disturbing the comfortable

So, California may be the late, great state, after all. It's broke. It's self-destructing (with the help of a few good Republican conservatives). It's another example of incredible ideological stupidity, sort of economic McCarthyism.

California is very broke. The governor, Arnold S., promised he would not raise taxes when he was elected. Arnold just signed a bill to raise taxes, because there is no money. N-o-m-o-n-e-y. Because of this the conservatives are screaming bloody murder. One of their ideals, in this situation, appears to be to lay off every single state employee. However, they've yet to figure out who's going to watch the prisoners, fight fires, do the scut-work of running a state with a bigger infrastructure—and budget—than many nations. All they know is that taxes are going to go up, and that would be about like pissing on a Bible for many of them. These people are seriously detached from reality.

Oregon is going to have about a $2.5 billion deficit in the next biennium. Washington's will be over $8 billion. I regularly get newsletters from several Oregon state legislators who moan piteously for more tax cuts. There is, apparently, something in the contemporary Republican mind, magical about tax cuts. Tax increases are...my god, they're...communist or something. But, the problem is that tax-cuts are a major contributing reason America is dangling over the economic cess-pool right now. That and deregulation and free market wet dreams, of course.

The conservative fantasy of shrinking government to where it can "drowned in a bathtub" is just plain stupid. It's the ideology of the intelligence-challenged. You simply cannot have a complex society without structure. Not with religious structure, either. There's too much centrifugal force. The best we could hope for would be a North American Somalia. I actually believe a lot of conservatives would prefer a fastest-gun-in-town approach to society. That's probably why John Wayne is his western roles is so idolized by the right-wing-nuts.

But, it doesn't work in real life. It's like a fantasy for senile adolescents. Look at California, shudder, think again about adequately funding government.