How Many Ways Can California Be Stupid?

[Valin]

Power Line:

Steven Hayward

4/16/13

 

Beating up on California these days is easier than snatching lunch money from the pocket protector of a skinny near-sighted kid. But why should Victor Davis Hanson have all the fun? And besides, now that I’m back in my home state after a decade away, the decay is palpable, like roads suffering from obvious “deferred maintenance” to unfinished housing tracts, etc.

 

So what are the main problems facing California right now? If you’re the ex-Governator, it’s—wait for it now—climate change! Ah-nold calls it California’s “silent disaster,” and it is nice of him to help us distinguish it from the very noisy and visible disaster that was his governorship. Can’t he just stick with making saggy superhero movies? (I mean, have you seen those surreptitious National Enquirer photos of what he looks like these days with his shirt off? He needs more chest prosthetics these days than Riccardo Montalban in The Wrath of Khan.)

 

What happened to California, in one photo

 

(Snip)

 

Well, at least California remains Number One in a few categories, as David Davenport reminds us at Forbes.com:

 

Highest taxes (gasoline, sales and top bracket of income taxes)

Lowest bond rating

Highest poverty rate (at 23.5%, the home of 1/3 of those in poverty in U.S.)

Highest unemployment rate (tied with Mississippi and Nevada at 9.6%)

Highest energy costs

Worst state to do business (as judged by Chief Executive magazine 8 years running)

Most cities going bankrupt

Prison system so poorly run it has been taken over by a federal judge