bankrupt
Good. Let it. Don’t give them a federal dime. I didn’t get represented in their decisions regarding what programs they should have, why should I have to pay for them.
Hm. That’s a bit verbose. Let’s try editing it a tad. Say, how does “No Taxation Without Representation” sound?
California goes bankrupt. Let them then cut programs to match their income. And yes, the voters of California are definitely at fault. I think in the “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” cycle California voters are in the “Fool me 8 times” part. People have to experience the consequences of their actions before they’ll actually start facing reality and act on it.
Anderson Cooper’s use of the word “teabagging” was poorly thought through. Interesting. Even more interesting though is that every liberal commentator and political hack used the same term–and they all had that little smirk on their face when they said it, and giggled uncontrollably afterward. When I heard them say it, my reaction was “Huh? WTF is teabagging?” Which was the same reaction as most of the conservative guests.
So I guess my question is, why is it that only the liberal men knew so much about gay men’s sexual practices?