“No problem, mistakes are human.”

You know the day we stop making mistakes is the day we stop doing anything. I just found myself a nice excuse.

“Not exactly sure what the point of this post was supposed to be though.”

The point I tried to make, poorly, is that if the state was such a “socialist” state then there would be no such innovative business as we can find in the Silicon Valley. A little difficult to elaborate here without further research and data and facts. But you seem to feel that CA is just a nanny state which it is not.

“The point I was making, and I still stand by that point, is that decades of nanny state ideologies that have played out in CA are a major factor for its current state of bankruptcy.”

No it is not quite true. And yes “Arnold” is a conservative. Now more to the point. It is not whether CA is a nanny state or not that is the problem. The real problem is the stupid law that makes Congress unable to do anything without a 2/3 majority. Even Arnold who came to change things was not able to. Let me remind you that Arnold was a good friend of Bush first. That Reagan came from CA as well as Nixon. So again CA is not what you think. The problem and I think a lot of people would agree (of course not CA Congress) is the 2/3 majority which pretty much paralyzes everything. It is almost impossible to govern CA because of that. For example estate taxes are ridiculously low for the price of the houses in CA. If we were to raise these taxes CA would probably go below for a long time. No one is willing to address the problem… And yes we should be able to talk taxes without ideology. Taxes fund the schools and schools are a service to everyone. In a smart community you’d rather have your kids in school than at the mall. No matter your ideology. [Note further for another debate though that ideologies are quickly becoming a thing of the past with the ongoing globalization. Think about it.]

“You disagreed (as near as I can tell) with the position of the CBO with respect to where growth in USG spending is occurring and will continue to occur, namely SS, Medicare/Medicaid, in the out years. ”

No I do not disagree. I am saying that “cutting” is NOT the solution without a deep reform of our revenue/spending. If you only cut the problem is sure to re-occur. If you leave in place the mechanism that put us here in the first place it WILL re-occur no matter how much you cut. My point about the DoD is this. DoD is a good example why things go bad but again you can add the farm bill. These two are among the worst managed budgets. DoD and the farmers get all this cash regardless of performance. They get it because there are many DoD employees (direct and indirect) and many farmers. These are only two examples. You know there is a lot of waste in the DoD. Pursuing cold war weapon technology is idiotic at such a level. It generates a lot of waste. This money ought to be reassigned to counter insurgency, guerilla warfare, terrorism (Don’t give me DHS please, one of the most stupidest thing ever, another one I would gladly cut).

“I also agree that $61B is not going to do it when we are pushing a nearly $4T yearly budget. This is only about 1.6% and represents a tiny nibble at the edges of the problem. It should be an order of magnitude greater to even have a chance of putting the US economy on the right trajectory. ”

Yes at least an order of magnitude greater but if you do so you start attacking the problem and Congress does NOT want to do it. It would mean very unpopular measures and you can only cut education so far.

“Targeted cuts are difficult to achieve as one man’s target is another’s sacred cow.”

Precisely. And if we somehow could come together irrespective of our ideologies then we could get something going. But we cannot, just watch the language of our politicians. The problem is that will probably “implode” at some point. It is not sustainable. So we can try the difficult measures now and recover or wait until collapse and then we can always find some tissue for our tears. Don’t think it is that far away. The last economic collapse was pretty close. This “war” is not over yet. Let me ask you something. The banks were bailed out with our taxes, our money. Now they earn interest on loans they provide to us. This is so beyond unethical I don’t even have a word. But had we let them go under we might be worse off. So how do we fix this? First we IMPOSE that they lend money to people and businesses (of course if they qualify if you see what I mean). But right they don’t and small businesses (the USA raison d’etre) are suffering. Idiotic.

In the end if we put the rhetoric aside you will see that we, I believe, strive for the same thing. I am willing to accept cuts in my pet programs, call it welfare if you want. On the other hand I expect proportional cuts in your pet programs, DoD, DHS, and the likes of old Cold War mentality.

There is a solution. No one is willing to sacrifice. In the end we will all sacrifice and it will hurt more.

What is it gonna be? What do you think?

With the current value of cash: My $2.00.

Ooopps My mistake… TX ain’t so bad after all

Oh well…”

No problem, mistakes are human.

