Roger
Hedgecock
was the Mayor of San
Diego
for many years and now writes a column and has a Syndicated Radio Show which
does very well.
Every
single person -- Democrat or Republican -- needs to read this short article. It
is not only worth the read, it very likely what's going to happen to all the
rest of us. This is not just politics talking -- this is a description of what
is really happening in California currently.
-----------------------------------------------
Written
by Roger
Hedgecock
- former mayor of San
Diego
I
live in California . If you were wondering what living in
Obama's
second term would be like, wonder no longer. We in California are living there
now.
California
is a one-party state dominated by a virulent
Democrat Left enabled by a complicit
media where every agency of local, county, and state government is run by and
for the public employee unions. The unemployment rate is 12%.
California
has more folks on food stamps than any other state, has added so many benefits
and higher rates to Medicaid
that we call it "Medi-Cal."
Our K-12 schools have more administrators than teachers, with smaller classes
but lower test scores and higher dropout
rates with twice the per-student budget of 15 years ago. Good job, Brownie.
This
week, the once and current Gov.
Jerry
"Moonbeam"
Brown had to confess that the "balanced" state budget adopted five months ago
was billions in the red because actual tax revenues were billions lower than the
airy-fairy revenue estimates on which the balance was predicated.
After
trimming legislators' perks
and reducing the number of cell phones provided to state civil servants, the
governor intoned that drastic budget reductions had already hollowed out state
programs for the needy, law enforcement and our schoolchildren.
California government needed more money.
Echoing
the Occupy movement, the governor proclaimed the rich must pay their fair share.
Fair share? Consider this: The
top 1% of California income earners already pay 50% of the state's total income
tax.California
has seven income tax brackets. The top income tax rate is 9.3%, which is slapped
on the greedy rich earning at least $47,056 a year. Income of more than $1
million pays the "millionaires' and billionaires'"
surcharge
tax rate of 10.3%. Brown's
proposal would add 2% for income over $250,000. A million-dollar income would
then be taxed at 12.3%. And that's just for the state.
Brown
also proposed a one-half-cent sales tax increase, which would bring sales taxes
(which vary by county) up from 7.75% to as much as 10%. Both tax increases would
be on the ballot in 2012. The sales tax increase proposal immediately brought
howls of protest from the Left (of Brown!). Charlie
Eaton,
a sociology grad
student at UC Berkeley and leader of the UC Student-Workers Union, said, "We've
paid enough. It's time for millionaires to pay." Go
figure.
At
least five other ballot measures to raise taxes are circulating for signatures
to get on the 2012 ballot in California . The governor's proposals are the most
conservative.
The
Obama
way doesn't end with taxes.
The
governor and the state legislature continue to applaud the efforts of the
California High Speed Rail Authority to build a train connecting
Los
Angeles
and San
Francisco
. Even though the budget is three times the voter-approved amount and the first
segment will only connect two small towns in the agricultural Central Valley .
But hey, if we build it, they will ride. And we don't want to turn down the
Obama
bullet-train bucks that Florida and other states rejected because the operating
costs would bankrupt them. Can't happen here because we're already
insolvent!
If we get into real trouble with the train, we'll just bring in the Chinese. It
worked with the Bay Bridge reconstruction. After the 1989 earthquake, the bridge
connecting Oakland
and San
Francisco
was rebuilt with steel made in China.
Workers from China
too. Paid for with money borrowed from China.
Makes perfect sense.
In
California , we hate the evil, greedy rich (except the rich in
Hollywood,
in sports, and in drug dealing). But we love people who have broken into
California to eat the bounty created by the productive rich.
Illegals
get benefits from various generous welfare programs, free medical care, and free
schools for their kids, including meals, and of course,
instate
tuition rates and scholarships too. Nothing's
too good for our guests. To erase even a hint of criticism of illegal
immigration, the California Legislature is considering a
unilateral
state amnesty. Democrat State Assemblyman
Felipe
Fuentes
has proposed an initiative that would bar deportation of
illegals
from California .
Interesting
dilemma for Obama
there. If immigration is exclusively a federal matter, and
Obama
has sued four states for trying to enforce federal immigration laws that he
won't enforce, what will the President do to a California law that exempts
California from federal immigration law?
California
is also near fulfilling the environmentalist
dream of de-industrialization.
After driving out the old industrial base, auto and
airplane
assembly, for example, air and water regulators and tax policies are now driving
out the high-tech,
biotech
and even Internet-based companies that were supposed to be California 's future.
The California cap-and-trade tax on business in the name of reducing CO2 makes
our state the leader in wacky
environmentalism
and guarantees a further job exodus
from the state. Even green energy companies can't do business in California .
Solyndra
went under, taking its taxpayer loan guarantee with it.
No job is too small to escape the
regulators. The state has even banned weekend amateur gold miners from the
historic gold mining streams in the Sierra Nevada Mountains . In fact, more and more of
California 's public land is off-limits to recreation by the people who paid for
that land. Unless you're illegal. Then you can clear the land, set up marijuana
plantations at will, bring in fertilizers
that legal farmers can no longer use, exploit illegal farm workers who live in
hovels with no running water or sanitation, and protect your investment with
armed illegals
carrying guns that no California citizen is allowed to own. The rest of us only
found out about these plantations when a workers' open
campfire
started one of those devastating fires that have killed hundreds of people and
burned out thousands of homes in California over the last decade.
It's
often said that whatever happens in California will soon happen in your state.
You'd better hope that is dead wrong.
Roger
Hedgecock
CALIFORNIA
IS OBAMA’S DREAM
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