Democratically-controlled California is literally facing bankruptcy. But it is very likely that the five tax-raising ballot initiatives proposed by RINO Gov. Schwarzenegger will all be defeated by a furious electorate.
The state tried to make some very, very modest cuts in welfare services. But George Wills reports in his May 14 column that this has enraged the SEIU, the Mexican-style cheap labor labor union, and its many welfare program govenment workers. So it is not surprisingly that Obama has warned California that it will lose billions in stimulus funds if the cuts are not rescinded.
The Obama administration is using the TARP program -- the $700 billion "stimulus" program passed in a panic by a spineless Vichyist Congress-- as an executive branch slush fund to fuel its agenda of maximizing dependency of people and institutions on the federal government. Mr. Will accurately describes the scam as "political favoritism cloaked in the rhetoric of economic planning and social justice that somehow produces results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail." This is not just susceptible to corruption, it is corruption itself.
As a 1980s-era refugee from LA myself, the similarities between the disastrous tax and spend culture in the Fools Golden State and those in Maryland are frightening. And Maryland is far more dependent on the federal tit 'n trough than California.
Adapted from "Tincture of Lawlessness: Obama's Overreaching Economic Policies" by George F. Will.
Comments