Home > Opinion > Mary Kate Cary > California’s Fiscal Emergency a Microcosm of Americans’ Debt Concerns

California’s Fiscal Emergency a Microcosm of Americans’ Debt Concerns

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I'm commenting on Scola of CA posting because he or she is really confused and needs some true facts and not politician facts. I'm college student who is young but I've lived in 2 wealthy places (Newport Coast, Ca and Napa, Ca) and if you've been to those places in the last 2 years you would see that people are hurting from the rich to the average joes. It's really ignorant that you could honestly say that the reason California is getting a bad view because of the Central Valley. I'm a college student like I said earlier and I even know that Nevada is a purple state not a conservative state and Arizona isn't exactly a conservative either, more a purple state.
Oh and talking about conservative states in saying that they are typically poor, well I guess you haven't been to Texas, Florida, Georgia and etc. Texas is the mecca of energy in the USA, not California and people from all over the world go to Texas for that simple fact. The unemployment rate in California stands at 12.3%, I bet you didn't know that information and Texas unemployment stands at 8.2%. So my advice to you coming from a student going to Fresno State in the Central Valley is do your research and show more information instead of promoting your Liberal garbage. Try being neutral and intelligent instead of one sided. Conservatives and Liberals have all screwed up. Try getting out of your bubble where ever that is in California and try traveling.
Oh and one fact you actually got correct was that Texas is having budget issues but nothing on the scale of California. Everything I've said has been the truth, look it up.

Chris Stevens of CA 10:46PM August 22, 2010

If liberal states get into trouble and conservative states don't, why does, Texas has an $18B budget hole. That's almost as big as California's. Considering California has 37 million people and Texas 24.5 Million people that means California's budget hole is $513 per Californian. That's a lot until you consider Texas' budget hole is $735 per Texan, more than 40% worse than the problem in California.
Bashing California is great fun for the political right. However, California is an amazing place to live and provides great, high paying jobs. California is one of the wealthiest states, per capita, in the union. It draws people from other states and countries in droves (myself included). In fact liberal states all tend to be the rich ones while conservative ones are poor.
What the right-wing media misses is California is big. Liberal, coastal California is doing quite well. However, there is a large conservative area called the Central Valley. It's largely agricultural, and is where your fruits and vegetables come from. However, it also includes a handful of mid-sized cities like Sacramento, Fresno and Bakersfield. While not huge compared to San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose or LA, Fresno and Sacramento are each about the size of Kansas City.
The conservative Central Valley has been decimated just like California's conservative neighbors like Arizona and Nevada. In many areas unemployment is around 20% and half of houses are in foreclosure. However, these places seem a million miles away from the liberal coast and most people have little idea that they even exist. You cannot tar liberal coastal California because it happens to be stuck in a governmental union with a conservative, agricultural region of Hoovervilles.

Scola of CA 2:00PM August 12, 2010

I do not understand how this would help CA with their deficit.

Bill Hedges of MO 11:24PM August 01, 2010

What is the probability that any government can successfully provide a stable currency necessary to grow a sustainable economy when the people running that government, the people advising them and the pundits, like the one who wrote this article, are either ignorant about the fundamental nature of money creation or they are deliberately misleading the citizens?
If Mary Kate Cary were to take the time and expend the effort to study the way money is created in our privately owned monetary system, she would soon find the following:
1. The Federal Reserve, like Federal Express, is a privately owned, for-profit business
2. All money (with the exception of coins in the US) is created as the principal of loans.
3. All loans must be repaid with interest.
4. As loans are repaid, money is destroyed.
5. New, larger loans must be continually originated to replace money destroyed by loan repayment and to create addition money to pay interest.
6. These larger loans expand the total debt in a never-ending debt spiral, operating like an ordinary Ponzi scheme by using newly created money to service older loans.
7. In times of financial crisis, banks restrict lending thereby reducing the money supply as loans are repaid or defaults occur.
8. A contracting money supply results in price deflation.
9. California, unlike the US government, is trapped in a deflationary spiral. However it could resolve its fiscal difficulties by following the lead of North Dakota and chartering its own state bank. North Dakota deposits all state revenue in its own bank, the bank operating as a normal bank, taking deposits, lending money, etc. with the profits going to the state treasury as revenue. In North Dakota, people can pay their mortgage interest to the state.

