Thursday, May 13, 2010

Meg, Steve, and Me

I take voting pretty seriously, even though it's often a lost cause. California voters are dead set in this death march off the cliff. Decades of reckless entitlement spending has turned the state into a Liberal paradise. We have the third worst education system in the country, and yet also the most expensive. We have the second highest unemployment rate in the country. The highest taxes on businesses of any state in the country which is why businesses flee the state / are not hiring. The highest state and sales tax.

California is the posterboy state for why Liberalism does not work. And yet, you can't get the damn Liberals out of the state legislature to save our lives. I looked it up. The Democrats have controlled the State Legislature since 1970, controlling the creation of all bills and laws not otherwise voted on by the people. Now, I'm not trying to suggest that Democrats are bad in a general sense. Most aren't. But when one group stays in power too long, the radicals in their party--who would never get elected otherwise--start to creep in.

Had George Bush served a third term, and the Republicans not been voted out of congress in 2006, I'll bet you they would have seriously been working on a Constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman, thus banning gay marriage at the federal level--for a very long time. Not cool. So see? I'm even saying is not good when my own party stays in power too long and the radicals from our side start to creep in.

Anyway, we get Republican governors, and every time I get my hopes up that they'll fix the mess in this state, but they go to take on the Liberal State Legislature and they cave. Schwarzenegger ended up being a fairly big disappointment. Still, he's a lot better than Gray Davis. Wow, he sucked. I think Jerry Brown has been an awesome Attorney General, but I would not want to see him be governor again. I'm too young to remember the last time he was governor, but I fear what would happen if he was, with no one to stop the Liberals from making our problems a lot worse. Arnold has atleast tried to stop the bleeding. I voted for his proposals during the special election. But he grossly under estimated the stupidity of California voters who prefer the march off the cliff.

Margret Thatcher once said, "The problem with Socialism is you eventually run out of other people's money." We've run out of other people's money, and when Arnold makes cuts that people fight like mad to oppose...I don't know what the hell is wrong with people, it's like they don't get that we can't keep spending. Like voters think, "I can't be out of money. I still have checks left!"

Look, I really hate the cuts in education. I was going to apply to Sac State, but I can't. They had to close their doors to people like me who already have BA degrees who are seeking another. His cuts affect me directly, and this really sucks for me. But I acknowledge that it has to be done. So I go to a JC for a couple years and hope things clear up until then. You make due without for a while.

I was hanging outside one of my classes talking to a fellow student. And this guy walks up to us asking us to sign a petition to increase spending for parks and libraries. The young woman I was talking to immediately took the clipboard and signed. I asked the guy how it would be paid for. He told me it was free. I pressed him on that and he told me this whacked out story about how drug dealers living in Columbia wanted to give back to the community so they were funding the bill. I really wanted to call the guy a moron for actually believing such an idiotic story. But you know, this woman I was talking to already signed it, and I didn't want to make her feel stupid, so I let it go.

But this in the mentality of people in this state. Tax dollars does not mean 'free money.' How many Liberals would have even asked the guy what the extra spending was going for? What if the petition was to pay for the state to pave all the parks in asphalt and turn them into dodge ball courts? Does it even occur to dumb ass Liberals to even ask these kinda of questions before volunteering to spend other people's money on crap we don't need?

Anyway, back to the governor situation. Putting aside the fact Steve Poizner has a really terrible last name, I'm leaning towards voting for him over Whitman. Whitman might be closer to my own political views--she's more of a social moderate like I am, but I get a sense that she's more likely to cave and side with Liberals. She also doesn't articulate herself well in "what I would do as governor" speeches. Most of what she says is meaningless "we have to get America back to work" bs fluff that they all say. That might not be an indication of the type of leader she would be, but it does make it more difficult to really judge the direction she says she will go versus how she'll really go. That, and I'm really not happy about the fact that, by her own admission, the only reason why she got into politics and registered to vote a couple years ago was because she didn't like what government policies did to her business.

Poizner is a lot more concrete in what he has to say in his speeches. Both seem to know the issues, but as much as people hate politicians, I think it really takes a politician to do a politician's job. Arnold is a good example of a non politician that means well, but just couldn't get it done. Alright. I made up my mind. I'm voting for Poizner in the primary even though he's way behind in the polls.

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