General Consultant Discussion

Recession - round 2

California is nearly ungovernable. Most observers point out that the Initiative process has enabled contradictory laws to pass. At the very least, the threshold for qualifying an initiative needs to rise. One glimmer of hope, though. In 2008 and 2010 they passed laws which fundamentally changed how redistricting is done. With any luck, the result will be fewer ""safe"" Leg districts, meaning that the winner won't be the winner of the primary. If that happens more, then the Leg could become more open to compromises. Still, CA will continue to lose population until this BS gets fixed.

CA is baked. If it didn't have beautiful weather and vistas in key locations it would already be a third world nation. Let's just assume California has a large liberal/left win majority, which it does. The left's answer to most budget deficits is to raise tax. Usually 95/5 Rich to 'all others' since there aren't enough 'Rich' to vote them out of office. Yet the 'rich' pay about 85% of all the taxes in CA. If they keep pushing up the taxes, the 'rich' say, 'screw this, I'm done' and move to Texas, Arizona, and other states with warm climates and MUCH lower tax burdens. Sure, Geffen, Sergei and others are so liberal that if taxes go up, they don't really care, especially since they have enough money for 1000 lifetimes. Although, don't know if you saw, one of the co-founders of facebook just renounced is US citizenship to protect the windfall he's going to get from the Facebook IPO (as a bunch of idiots buy the stock after it goes on the aftermarket) All that will leave california with is a handful of rich, a large middle class who doesn't want to/can't afford to move due to family, career etc, and a massive lower class, many of which aren't even legal citizens draining the Californian coffers in the form of welfare, educations, 'special needs', emergency room visits, medicare, food stamps, and a million other 'sanctuary state' entitlements. THey are just assuming that Obama is going to come in, in the end, and ask the rest of the 49 states to bail california out via a huge federal government bailout

Mark, your right-wing screed is inappropriate, and unhelpful to understanding a structural problem. I lived in CA during the 70's and early 80's (I left to follow a woman ..) and have watched with fascination since. Plenty of other reasonable observers see the solution differently. If you noticed, my comment was all about process and grid-lock, not whose fault it is.

Ok, so I suppose it's been the right wing folks who've has so much political influence in california that have made the state the fiscal laughing stock of the nation and a clone of Greece. Forgetting left & right, what are the top 5 causes for California's economic demise (and it started well before the 2008 recession). What are the solutions for those 5 causes? Would California's completely Democratic legislature EVER pass those solutions?

@JerryNorman - I think Mark is unapologetically right wing for sure. I'm more centrist myself and I have to look on and say that it sure seems that the CA situation is a good example of swinging too far to an extreme. Regardless, his point about raising taxes is right on the money. Illinois recently raised corporate taxes and several organizations have started up new initiatives in other states because of it. You cannot tax people to make up for shortfalls - you need to provide a great business climate to provide jobs and money to buy goods which feeds the cycle upwards. Providing entitlements always has a negative effect - oftentimes on the very constitutents the entitlements were meant to help. In my view, CA is leading the country in entitlements and they need to reign it in a bit to bring back a balance.

Kick each other in the nuts over in the politics group

This topic probably should have been posted there in the first place. SC really needs to make it easy to move these threads...

But to be fair to California, Illinois and Chicago seem to be right behind with pension entitlements for politicos......... Wish I would have gotten a city job back in the day...........

I don't see a Politics group on my dashboard. But I'm not going there anyway, If I want to argue politics, I'll do it on FB.

Actually, there is a political forum set up on the 90 Minds side.

Jeff, I'm saying, I don't see the 90 Minds Political Forum.

Maybe Robert can set it to display on the OASIS side also.

Sorry, Jeff. I misunderstood what you meant. FWIW, I'm just fine without such a forum here.

Just so you know, had I started that thread, it would have been in politics (and there isn't much 'debate' here because we definitely have more liberals than conservatives, at least ones that speak up :) Could be the heavy weight to the CA and Northwest representation) There is no way to bring up the Train Wreck that is California's finances and not have it be about politics. That state has more natural resources, the best weather, the most beautiful vista's of pretty much the other 49 states, and it's doing far worse than states like my own NJ which pretty much has nothing but Snooki to our name. And our state leans left also, but 60/40, Not 80/20 but Chris Christie is way more 'the terminator' than wishy washy Arnold ever was. Christie is not afraid to stand up to the public employee unions. Those same unions pretty much run California and are an extension of the DNC.

