California,The “Failed State”

By Austin Hill
“Failed state.”

That sounds harsh, doesn’t it? Do a web search with the words “failed state” and names like Somalia, Haiti, and Sudan will appear on your computer screen.

Unfortunately, the 31st state in our union – California – is looking more and more like a “failed state” as well. And this should matter to every American, because like it or not, California is both a global economic epicenter and a spectacular place in the world.

My native homeland of California is home to the highest mountain in the contiguous forty-eight states (Mount Whitney), the lowest valley (Death Valley), Facebook, “Surf City, U.S.A.”(Huntington Beach), Apple Computers, The World Champion San Francisco Giants, the most fertile farm land in the world (San Joaquin Valley), eBay, Legoland, Cisco Systems, “the entertainment capitol of the world” (Hollywood), three U.S. Presidents (Richard Nixon by birth, and Herbert Hoover and Ronald Reagan by “adoption”), and Mitsubishi Motors of North America. It remains a global leader in the agricultural, information technology, and aerospace sectors. If it were its own country, it would comprise the eight largest national economy in the world.

This is to say that California can be and should be a place of robust economic opportunity across multiple sectors. But politicians and government employee labor unions have a stranglehold on the state (sound familiar?). Businesses and capital are now leaving while actual economic output is slumping.

Most academicians and government bureaucrats who keep track of the world’s “failed states” still won’t admit that Greece belongs on their lists, so the idea that California has in any sense “failed” isn’t even considered. But if we take seriously the criteria for determining a “failed state,” then the sad truth about California becomes painfully clear.

One of the most often quoted authorities on failed states is The Fund for Peace, a Washington, DC-based non-profit think tank organization, and among the many indicators of a failed state that “FFP” notes is “uneven economic development among group lines.” This notion of “uneven economic development” often has “life or death” implications in places like Zimbabwe or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, yet the idea is every bit as real in California as it regards the disparity between the government, and the private sector economy.

For the record, the government of California presently entails a budget deficit of somewhere between $10 and $15 billion – a deficit that is expected to swell to about $25 billion by the middle of 2012. With this as his backdrop, Governor Jerry Brown took office in January noting at the time that California had a history of “kickin’ the can down the road” with its budget woes, and that his plan to solve California’s dreadful fiscal problems would involve both cuts in government spending, and – if California voters approved – tax increases.

Yet Governor Brown is a life-long government employee, and will have nothing to do with cutting state spending where it is most problematic – in the arena of government employee salaries, benefits, and retirement pensions. In fact, while he has been completely unable to implement his plan of “temporarily extending” certain “temporarily inflated tax rates” (which de facto amounts to a tax increase plan), he has continued lining the pockets of unionized government employees with more lavish expenditures on their salaries, benefits, and retirement pensions.

In April, for example, Brown approved a new contract for the California Prison Guard’s union, which allows guards to accrue unlimited numbers of un-used paid vacation days each year. When a guard retires, the un-used vacation time can now be “cashed-in” at the guard’s highest salary rate- a sweet pay-off from Governor Brown to a labor union that spent nearly $2 million on his campaign last year.

And here’s where yet another set of criteria comes in to play for determining a “failed state.” According to the Fund for Peace, failed states often exhibit “a disappearance of basic state functions that serve the people, including a failure to protect citizens from terrorism and violence…” The high-minded folks at the FFP may not know this, but – shocking news! – California has so horribly mismanaged its prison system that it can’t afford to facilitate all of its prisoners.

After being taken to court over the conditions in which they were detaining convicts – which included as many as 54 prisoners sharing one toilet – the California government was ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court in May of this year to release huge numbers of prisoners. This is to say that California’s leaders had plenty of money to spend on their unionized prison guards, yet it doesn’t have enough money to properly facilitate prisoners so as to comply with federal requirements.

Is this “failure enough” to get anybody’s attention? By the FFP’s own criteria, California has failed to fulfill a “basic state function” and to protect “citizens” from “violence.”

The Fund for Peace needs to sound the alarm bells over the California government’s failures, but they probably won’t. It’s up to the state’s citizenry to demand better leadership in Sacramento – before it’s too late.

Email: Austin Hill


Comments are invited!
Send feedback to:  WatchDog
.

