State caught in avalanche of job losses - Los Angeles Times
Unemployment in California shot up to its highest level in nearly 26 years in January, leaving more than 1 in 10 workers without a job.
Figures released Friday show that 79,300 jobs were lost in the state last month, bringing the total number of unemployed to 1,863,000, or 10.1% of the workforce. That’s the highest since the rate touched 10.4% in 1983.
California spends far more than it takes in, despite having some of the highest taxes in the United States. It is hostile to business, and the middle class is fleeing in droves. It runs huge deficits every year, yet the Dem dominated legislature refuses to do anything effective to cut spending.
Now one in ten Californians is unemployed. Does any of this sound familiar? It should. It’s what Obama and the Democrats have in mind as a “solution” for the rest of the country.
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From the picture shown in the newspaper, I would hope that the Dodgers enlist the help of the E-Verify. With our unemployment like it is, I certainly hope none of the jobs go to illegal aliens using the social security number of some unsuspecting US citizen.
I keep thinking of Heinlein’s quote, “Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as “bad luck.”"
Twenty years ago, my uncle, who at the time was in charge of facility maintenance for Lockheed, began complaining about the increasing number of irrational environmental laws in California. One of the worst, in his words, was a law requiring the run off from parking lots to be cleaner than the rain. It appeared that Sacramento expected major companies to devise brilliant solutions to this and other problems using company budget. Instead, Lockheed and the rest of the aerospace industry left the state. For some inexplicable reason the unemployment rate has risen Obviously a case of “bad luck”.
This is my greatest fear, California is a pefect example of what happens when liberal democrats get everything they want. Unchecked spending and social programs without regards for the results. Honestly, I think they should be allowed to fall flat on their face. I have pity for the good citizens who do not advocate what their elected officials are doing, having said that liberalism needs to be exposed for the failure that it is. Unfortunately that will never happen. California is deemed to big to fail.
The problem with the libs s they never seem to learn from their solutions. No amount of money seems to be enough for them, it’s like they think there’s some magical number they can achieve that’ll suddenly cause the clouds to open up and the angels to decend.
Californians can flee, but what about the rest of us when this goes Nationwide with Obama, Reid and Pelosi?
I think we should start calling California the Rust Coast as it is following the same evolution that turned the once dominate industrial states of the Great Lakes region into permanent economic basket cases.
Once a regions dominant political culture becomes overtly hostile to business and economic creativity, the region’s prosperity is at an end.
The democrats running that zoo called California don’t care that their social spending and “make the rich pay their fair share” tax structure is wrecking the state.
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Couple that with the state’s unwillingness to require that the K-12 students actually learn something that employers would value rather than ethnic studies, gay appreciation, and activism 101.
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California is a perfect example of what happens when “fairness”, multiculturalism, sanctuary mentality and general incompetence by government is demonstrated.
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Bankruptcy — “Yes We Can !!”
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I agree 100% with Georgegirl on E-verify. The U.S Senate is attempting to dilute or eliminate it, and they removed it from the stimulus package. Please all of U go to Numbers USA, Fair or CAPs and e-mail or call your reps and voice your support for E-Verify so that Jobs created by the stimulus package go only to unemployed Amercans and not to illegals.
http://digg.com/users/bigbird911
CA’s private sector was once the envy of the world. Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and much more.
Now, people are LEAVING. I never thought I would see the day. Despite the perfect weather that is far better than almost anywhere else in America, despite the natural beauty, people are LEAVING. Whites are going to the US interior while Asians are going back to Asia (and thus America loses these highly productive people totally).
Again, the decision to leave California is much harder than the decision to leave Detriot or Cleveland. Yet, it has come to that.
Read how government is set to destroy Silicon Valley, through a combination of many left-wing ideas.
California’s economic prosperity will converge with that of Mexico. I doubt anyone could argue otherwise.
And as goes California, so goes the nation.
“No amount of money seems to be enough for them, it’s like they think there’s some magical number they can achieve that’ll suddenly cause the clouds to open up and the angels to decend.”
That is why leftism is a religion, and a very fanatical one at that, unlike, say Christianity.
See here how avoiding leftism can make a woman beautiful.
Hey, if the USSR was not too big to fail, how can anything else be?
I never bought this ‘too big to fail’ argument.
http://digg.com/politics/California_UE_rate_reachs_10_real_UE_is_15_20
Real Ca UE rate(U-6) is closer to 20% as i explain in my Digg link.
Ca is totally screwed, and not just with 10-20% UE rate:
I am almost a native California and my heart bleeds real bad. This great socialist state in which half the population is on the state dole is effectively BK. Too bad, I have no pity and ask for none. I don’t depend on the state at all and am entirely self sufficient. I only that they provide a min degree of public safety such as policing and maintaining the public roads and parks.
Ca is such a huge parasitic socialist state with every ones hand in the state cookie jar via medi-caid, educational spending and welfare services that this budget mess should be impacting a large % of the population here.
The budget just passed gave CA a brief respite but imposed some nasty tax increases, which chiefly benefit the state workers and the welfare-sucking low-income parasites such as illegals who never pay taxes anyway. The middle class will get squeezed hard, and many will pack up and leave CA.
Newest self-help book:
“Fail Your Way to Success…the Obama Way!”