Mark - I am a CA native and it breaks my heart to see how we are slipping into the abyss! I wish we could have Chris Christie over here just for a few years but unfortunately, we will never vote anyone in to fix the mess. For heavens sakes we voted Brown in again even knowing who he is!

Mark, with all due respect, you have no idea about my politics. My post here was about the rules of decision making - the process - in CA, not what ought to be done with spending, taxes, etc. Nor ""whose fault"" it is. A big difference, especially among consultants where Process is King. Further, be careful about your labeling of others. My experience is that forums of small business people seem to lean more R than D. I use the party label on purpose: ""liberal"" and ""conservative"" names seem to have amorphous definitions which differ over time (like minutes, these days) and between accuser and accused (you might call me a liberal, I would call my self conservative --- but like Sage branding, you have no idea what I include in my ""brand name."")

@JerryNorman I apologize, but I don't think I ever accused or stated you are a liberal or democrat. I said California leans heavy liberal which is no secret to anybody. I simply stated that the left wing of California has pretty much destroyed the economics of the state. One can't blame the right wing because they are a permanent small minority. You then jumped in and called my fact based comment 'right wing screed' whatever that is, and people here who know me, probably thought ...'uh oh, now this is gonna get fun' but alas, I was extremely PC and just stuck with the facts as I know them to be. If there is anything factually incorrect with my statement, which seems to coincide with yours except you say 'politicians' and I say 'left wing politicians' let me know. Last I checked, the right wing doesn't have a whole lot to do with anything that passes for legislation in CA. So going back to the topic, is there any way to say Liberalism and its related politics isn't the primary contributor to California's fall from economic grace relative to other states who have far less going for them in terms of attractiveness? I'm all ears as to other potential reasons, but so far nobody has mentioned any.

Regarding the others, I've simply said of those that bring up the topic, while we have had various socialcast or live meetings together, I think it's pretty clear I'm outnumbered. If I'm not, which is possible, than the other Conservatives in the group are very quite about the topic. This is also why we setup a politics section as a separate group so as to avoid these scraps publicly and all who enter know what they are in for. But Wayne put up the first post and you can't move them. Not blaming wayne per say, but you can't talk about California's finances and not know that its all about their social welfare state mentality

Mark, wow. Not the sort of interaction I find useful. I never said you thought I was anything. I just said you (and implied anybody else) couldn't tell from my posting what I am because I only mentioned process. Your ""screed"" is full of conclusions. Facts are things that can actually be reference checked. At least in my world. Politifact and factcheck.org would take issue with the claims you laid out. A lot of people near the spectrum middle find the claim that ""those guys have to change how they vote"" to be repulsive and non-helpful. And minorities almost always affect legislative outcome, so claims of blameless minorities also turn off those near the middle. And, for what it's worth, much of the Northeast, including New England, is doing better than CA. So is WA and OR. CA has a set of pretty unique problems, at least for now.

In the 'reply' that you are referring to, you'll notice I didn't reference you or refer to your reply. Unfortunately Socialcast isn't threaded so it's not always that obvious. My reply was to Wayne Original Link. If I was referring to you I would typical use a @JerryNorman type reference. Now to your comment about fact checking. Asking Politifact is like fact checking via MSNBC. (http://politifactbias.blogspot.com/) I don't think the word 'fact' and politics even deserves to be in the same sentence. Sad but true Now, let's just assume for the moment, either of those sources is factual and objective. What do they, you or anyone else refute in my initial assertion that runaway entitlement spending and other liberal idealogically based laws and enforcement of them isn't the primary contributor to California's problems? You seem to keep wanting to create some kind of personal issue here between us that doesn't exist nor is intended. Let's go extremely 'politically correct' and take out every word I said that used the term 'liberalism' or Democrat. You seem to take my reference to either as some sort of derogatory remark. I'll just leave that as it is for the moment. What is wrong with the facts or conclusions of my initial statement. That's all I want to discuss here. You say that California has ""unique problems"". For a state that has more natural resources, population growth, weather, travel hubs, tourism, etc, etc, how is California disadvantaged or what problems are 'unique' to them beyond a certain political parties decades long stranglehold on all tax, spending and immigration law enforcement policy?