Give the Republicans what they want.

Gut the social welfare system, make people pay for college their own damn selves, make them pay for health care.

One week of such a life and many californians will run back to the legislature agreeing to raise the taxes to pay for their luxuries.

Simply put, it is the problem of the people, they want services, but want someone else to pay for it. Arnold is correct, the people do not want higher taxes, at least not yet, forcing the state to live within their budget will force Californians and other states to wake up to the costs of their state benefits.

Once people realize that burdens must be shared for shared advantages, they will be more careful in what advantages they seek, and more willing to part with the cash to pay for them.

No one wants to hear about kids without healthcare, but no one wants to pay for it with higher taxes either. So the only way to solve this impass is to make people realize their desire for lower taxes have a cost, and then they will decide if they can live in a world with low taxes and low services.

I was born and raised in California. I witnessed the decline in schools after Prop 13. I watched the state choose again and again to underfund government yet ask much of it. And once I graduated from the University, I moved far away from there.

I still miss the natural beauty of California -- the mountains, the ocean, the forests, the deserts. Being able to drive to any climate you care for. I really do miss my first home state.

But I'm also very happy I got out before it got so much worse than it was when I left in '92. You couldn't pay me to live in that socio-economic-political system now.

But the natural environment...ahhh. That, I'll always miss. Along with the California of my youth, pre-Prop 13, when it had the best schools in the nation, and a vibrant public life.

Yeah, we're not perfect but for all our problems, at least we've got WATER! We're shrinking, and we need well educated workers to rebuild the manufacturing base. Winters aren't the greatest, but you get used to them and summers are heavenly. Real estate is cheap, and varied. We've got world class higher education and it's still relatively affordable. Think about it.

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!

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.

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...