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
.
Showing posts with label court. Show all posts
Showing posts with label court. Show all posts
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Stopping Obamacare, Or “Gay Marriage?” That Is The Question
By Austin Hil
Think the “gay marriage” issue is off the table right now?
Think again.
Closing arguments wrapped-up last week over a lawsuit seeking to overturn California’s “Proposition 8,” a ballot initiative passed overwhelmingly in November 2008 amending the state constitution so as to define marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Plaintiff’s Attorneys David Boies –a former legal advisor to the Al Gore for President campaign – and Ted Olson, former White House Attorney to President George W. Bush, have both expressed confidence that the judge will side with them, yet also acknowledge that regardless of the judge’s decision, the case will be appealed.
Suffice it to say that the issue of “gay marriage” may be back in the headlines again soon. Specifically, the “prop 8” case could be headed to the Supreme Court. This, in turn, will likely cause at least some socially conservative Americans to demand that the Republican Party jump- start its previous “gay marriage ban” efforts.
And this will impact the November 2010 elections.
Just when a majority of the American electorate has finally begun to wake up and realize the tyranny that it is under – a government that has spent future generations of wealth on the selfish, short-term political objectives of the “ruling party;” a President who, after spending a trillion dollars on so-called “stimulus” programs is now pressuring Congress for another $50 billion to “bail-out” states that are bankrupt and facing public employee layoffs; and an Administration whose remedy for an oil spill disaster is to press for tax increases on energy purchases – the nation could be and should be about ready to become “more Republican” this fall. And the best hope for the Republican Party – indeed, the best thing the party can provide the United States right now – is a cohesive, rational explanation for why the Obama economic oppression is dangerous, and an understandable free-market alternative.
Yet, if a large portion of the Republican Party “base” is distracted from the realities of the present-day subjugation, and chooses instead to focus on something that may or may not happen in the courts (an upholding or an overturning of a “marriage law”), the opportunity to stave-off America’s march toward serfdom could be severely hindered, or crippled altogether.
So what’s the strategy? How does the Republican Party maintain its current momentum in the current political climate? The first step is for conservative Americans to begin understanding economics, itself, as a “moral issue.”
Social conservatives have for decades been focused on “moral issues” like abortion, and the definition of marriage. But what do they have to say about the immorality of a government that is drowning our nation in debt?
For nearly four decades, American politics and public policy have been impacted by the influence of faith-based voters and organizations. Consisting of a majority of American Evangelical Christians, a majority of American Mormons, substantial portions of the American Catholic population, and many orthodox Jews, the population of faith-based voters has swung national elections in one direction or the other, either by predominantly siding with one political party or another, by not uniting and thereby “splitting” their collective impact between the two parties, or by simply not voting at all.
This impact was arguably first experienced in the landslide re-election of President Richard Nixon in 1972. In the midst of a war in Viet Nam, and cultural chaos at home, faith-based Americans were un-nerved by the direction of the country, and drawn towards Nixon’s appeal to law-and-order, and articulation of “traditional American values.” In 1976, faith-based Americans were distraught by the scandals that had engulfed Nixon, and were persuaded to the left by Jimmy Carter.
In 1980 Ronald Reagan swung faith-based Americans back to the Republican side of the aisle where they would remain for the bigger part of twelve years. Faith-based Americans then “split” their votes(or in some cases began the bad habit of “not voting”) during the Clinton years, only to return to the Republican fold with the elections of President George W. Bush.
But faith-based voters “split” again in 2008. While many still remained in the Republican camp, still casting votes according to their concerns over the “moral issues” of abortion and marriage, still others were drawn by Barack Obama’s ability to articulate “universal healthcare” in “moral” terms.
Yet it would appear by now that many faith-based Americans have woken up to a cold reality-Obamacare is not about compassion, but about a self-serving politician creating dependency on himself, and using other people’s resources (tax payer’s dollars) for his own political gain. Likewise, agendas such as “Obamacare” and “stimulus” and “bailout” programs have spent the wealth of future generations, on immediate, short-term political ambitions.
Worse still, Obamanomics is dangerously similar to the economic models that are sinking Greece right before our eyes, and that threaten Spain, Germany, and the U.K. Does the “faith” of faith-based Americans have anything to say about the immorality of such fiscal recklessness?
Courts and judges will do what they are going to do with “gay marriage” in the coming months. Americans must focus on stopping the economic ruin of President Obama and his party’s “leaders” in Congress – before it is too late.
