California Is Liberalism's "Canary In The Coal Mine"

by Carol Platt Liebau - May 17th, 2009 - Townhall.com

Put simply, California is in desperate fiscal straits because it has become a place where government works for only two constituencies: Those who need public assistance, and unions. Sacramento is so busy responding to the needs of the one and the demands of the other that the legitimate expectations of regular, taxpaying citizens have been completely ignored.

For union members, life is good. California teachers earn 25% more than the national average, even though some of the most incompetent, indifferent or downright dangerous of them cannot be fired because of concessions won by the teachers’ unions. The SEIU is so powerful that some of its members were able to listen in on a phone call between the Obama administration and the state – which resulted in the President’s threat to withhold stimulus money if the cash-strapped state made even modest cuts in the salaries of unionized home health care employees.

California used to be one of the greatest states in America. It was not called the Golden State for nothing. The Mediterranean climate means that a huge majority of the state's people spend little for either air conditioning or heating. The weather is fantastic, mild all year round. It is a great place for an outdoor lifestyle that includes athletics and boating. That magnificent weather has led to the cliche that California only has two seasons, spring and fall.

The low costs for climate control helped manufacturing and commerce too, as the plants and warehouses did not have to have air conditioning or heating and they still provided a comfortable place to work. So California became a major industrial power with lots of good jobs.

Then Democrats took over and decided its riches needed to be shared with the "needy". Of course it turns out that the "needy" are mostly illegal immigrants, those who refuse to work and government employees. The weather hasn't changed, but the states status as the Golden State has. It turns out that there are not enough "rich" to fund the easy life for all the "needy", so California started taxing small business and high wage employees, i.e. the productive workers that any economy needs to survive. Those people and the companies that employed them then started moving out of California to Arizona, Oregon, Texas, anywhere other than California. Today the California economy is on life support, the state is bankrupt, and the employee unions are making more outrageous demands every day. They are furious that the productive tax payers left in the state resent the high pay for no work jobs of the bureaucrats.

This article has a true premise. What is about to happen in America is what happened in California over the last 20 years. Barack Obama is the Gray Davis of America. However, as in California, America is about to find out that it is nearly impossible to undo the damage once they let it happen. We are running out of time to stop Obama. If it is not too late already. There is one frightening difference. You can leave California and stay in America. Where do Americans go when their nation has been destroyed?