As the election returns poured in on the evening of November 2 and the giant Fox News map began to turn solid red from Arizona to Pennsylvania and from Idaho to Florida, the blue fringes of the east and west coasts stood out in stark contrast.<\/p>\n
In California, voters returned Barbara Boxer to the U.S. Senate for another six year term.\u00a0 This is the same woman who openly displayed her ignorance by publicly berating Brigadier General Michael Walsh of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in an open public hearing\u2026 and for what reason?\u00a0 For addressing her as \u201cMa\u2019am\u201d \u2013 the prescribed term of address for high-ranking females in the U.S. military and other female dignitaries.\u00a0 Had Boxer represented almost any state other than California, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, or Maryland\u2026 all coastal states\u2026 she would have paid a heavy price for her boorishness.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
But then, in an act of even greater self-loathing, the voters of California reelected \u201cGovernor Moonbeam\u201d himself, former governor Jerry Brown, to another term in the governor\u2019s office, defeating former eBay CEO Meg Whitman by 54-41%.<\/p>\n
It is exactly what one might expect when the wealthiest, most beautiful state in the nation is left to be plundered by liberals and Democrats.\u00a0 Thanks to decades of kowtowing to every whim of radical environmentalists, labor unions, teachers unions, public employee unions, and other leftist interest groups, California finds itself on a fast track toward a cultural and economic meltdown\u2026 with no one left to bail them out.\u00a0 After decades of every conceivable sort of over-regulation of the business community, California is hemorrhaging jobs, businesses, and investors to Arizona, Texas, and other states.\u00a0 How bad is it? Consider that:<\/p>\n
\u2022 California has a 12.4% unemployment rate (approx. 2.3 million unemployed) while suffocating under a job-killing $8.00 per hour minimum wage\u2026 one of the highest in the nation.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Between 2001 and 2010, factory jobs declined from 1.87 million to 1.23 million, representing a 34% loss in the state\u2019s industrial base.\u00a0 Manufacturing jobs are not likely to return\u2026 ever.<\/p>\n
\u2022 With just 12% of the U.S. population, California is home to nearly one-third of the nation\u2019s welfare recipients.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2022 The state budget shortfall for fiscal year 2009-10 was $45.5 billion, equivalent to 53% of total state spending \u2013 the largest spending\/revenue gap of any state in U.S. history.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The California sales tax is the nation’s highest, and its income tax is the third-highest.\u00a0 In terms of favorable business climate, the Tax Foundation ranks California 48th.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So who is to blame for California\u2019s sad state of affairs?\u00a0 To answer that question we need only note that current unfunded pension liabilities for the state\u2019s public employees may be as much as $500 billion.\u00a0 According to the Howard Jarvis Tax Foundation, \u201cCalifornia taxpayers are now paying pensions that exceed $100,000 a year to over 12,000 former state and local government workers, including more than 9,000 state and local employees covered by the California Public Employees\u2019 Retirement System, and over 3,000 former school administrators or teachers covered under the California State Teachers\u2019 Retirement System.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coupled with the fact that California is also home to some 25% of the country\u2019s 15-20 million illegal aliens, it is easy to see why the reelection of Boxer and Brown can only be described as a \u201cdeath wish.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
What it boils down to is that an ever-shrinking population of super-wealthy are now left to feed the insatiable welfare-state monster in states such as California and New York.\u00a0 As the Wall Street Journal tells us (\u201cThe Two Left Coasts\u201d \u2013 Nov. 5), the economies of Albany and Sacramento are \u201cperched atop a shrinking base of taxpayers, many so wealthy that they don\u2019t care what tax rates are.\u00a0 The highest-earning 1% funds nearly half of the New York budget.\u00a0 The liberal political class then feeds these dollars to its union constituents \u2013 not least in the form of gold-plated benefits and pensions \u2013 who in turn spend mightily to protect their patrons, even as the state budget\u2019s lurch ever closer to Grecian territory.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was all quite predictable, yet it still causes pundits to ponder the age-old question: Why is it that those who live along our coastlines, east and west, tend to be so much more liberal in their politics than those of us who occupy the great geographic center of the nation?<\/p>\n
