Like I Said Before...

...Read George Will. This editorial really nails the situation in California. It perfectly outlines the facts and motives behind California's ongoing financial collapse and impending bailout; places blame precisely where it belongs; and clearly defines the dangers of where this is all leading. What happens when the Obama administration bails out the State of California and tries to take over it's management? Just as it is doing with some of the largest businesses in the country? That is going to go well. The insanity is spreading.

Is anyone paying attention? California is in the beginning stages of what will inevitably happen to the country as a whole if we continue down this path to quasi-socialism and the era of the nanny-state. The process is fairly easy to follow:

• The politicians figure out that there is a large voting block that is, or wishes to be, dependent on the government for some portion of their life
• Said politicians instigate programs that further enable dependency
• Those who are dependent on the government programs begin to feel that it is their right to be supported by the government
• The dependents begin to demand more and more of their support be provided for, and politicians listen, because the dependents vote and are becoming more numerous
• Meanwhile, these programs have to be paid for; so the politicians have to raise revenues, and the only way they have to do that is through taxes.
• It goes pretty well at first: the voting block is happy, their numbers continue to increase and they outnumber the ones paying the taxes. So the politicians continue to get elected, which is all they are really interested in anyway.
• Then a curious thing starts to happen: the demands of the dependents start to overwhelm the resources of the government.
• About this time the government discovers that the rolls of the taxable are starting to decrease; or at least the amount of the revenue has reached its maximum.
• At this point the government has to make a decision: It cannot raise anymore money, so it has to start cutting services.
• Who suffers? Who gets to do without? And what do they get to do without? Well, the dependents have turned this choice over to the government, and the government has to start deciding what is important in their life.
• The starting point will be "tough decisions" that include the rationing of services. Some of the initial phases will include withholding medical care for non-essential treatments and prescriptions from those that might not really need them. And the government gets to decide who gets rationed. Don't think that is possible: just take a look at what is happening currently in the UK and Canada. Ask someone who lives there how long they have to wait to have a test performed; or which terminal patient has to do without meds that may make them comfortable. It is happening. NOW. In the great realms of socialized medicine, it is happening now, because there is not enough revenue to take care of everyone dependent on the system.
• It will have to continue, just cutting the medical will not be enough. It will continue. How far does it go? Does anyone remember bread lines in the Soviet Union? They were all dependent on the government, too; led to believe they would be provided for by the politicians they trusted.

Do we see the pattern? Can we not tell that California has reached capacity. It can no longer maintain services it has promised to provide it's citizens, and it can no longer raise taxes. The providers have had enough; the achievers have been bled dry.

What do they do now?