The current trends in the Golden State point to a failing state…

Who Knew…

What happened to the Golden State?

…To make a long story short, the same political constituencies that have made Brown’s Democratic Party invincible at the ballot box have also made the state unable to compete economically. California public employees, who are represented by the nation’s most politically powerful government unions, benefit from some of the nation’s most generous compensation packages…

…Endangered species of wildlife are now favored over farmers and food. Highways and suburbs are losing out to mass transit and urban centers. The emerging result is a disappearing middle class, and what’s left of the state is split between a highly educated, landed, wealthy and elderly elite, and a poor, government-dependent, uneducated lower class.

The States are the petri dish for the nation – enjoy the decline…

Washington Examiner

 

California – Paying Their Share

About That Surprise California Budget “Surplus”: There is No Surprise and No Surplus Either

Appears that “Generally Accepted Accounting Practices” are to blame…

The report says the extra money was “likely the result of major tax law changes at the federal and state level having a significant impact in the timing of revenue receipts.”

That is: Taxpayers were paying a share of their bill early, getting income off their books in the hope of limiting exposure to the tax hikes that recently kicked in.

The administration was expecting that money to arrive in April. Now, officials are saying it won’t, and that just as January’s receipts soared, they’ll be offset by a spring plunge.

More than offset, one suspects

Who could have guessed...

LA Times via Mish’s

Dollar Store to Open on Rodeo Drive…

Obama and the moonbats in California are convinced that “taxing the rich” is the path to economic salvation.  To the left, capital flight is a neo-con myth and supply side economics is voo-doo.  Just like climate change and BPA, commies never let a few facts get in the way …

Despite Tax Increase, California State Revenues in Freefall

State bureaucrats immediately ramped up deficit spending far beyond the state’s $6 billion annual tax increase, with the Departments of Health Services and Developmental Services increasing this month’s spending by over $1 billion versus last year. The lower tax collection and higher spending drove the State’s deficit after the tax increase to $2.7 billion for the first 5 months of this fiscal year.

Executives of the 99 Cents Only Stores Inc. proclaimed they would be opening a new location in Beverly Hills on formerly posh Rodeo Drive.  

Breitbart

The Rest of the Nation is “Catching Up” With California…

It’s called Capital Flight…

Something liberals just don’t get.  When people feel its better to live in State A, because State A wants them to keep more of their stuff, than in State B, because State B takes more of their stuff – eventually they leave State A… in droves…

One of the best indicators of a state’s economic health, according to John Merline, writing in Investor’s Business Daily, is the “U-Haul Index” (first publicized by economist Mark Perry) to see what people are paying to move into, or out of, the state. Renting a 20-foot truck one way from San Francisco to San Antonio, Texas, for example, costs $1,693. Going in the other direction, however, costs only $983 for the same truck…

It isn’t all about taxes, however. Its regulatory environment and yawning fiscal deficits are chasing companies away to more favorable locales. Part is the state’s determined efforts to increase still further its tax burden on high income earners — now an astounding 13 percent — along with its implementation of policies favored by the Obama administration in Washington. As Joel Kotkin of NewGeography.com put it,

California will serve as the prime testing ground for President Obama’s form of post-economic liberalism. Every dream program that the Administration embraces — cap and trade, massive taxes on the rich, high-speed rail — is either in place or on the drawing boards.

U – Haul has offices in Canada – c’mon up…

The New American, via I Hate the Media

 

Susan Rice is Not Available for Comment…

Four men detained in California in home-grown terror plot

 

Only one of the men appears to be a native-born citizen of the US. Kabir was born in Afghanistan, while Deleon was born in the Philippines and Santana Vidriales in Mexico. The fourth, Arifeen David Gojali, is a native US citizen, according to the report in the LA Times.  All three had prepared themselves for their upcoming training and had committed themselves to terrorism:

Open Borders…

Bin Laden is dead and Al Qeada is on the run…

 

Hot Air

 

 

If “Urban” is Now Racist…

What are “California” and “New York”?

Paul Ryan was crucified as being “racist” when he pointed out that most “urban” areas went for Obama in the election – because we all know no white people live in cities… Do any white people still live in California and New York? By the logic pushed on Ryan’s comments, the results of the congressional election would suggest not…

A Smart Politics analysis of 83 general election cycles dating back to 1850 finds that the Democratic Party now comprises a larger percentage of Californians and New Yorkers in the U.S. House than at any point since California joined the Union.

When the 113th Congress convenes in January, 29.4 percent of the 201-member Democratic caucus will hail from California (38 members) and New York (21 members).

That marks an increase from the two-state delegation’s collective previous all-time high of 28.1 percent recorded after the Republican tsunami of 2010 (increasing for a few months to 28.5 percent after Kathy Hochul’s win in NY-26 in 2011).

Smart Politics

The Rest of the Country is “Catching Up” with California

Great…

California is Destroying Itself. The U.S. is Next.

What do the Californians get for their taxes? Not much. It ranks 48^th among the states in elementary school rankings in reading and 49^th in science. Not much value for the high rate of per-pupil spending. Its teachers are the highest paid in the nation.

In November, California’s cap-and-trade program kicked in and businesses will be charged for emitting carbon and thus passing the costs along to consumers. It mandates a 30% reduction in emissions from cars, trucks, utilities, and other businesses by 2020.

As a result of the 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act, the Governor’s Office of Small Business concluded that implementing the law will cost an average $3,857 per household and $49,691 per small business. In jobs alone, it will cost 1.1 million as companies leave and tax revenue as people leave with them.

Enjoy the decline

Warning Signs

San Bernadino – A Little Slice Of Obama’s America

How a vicious circle of self-interest sank a California city

Yet on close examination, the city’s decades-long journey from prosperous, middle-class community to bankrupt, crime-ridden, foreclosure-blighted basket case is straightforward — and alarmingly similar to the path traveled by many municipalities around America’s largest state. San Bernardino succumbed to a vicious circle of self-interests among city workers, local politicians and state pension overseers.

Little by little, over many years, the salaries and retirement benefits of San Bernardino’s city workers — and especially its police and firemen — grew richer and richer, even as the city lost its major employers and gradually got poorer and poorer.

Gosh anyone want to take stab at guessing to which party the local politicians belong?  Any bets that the “decades long journey ” to bankruptcy is directly related to the demise of California Republicans?

If towns and states are the petri dish of American society, welcome to the new normal.

Reuters

All the cool trends start in California 2

The notifications don’t necessarily mean these cities are headed for bankruptcy court

And the sun might not rise tomorrow…

Warnings from 8 cities

Current officials say past city leaders mismanaged and misstated finances, perhaps intentionally, and that the city is overextended on employee costs.

So kinda like “blame Bush”…

But they’re getting a brand new bullet train!

SFGate.com