Guess what, guys — those refugees deserting the sinking ship? Who do you think they are? They’re the ones that sponsored the wrecking to begin with … the ones who supported wholeheartedly the idiotarian policies that have been the destruction of California, and now that it’s started looking like an unpalatable husk those same wreckers, like ichneumon wasps, are swarming away from the ruins looking for all new places to destroy. Like they’re doing to Oregon and Arizona and Colorado. Coming to YOUR state Soon. That’s a promise.
Here’s another similarity: CA had the opportunity to open up some offshore areas to oil exploration, but the democrats decided it was not the right thing to do for the environment. Of course, the revenue would have come in handy in the budget crisis, but never mind. It’s always ideology over pragmatism here…
Not all of us native Kalifornians are socialists. Unfortunately, the fiscally conservative are a minority. Every election there is a half dozen measures that only cost a few million dollars. And every year the almost always pass. Few on the left seem to understand that there is a limit to how much money can be sucked out of pay checks and businesses before people start looking for a new home.
Even with state bankruptcy looming, people still want the state to spend more money on their idiotic pet project.
For the past 20 years I have ALWAYS voted “no” on all ballot measures that spend money, even in cases where I supported what the money was for. Now, despite my best efforts, the state is screwed up beyond repair and I’m suddenly an unemployed, high skilled computer specialist, in the heart of the world’s computer industry.
Thank you, Megaera, for a ray of hope, however small. It’s possible those who see the wreckage as raw materials and opportunity will come back.
I’m marooned in California, recently unemployed, and marvel at how no one seems to blame the democrats who have held Sacramento in a strangle hold for the last 20 years the least bit accountable for what has happened. People are blaming the republican minority for not given in to raising taxes higher! If I could leave this koo-koo bird state I would. It will take a decade to dig this state out of the ditch it got itself into and there are no shovels to be found.
We are all Californians now.
So what? You were warned that if enough conservatives embraced your POV on McCain all Americans would be eating the Obama shit sandwich for the next four years. You said that was perfectly fine with you, and that it could even be good for the nation and conservatives. So, why don’t you just shut up and enjoy the shit sandwhich you were so eager for all Americans to experience.
Maybe you should send your photo to this site http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2009/03/im-sorry-obama-voters-express-their.html, saying that you are sorry that you didn’t vote for McCain.
California was a red state as recently 1988. Yes, it went for Bush I in 1988.
But since then, every single measure of quality of life has declined. Tuition at UCLA and Berkeley used to almost free for state residents. Now, it is high. The private sector used to be the envy of the world, and still is, but the decline is evident.
People were flowing in. Now, conservatives are leaving. Leftists are not leaving, though. They are gleeful and the influx of Mexicans they can now experiment on.
Check out the electoral history of CA. It went to the GOP in 1988, but since then, the margin of Democrats victory has gotten wider and wider.
The last hope was the Governator. But he could not reign in the idiots. He was the last hope, and he failed.
It is not the leftist Californians that are leaving. It is the CONSERVATIVE Californians that are leaving. There used to be a lot of conservatives in CA. Hell, Reagan was from CA, and it voted red as recently as 1988.
Conservatives are leaving CA.
Have we elected Barack Obama or a Robert Mugabe lookalike? I’m afraid we will know that answer soon enough, but maybe too late to cure.
Or the McCain shit sandwich for eternity. California will eventually embrace sanity again. If not, well, no McCain would have saved it either, you numbfuck. We tried the McCain-style savior - his name was Schwarzengger. If we’re doomed, better to know now, than when all possibilities are hopeless.
Oh, and Aaron? Go suck some moderate socialist cock, why don’t you? Put that mouth of yours to some use more in keeping with your mindset.
One more thing, Aaron. If you lesser-of-two-evils dumbshits ever get behind an actual conservative, you’ll have my vote, too. I didn’t vote for McCain, but I didn’t vote for Obama, either.
Get a clue, or watch your party hit the trash heap of history. I keep telling you nitwits I’m not a Republican. You want my vote, give me something I want to vote for.
However, your whining is rather enjoyable. Keep it up. Maybe if you feel enough pain, you’ll find better candidates than the McCains of the world.
Probably not, though. Mokes like you are so stupid you’d rather whinge about people like me, rather than clean up your own act.
You just don’t understand: to actual conservatives, its not a huge deal whether the shit sandwich is flavored Dem or GOP - it’s still shit sandwiches, all the way down.
CA is BK because it hands out free subsidized health care for illegal aliens and their anchor babies. LA county alone spends over 400 miilion each year at taxpayers expense to provide health care care to the poor, mainly to illegals.
US and CA both suck up to the illegal alien lobby/socialist do-gooders, and cheap labor -exploiting corporations in granting freebies such as free healthcare for illegals.
Message to Arnold and state of CA: U are a bankrupt state now but during the flush times U wasted billions of dollars for LAUSD school construction projects put up in the worst Los Angeles illegal alien blighted zones which are nothing but scam/ fraud projects which put CA on the hook for billions in bonds which the now BK state cannot pay
CA is 40 billion in the red and bankrupt due largely to providing free benefits to illegal aliens who freeload on the free education and healthcare , meanwhile sending back remittances back to their home countries and not providing one cent in taxes to pay into the CA social security net
CA is $40 bn in the red and bankrupt because CA ships $50bn a year out to support other states in the form of excess federal taxes. If CA got back what it puts out in taxes, CA would not be in the red.
So if you live in a welfare queen state, then you shouldn’t be bitching about CA’s position all that much.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/sr139.pdf
I wish that at age 85, I could look as good as Robert Mugabe. The man looks good for 85.
I live in California. Is it okay if I bitch?