Bryan Fischer
California is toast - - not if but when
By Bryan Fischer
You can forget about California. It's gone. It has gone past the tipping point, and is headed for the bottom of the abyss.
There is an arresting scene in the movie "Titanic" where the ship's engineer explains that the ship is doomed. Water by this time is flooding the forward hold. The engineer explains that because the walls between the holds do not go all the way to top, when the initial hold takes on enough water, water will begin spilling over into the second hold. Then when it fills with water, the third hold will begin to fill up. The process will continue, he says, until the sheer weight of the water would force the ship to plunge nose down to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Doom was inevitable. The question was not if but when.
California is not just the Lindsay Lohan of the states, as the Wall Street Journal suggested a week ago, it is the Titanic of states. It is the largest, most populous, has the world's eighth largest economy, and is heading for the bottom of the ocean.
It is shipping water at a dangerous pace, and the builders who could have put some containment walls in place are nowhere to be found.
The one chance California had was the election of Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003. Sadly, he turned out to be one of the economic girlie men he criticized on the campaign trail and as he leaves office he leaves California with a $25 billion debt for the coming fiscal year and a total unfunded liability of more than $500 billion in public pensions.
Passing a budget in California required a two-thirds majority — until Nov. 2, when California voters changed the law and now allow the juveniles with the checkbook and the credit cards to pass a budget with a mere majority. What modest containment wall was in place has now been totally dismantled.
Confirmed economic girlie men are now firmly in charge, since Democrats won every statewide office, girlie men who will accelerate spending and borrowing. There are no adults in Sacramento now, just petulant little two-year-olds who want what they want and want it now, and are in a position to get it. And they plan to pass the bill for this infantile spending spree to the other 49 states.
If the rest of the Union says no thanks, as surely it must, there is absolutely no hope for California. It is gone. The question is not if but when it falls into sovereign default. The only question now is how many lifeboats people will have access to — there are maybe 45 of them right now, states who haven't spent themselves into oblivion — and how many survivors will manage to flee in time. The number of survivors is likely to consist of the number of people who manage to find refuge in some other state with a semblance of fiscal sanity.
California is not only gone economically, it is gone culturally. Thirteen-year old Cody Alicea was ordered last week by school officials at Denair Middle School in Del Rio, Ca., to take his American flag off his bike when he came on to school grounds because the flag was stirring up "racial tensions."
The backstory here is that Mexican students were bringing hordes of Mexican flags to school on Cinco de Mayo, and school officials apparently intervened. When Cody showed up with his American flag two months ago, these Mexican students were irate. How come we got in trouble for flying our flag, and he's not getting into trouble for flying his?
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, over 50% of the students in California's public education system are Hispanic. This by itself is not a problem. The problem is that a high percentage of these students have no intention of assimilating into America.
Their first loyalty is to Mexico, not the United States. Their first and only language is Spanish and not English. Their major patriotic holiday is Cinco de Mayo and not July 4. George Washington is not their country's hero, but General Ignacio Zaragoza Sequin, who defeated the French on May 5, 1862.
Abraham Lincoln said a nation cannot exist half slave and half free; a house divided against itself, he reminded us, cannot stand. Neither can a state exist half-Mexican and half-American. There is no cultural cohesion, no melting pot, no basis for oneness and unity. Such a state, as California now is, is doomed to fatal Balkanization.
If California had elected leaders who would now insist on English as the only official language for government and schools, and insist that only legal immigrants have access to educational services, and insist that California's ginormous welfare system and public pension fund be dismantled forthwith, there might be a glimmer of hope.
But the unapologetic race-baiters and tax-and-spenders are back in charge and there is nothing and no one to hold back the waters. California's destiny has been fixed and it's too late for anyone to do anything about it. All we can do now is wait for the movie.
(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)
© Bryan Fischer
November 15, 2010
You can forget about California. It's gone. It has gone past the tipping point, and is headed for the bottom of the abyss.
There is an arresting scene in the movie "Titanic" where the ship's engineer explains that the ship is doomed. Water by this time is flooding the forward hold. The engineer explains that because the walls between the holds do not go all the way to top, when the initial hold takes on enough water, water will begin spilling over into the second hold. Then when it fills with water, the third hold will begin to fill up. The process will continue, he says, until the sheer weight of the water would force the ship to plunge nose down to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Doom was inevitable. The question was not if but when.
California is not just the Lindsay Lohan of the states, as the Wall Street Journal suggested a week ago, it is the Titanic of states. It is the largest, most populous, has the world's eighth largest economy, and is heading for the bottom of the ocean.
It is shipping water at a dangerous pace, and the builders who could have put some containment walls in place are nowhere to be found.
The one chance California had was the election of Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003. Sadly, he turned out to be one of the economic girlie men he criticized on the campaign trail and as he leaves office he leaves California with a $25 billion debt for the coming fiscal year and a total unfunded liability of more than $500 billion in public pensions.
Passing a budget in California required a two-thirds majority — until Nov. 2, when California voters changed the law and now allow the juveniles with the checkbook and the credit cards to pass a budget with a mere majority. What modest containment wall was in place has now been totally dismantled.
Confirmed economic girlie men are now firmly in charge, since Democrats won every statewide office, girlie men who will accelerate spending and borrowing. There are no adults in Sacramento now, just petulant little two-year-olds who want what they want and want it now, and are in a position to get it. And they plan to pass the bill for this infantile spending spree to the other 49 states.
If the rest of the Union says no thanks, as surely it must, there is absolutely no hope for California. It is gone. The question is not if but when it falls into sovereign default. The only question now is how many lifeboats people will have access to — there are maybe 45 of them right now, states who haven't spent themselves into oblivion — and how many survivors will manage to flee in time. The number of survivors is likely to consist of the number of people who manage to find refuge in some other state with a semblance of fiscal sanity.
California is not only gone economically, it is gone culturally. Thirteen-year old Cody Alicea was ordered last week by school officials at Denair Middle School in Del Rio, Ca., to take his American flag off his bike when he came on to school grounds because the flag was stirring up "racial tensions."
The backstory here is that Mexican students were bringing hordes of Mexican flags to school on Cinco de Mayo, and school officials apparently intervened. When Cody showed up with his American flag two months ago, these Mexican students were irate. How come we got in trouble for flying our flag, and he's not getting into trouble for flying his?
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, over 50% of the students in California's public education system are Hispanic. This by itself is not a problem. The problem is that a high percentage of these students have no intention of assimilating into America.
Their first loyalty is to Mexico, not the United States. Their first and only language is Spanish and not English. Their major patriotic holiday is Cinco de Mayo and not July 4. George Washington is not their country's hero, but General Ignacio Zaragoza Sequin, who defeated the French on May 5, 1862.
Abraham Lincoln said a nation cannot exist half slave and half free; a house divided against itself, he reminded us, cannot stand. Neither can a state exist half-Mexican and half-American. There is no cultural cohesion, no melting pot, no basis for oneness and unity. Such a state, as California now is, is doomed to fatal Balkanization.
If California had elected leaders who would now insist on English as the only official language for government and schools, and insist that only legal immigrants have access to educational services, and insist that California's ginormous welfare system and public pension fund be dismantled forthwith, there might be a glimmer of hope.
But the unapologetic race-baiters and tax-and-spenders are back in charge and there is nothing and no one to hold back the waters. California's destiny has been fixed and it's too late for anyone to do anything about it. All we can do now is wait for the movie.
(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)
© Bryan Fischer
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
