|
Paradise Lost - California is not too big to fail.
A civic unease runs through California these days. Premonitions abound of terrible things ahead. Not the space invaders or blade-runners of cinematic imagination, but padlocked -public services, interminable DMV lines, closed classrooms, off-limits recreational areas, public employee strikes, inadequate or nonexistent police, fire, and medical responses.Just days before the Northridge slaughter, San Bernardino city attorney Jim Penman addressed a crowded city council meeting in the wake of an elderly woman's murder, telling residents of the bankrupt municipality to "lock their doors and load their guns." Penman was not alone among California city officials forced to slash law enforcement budgets. Nor did he back down amid the predictable media tut-tutting: "You should say what you mean and mean what you say." California voters in November overwhelmingly pulled the lever for a one-party state. Democrats control the governorship, statewide offices, and veto-proof legislative majorities--all beholden to powerful state employee unions. If the recent standoffs with such unions in Wisconsin and Michigan seemed dramatic, just wait for the coming epic in California, a state known for manufacturing drama. No prospective Scott Walker or Rick Snyder, the governors of Wisconsin and Michigan, appears on the political horizon. But that doesn't mean peace with the unions--the money to buy it doesn't exist. So there will be a budget war of multiple battles and skirmishes. With Republicans already prostrate, some joke darkly--this, mind you, in the land of Reagan and "sunny optimism"--of adopting a Leninist approach: Let it all collapse . . . break the whole egg carton . . . build on the ruins . . . make lots of morning-after omelets. A dark scenario indeed, but name another more likely for Republicans. Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC 2013-03-03 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=363360 |