Those Stupid California Voters
What is it with stupid California voters? Don’t they know what’s good for them? First, they vote for traditional marriage, when every smart person knows that’s just wrong. Now, they vote against tax hikes! What is wrong with you people?
The Sacramento Bee gets it. Well, they did until a bunch of soon-to-be-ex readers complained. Then they pulled an Obama.
I just don’t understand. Haven’t we all been told that outspending your opponent 10 to 1 ensures victory, which was why we needed to take the money out of politics at the national level?
What’s wrong with you people?!
Cross-posted at Gold-Plated Witch on Wheels.
Art Downs:
The people really do not count. They can be convinced to ignore their interests when they vote for candidates but when they get it right in referenda, their will is regularly overturned by legislative trickery or judicual fiat.
Ahnalhd has proven to be a political ‘girlie-man’. Maybe he can blame it on steroids..
21 May 2009, 5:40 pmHarrison:
Tell me about it. I voted yesterday and you’d think I’d done the state a disservice. To think I voted for Arnold! We need people like Tom McClintock running things.
21 May 2009, 5:59 pmHal:
Haha. Yeah… what are they thinking. Going against the powers that be who want to control every aspect of their lives.
I think this story is one of the items that drove down the stock market today frankly. Though I don’t hear anyone else mentioning it. You know investors are thinking in the back of their minds, “Oh crud, now the FED is going to bail out California too. What’s next?” Top that off with a host of foreign countries doing what they can to get out of the dollar and you can say good buy greenback.
Probably explains what happened to gold today. I just check the 24hour graph on the widget I use, ExactPrice, to track the precious metals and that’s a pretty steep climb that started this morning.
Looks like people are looking to hedge against a dollar that’s looking more like a zombie at this point.
21 May 2009, 6:09 pmYorkshire:
CA will take this to court to get the results overturned.
21 May 2009, 6:33 pmDana Pico:
It’s all a subtle anti-immigration plot. Once California gets even broker than Mexico, they expect the illegals to head back home.
Or to Colorado.
21 May 2009, 6:40 pmPhoenician in a time of Romans:
California shows a systematic failure in governance, directly tracable back to a lack of accountabilty among the electorate.
However, as California goes, so goes your nation. People would be right to get out of the US dollar.
21 May 2009, 7:00 pmRovin:
I tell all my green card friends about this wonderful place called Jim Thorpe. You should see their eyes light up when I tell them there are so many high paying concrete jobs, they’ll never wanna go home.
21 May 2009, 8:37 pmSharon:
What’s wrong with these people?! Don’t they know that raising taxes to outrageous levels is good for America? Maybe Obama can give another speech about how much more the Europeans like us.
In the meantime, instead of cutting frivilous and wasteful programs, California will cut police and fire protection, close libraries and other services most of the people want just to punish them for voting this way. Obama and the Democrats are going to use my tax dollars from Texas to bail out irresponsible California. And then they wonder about taxpayer revolts.
21 May 2009, 9:40 pmJohnC.:
Revolt? What revolt? Count me in.
21 May 2009, 9:51 pmOther Dana:
Sharon, as a Californian, I bristle at your generalization of “What’s wrong with these people?”! Many, many of us vote a resounding to NO to every proposition and every bond measure these louts float with their veiled threats and fearmongering that we’ll all fall in the ocean if these don’t pass, we won’t have policemen on the streets and the criminals will take over, houses will burn to the ground, heck, even whole cities might burn to the ground because we won’t have enough firemen, and worst of all, our children will suffer and become illiterate ignoramuses because we won’t have enough teachers and there won’t be enough money - ad nauseum. Unfortunately, there are enough strongholds of deep money on the left and gerrymandering that keep us in this downward spirals.
Bottom line: we are being held hostage by powerful unions and we have weenie legislators too afraid to lose their support. I don’t think there are many spines in Cali.
And unfortunately most Californians are so used to handouts and everything be given to them, that the mere thought of any cutback is incomprehensible and unacceptable. But do keep in mind that at the anti-tax rally in March (not the teaparty) in Fullerton, 15,000 people showed up just to express their frustration. So there is a thread. Which gives me an iota of hope.
21 May 2009, 10:01 pmDavid:
Can you say Gov. Whitman?