Not exactly sure what the point of this post was supposed to be though. CA is friendly to entrepreneurs? Clearly it is middle of the pack. One would have to put that set of data in context however. Is the business climate favorable because of state or local tax incentives or do businesses startup in spite of state politics? Is it due to availability of a skilled (or unskilled) workforce? What is the success rate of those new startups? Are they IT, manufacturing, or service sector startups? You will have to elaborate on what point you were trying to make.

The point I was making, and I still stand by that point, is that decades of nanny state ideologies that have played out in CA are a major factor for its current state of bankruptcy. Social network spending (entitlements) and extremely generous state employment benefits cannot be sustained when the state is bankrupt. In my view, CA, and a number of other states like Wisconsin, Michigan, New Jersey, are current examples of where the Federal Govt. will be in only a few years given current spending trends.

Historical data have consistently shown that US Government revenue (taxes) at the 20% of GDP level is sustainable. That is where the US is currently. We are currently spending in excess of 26% of GDP and per my earlier post, most of this additional spending is entitlements. You disagreed (as near as I can tell) with the position of the CBO with respect to where growth in USG spending is occurring and will continue to occur, namely SS, Medicare/Medicaid, in the out years. It was their statement that DoD spending, as a portion of the GDP is decreasing, not mine. So how does further reduction in DoD alone solve the deficit/debt issue? It doesn’t and I think you agree on this. Reductions in spending have to occur in the arena of entitlements as well, even more so than in discretionary spending (DoD) to have any chance of driving deficits to zero and reducing the national debt. I also agree that $61B is not going to do it when we are pushing a nearly $4T yearly budget. This is only about 1.6% and represents a tiny nibble at the edges of the problem. It should be an order of magnitude greater to even have a chance of putting the US economy on the right trajectory. Targeted cuts are difficult to achieve as one man’s target is another’s sacred cow. Across the board cuts, on their own, don’t work either. Individuals don’t do that at their household level so expecting the USG to do that is naive. It needs to be a combination of both. Across the board to achieve 40-60% of the necessary cuts (both discretionary and entitlements) and targeted cuts to duplicative or non-core programs that in times of financial stress are more “nice-to-haves” rather than “must-haves” to achieve the remainder of the cuts.

Just my $0.02

“Then again, if you are of the same mind as CS ”

You know that hurts.

Ooopps My mistake… TX ain’t so bad after all

Oh well…

“Then again, if you are of the same mind as CS and actually think “Arnold” was a conservative, well …. maybe you just can’t help yourself.”

Unless of course you never lived in CA and don’t know what you are talking about.

Just wondering why the Silicon Valley in in CA and not in TX… Any idea?

Also according to http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fsb/fsb_beststates/2007/ CA is number 5 while TX is number 43. Must be a CA Socialist-Bolshevik thing…

Nah… TX has JSC and Clear Lake. That must be it.

Oh well…

While I am not from CA, it took all of about 2 minutes to come up with the following facts:

The Democrats have controlled the Senate since 1970. The Democrats have controlled the Assembly since 1970 except for the 1995-1996 session. Specific data from 1999-present shows that:

The Democrats have controlled the State Senate with a 25-15 majority (except for two sessions that were 26-14 (2001-2002) and 24-14 (2009-2010)) since at least the 1999-2000 session.

The Democrats controlled the Assembly with a nominal 50-30 majority (sometimes 48-32 as in 2003-2008 (3 sessions) and sometimes by a larger margin as in the 52-28 breakout in the current session).

All of which shows you clearly do not understand CA politics or your idea of what “conservative” means is significantly warped. Either that or you are just a pathological liar. Hard to say.

Then again, if you are of the same mind as CS and actually think “Arnold” was a conservative, well …. maybe you just can’t help yourself.

Shows how much you know about state politics. CA is very conservative- all the liberalism that get’s so much wailing and gnashing of teeth on talk radio and fake news is city politics. I know I live there 10 years. All the state politics there has always been about the ultra-rich and greedy corporations. Hey- wait a minute- kind of like the Federal Government!

“that statement, a direct quote from a guy who calls himself “common sense” ”

Maybe I am a gal for all you know.

“Am I the only one who sees the irony, disregard for all things logical, sad humor, and depths of denial that political ideology can produce?”

Can you look your image in the mirror and convince you that $61B will cut the deficit? Talk about ideology… You do not understand. That’s okay. You can learn or not.