In a very sobering article published last week in the Guardian ("Will California Become America's First Failed State?") Paul Harris writes "...the state that was once held up as the epitome of the boundless opportunities of America has collapsed. From its politics to its economy to its environment and way of life, California is like a patient on life support. At the start of summer the state government was so deeply in debt that it began to issue IOUs instead of wages. Its unemployment rate has soared to more than 12%, the highest figure in 70 years. Desperate to pay off a crippling budget deficit, California is slashing spending in education and healthcare, laying off vast numbers of workers and forcing others to take unpaid leave..."
Which prompts these cogent comments from Wesley J. Smith:
What a debacle: California has borrowed hundreds of millions to fund ESCR/human cloning, almost $300 million of which went into the most expensive, luxurious buildings that money can buy – all to “show Bush.” Fine, but now we are worse than broke, we are in danger of being a “failed state.”
Can you believe it? We are so broke we are reduced to borrowing money to repay money already borrowed from other accounts, and one of the projects to be funded with this red ink is the California Institute of Stem Cell Research!...
I told y’all during the Proposition 71 campaign: If health care plans for the poor collapsed, if the schools had to be shuttered and university tuition raised through the roofs, indeed, if the state fell in the sea, “the scientists” would still get their cloning money. And that is exactly what’s what we are borrowing more money to ensure. The sense of entitlement and privilege would choke a horse. The fiscal stupidity boggles the mind.