“Hi, I’m California, And I’m Addicted To Spending…”

By Austin Hill

“Hi, I’m California, And I’m Addicted to Spending…”

What a magnificent confession this would be, if only we could hear it collectively from our 31st state.

Imagine -California emerges from its’ state of denial, and admits that it is addicted to government spending. And then, after acknowledging its’ addiction, envision the government of California coming to believe that a power greater than itself (the private sector) could restore its’ sanity, and then turning itself over to the care of that greater power, and, in so doing, checking itself into “rehab.”

Psychobabble and twelve-step metaphors can only go so far. But in all seriousness, our “friend” California has a very severe problem with spending, yet remains in denial. And there’s no indication that California will stop “using” anytime soon.

My native home state –which is also home to the highest mountain on the continent (Mount Whitney), the lowest valley (Death Valley), Facebook, “Surf City, U.S.A.” (Huntington Beach), the most robust farm land (the San Joaquin Valley), Google, Disneyland, Mattel Toys, The World Champion San Francisco Giants, Legoland, Cisco Systems, “Hollywood,” three U.S. Presidents (Richard Nixon by birth, and Herbert Hoover and Ronald Reagan by “adoption”), Mitsubishi Motors of North America, and the most notorious, mystery/non-existent NFL franchise (there are always rumors about L.A. getting a team again) – is in serious trouble.

I wish we could perform an “intervention” – perhaps at the Betty Ford Center (which, conveniently, is in Palm Springs) -and get dear California some help.

The last election provided an opportunity for California and the rest of America to admit that it had a problem, and then to begin working on its “recovery.” And while a good bit of the country took the first couple of “steps” among the twelve, the Golden State chose to remain on its current course.

“I’m just a social spender,” our friend California seemed to be saying last Fall. “I could stop whenever I want, but I don’t want to. I’m happy living this way, and I’m not hurting anybody, so quit hassling me…”

Evidence of this denial was apparent in the days immediately following the election. As if the $6 billion budget shortfall that he presided over didn’t really exist – a deficit that is expected to expand to a whopping $24.5 billion over the next eighteen months - outgoing Governor Arnold Governor Schwarzenegger called the legislature in to a “special session,” and then held a press conference to announce his “really big plan.” For a second and final time before leaving office, he was going to try to - - cut spending? – no, no, he was going to try and legislate a state-wide ban on plastic grocery bags. This, he explained would help save the planet, but would also create “green jobs.”

But that was last December. Now, a guy who was Governor for eight of my elementary, junior high and high school years is Governor yet again. A perennial government employee, Jerry Brown is back in Sacramento, and he appears ready to continue the addictive cycle.

The problem with California’s budget, Governor Brown seems to be reasoning, is not that politicians had spent too much or that government agencies are wasteful. No, Jerry Brown seems to be treating the spending problem as merely a “revenue” matter – if he can confiscate more revenue from private people and put it in to “public” coffers, he can “fix” the problem, and continue on the current course.

With less than 2 months in office, Governor Brown has already hinted that California’s famous “Proposition 13” might need to be undone. In case you’ve forgotten, this was a landmark ballot proposition that drew a record number of voters to the precincts in 1978. It passed in a landslide, and imposed a statewide limit on the rate at which local counties and cities could levy property taxes.

Along with a possible “tweaking” of Proposition 13, Governor Brown is also proposing to retain several tax increases that are supposed to expire later this year. And he says he wants to “let the people decide” – he’s not pushing for these tax increases to happen legislatively, but rather, he wants Californians to vote on them in a “special election” this June. Just as the people of Egypt want their voices to be heard in Egypt’s government, so Governor Brown reasoned, “it would be irresponsible to exclude the people from this process.”

In addition to the tax increases, Governor Brown has proposed some modest sell-offs of state owned vehicle fleets. But he’s ignoring serious systemic problems: California’s state employee retirement pension funds have been severely mismanaged and present the state with huge liabilities; and California goes further in to debt roughly $40 million each day, just paying-out the state’s generous unemployment benefits.

Isn’t this just a classic example of an addiction problem? “I could stop at any time, but I don’t want to. Just give me more of my drug-of-choice, and I’ll be fine.”

Our friend California apparently hasn’t “hit bottom” yet.

Email Austin Hill


Comments are invited!
Send feedback to:  WatchDog
.