Bill Parks of MD 10:06PM August 01, 2010

Point is liberal States get in trouble faster because they don't cut back when revenue weakens.
CA certainly does not have a required balanced budget.
You like yahoo answer:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090713170843AAMqnzg
For your academic proof:
http://www.statepolicyindex.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/freedom-in-the-50-states-an-index-of-personal-and-economic-freedom-by-ruger-and-sorens.pdf

Bill Hedges of MO 7:35PM August 01, 2010

My point was that there is no trend between liberal/conservative state fiscal policies and levels of indebtedness/projected indebtedness of various states. The stronger correlation is between levels of indebtedness and the various levels of impact of the overall economic decline. You missed the point. The economy is a bigger factor than per capita spending which is high across all states.

steve of IL 4:57PM August 01, 2010

A budget is like a diet in reverse. You consume more calories than you burn off, you gain weight! You spend more money than you bring in, you go deeper in debt! Both take discipline to reverse, and looking at the waist lines of our politicians, tells me they have problems with both! Politicians take care of their personal debt by giving themselves a raise and increasing taxes. You and I get laid off because now businesses can't compete! A recession seems to come to the Federal, State and local governments last, if ever, because they are a parasitic endeavor. They seem to have to run into huge debt, before they see the problem because it doesn't affect their personal income. Raising taxes on the UNEMPLOYED, the underemployed and the retired, who have no control over their incomes, never makes sense. Citizens that become conservative, in a recession to balance their budgets, are at battle with governments that don't want to address the government's budget and just keep on taxing and spending, until it becomes catastrophic. Both parties are guilty of this. The tax payer sees more of his money squandered on projects like bridges that cross an expanse that goes from nowhere, to nowhere, and bridges we use every day are allowed to go into disrepair until they collapse for the lack of enough inspectors! We need to put the politicians on an incentive program, The country, and his constituents prosper, and the politician prospers. The country loses money and the people lose jobs, the politician gets a pay CUT, or fired immediately before he can do more damage. The politician that is an underachiever needs to be cut loose in the next election and that often doesn't happen so the damage goes on. Prosperous businesses remove their bad performers, without paying HUGE bonuses, and then they start to prosper again. We should't need an M. B. A. to get this and neither should the government, although we are paying for plenty of them! Yet with all these resources, they still can't balance a budget!

Lee Hansen of MI 11:04AM August 01, 2010

Please do a search for California Governors budget, click into the Proposed Budget - Summary, then the Introduction pdf. There you will see that our 09-10 (latest year now ended) spend was about $85B. If we keep spending flat in this current year, 10-11, you will also see the anticipated tax collection revenue graph is also 85B. Stay flat - no deficit !
Our deficit as highlighted in the news is not due to a shortage of tax receipts. It is due to skyrocketing spending.

Rich Altmaier of CA 9:51PM July 31, 2010

Always off base.
I did not say conservatives States did not have debt. I said they were in better shape than liberal ones.
Focus... I said:
"States in worse shape now are the liberal ones. Ones in better shape are more Conservative. "
As you say:
"The so called "liberal" states have bigger expenses than the "conservative" ones."
My point exactly... You often make my point. THANKS...

Bill Hedges of MO 8:25PM July 31, 2010

May-be liberal states have more expenses because they kiss more union butt , just like you kiss the progressive butt .
TALK ABOUT SOMEONE BABBLING , what do you call what you do ?

Hunter of WI 6:24PM July 31, 2010