Could you recommend an article summarizing the policy changes? I want to rub it in a guys face who always brought up California as the failed liberal state. I anticipate him countering with all the articles claiming the surplus is bogus that are on the top of google.

California is a horrible example. Uber rich people like the ocean and will basically swallow any tax increase to look at it. Also they are blessed with silicon valley and capital gains are taxed as ordinary income. CA fiscal policy would bankrupt most states.

Maher's Cali-rant.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-m...b_3999675.html
excerpt:

Rich people also are big fans of the Baltic, apparently. Germany and Sweden somehow manage to avoid bankruptcy despite having taxes.

Also, man, boy did California get lucky to inherit Silicon Valley. Probably lets them fund their unrelated world class comprehensive public higher education system. So lucky!

Wonder why Detroit is in such bad shape! Tons of taxes, great public higher education!

Actually Ann Arbor keeps thriving, and Oakland and Macomb Counties do just fine themselves. Those are probably more relevant, since U-M is still pretty elitist.

DCCC just sent out a fundraising email with the subject of "John Boehner is pathetic" heh.

Cali. doing fine, now with a surplus. Merely got borked by harsh downturn combined with cuts in federal spending. Raised taxes, budget is in order thanks to dem supermajority. They say everyone has fled, which explains why avg 3 bedroom house is 400k.

Edit--reading Maher stuff now.

Edit2--I'm a crazy Cali. homer, other than excessive pensions.

Detroit doesn't have "tons of taxes". It has tons of vacant and abandoned homes, though! So no revenue. Detroit provides terrible education, though, also terrible all of the other public services.

Cali vs mich=inflow of people and capital vs outflow. Thing is, CA is a pretty nice place to live physically and socially. If one leaves the state one or both dimensions will almost always be worse.

I wonder why.

Yeah, you do.

Riverman can you identify what aspect of Detroit's fiscal policy differed from other Rust Belt cities that are not currently post-apocalyptic wastelands? Was it that Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Chicago and Toronto instituted the Ryan budget while foolish Detroit unionized the mayor's office or something?

Not off hand honestly. I recently wrote something, but it still needs editing. I happen to have a lot of family involved in California politics at various levels. A lot of the changes that are occurring aren't even realized yet, but they will become a model for other states. My brother in law for instance is the main architect in the greening on the port of L.A. The carbon reduction, and efficiency increases will be felt across the country, but a lot of these changes are just taking effect (in the last 1-2 years).

I have a cousin who recently got elected to city council after being mayor Veragosa's right hand man for many years (I'd call him the brains of the operation, but...). My father in law is port commissioner down here as well.

I can say that the people who are involved in a lot of the major changes that are taking place in California are all doing exceptional work with an intelligent long term vision for California. That's generally been the halting place for most politicians. They want quick immediate changes that will help them get re-elected. Not long term projects that will have little political impact on their careers. That's honestly all changed since Browne has been in office, and he is a major reason all of this is happening. I have 5 family members that have been actively involved in California politics well before Browne took his second step into CA politics, and a couple that were there during his first round. All of them give credit to Browne, even if they disagree with some of his approaches.

It's easy to get disillusioned by how horrible all of these governors have run their states. But there will be a model for how to fix it and move away from these horrible Republican models. CA is not there yet, but it will be very soon. The biggest question is, will anyone else in the country really listen to what CA is doing, and look to follow in it's footsteps? I'm not sure how optimistic I am there, based on how propagandized most people have become, but I'll still hang on to some hope.

First, Pittsburgh has done very well. Second, it is my fault for naming a city when we were talking about states, but my argument was that jacking up taxes worked for CA because it is really pretty whereas it is a recipe for disaster elsewhere. The rust belt states you cite are indeed instructive examples.

In before you cite OH and IN where Republican governors have imposed sanity.

Man are we really supposed to pretend you have any ****ing idea what you're talking about? Like that this **** is based on numbers rather than just generalized anti-union animus and a vague awareness of unions being in the news?

You hates yourself some unions. This has been established.

Your argument is trivially proven wrong by looking at the entire rest of the industrialized world. Or is it that rich people also can't get enough of the scenic Lake Ontario coastline so they don't flee Toronto for the islands of sanity(read: Right to Work states). If only Detroit had been on THAT lake they could've gotten away with high taxes.

Who was talking about unions?

I am talking about fiscal policy dude. At the state level. Lets stay on topic.

Don't know that much about clev/det/chi but Pitt struck me as pretty CA in nature, with some exceptions obv, when i was there for two years. I think it was that rationality/big education were implicitly understood to run the show (pitt/cmu/museums), especially over old boys and big biz. When big biz has threatened to leave CA the answer has almost always been, go for it--hear it's nice in phoenix/north carolina.

Taxes are terrible and drive away rich people, except for in all the places where that didn't happen. But trust us, taxes drive away rich people.

I've struggled quit a bit with understanding why cutting revenues so drastically by so many top revenue earners in our country over the last 35 years, has evolved into massive deficits and deterioration of the U.S's infrastructure, and social framework. All of these states running massive deficits. Hmmm... I wonder why. This isn't rocket science. Economics is fairly complex, but you can't starve revenue and keep expenditures the same or slightly increase without the eventual red ink.

This whole situation the U.S. is in, has been a systematic attack by the wealthy to grab a bigger piece of the economic pie. And guess what... it's worked! Now what? Now they have more, people have less, median wages have remained flat. The U.S. has the largest income inequality in the world. The wealthy in this country are getting what they want. What do you think is next? Cut more taxes?

lol fly

goal post shifting, strawmanning and a personal attack. all that is left is a gratuitous racism allegation.

Again, you seriously have no idea what fiscal policy any of those states implemented. And what goalpost shift is there? Maher was laughing about how all the dire warnings for CA didn't come true, you brought up a city(???) that has been in decline for like 30 years to prove that CA's policies were a fluke, I pointed out that CA-style high tax/high service policies work in literally dozens of other situations.

Maybe Canadians just don't know about how sane things are in Indianapolis yet. Or even better, Mississippi.

He said you hate unions. Do you agree with the idea of the "free" market?

Not 'again,' and yes I do.

Fyi, Browne's economic model is almost identical to Clinton's when he took over and cleaned up the mess from Reagan/Bush. But Clinton just benefited from the .com boom, that's the only reason why the country rebounded.

At least more intellectuals are speaking out finally, and we need to support them. This propaganda turning U.S. citizens into corporate apologist needs to come to a dying end.