Email: Austin Hill
Comments are invited!
Send feedback to: Watch Dog
.
Think the “gay marriage” issue is off the table right now?
Think again.
Closing arguments wrapped-up last week over a lawsuit seeking to overturn California’s “Proposition 8,” a ballot initiative passed overwhelmingly in November 2008 amending the state constitution so as to define marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Plaintiff’s Attorneys David Boies –a former legal advisor to the Al Gore for President campaign – and Ted Olson, former White House Attorney to President George W. Bush, have both expressed confidence that the judge will side with them, yet also acknowledge that regardless of the judge’s decision, the case will be appealed.
Suffice it to say that the issue of “gay marriage” may be back in the headlines again soon. Specifically, the “prop 8” case could be headed to the Supreme Court. This, in turn, will likely cause at least some socially conservative Americans to demand that the Republican Party jump- start its previous “gay marriage ban” efforts.
And this will impact the November 2010 elections.
Just when a majority of the American electorate has finally begun to wake up and realize the tyranny that it is under – a government that has spent future generations of wealth on the selfish, short-term political objectives of the “ruling party;” a President who, after spending a trillion dollars on so-called “stimulus” programs is now pressuring Congress for another $50 billion to “bail-out” states that are bankrupt and facing public employee layoffs; and an Administration whose remedy for an oil spill disaster is to press for tax increases on energy purchases – the nation could be and should be about ready to become “more Republican” this fall. And the best hope for the Republican Party – indeed, the best thing the party can provide the United States right now – is a cohesive, rational explanation for why the Obama economic oppression is dangerous, and an understandable free-market alternative.
Yet, if a large portion of the Republican Party “base” is distracted from the realities of the present-day subjugation, and chooses instead to focus on something that may or may not happen in the courts (an upholding or an overturning of a “marriage law”), the opportunity to stave-off America’s march toward serfdom could be severely hindered, or crippled altogether.
So what’s the strategy? How does the Republican Party maintain its current momentum in the current political climate? The first step is for conservative Americans to begin understanding economics, itself, as a “moral issue.”
Social conservatives have for decades been focused on “moral issues” like abortion, and the definition of marriage. But what do they have to say about the immorality of a government that is drowning our nation in debt?
For nearly four decades, American politics and public policy have been impacted by the influence of faith-based voters and organizations. Consisting of a majority of American Evangelical Christians, a majority of American Mormons, substantial portions of the American Catholic population, and many orthodox Jews, the population of faith-based voters has swung national elections in one direction or the other, either by predominantly siding with one political party or another, by not uniting and thereby “splitting” their collective impact between the two parties, or by simply not voting at all.
This impact was arguably first experienced in the landslide re-election of President Richard Nixon in 1972. In the midst of a war in Viet Nam, and cultural chaos at home, faith-based Americans were un-nerved by the direction of the country, and drawn towards Nixon’s appeal to law-and-order, and articulation of “traditional American values.” In 1976, faith-based Americans were distraught by the scandals that had engulfed Nixon, and were persuaded to the left by Jimmy Carter.
In 1980 Ronald Reagan swung faith-based Americans back to the Republican side of the aisle where they would remain for the bigger part of twelve years. Faith-based Americans then “split” their votes(or in some cases began the bad habit of “not voting”) during the Clinton years, only to return to the Republican fold with the elections of President George W. Bush.
But faith-based voters “split” again in 2008. While many still remained in the Republican camp, still casting votes according to their concerns over the “moral issues” of abortion and marriage, still others were drawn by Barack Obama’s ability to articulate “universal healthcare” in “moral” terms.
Yet it would appear by now that many faith-based Americans have woken up to a cold reality-Obamacare is not about compassion, but about a self-serving politician creating dependency on himself, and using other people’s resources (tax payer’s dollars) for his own political gain. Likewise, agendas such as “Obamacare” and “stimulus” and “bailout” programs have spent the wealth of future generations, on immediate, short-term political ambitions.
Worse still, Obamanomics is dangerously similar to the economic models that are sinking Greece right before our eyes, and that threaten Spain, Germany, and the U.K. Does the “faith” of faith-based Americans have anything to say about the immorality of such fiscal recklessness?
Courts and judges will do what they are going to do with “gay marriage” in the coming months. Americans must focus on stopping the economic ruin of President Obama and his party’s “leaders” in Congress – before it is too late.
Email: Austin Hill
Comments are invited!
Send feedback to: Watch Dog
.
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