I have a long-held theory about that.\u00a0 I suspect that those who live near the shorelines of our great oceans are much more prone to feelings of helplessness than those of us who live hundreds of miles inland.\u00a0 Staring out to sea and realizing that there is nothing but water for thousands and thousands of miles could tend to make one feel a bit powerless, totally insignificant.\u00a0 Watching the unceasing movement of ocean waves, eating away at sandy beaches and cliffs of stone, could give one a sense of inevitability.\u00a0 In other words, it\u2019s bigger than all of us, so why fight it; why not just give in to it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the other hand, those of us who live in the great middle of the country tend to approach things a bit differently.\u00a0 If we decide to build a lake, a highway, a dam, or even to reroute a river, we simply bring enough men with bulldozers and concrete to do the job.\u00a0 And if we find a hill or a mountain in our path we simply bring enough trucks and earthmovers to either move it aside, build a road around it, cut it down to size, or dig a tunnel through it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The point is, these things tend to shape the way we think about everything in our lives, including the political intangibles that confront us.\u00a0 Which brings us to the question of what, if anything, Californians will do about: a) the ever-growing outflow of jobs and wealth to more business-friendly states, and b) the human waves of illegal immigrants that threaten to overwhelm them.\u00a0 Will they continue to be as sanguine about the incessant waves of humanity rolling over them as they are about the ocean waves that erode their beaches?<\/p>\n
Simple arithmetic should tell Californians what everyone should know, which is that no state and no nation can withstand an endless influx of poor and uneducated immigrants, while at the same time exporting millions of manufacturing jobs to competing states and low-wage countries\u2026 all the while loading a heavier and heavier burden of taxes on a shrinking business community and investor class.\u00a0 But who said liberals and Democrats ever gave a whit about simple arithmetic?<\/p>\n
So, faced with these realities, and with no chance that the rest of the country will bail them out, what will Californians do?\u00a0 Will they come to their senses and try a bit of \u201ctough love,\u201d or will they opt for more of the same?\u00a0 As governor-elect Jerry Brown packs his bags for a return to Sacramento, he never fails to thank the unions for their undying support\u2026 leaving little doubt about his priorities.\u00a0 As governor, he can be expected to cater to their every whim.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
None of this should give us much hope that Californians will do what is necessary to make illegal immigration both difficult and unpleasant.\u00a0 California\u2019s liberals will likely see illegal immigration, like the incessant waves of the vast Pacific Ocean, as a force too big and too powerful to reckon with and simply opt for more of what got them into trouble in the first place.\u00a0\u00a0 While voters across the country turned out by the millions on November 2nd<\/sup> to declare that they\u2019d had enough of ever bigger, more oppressive, intrusive, and higher-cost government, California voters lined up to say, \u201cCould we have a bit more of that, please?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n I recall driving from Los Angeles to San Diego during the spring of 1988.\u00a0 And as I drove down I-5 through Orange County, through San Juan Capistrano and San Clemente, I couldn\u2019t help but speculate why the Spanish would give up such a beautiful piece of real estate.\u00a0 Now, more than twenty years later, it appears inevitable that California will one day be reclaimed by Mexico and there\u2019s nothing that anyone can do to stop it.\u00a0<\/p>\n The invasion and occupation is already well under way, and the hell-hole that is now Tijuana will stretch one day from San Diego to the redwood forests of northern California.\u00a0 And if Californian\u2019s are either unwilling or unable to help themselves, then how can anyone else help them?\u00a0 How can we prevent the Golden State from becoming the world\u2019s largest source of economic and political refugees?\u00a0 The answer is, we can\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As the election returns poured in on the evening of November 2 and the giant Fox News map began to turn solid red from Arizona to Pennsylvania and from Idaho to Florida, the blue fringes of the east and west … Continue reading