- PALM SPRINGS, Ca -- In just
a few weeks time, California hits the wall.
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- And Americans should take a good, long look at the fiscal
and social wreck of the Golden Land, because California is at a place to
which all of America is heading.
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- In May, when five fund-raising proposals were put on
the ballot, Gov. Schwarzenegger pleaded with the overtaxed Californians
not to make their state "the poster child for dysfunction."
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- As The Economist writes, "On May 18th, they did
exactly that."
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- Arnold went to the White House for U.S. loan guarantees
for new state bonds. But with the president's approval rating wilting because
of a belief he is spending too much, the Obama-ites slammed the door.
- In Sacramento, a Republican blocking force is resisting
any new tax revenue. And with the state under a constitutional mandate
to balance its budget, yet facing a $24 billion deficit this July, a chainsaw
is about to be taken to state government.
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- Some 38,000 of 168,000 state prisoners may be released.
As Barack Obama is pushing universal health insurance, California will
cut Medi-Cal for the poor. Education will be slashed, resulting in a shortened
school year, thousands of laid-off teachers, school closings and an end
to summer programs in a system that has plummeted from the nation's best
to one of its worst, as measured by dropout rates and academic achievement.
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- The 10 campuses of the University of California face
cuts that may result in 50,000 fewer students and 5,000 fewer teachers.
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- What makes her fiscal crisis relevant to us all is not
only that California is our most populous state, with one in eight Americans
living there, but California has a gross domestic product larger than Canada's.
- Moreover, the demography of California today is the demography
of America tomorrow, just as the social and fiscal policies of California
in the last decade mirror those of the U.S. government today.
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- One-third of all U.S. wage-earners today have been amnestied
from paying U.S. income taxes, as the top 1 percent haul fully 40 percent
of that huge load. So, too, in California, the well-to-do and the wealthy
are hammered, which is why many have quietly closed their businesses, packed
and gone back over the mountains whence their fathers came.
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- Under George W. Bush and Obama, the U.S. government has
undertaken huge new responsibilities: No Child Left Behind, Medicare prescription
drug benefits, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the takeovers of banks and
auto companies, bailouts without end and national health insurance.
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- California, too, spent lavishly in the fat years and
issued bonds when state revenues did not cover the costs, bringing its
once-sterling credit rating down to the nation's lowest. So, too, U.S.
Treasury bonds, T-bills and the American dollar are now increasingly suspect.
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- Demographically, California is where America will be
in 2040.
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- White folks, who are leaving California as they did in
the millions in the 1990s, are below half the population. Hispanics, their
numbers surging due to legal and illegal immigration, are well over a third
of the population. The African-American share of California's population
is also falling, as the Asian share is rising, again from immigration.
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- Los Angeles, which is what most large American cities
will look like, is the most diverse city on earth. Has diversity been a
strength?
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- In the prisons and jails, and among the scores of thousands
in street gangs and the underclass, a black-brown civil war is underway.
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- In October 2006, the Financial Times reported the findings
of the famed author of "Bowling Alone" on what diversity has
wrought:
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- "A bleak picture of the corrosive effects of ethnic
diversity has been revealed in research by Harvard University's Robert
Putnam, one of the world's most influential political scientists. His research
shows that the more diverse a community is, the less likely its inhabitants
are to trust anyone - from their next-door neighbor to the mayor."
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- "In the presence of diversity, we hunker down,"
said Putnam. "We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse
than had been imagined. And it's not just that we don't trust people who
are not like us. In diverse communities, we don't trust people who do look
like us."
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- "Professor Putnam," said the Financial Times,
"found trust was lowest in Los Angeles, 'the most diverse human habitation
in human history.'"
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- Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan carried California nine
times. But the state is now a fiefdom of liberalism. John McCain's share
of the vote was smaller than Barry Goldwater's. California today believes
in Big Government, open borders, diversity, multiculturalism and the politics
of compassion. But what liberalism has wrought in California, its native-born
are fleeing.
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- Still, where California is at, America is headed.
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- Californians who are running away from the communities
and towns in which they were raised have Arizona, Idaho, Colorado, Utah
and Nevada to head to. But when all of America arrives at where California
is at today, where do the Americans run to?
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- Patrick Buchanan is the author of the new book "Churchill,
Hitler and 'The Unnecessary War." To find out more about Patrick Buchanan,
and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists,
visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
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- COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC
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