If you’ve been following the news, you know there are a few issues that need correction in our Golden State. Starting with our not-so-golden budget, which is “balanced” annually with Olympic-level financial gymnastics.
Here are a few more that have cost Californians money and reduced our quality of life.
Do you recall the ballot measure labeled the “Safe Schools and Neighborhood Act?” That was the measure providing “free theft” up to $950.
Over the 10 years it was in force, this measure caused countless small business bankruptcies, and has driven retailers out of neighborhoods and communities, many of them communities where residents can’t easily get to the shopping center in another town or on the other side of town.
At this point, you have to ask the question: What were our legislators thinking when they offered it to voters as the “Safe Schools and Neighborhood Act?” The less-than-rational rationale was that the money that wasn’t spent on trials and incarceration would be spent on crime prevention, victim services and mental health and drug treatment.
More likely is that money ended up in unemployment checks for those laid off during the epidemic of retail theft, and dealing with the vandalism and crime attracted by abandoned buildings.
Yet, it took years to get this bill reversed, and then only by another ballot measure. We have to ask: Who were our legislators listening to? Certainly not the people who elected them.
Another fiscal horror story is the tens of billions of dollars being spent for a high-speed train from the middle of Nowhere, California to the middle of Nowhere, California. Originally planned to go from San Francisco to Los Angeles, that goal has been put in cold storage, and the focus is on finishing the Merced to Bakersfield line, which will cost $32 to $52 billion.
We can’t keep our reservoirs repaired and full to provide water for residents and farmers, or build new ones, yet we have billions for an electric train no place near California’s major business and population centers.
An additional concern are the annual wildfires in our California forests. You just have to ask yourself, “Do we really need to have this issue as an annual happening?” Our forests are fabulous assets that need added care and protection.
Over the years, it appears common sense — unglamorous — responses to California’s problems have been replaced with no sense, which has developed into glamorous high-profile nonsense like a $32 billion rail line from Merced to Bakersfield.
Oh, that’s right, California has a Governor who wants to be president. What record will he run on?
Not his stewardship of California.
Previous Milestones:
Milestones – Salute to Our Service Clubs – Opinion
Milestones – Majority Rule – Opinion
Milestones – Hypocrisy at its Finest – Opinion
Miles, you hit the nail on the head. You did leave out that the fires are much worse because the environmentalists insist we don’t remove dead trees or clean up the forest floor. This leaves more fuel for the fires.
One of the biggest problems in the state is that it is run almost entirely by leftists with no checks and balances at all. It is like an asylum being run by the inmates.