Thanks, Liberals/Progressives, for destroying the "Golden State." Voters: when, oh when will you wake up?-- G.M.
Written by former Mayor of San Diego.
CALIFORNIA IS OBAMA’S DREAM
Written by Roger Hedgecock
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
I live in California. If you were wondering what living in Obama's
second term would be like, wonder no longer. We in California are
living there now.
California is a one-party state dominated by a virulent Democrat Left
enabled by a complicit media where every agency of local, county, and
state government is run by and for the public employee unions. The
unemployment rate is 12%.
California has more folks on food stamps than any other state, has
added so many benefits and higher rates to Medicaid that we call it
"Medi-Cal." Our K-12 schools have more administrators than teachers,
with smaller classes but lower test scores and higher dropout rates
with twice the per-student budget of 15 years ago. Good job, Brownie.
This week, the once and current Gov. Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown had to
confess that the "balanced" state budget adopted five months ago was
billions in the red because actual tax revenues were billions lower
than the airy-fairy revenue estimates on which the balance was
predicated.
After trimming legislators' perks and reducing the number of cell
phones provided to state civil servants, the governor intoned that
drastic budget reductions had already hollowed out state programs for
the needy, law enforcement and our schoolchildren. California
government needed more money.
Echoing the Occupy movement, the governor proclaimed the rich must pay
their fair share. Fair share? The top 1% of California income earners
currently pays 50% of the state's income tax.
California has seven income tax brackets. The top income tax rate is
9.3%, which is slapped on the greedy rich earning at least $47,056 a
year. Income of more than $1 million pays the "millionaires' and
billionaires'" surcharge tax rate of 10.3%.
Brown's proposal would add 2% for income over $250,000. A million-
dollar income would then be taxed at 12.3%. And that's just for the
state.
Brown also proposed a one-half-cent sales tax increase, which would
bring sales taxes (which vary by county) up to 7.75% to as much as
10%. Both tax increases would be on the ballot in 2012.
The sales tax increase proposal immediately brought howls of protest
from the Left (of Brown!). Charlie Eaton, a sociology grad student at
UC Berkeley and leader of the UC Student-Workers Union, said, "We've
paid enough. It's time for millionaires to pay."
At least five other ballot measures to raise taxes are circulating for
signatures to get on the 2012 ballot in California. The governor's
proposals are the most conservative.
The Obama way doesn't end with taxes.
The governor and the state legislature continue to applaud the efforts
of the California High Speed Rail Authority to build a train
connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco. Even though the budget is
three times the voter-approved amount, and the first segment will only
connect two small towns in the agricultural Central Valley. But hey,
if we build it, they will ride.
And we don't want to turn down the Obama bullet-train bucks Florida
and other states rejected because the operating costs would bankrupt
them. Can't happen here because we're already insolvent.
If we get into real trouble with the train, we'll just bring in the
Chinese. It worked with the Bay Bridge reconstruction. After the 1989
earthquake, the bridge connecting Oakland and San Francisco was
rebuilt with steel made in China. Workers from China too. Paid for
with money borrowed from China. Makes perfect sense.
In California, we hate the evil, greedy rich (except the rich in
Hollywood, in sports, and in drug dealing). But we love people who
have broken into California to eat the bounty created by the
productive rich.
Illegals get benefits from various generous welfare programs, free
medical care, free schools for their kids, including meals, and of
course, instate tuition rates and scholarships too. Nothing's too good
for our guests.
To erase even a hint of criticism of illegal immigration, the
California Legislature is considering a unilateral state amnesty.
Democrat State Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes has proposed an initiative
that would bar deportation of illegals from California.
Interesting dilemma for Obama there. If immigration is exclusively a
federal matter, and Obama has sued four states for trying to enforce
federal immigration laws he won't enforce, what will the President do
to a California law that exempts California from federal immigration
law?
California is also near fulfilling the environmentalist dream of
deindustrialization.
After driving out the old industrial base (auto and airplane assembly,
for example), air and water regulators and tax policies are now
driving out the high-tech, biotech and even Internet-based companies
that were supposed to be California's future.
The California cap-and-trade tax on business in the name of reducing
CO2 makes our state the leader in wacky environmentalism and
guarantees a further job exodus from the state.
Even green energy companies can't do business in California. Solyndra
went under, taking its taxpayer loan guarantee with it.
No job is too small to escape the regulators. The state has even
banned weekend amateur gold miners from the historic gold mining
streams in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
In fact, more and more of California's public land is off-limits to
recreation by the people who paid for that land. Unless you're
illegal.
Then you can clear the land, set up marijuana plantations at will,
bring in fertilizers that legal farmers can no longer use, exploit
illegal farm workers who live in hovels with no running water or
sanitation, and protect your investment with armed illegals carrying
guns no California citizen is allowed to own.
The rest of us only found out about these plantations when the
workers' open campfire started one of those devastating fires that
have killed hundreds of people and burned out thousands of homes in
California over the last decade.
It's often said that whatever happens in California will soon happen
in your state.
You'd better hope that's wrong.
