GOLDEN STATE WORRIER: CALIFORNIA'S SELF-DESTRUCTION IS A WARNING FOR THE REST OF AMERICA

This is my reaction to a "jasond," a commenter on Legal Insurrection's brilliant Prof. William A. Jacobson's post about the viral video titled "Why Our Country is Going Down The Drain," in which Judge Judy's Judith Sheindlin grills a deadbeat dude who didn't pay his girlfriend rent despite having received thousands of dollars in misappropriated government aid.  The original LI post, titled "What do you do? I'm me" (a quote from the unjustly conceited defendant) can be found here, in which the video is embedded.

jasond's comment was as follows:

Multiply [the guy in the video] and his former girlfriend by 10 million and you’ve got california. Eisenhowers’ “domino theory” may been correct all along. We just didn’t realize the first domino would be california.

My reply:

You know that brief feeling of terror when you’re driving in wet conditions and you find yourself hydroplaning and heading toward a guard rail or another vehicle? That feeling that it’s inevitable that you’re going to crash, and it’s just a matter of how badly you’re hurt and how much it will cost you?

That’s what it feels [like] nowadays to be a California resident with no hope of relocating.

Folks, if you aren’t absolutely steeped in what’s happening in what used to be The Golden State, you have NO idea what’s going on. Jerry Brown is trying to create a legacy for himself before he croaks, and is hoping that will include the extravagant, unneeded so-called “high speed rail” stretching north to south. Arnold Schwarzenegger earlier wanted his landmark to be a state-funded multibillion dollar stem-cell research program that has yielded NO breakthroughs, and was the main driver behind the recently-begun job-killing cap-and-trade program that California voters foolishly approved. And Ahnuld’s predecessor Gray Davis, in his haste to buy the loyalty of public employee unions, installed the Sacramento plumbing flushing hundreds of billions of dollars to pension funds based on the expectation that the dot-com boom would never end. Oops.

Former RINO CA Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado

Add on top of that the fact the Republican Party is for all intents and purposes non-existent in the state after Democrats won a supermajority in the Senate and Assembly. That means that not only can tax increases can be passed by the legislature without two-thirds voter approval, it means those approvals can survive Brown’s veto (which could allow him to position himself as being fiscally responsible when he’s not).

Well, so what, you may ask — Dems are overreaching. Things are cyclical. It will come back to bite them if they go too far. Not so fast (pay attention, it gets into deep weeds here).

As part of a deal to temporarily close a budget gap during the Schwarzenegger fiasco, RINO State Senator Abel Maldonado — who had a speaking part at the 2008 Republican Convention — crossed party lines and cast a tie-breaking vote. He was rewarded by Dem support of his pet legislation — a bill that made California general elections competitions between the top two vote-getters in open primaries. That means that each final vote could potentially be between two candidates of the same party. Guess how well that worked out for Republican candidates.

The grateful Schwarzenegger also appointed Maldonado to the Lieutenant Governor position replacing John Garamendi, who left after winning the retired Ellen Tauscher’s Congressional seat. Maldonado thought with the top-two system in place and his advantage over any challenger as an incumbent, he would be a shoo-in for election to a full term when his centrism and Hispanic heritage was factored in. Then, former S.F. Mayor Gavin Newsom, having earlier realized he couldn’t beat Brown for Governor, jumped late into the Lt. Gov. race, and soundly defeated Maldonado.

Undeterred, Maldonado ran for a newly-drawn Congressional district vs. ensconced liberal Dem Lois Capps. Despite L.A.’s NBC affiliate’s declaration that his top-two gambit was a success because he might not have faced Capps in November otherwise, he still lost — as did nearly every Republican on the ballot facing a Democrat. Maldonado hoist himself with his own petard twice! More importantly, because of his selfish ambition, chances that a Pub will be able to supplant any important official in California anytime soon are slim to none.

That’s a primer for you folks in the forty-something remaining sane states. Learn from California’s mistakes so you won’t have to suffer them yourselves. Meanwhile, I’m working on a petition to change the state bird from the California Golden Quail to the Coal Mine Canary.