Open Up That Golden Gate--And Let Me Out

California, there you go. San Franciscans just celebrated the 72nd anniversary of the completion of the landmark Golden Gate Bridge. It remains to be seen if it will still be there a year from now. With California's ongoing fiscal crisis, and the selling-off of public landmarks to raise money, by this time next year the Golden Gate Bridge might end up in Abu Dhabi or spanning the Dubai port. After all, Arizona got London Bridge a few years back.

Or maybe the feds can buy it with some newly printed funny money and rename it The Golden Obama Bridge. Ladies and gentlemen, California is a mess. Remember what Mao used to call America? A pitiful, helpless giant. He could just as easily been talking about our land of giant redwoods, vast deserts, majestic mountains, great metropolises, sandy beaches, and unique huge rivers of red ink. No longer satisfied with declaring that California needs to make draconian cuts in spending, the Governator has announced that the state has to make "beyond draconian cuts," whatever that means. But what is truly amazing is that it took the "leaders" in Sacramento this long to figure out that California has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.

While there is a national discussion about Obama moving the United States into full socialist mode in the near future, California arrived there a couple of years ago when its people began to realize that we have a whole lot of social welfare programs, a huge army of public employees, and no way to pay for it. Well, of course, there's always taxes. Keep raising them. Although California already had the highest sales tax rate in the nation, the state raised it again by 1% on April 1 of this year, and with local and county sales tax added in, we San Franciscans now pay 9.5% tax on all our non-food purchases. Can the food tax be far behind? We also claim the highest income tax rates of any state in the union. But spending has still continued to run away from revenue by a country mile.

Add to the problem the influx of a huge illegal population of immigrants, mostly from Mexico and you have a budget crisis of unparalleled proportions. Despite all the propaganda about illegals paying their own way, the simple fact is that services provided by the state to illegals cost far, far more than any income the state may receive from them in whatever taxes they choose to pay. And with unemployment in the state rapidly exceeding 11% of the work force, can anyone truly argue that the illegals are just coming here for the jobs? I guess they just want to do the jobs that nobody else wants to do, because there are no such jobs available in the first place.

Governor Schwarzenegger has announced that out of the clear blue sky, with no advance warning and unfathomable economics, the state must eliminate welfare, cut billions to schools, close state parks, eliminate multiple state projects, and (God forbid!) drastically cut back government employment. No kidding!

It would be "beyond draconian" if it weren't that California's drunken sailor spending spree has been so "beyond belief" to start with. Companies doing business in California have been cutting back on expenses and overhead, cutting work forces and even closing locations in logical reaction to the downturn in the economy. Why is this concept such a revelation to the geniuses in Sacramento? The mainstream media, largely liberal, have been in lockstep with the profligate spenders in Sacramento for years, so their shocked reaction would be maddening if it weren't so ironically funny. A sample of statewide headlines (courtesy of Scott Sabatini, a writer for the San Francisco Examiner): "Shock, awe greet Schwarzenegger's proposal to end welfare." The San Jose Mercury News. "Governor's plan could force some out of college." The Contra Costa Times. "Healthcare cuts would mean higher costs and possibly death, officials say." The Los Angeles Times. "Governor's budget beyond draconian." Capitol Weekly. "State budget puts Hearst Castle at risk." The Fresno Bee. "25 Bay Area parks may close from budget crisis." The San Francisco Chronicle.

We were shocked, shocked to discover that we were out of money. How is that possible? We still have plenty of checks left. Of course, you can understand part of the problem. A state Assemblyman, Jim Nielsen of Redding stated that "changes to welfare need to be scaled back rather than chopped off completely." The problem? Nielsen is a Republican. By California standards, he's even considered conservative (I hasten to add, I don't consider him any such thing). So you can imagine what the Democrats have been saying.

There's plenty of blame to go around. The state government was providing bread and circuses at a rate that would have shamed ancient Rome. But there were a whole lot of citizens who took those "gifts" who should have known better. They could have asked "who's paying for this?" Nevertheless, nothing gets in the way of legislators blaming the taxpayers. The 1% sales tax increase I mentioned above would have expired on July 1, 20011 if voters had approved the spending bills put before the voters this month. Several Sacramento politicians have now pointed the finger at the citizens for rejecting those state propositions by saying they have only themselves to blame for the sales tax now going well beyond 2011. As usual, it's a lie. The truth is that the only reason the 1% increase would have ended in 2011 is that the bills the people rejected would have replaced the 1% tax with new and even higher taxes on things other than direct sales taxation. Robbing from Peter to pay for Paul and Mary and their entire family.

Not counting illegal immigrants, California for the first time in its history has suffered a net loss in population. Businesses and individuals are fleeing in droves. Anybody want to guess why?