I think its curious when State and local elected officials go to Washington DC to ask for money. Frankly, they seem to me quite like the sad blokes standing in the median of a busy street corner holding a cardboard sign.
Many State and local governments just haven’t done their job correctly in handling taxpayer dollars. They’ve negotiated stupid contracts with their employees, overpay for everything, and seemed genuinely stunned that there is a business cycle, you know, that period of time when tax revenues actually fall.
There may be nobody in America that has abdicated his responsibility worse than California’s Governor. Oh, he took a stab at reform, once, in 2005. After a crushing defeat, he never tried again. He is now a pathetic figure, flying back to Washington to beg for money, asking the feds to borrow from China and give it to California after laundering it through the bureaucracy.
This is all an attempt to get Washington to subsidize the poor performance of a Governor who should know better, and a psychotic Legislature, that even in the face of ANOTHER $20 billion deficit was STILL voting for single payer health care this past week.
I hope the Congress says no to the panhandlers, no matter where they are from. They should have to pay for own political malpractice.
January 23rd, 2010 at 12:00 am
Great point, Mike! I don’t understand why NO ONE in the “mainstream media” has thought it worth mentioning that the federal government has no money at all to give California, even if that was somehow a good idea. The federal government is in debt and getting further in debt every day. When Governor Schwarzenegger demands more federal money for California, he is really asking Congress to borrow more money, which seems criminally insane. If more people understood this situation, it would be easier to understand why Congress is unlikely to give California much of anything…
Furthermore, giving more money to the spending addicts in the California Legislature is the equivalent of giving a bottle of whiskey to an alcoholic. Common sense should tell us that will not solve the problem, but will only make things worse.