California Suggests Suicide; Texas Asks: Can I Lend You a Knife?
16th November 2010
Joel Kotkin lays it out.
In the future, historians may likely mark the 2010 midterm elections as the end of the California era and the beginning of the Texas one. In one stunning stroke, amid a national conservative tide, California voters essentially ratified a political and regulatory regime that has left much of the state unemployed and many others looking for the exits.
Instead of a role model, California has become a cautionary tale of mismanagement of what by all rights should be the country’s most prosperous big state. Its poverty rate is at least two points above the national average; its unemployment rate nearly three points above the national average.
This state of crisis is likely to become the norm for the Golden State. In contrast to other hard-hit states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Nevada, which all opted for pro-business, fiscally responsible candidates, California voters decisively handed virtually total power to a motley coalition of Democratic-machine politicians, public employee unions, green activists and rent-seeking special interests.
November 16th, 2010 at 12:04
It just adds some options. Instead of seceding (which Texas should do before the rest of the USA sinks like the Titanic), this does offer the opportunity to allow California to secede, giving all those Marxists a welcome place to live. Barry and Michele could be named Czar and Czarina, and hobnob with the Hollywood elite. One good earthquake and, well let’s just say there should be more oxygen for the rest of us.
November 17th, 2010 at 14:27
California is proving itself to be truly the “granola state” – the fruits, nuts, and flakes are firmly in charge.