" and the state will be so weighted down by debt it will break off the continent and fall into the Pacific Ocean."

Hallelujah. Can I send my credit card over there and speed up the process? If we get the government we deserve, the best thing that could possibly happen to the US is the disappearance of california.

Maybe you could sell it back to Mexico?

In the event of another major fire in California, please--just let nature take its course.

I've been trying to get my head wrapped around this California thing. Why, in the present circumstances, would a state so deep in debt and moral hazard decide to double down on the thing that got them in so much trouble? It makes me want to grab them all by the neck and scream, "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?" It's almost like rebellious teenager who wants to test their parents to see if the rules are really the rules. Not only did they re-elect Boxer and give Moonbeam Brown another shift at the cash register, they passed all kinds of initiatives that will make it even easier to drunkenly spend money. May as well give a no-limit Harrah's card to a gambling addict.

Seriously, I can't figure out what the hell Californians think they are going to do to get out of their mess. Have they been brainwashed? I keep seeing the comment "California sends more money to Washington than it gets back in Federal dollars and services." I'll grant that point... but by now it's clear that that is only true because the state is writing IOUs like crazy and has been for decades. Yes, California is by itself one of the biggest economies in the world... "We're losing 2% on every sale, but we'll make it up on volume!" Meanwhile, strangling regulation and high taxes ensures that revenue will continue to drop even as government expands. The most charitable conclusion I can come up with is that 55% of Californians are just philosophically not serious. They don't care. (The less charitable conclusion is that they're trying to blackmail the rest of the nation.)

A federal bailout will probably be necessary at some point. Even if we indulged our wildest fantasies and cut the state loose, California has a hell of a long border and defending it just wouldn't be practical. And, California has some military facilities which are critical to the security of the nation and would be nearly impossible to move; we can't afford to lose those and we especially can't afford to have them fall into enemy hands. And that's ignoring the fact that California still holds substantial economic assets and a significant percentage of the nation's wealth.

So, given that a bailout is going to happen, I propose these terms and conditions for starters:

1. California drops back to territorial status for ten years. Its representation in the U.S. Congress is suspended; the state will be permitted one non-voting observer in each house of Congress. (The seats are not reapportioned; they are held in reserve.) At the end of ten years, Congress must vote to re-admit the state to the Union.

2. The territorial governor will be appointed by the President and confirmed by the U.S. Senate; the governor will appoint 50% of the representatives of each house of the state Assembly, with the people electing the other 50%. The governor, with the approval of a majority of both Houses of the U.S. Congress, will draw up a re-districting plan prior to the first election, which must comply with an anti-gerrymandering mathematical formula.

3. The territorial governor will appoint a state regulatory review commission. This commission has the power, during the territorial period, to render any existing regulation on the state's books null and void by majority vote. Any citizen of the state may request the commission to review any regulation. Any new or amended regulations must be approved by unanimous vote of the commission.

4. With regard to immigration, the laws of all states that border California will apply within California, with the most restrictive laws taking precedence. The governor will have the power to invoke the state's National Guard to enforce these laws.

5. During the territorial period, the Ninth Circuit's jurisdiction in California is suspended. The state's judicial system, including its Supreme Court, will be inferior to a panel made up of judges from the 4th, 5th, 6th, 10th, and 11th Circuits. This panel will have jurisdiction over both state and federal cases within the state, and will have the power to remove state judges by unanimous vote.

6. The California constitution will be amended to prohibit the state from passing a deficit budget, and to mandate that across-the-board proration apply in years when revenues fall short. All state obligations must be fully funded in the year in which they are incurred. County and local government bodies are banned from borrowing in any form. The state is prohibited from setting up or funding any defined-contribution plan for state employees, and unionization of government employees within the state is prohibited. New taxes and tax increases at any level of government are banned for ten years after statehood is re-granted. Term limits will be established as two terms each for the governorship and each house of the Assembly. For a period of thirty years after the re-granting of statehood, these new provisions are non-repealable and non-amendable except with the consent of a two-thirds majority of both houses of the U.S. Congress.

7. California's legal citizens are still Americans. Except as noted above, all provisions of the U.S. Constitution still apply in California. This cannot be allowed to turn into another Reconstruction.

You want to know why CA voted the way it did? Because approx 55% of the eligible voting population did not bother to cast a ballot. Approx 22.8M eligible voters and only ~10.3M votes.

http://elections.gmu.edu/Turnout_2010G.html

I vote (absentee) in CA and I am flat out pissed at the election results. Bad enough I had to put up with J Brown when I was a kid, but again? Really? WTF CA? And Prop 19 - you could have turned that into a significant money making opportunity for the state. Instead you let Trinity County and their pot-growing buddies (http:// vote.sos.ca.gov/maps/ballot-measures/19/) ensure that you will not see that particular revenue stream anytime soon. Good job. Of course you realize that those northern counties voted no in order to ensure that their revenue stream from illegal pot is not interrupted.

I would argue that the only thing evident from this election is the rejection of the population's responsibility to vote. When your returns are in the mid to low 40%, as a nation, I think the results say more about an apathetic and over-indulged population than they do about the way the nation is thinking. Truly, we get the government we deserve. Damnit.

The wags are commenting on the MA election. I don't know the reference.

There were three policy initiatives: (1) Remove the sales tax on alcohol (the prior excise taxes to remain). (2) Make it harder to obtain subsidies for building new housing. (3) Lower the sales tax from 6.25% to 3%.