Roger Hedgecock is the former mayor of San Diego and a nationally
syndicated radio talk show host.
Written by Roger Hedgecock
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
I live in California. If you were wondering what living in Obama's
second term would be like, wonder no longer. We in California are
living there now.
California is a one-party state dominated by a virulent Democrat Left
enabled by a complicit media where every agency of local, county, and
state government is run by and for the public employee unions. The
unemployment rate is 12%.
California has more folks on food stamps than any other state, has
added so many benefits and higher rates to Medicaid that we call it
"Medi-Cal." Our K-12 schools have more administrators than teachers,
with smaller classes but lower test scores and higher dropout rates
with twice the per-student budget of 15 years ago. Good job, Brownie.
This week, the once and current Gov. Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown had to
confess that the "balanced" state budget adopted five months ago was
billions in the red because actual tax revenues were billions lower
than the airy-fairy revenue estimates on which the balance was
predicated.
After trimming legislators' perks and reducing the number of cell
phones provided to state civil servants, the governor intoned that
drastic budget reductions had already hollowed out state programs for
the needy, law enforcement and our schoolchildren. California
government needed more money.
Echoing the Occupy movement, the governor proclaimed the rich must pay
their fair share. Fair share? The top 1% of California income earners
currently pays 50% of the state's income tax.
California has seven income tax brackets. The top income tax rate is
9.3%, which is slapped on the greedy rich earning at least $47,056 a
year. Income of more than $1 million pays the "millionaires' and
billionaires'" surcharge tax rate of 10.3%.
Brown's proposal would add 2% for income over $250,000. A million-
dollar income would then be taxed at 12.3%. And that's just for the
state.
Brown also proposed a one-half-cent sales tax increase, which would
bring sales taxes (which vary by county) up to 7.75% to as much as
10%. Both tax increases would be on the ballot in 2012.
The sales tax increase proposal immediately brought howls of protest
from the Left (of Brown!). Charlie Eaton, a sociology grad student at
UC Berkeley and leader of the UC Student-Workers Union, said, "We've
paid enough. It's time for millionaires to pay."
At least five other ballot measures to raise taxes are circulating for
signatures to get on the 2012 ballot in California. The governor's
proposals are the most conservative.
The Obama way doesn't end with taxes.
The governor and the state legislature continue to applaud the efforts
of the California High Speed Rail Authority to build a train
connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco. Even though the budget is
three times the voter-approved amount, and the first segment will only
connect two small towns in the agricultural Central Valley. But hey,
if we build it, they will ride.
And we don't want to turn down the Obama bullet-train bucks Florida
and other states rejected because the operating costs would bankrupt
them. Can't happen here because we're already insolvent.
If we get into real trouble with the train, we'll just bring in the
Chinese. It worked with the Bay Bridge reconstruction. After the 1989
earthquake, the bridge connecting Oakland and San Francisco was
rebuilt with steel made in China. Workers from China too. Paid for
with money borrowed from China. Makes perfect sense.
In California, we hate the evil, greedy rich (except the rich in
Hollywood, in sports, and in drug dealing). But we love people who
have broken into California to eat the bounty created by the
productive rich.
Illegals get benefits from various generous welfare programs, free
medical care, free schools for their kids, including meals, and of
course, instate tuition rates and scholarships too. Nothing's too good
for our guests.
To erase even a hint of criticism of illegal immigration, the
California Legislature is considering a unilateral state amnesty.
Democrat State Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes has proposed an initiative
that would bar deportation of illegals from California.
Interesting dilemma for Obama there. If immigration is exclusively a
federal matter, and Obama has sued four states for trying to enforce
federal immigration laws he won't enforce, what will the President do
to a California law that exempts California from federal immigration
law?
California is also near fulfilling the environmentalist dream of
deindustrialization.
After driving out the old industrial base (auto and airplane assembly,
for example), air and water regulators and tax policies are now
driving out the high-tech, biotech and even Internet-based companies
that were supposed to be California's future.
The California cap-and-trade tax on business in the name of reducing
CO2 makes our state the leader in wacky environmentalism and
guarantees a further job exodus from the state.
Even green energy companies can't do business in California. Solyndra
went under, taking its taxpayer loan guarantee with it.
No job is too small to escape the regulators. The state has even
banned weekend amateur gold miners from the historic gold mining
streams in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
In fact, more and more of California's public land is off-limits to
recreation by the people who paid for that land. Unless you're
illegal.
Then you can clear the land, set up marijuana plantations at will,
bring in fertilizers that legal farmers can no longer use, exploit
illegal farm workers who live in hovels with no running water or
sanitation, and protect your investment with armed illegals carrying
guns no California citizen is allowed to own.
The rest of us only found out about these plantations when the
workers' open campfire started one of those devastating fires that
have killed hundreds of people and burned out thousands of homes in
California over the last decade.
It's often said that whatever happens in California will soon happen
in your state.
You'd better hope that's wrong.
Roger Hedgecock is the former mayor of San Diego and a nationally
syndicated radio talk show host.
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