I agree that you guys missed an opportunity by not supporting McClintock, but you have it right now as Sharon illustrated. Whatever happened to the notion that conservatism is dead outside of the south? I guess some millions missed that Huffington memo.
21 May 2009, 10:42 pmSharon:
I guess I needed to put some sort of *sarcasm* tag on my post.
21 May 2009, 10:56 pmHarrison:
This is the problem with Liberalism… I saw it when I lived in France, I see it here… you start giving people “benefits” and they get used to it. Who can say “no” to a free lunch? Well, only the people who have to pay for it. Pretty soon you build up a social system so large that people become dependent upon it and it cannot be undone.
21 May 2009, 11:13 pmOther Dana:
Sharon, as a Californian, I bristle at your generalization of “What’s wrong with these people?”!
No Sharon, not at all - I got it - hence, the exclamation mark. Perhaps I should have used a happy face emoticon. It’s too soon in our relationship to shortcut to the exclamation I suppose.
21 May 2009, 11:13 pmOther Dana:
I guess I needed to put some sort of *sarcasm* tag on my post.
oops. In response to this…
21 May 2009, 11:15 pmLiberty Pundit | Oh, Those Stupid Voters That Hate High Taxes:
[...] Air Michelle Malkin LaShawn Barber Patterico Common Sense Political Thought Stop The ACLU Sister Toldjah Share and [...]
22 May 2009, 2:02 amEric:
Notice how we’re reverting away from those PC terms like “Firefighter”? Most firemen are MEN, and the few who aren’t are either lesbians or look like this: http://www.sherrysmith-fbb.com/Firefighting.html
22 May 2009, 2:34 amDana Pico:
You mean this one?
22 May 2009, 6:31 amJoe Shallenberger:
What’s the California Electorate know about governing themselves anyway? Don’t they know all successful governments throughout history have been ran by Statist Politburos charged with making any and all decisions for the electorate instead?
22 May 2009, 10:24 amPerry:
California’s problems: Blame the Bush economy too. You wingnut critics seem to have forgotten about that. Ask Arnold!
Californians have been both the causes and the victims of enhanced exuberance in real estate, for over thirty years. The chickens have come home to roost.
Prop 13, which drastically reduced property taxes, thus ruining the California education system, turned out to be a transformative decision by the voters.
Put that together with the weather changes producing wild fires in locations that should never have had homes built, and you have another major downer for Californians.
Bottom line, Californians have turned themselves into an ungovernable people. I doubt if there is even one leader who could be elected Governor who could do better than Arnold.
Californians, correct me, please, where my perceptions are off-truth!
22 May 2009, 2:29 pmDNW:
Anybody know what that is supposed to mean?
Was that quote evidence of a Peter Jennings moment? Or was the word “electorate” mistakenly substituted for “elected”?
Because as it stands, it reads as if suggesting that there are those among the electorate[voting citizens] who are supposed to be accountable to someone else or some other entity, and who have in this instance of tax revolt, failed in their responsibility.
Bring it on. I’ll sell a couple of Krugerrands and pay off my house.
22 May 2009, 4:10 pmDNW:
Yeah, Art. The “people” are always considered to be unconditionally “sovereign” according to progressive theory; until the moment that that “sovereign will” is expressed in a way which conflicts with the goals of the client class and its bureaucratic managers.
22 May 2009, 4:23 pmPhoenician in a time of Romans:
What’s the California Electorate know about governing themselves anyway?
About as much as they know about doctoring themselves, farming for themselves, programming their own computers, and building their own houses. There’s a reason why polities turn to representative rather than direct democracy.
22 May 2009, 6:01 pmSharon:
The rise of the elites. You don’t know how to farm, heal yourself, program your computers and build houses. LOL
22 May 2009, 6:40 pmPhoenician in a time of Romans:
Gee, Sharon - are you telling us that you raise your own food, do your own doctoring, wrote your own web browser and built your own house? Is it just possible that actually understanding and dealing with the sort of issues legislators have to deal with requires, I dunno, a full time commitment as well?
22 May 2009, 7:34 pmYorkshire:
If you travel to Yellowstone and other big wilderness areas run by the NPS there is a common sign in all of them. “Do Not Feed The Bears, lest they become dependent.” Why is it the NPS figured this out easily, and we’re still trying to invent the painless, non-dependent free lunch through every social program on earth.