All congressional seats went to Dems, including the remarkably bad Barney Frank. Governor Deval Patrick was reelected, despite raising taxes in innumerable ways and not accomplishing his last campaign promises, like not raising property taxes.

The wags say that MA must be filled with liberal alcoholics. The voters specifically rejected policies (2) and (3), keeping subsidies and taxes high. But, they approved (1), removing the extra sales tax on alcohol that was imposed about one year ago.

For conservatives (die-hard or otherwise) who might happen to read this, I elaborate:

No, I didn't like the Democrats health care bill and urged my senators and rep to vote against it but it was enacted anyways. However, health care has never been a problem that most Republicans cared much about. The Democrats enacted a lousy-to-terrible bill, but in contrast to the elephants, some of them actually cared enough to try to do something.

Then there's this prevalent mentality among Republicans at the federal level that the finances really don't matter. Well, they used to for some past Republican presidents (Nixon, Ford, Bush the older) but certainly not for G.W. Bush and hundreds of lap-dog Republicans in Congress during the last decade. With the budget in surplus in 2000, that meant it was time to enact big tax cuts. Then in the last 10 years what did the elephants do? Well, two tax cuts were enacted roughly concurrent with the onset of two wars. New prescription drug benefits doing were enacted at W's insistence without doing a thing to provide financing for them. Subsidies to farmers were increased by Republicans before the 2002 election. The Republicans of the last decade who actually cared about the finances were a minority.

And now the Republicans say it's necessary to bring spending under control, but naturally taxes can't be raised. If taxes are ever raised, recession will result, that seems to be the line.

According to a pre-election news article, 19 of 20 U.S. Senate Republican candidates didn't accept that humans are largely responsible for global warming. That means 5% were actually acquainted with the evidence and/or respectful of scientists. I haven't checked, but I'd bet a lot of these same elephants also think the public school system is failing students. The irony is they don't realize how uneducated they are.

And now we have Sarah Palin exciting a lot of Tea Party folks and other Republicans. Interesting how many Tea Partiers and elephants overlook that while she claims to be against excessive federal spending, she (a) once hired a lobbyist as mayor to try and milk Uncle Sam for more money, and (b) supported construction of a controversial and very expensive bridge mostly using federal money until it became unpopular. Now that she has quit a position of responsbility, she has it great - goes around exciting people with speeches, makes a lot of money getting fools to pay to listen to her, and will probably get to have lots of clout with absolutely no responsibility in the 2012 election.

So this columnist points out the Democrats often suck. Problem is, the Republicans suck worse. They've really gone downhill. At least in the past Republicans had a strong track record of making rational decisions most of the time. Those days, it seems, are over.

Iconoclast, you must not hang around here much. Complaints about W's spending cuts no ice if you're willing to give Obama's spending a pass, as evidently you are since you didn't mention it. You've repeated the well-demolished falsehood about Clinton leaving W a surplus, and you conveniently forgot to mention that little thing called 9/11.

And you've repeated one of the leftist Big Lies: the one that says that raising taxes inevitably increases government revenue, and lowering taxes inevitably decreases revenue. The Reagan Administration destroyed that one, yet leftists keep repeating it. Not to mention the implication that all wealth belongs rightly to the government, and that a tax cut is somehow a "gift" to the people who receive it. It's very much the other way around... all tax revenue is a grant to government. The people are at liberty to rescind that grant when they see fit.

Don't even get me started with that ridiculous global warming thing. The rest of that paragraph is self-fisking so I'll leave it alone.

@Andrew_M_Garland,

You want to talk about gerrymandering look at the 4th District in Massachusetts. If they found some way to redistrict it without politics -- i.e. pick a corner and build the districts until they do the population. Then start the next -- you probably would have very different results.

California is just as bad.

The wags say that MA must be filled with liberal alcoholics.

Well Andrew, that is where Teddy was from. :)

Iconoclast,

I have to second what Cousin Dave said. I'll just add, that it is congress who holds the purse strings. Not the president. And all through his presidency, . So that means, that there had to be quite a few democrats that were voting for all of that funding.

For the entirety of Obama's term, up to this election, the Dems have had a majority in the senate and the house, and were able to do as they please, without even including the Republicans. I seem to remember quite a few emergency closed door meetings where the republicans weren't even invited.

And now, we get the news (Surprised amy hasn't written on it yet) about Obama's upcoming trip to India. While I don't think going there and gladhanding is a bad idea (They are one of the few stable countries in the area, and aren't real thrilled with our pakistan support, since they don't get along), the size and cost are a really stupid idea right now. He needs to seriously trim it down, and spend as little as possible on this trip. Because this WILL bite him in the ass in 2012, if he doesn't. IF the figures are correct, $200 Million a day, is going to piss off a lot of out of work people.

Wow, yesterday I said to my coworkers that instead of waiting for the "big one" to throw us into the Pacific, we only had to wait for Jerry Brown to be sworn in. I DO NOT GET why anyone voted for him. I just don't understand it.

As a Californian, I was appalled at the election results. Virtually every piece of legislation that would have helped the CA economy was voted down, and every piece of legislation that would hurt the CA economy was voted in. Insanity.

I DO NOT GET why anyone voted for him. I just don't understand it.

It's because you live in a state where a majority of the population is certifiably retarded.

They aren't merely ignorant, ignorance can be educated. They aren't stupid, stupid can be convinced.

No, they're retarded. They are completely incapable of independent rational thought beyond the level of an eight year old child.

Connecticut is the same way. Half the population is functionally retarded. And I just don't know the cure for it.

Institute a testing program, those who fail are shot, or given the choice between being shot and surrendering their vote