For decades, Democrats have straddled a divide: they sought to represent both the producers of government services and the low and middle income citizens who depend on those services. Democrats want the votes and the contributions of teacher unions, and they want the votes of the parents whose kids attend public schools. As long as the blue model worked, the contradictions could be managed.
Increasingly, however, the contradictions have come to the fore. Teacher unions want life employment for incompetent teachers; their representatives negotiate farcically unsound pension arrangements with complaisant politicians and want taxpayers to pony up when the huge bills come due. Other producers of government services also have their sweetheart deals.
The result is that the consumers of government services, many of whom of course are Democrats, are getting a raw deal. They are paying too much money in taxes to support a system of government that, however outstanding and dedicated some people in it may be, simply cannot deliver acceptable services at a reasonable cost. The Democratic claim to represent both sides fairly is getting harder to sustain.
What can’t go on, eventually won’t.
[Update a while later]
In rural central california the cops just tell you to make sure you have good insurance and not to bother calling them.
If that’s the case, then how can they justify having their jobs? Why not just fire them and close the police department if they aren’t doing anything?
That. Is exactly what the Kansas City police said when our car was broken into. They refused to come investigate just gave me a police report number over the phone.
If they ever have a referendum about raising taxes for the police department, speak out against it. If they’re not doing their jobs, they don’t deserve additional money.
It’s hard to say and likely varies from place to place. Either they aren’t doing their jobs or priorities make it impossible to be everywhere we need them.
The problem is, it is hard to tell which? How does revolving door justice play into it? Some criminals should never see the light of day. In scripture, a thief had to pay back twice what they stole (meaning for some it was profitable but others would look for another line of work.)
They’re busy making revenue–issuing speeding tickets and the like.
Were you actually asking us to sack a member of a government union?
“In rural central california the cops just tell you to make sure you have good insurance and not to bother calling them.”
Yep. Banana Republic.
I’ll probably go to my grave, not understanding how people can’t look at their elected officials, see the problems caused by their votes, and the people then not voting them OUT to save themselves from drowning. And CA isn’t the only place like this, unfortunately.
It’s too bad, I used to love CA.
I think local news is just as bad as national news so its hard for people to know what is going on in their own town.
wodun,
I don’t rely on the local news ti tell me that my taxes are going up, up, UP and the schools suck, the roads are going to pieces, and the police / fire response times are going up, the city council just spent $300K to turn 6 intersections into European style roundabouts AND the P/T city council just voted themselves and the mayor a 9% raise because they haven’t had one since their 11% raise three years ago, or a thousand other things that happen around me, that are part of the public records or there for me to see with my own eyes.
I’d say most ‘news’ is set to the side OF the elected worms who are doing this stuff TO us. And especially don’t tell me you’re having trouble keeping the roads repaired, then spend TONS of money tearing out a recently repaved section good road, to build stuff like a roundabout. Nor can you justify a raise for the city council, who have regular jobs, and deny a raise for city employees, because the city is having trouble paying its bills.
And this transfers to the state level and the federal level too. But as you said, some people tie themselves in knots, and THAT”S the part I don’t get.
Der,
It’s quite the mystery. But you can see how the lefty voters twist themselves into a pretzel trying to justify their beliefs right here…Our Beloved Jim and The Grand Admiral Gerrib are two fine examples.
All they have to do is observe….Spain? unemployment up 3% from last year. Idiotic Green subsidies being withdrawn….
California?
Circling the drain. You even have the irony of Moonbeam Brown trying to cancel out the very ideas he pushed in the 70’s as gov.
Greece? Rioting in the streets as you try to roll back the governmental largesse that cannot be afforded.
Italy….
France……
Detroit – decades of Lefty government gets you…Today’s Detroit.
And yet…………
Tax more!
Spend more!
We just didn’t do it quite right….or quite enough…or quite something……
And they can see the counter-examples…Texas….Canada…..etc.
But their heads are far too deeply imbedded in the sand.
If I lived out there my house would have turrets – both the architectural variety and the gun variety. And a moat.
They won’t give you planning approval for turrets. Try building them without approval, see what happens. A moat? Why, you’re just begging for the EPA to come arrest you for polluting a “waterway”.
I’ll just call the moat a “swimming pool” on the blueprints.
Of course, the state will be tipped off when they spot the “MOLON LABE” crop circles on Google Earth.
Your moat will be declared a wetlands and you will have to maintain it or have Fish&Game after you. EPA will find that you hadn’t filled out the Environmental Impact Statement correctly and demand you take it out. The zoning commission will find your moat a public nuisance and require you cover it over. The resource board will find that you are wasting natural resources and demand that you fill it in and plant it in native flora.
And of course there’s the psychological harm that all those nasty defensive structures would cause any poor schoolkid who happened by. The department of education will be on your case as well.
Make the gun turrets retractable like they were on the old B-36.
They’d know something was up if your pool had alligators but you didn’t live in FL or LA.
They’d know something was up if your pool had alligators but you didn’t live in FL or LA.
Tell then they’re Californian alligators, a species so close to extinction nobody even knew they existed. And the turrets are merely decorative. The 50 cals that happen to be in the turrets, well those are there to protect the wetlands that your small breeding group of Californian alligators happen to occupy.
Did crocodiles once live in the Colorado River delta? I found a claim that they did, but not much support for it. Anyway, that’s not all that far from California.
Victor Davis Hanson has lived, and discussed this in detail, such as – http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson020313B.html
WRM, VDH and http://fredoneverything.net/ – essential voices.
Check out what McMegan has to say http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/07/why-hugo-chavez-was-bad-for-venezuela.html
about the late Mr. Chavez.
“Take chunks of the house and give them out to the poor.” Well actually, not giving chunks of the house out to the poor is derisively called the Trickle Down economic theory.
Every time and place has its charismatic champion-of-the-poor leader with a latent authoritarian streak, who assumes power in time of crisis and proceeds to make everything worse. The scary thing is not that person, but the defenders of that person, who offer weak, thinly reasoned explanation of why that person is doing the right things coupled with scalding-scolding criticism of anyone who would dare complain.
A lot of us around here are Libertarian as is Ms. McArdle, I guess, and the idea of a successful state-run enterprise is heresy. Well, PDVSA was a successful state-run enterprise . . . until Mr. Chavez ran it into the ground. “Obamacare” could be a successful state-regulated system . . . if you had Mr. Romney instead of Mr. Obama in charge.