22 May 2009, 7:44 pmDana Pico:
The Saxon in a time of Normans wrote:
Well, I guess that would seem to be just plain obvious, wouldn’t it? Yet it might be asked if what seems so obvious in the abstract has worked that way in practice? California has a full-time legislature, and the state is so fornicating helpless that it can’t do anything right. Pennsylvania has a full time legislature, so full of corruption and featherbedding that one of the top state Senators is going to the big house, a bunch of legislators got themselves in trouble for trying to put through a raise of their own pay in an after-midnight vote, and the Speaker of the House, who just happens to be my state representative, was elected, at age 22, to fill the term of his father when his father died in office, and has now been there for 26 years without ever having held a job in the real world.
The part-time legislatures, in states like Kentucky and Virginia, having only limited amounts of time to get their work done, do something really radical: they get their work done! The state budgets get passed, and are balanced.
Perhaps what seems like just obvious wisdom isn’t quite so wise as it seems.
22 May 2009, 9:32 pmDana Pico:
The Philistine in a time of Israelites wrote:
Well, why not turn to a professional ruling class, one which needn’t concern itself with the unsettling requirement of winning elections? Plato certainly thought that was the proper way to do things, and, just coincidentally, discerned that it was his class of people who ought to be the ruling class.
You know, if we saw some real efficiency in government by our full-time legislatures, both at the state level and in Congress, it would be solid evidence that your statement is accurate. Yet in our professional, full-time Congress, not only is the budget almost never balanced, most years it isn’t even passed on time. Our fiscal year ends on September 30th, every year, yet almost every year government departments run from October through whenever on continuing resolutions, extending the previous years budget, until the new appropriation can be passed. In FY2009, we had a huge Omnibus Spending Bill, covering several federal departments, which was finally passed in February, five months into the fiscal year.
Even then, no only is the budget nowhere close to balanced, the legislature lies to itself with smoke-and-mirrors “projections” of anticipated revenue; the executive is just as bad, if not worse.
22 May 2009, 9:45 pmSharon:
Gee, Sharon - are you telling us that you raise your own food, do your own doctoring, wrote your own web browser and built your own house?
Nope, I don’t, but in past generations, you didn’t have to be an “expert” to do those things. And, come to think of it, plenty of people write their own computer programs (my husband does), grow their own food (my brother does), do their own doctoring (anyone who works in medicine or holistic healing does), and build their own houses (I know several families who have).
Your insinuation that legislators are “experts” and, therefore, we should bow down and accept their dictates strikes me as decidedly un-American. In fact, it sounds decidedly European.
22 May 2009, 10:36 pmArt Downs:
Education has become a bloated sacred cow that is anything but cost effective. Those who suggest any economy are treated as allies of ignorance.
While we should encourage knowledge based education, this is not what we are getting. There are layers of goldplating that detract from the final product. Trendy and costly gimmicks often do not live up to their expectations. Californication has many facets. Remember that ‘Ebonics’ was a hot issue in Oakland.
The NEA and its allies in the so-called ’schools of education’ are creating this costly mess. Why did we foster illiteracy by dumping phonics? Why the disdain for memorization of the multiplication tables? Why are overpriced textbooks laden with political agendas being pushed?
23 May 2009, 4:53 amArt Downs:
In fact, it sounds decidedly European. Sharon
Euro-Twits have long been conditioned to accepting statism. Germans are among the worst of the lot. We can find a few aspects of their society to admire (sensible alcohol laws, autobahn speed laws) but there is a tendency to demand all sorts of certification.
Our nation evolved from what was then the most free advanced society on the planet and we attempted to improve. People came to this nation not for entitlements that were extracted from other people but for freedom: political, religious, and economic.
Yet there are some who would emulate the worst aspects of Euro-decadence.
The spirit of the Enlightenment is largely extinguished in the land of its birth and is flickering here.
Does anyone care?
23 May 2009, 7:16 amEric:
Probably because of the rise of cheap pocket calculators.
My Dad was the last generation trained to use a slide rule. I used to play with it as a little kid, and thought it pretty clever. That was right when HP and Texas Instruments started into the pocket calculator business, and took about 90% of the drudgery out of doing math.
23 May 2009, 11:08 am