(2 articles) CALIFORNIA RUINATION and LIBERAL RUINATION

If You Live In California Things Just Got A Whole Lot WorseWhy does the state of California seem to be so incredibly hopeless? These days California can’t seem to do anything right, and if you live in California things just got a whole lot worse. Governor Brown has announced that the state budget deficit for this year is going to be much larger than projected, that more government services are going to be cut and that voters are going to vote on another round of tax increases in November. Meanwhile, unemployment is sitting at 11 percent and extended federal unemployment benefits for workers in the state are ending. Because California is one of the worst places in the nation to conduct business, there has been a steady flow of companies leaving the state. Those companies have taken a whole lot of good jobs with them. Due to the lack of jobs and a steady stream of impoverished immigrants coming in from Mexico and other countries, poverty in the state has exploded and crime is rapidly increasing. California may be the land of “endless sunshine”, but for the California economy there are only dark clouds on the horizon. The state is coming apart at the seams and there is not much hope that things are going to turn around any time soon. Read More

Liberals Ruin EverythingWhen friends suggest that the election in November will be close, I half-agree, with a twinkle. Because I don’t think it will be close. That’s because this lot, as the Brits say, don’t have it sorted — unlike Bill Clinton in the 1990s, who knew how to seduce the middle class. It’s a point of pride among urban liberals around the president not to understand the ordinary American. It’s been this way ever since John Kenneth Galbraith’s bestsellers like The Affluent Society taught liberals how to sneer at the ordinary middle class rather than understand it. Of course, you can be a governing elite and be wrong about everything and still not wreck everything. That’s because, as Adam Smith said, there is always a great deal of ruin in a nation, even at the best of times. But when a political dynasty has been getting things wrong for the best part of a century, then the ruin can get to be pretty serious. And that is what is agitating the average white guys of the nation like Rudy Guy: the specter of ruin, economic, moral, and personal. Read More