As a child I went to summer camp in Vermont, a stone's throw from the Quebec border. There was a girl from the West Coast and every summer she would tell us all, "In California we're wearing this, blah, blah, blah." We looked to her for all things hip and I can remember watching her unpack her suitcase with wonder.

Years later, after I moved out here, I thought to myself, "Man, did she ever put one over on us." She was from Fresno! That's got as much difficulty as any Rust Belt town attracting and retaining people of talent. Many of the Anglos who migrated to places like Fresno, Modesto, and Bakersfield came from the Dust Bowl, places like Oklahoma, and they have a similar feel. These days, other than agriculture, there's the prison industry which took off after Three Strikes. On the weekdays a lot of the highway traffic is LA County Sheriff's Dept buses ferrying inmates around.

I used to like to drive Highway 99 to go through the agricultural belt and catch a glimpse of yesteryear. It's lined with great junk shops!

Incidentally, it's not just the rest of America, in Asia California also has cache. One of the first Chinese fast food chains was California Beef Noodle Soup. The Chinese government loved it since it was a popular indigenous alternative to McDonalds. Indigenous it was; though the patrons all associated it with California and assumed Americans ate there too. Too late to trademark (or our financial problems would be solved).

Occasionally, around Santa Barbara, I've seen golden haired boys who appear to have not a care in the world surfing. But it costs an arm and a leg to live in coastal California, the days of easy living are long gone.

ONE BILLION dollars are spent by LA County alone on the children of illegal aliens. ONE BILLION dollars are spent by the state on illegal aliens in Ca. prisons. etc

They aren't about immigration. They aren't about shifting jobs overseas.

California's problems are about a hard right ideology that seeks nothing short of the destruction of the 'nanny state' through the decimation of the state's budget.

They don't care that kids can't go to school. They don't care that the police are nearly nonexistent. They don't care that the parks are closing. They don't care that poor people are dieing.

They are the Nihilists that everyone was afraid of from the nightmares of the past. They are the ones playing chicken, for keeps, with the governments. They hold money and power supreme over everything else. The idea that someone is being assisted by a government somewhere drives them insane with rage.

They are ubber-traitors to the very ideals that they *claim* to hold dear: America. They treat California (and so many other states and localities) in this country as if they were whores to be abused and left for dead when they can't 'put out' anymore. They are like a cancer that feeds on the host until there is nothing left. For them, the idea of widespread death, disease and destruction is pleasing.

The fact that they are not being run out of town is more a testament to a large advertising budget then anything else. Fox News works for them. So does CNBC. Corporate America has a mainly love relationship with this ideology as the more traitorous of them use it to whipsaw their demands for lower taxes or they will kill more jobs. The great republican 'free market' was nothing more than a three-card Monte con job on the country. It allowed the mobility that set the stage for the rapid destruction of the pillars of government and society that propped them up too.

And the people? They dose in deluded fear of attacks from outside the country, totally oblivious to the destruction that has been wrought from within.

The tragically laughable fight over the inheritance tax (the 'death tax') is a crowning achievement of these anti-tax ideologues. The vast (90%+) of the citizens that believed that the inheritance tax was unfair and would 'steal local farms and jobs' would never fall victim to it in their lifetimes but they bought that load of horse shit and so much more...

Taxes are evil. Well, except when the government helps them personally...

We have a tax cap from the 70's in place where I live and people rail about the 'nonexistent police force' and 'lack of response from the fire department'. Well, if they PAID for their services then maybe they would have someone to put out the fires in their McMansions...

California has the money to end their spiral. They don't have the brains to see it... After all, who wouldn't want to save money on taxes. (and starve the 'beast') The new welfare queens are the corporate masses, yearning for no taxes...

there was a fascinating exhibit at the Oakland Museum of History called "What's Going On? California and the Vietnam War." It showed all the links; among them SF's Treasure Island which was the point of embarkation for many troops.

The emergence of high tech, a mainstay of the economy, also lay in defense industry dollars which were part of the war build-up. Though Orange County was as Republican as they get, in fact a lot of the money which transformed the landscape into a suburban oasis far from the barrios of LA was military industrial complex federal largesse. When the Cold War ended, the aerospace industry, including such giants as Lockheed, was hurt badly.

LA had an industrial hub, including auto manufacturers. The jobs were a draw for blacks in the cotton belt. You would never know that today. It's all gone and because the land is much more valuable than in places like Michigan, it's been redeveloped.

I don't feel remotely sorry for the people of California. That's what they wanted...now they have it...so live with it! In my state next door the Legislature made the hard decision to raise taxes overriding our Republican Governor's veto. The whining from the Republican's was endless but that's to be expected. After all what do you expect from 'borrow and spend' Republican's? I personally am sick to death of the 'No New Tax' fanatics. They have created a mess over the years that's not going away! I hope California is happy with their mess!