California; The Canary In The Coal Mine

                                                                   

For the past 125 years or so California has served as a microcosm for what's trending across our nation.    For good or bad, California has been the "canary in the coal mine" that tells us where we're going right or wrong.  Sadly, California is telling us that America is well on her way to ruin.

As far as we can tell, California has somewhere around 40 million residents, with as many as ten million of them illegal aliens.  (We don't know for sure because even the U.S. Census Bureau has become so politically skewed that we are no longer allowed to ask the right questions to determine an accurate total).   These totals represent a doubling of the state population since 1970.  

And what has the state population explosion wrought?  Let's first look at the state's water shortages.

I just read recently that hydrologists contend that California's current water drought is not because of some glitch in weather patterns; California has always been part of a temperate climate with finite water resources, especially in the south.  If we are to take the hydrologists at their word we can only assume that California, with that population doubling, have set themselves up for a lifestyle simply unsustainable, given their current and past water resources.

So what are California's long serving Democratic masters doing to solve the problem?  Well, they're laying out the welcome mat for even more illegal Mexicans of course!  Jerry Brown and gang believe that if they can force the populace to shower once a week, and flush the toilet just once a day, their problems will go away!

And how's California doing with her finances?  Well, again Brown and gang have raised taxes and fees.  And they've instituted budget set asides where they no longer have to account to the states citizens the massive public pension debt....which just happens to exceed a trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities.  Of course this does not include the $340 billion dollar in general fund debt!  

Just this morning I was reading a U.S. News and World Report article that says the city of San Francisco now allocates 23% of all municipal fees and taxes just to service their debt!  Add in the cost of educating both legal and illegal children and you find the city's revenue goes almost entirely toward schools and debt servicing and leaves very little left for anything else!  And this from a city wealthy beyond one's wildest dreams!

It's even worse in the southland.  Los Angeles carries over $11 billion dollars in debt for just their water system, their pension system is in ruin as the city pays out over 15% of their revenue just to service the pension debt for municipal employees!

The once admirable California University System is now carrying $23 billion dollars in debt even as tuition rates for students have tripled in the last two decades!  And even as the state offers generous scholarships and reduced tuition rates for tens of thousands of illegal Mexicans!

How's the state doing on infrastructure?  Well, the Dems in Sacramento are allocating untold billions of dollars to build a high speed train but they can't seem to fund pothole repair on city streets, or keep their freeways repaired!

How about K-12 education?  Fifty years ago, when we enforced our immigration laws, California led the nation in education, both at the K-12 level and in our universities.  Student SAT scores outdid any state in the nation.  Today California rates 35th among the states..and sinking....even as they outspend nearly everyone else!  

How's California doing on business?  Sadly, were it not for Silicon Valley, California would be Mexico City north.  The state has managed to drive out scores of businesses as utility rates have soared and regulatory nazism has made it tough to do business in the state.  Intel, Apple, Motorola and dozens of other business entities, if not leaving the state entirely, are building elsewhere; in Arizona, Nevada, Utah and Texas.

And what does the governor and state legislature do about their problems?  Nothing!  They simply rearrange the seats on deck of the Titanic and involve themselves in implementing hotel maid labor conditions, benefit plans for babysitters, mandate a ban on flat fitted sheets in hotel rooms (hotel maids claimed making the beds were hard on the back) and telling her citizens not to flush their toilets.  

And, with the state's current man-made water shortage, Sacramento has told Central Valley farmers to go to hell....that the preservation of a small fish is worth sending trillions of gallons of fresh water down the American river and out to the sea.

So why should the other states worry about what's happening to California?  Because we are seeing California's troubles in other parts of the country!  In New Hampshire, in Missouri, in Pennsylvania, we're seeing town councils trying to implement bans on renting to illegal aliens...or attempting to ban illegals from welfare, or food stamps, or requiring proof of citizenship to register their children in schools...and each and every time being shot down by the liberal courts.

California is the gateway to our nation's drug trafficking, with every major city in America plagued by drug cartels and illegal street gangs and the accompanying soaring crime rates.

And the saddest thing about it all is that California residents sit in their own soiled diaper, become used to the stink, and learn not to mind it so much!  Take a trip to any city in the state and look at the problems they have; street gangs, graffiti, filthy conditions, overburdened and underperforming school systems, soaring crime, epidemic hit and run traffic rates, stolen car indexes in the stratosphere, bankrupt cities, with half the population who don't give a damn as California seems marginally better than their native Mexico....so it don't seem so bad!  And doesn't everybody dump their old mattresses and five gallon cans of motor oil on to the side of the road?

Up until 1986 coal miners used to carry a caged canary into the mine.  If the canary stopped chirping, or died, it was too dangerous for a coal miner to be down there.  Sadly, California has decided they don't want to put that "canary" down there because it might just tell them how bad they have it.

Sad.  Damned Sad.