A smart politician!?

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For reference, I live in California. California is basically one step ahead of the rest of the USA in drowning itself in debt, useless projects, mismanaged resources, and general incompetent government. Three major cities have declared bankruptcy in the last year.

One of our politicians says this: http://arc.asm.ca.gov/member/77/?p=media&sid=431&id=12625

I'd vote for him, because unlike seemingly everyone else he seems to actually acknowledge that everyone as a whole has mismanaged, well, everything.

[scadugenga]

Your court system is killing me at work.

LA closed half of their civil courts.

HALF.

Irons I've got in the fire over there have local counsel tearing their hair out trying to get court dates that aren't a minimum of 18 months out.

As much as I'd love to move to the Monterey area--the state really needs to get it's crap straightened out first.

And give up the stupid gun law requirements. I can't move somewhere I couldn't own a Springfield Arms XDM...

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It's amazing how many problems California has.

America, as a whole, jails more people than just about any other industrial nation. California is even worse. Courts are completely overwhelmed, and prisons are at something like 200%. The problem is so bad, we're literally releasing everyone available for parole or early release that we can, and are talking about cutting sentences short for non-violent offenders.

We have some of the highest unemployment in the nation.

We have massive, massive debt. Several of our cities have declared bankruptcy. Cities, for crying out loud. Not little ones, either.

State legislature is gridlocked. It takes about a year for them to pass our yearly state budget. If we're lucky.

Our state entitlement and retirement programs are an absolute mess. Incredibly expensive and inefficient in the short run, completely unsustainable in the long run, and we already have more debt than we can deal with.

We have some of the highest taxes in the nation. Democrats seem to think that give them leave to spend five dollars for every dollar taxes take in, and then try and raise taxes again to make up for the deficit.

We have one of the most anti-business governments in America. We hate capitalism, and that attitude is directly reflected in our economy. Business are just like "well, fine, screw you too", and leaving California every chance they get.

We completely mismanage many natural resources, particularly water. Many of our state parks are struggling to stay open.

We've approved hugely wasteful, completely nonsensical projects, in particular a bullet train from San Francisco to LA. As a civil engineer, and with family members that are civil engineers, anyone who thinks the bullet train is even remotely a good idea is either completely uneducated in the matter, or a complete idiot.

Our public education system spends more money than just about anyone else per kid, with poor results.

Our upper education and university system has become incredibly expensive. Tuition and student debt has skyrocketed over the past five years or so. College is literally becoming unaffordable to anyone below the upper-middle class. It's much cheaper to go out of state.



And what's worse, I see many of these exact problems starting to play out on the national stage. Half the stuff Congress and Obama seem to do are the first steps that California took to diving off the deep end. No wonder I'm so opinionated on things like Obamacare.



Our weather's really nice, though. At least, if you live on the coast. In the valley it gets pretty hot in the summer, and in the mountains it gets pretty cold in the winter.



I can't move somewhere I couldn't own a Springfield Arms XDM...

I KNOW! My parents were going to get me a .40 XDM for my 21st birthday from the Reno Cabela's in Nevada, and had almost bought it when the person at the register saw the california driver's licence. Now I'm stuck with the still cool, but not as cool, regular XD .40 Tactical.