I get it, but California's problems have been in place long before this downturn. It was only back in 2003 that they had a $35+ billion budget crisis.

You can certainly believe what you want, but bou complain about Republicans spending like drunken sailors while ignoring the fact that Obama's deficits have been significantly larger, and this leads you to believe the Republicans are terrible. At the same time California's legislature has been spending like drunken sailors and this leads you to believe the federal government should give them more money we have to borrow from others.

You are also willing to cut California (and the greater NY metro area) slack because of its complexity, size, and diversity while ignoring that the entire country is significantly more complex, large, and diverse.

I understand what you are saying, but the position is still isn't sensible to me.:shrug:

Because voting for someone JUST for economic/budget reasons, is proof of intellgence. :skep:

I believe McCain would have probably been better for the budget, but I didn't vote for him for other reasons.

Floriduh has higher average scores in all aspects and grade levels of the National Assessment of Educational Progress than California according to the U.S. Department of Education. Maybe that is due to California averaging over 25% more students per teacher than Floriduh does.

Comparing percentage of the population with high school diplomas, Floriduh is a not very good 34th with 85.9%, but California is even worse at 45th with 81.3% according to a report from the Census Bureau from 2004.

When talking about post-secondary education California does do better than Floriduh for both bachelors degrees (29.4% vs. 25.4%) and advanced degrees (10.4% vs. 9.1%), but which is more relevant when comparing the total citizenry of states, the relative achievements of the minority or the relative performance of the majority?

And did they include immigrants in those numbers?

Florida people are older and less likely to be an illegal, so their educational stats SHOULD be good. In fact they should be even better than they are.

To make it apples-to-apples, take two US citizens, both the same age. I can guarantee the one from Cali will have spent more total time in school than the one in FL.

There are less illegals in Florida than in California, but there are still a lot of them here. If it is such a big problem for your state and is dragging your educational system down so much it would probably make sense to do something about it rather than staging a boycott and bitching about Arizona doing something about it.:idk:

As for your assertion, maybe, but we don't know because it seems the US Dept. of Ed. takes each state as it is, not as you may want it to be.:shrug:

So you're getting my point...but I might add that NYC and Cali kind of act as support, supply, and distribution centers the rest of what I like to call "flyover territory" in between (read: The rest of the US).

So, while the rest enjoys the spoils of what these great metropolises bring to the entire country, they perhaps have to realize as well that they're also the hardest hit areas in times of trouble.

Just saying...Cali's problems are more complex than Podunk.

I don't think you can just blame Liberals, that's fucking absurd.

Blame CA bloated social programs. If you can't pay for them, you can't pay for them. People will make due, they have for at-least a few thousand years. Just means white people working in orchards instead of mexicans.

And America's problems are more complex than California's, yet you don't seem to take the same restrained approach when assigning blame there.

CA's problems are fairly simple. The problem is that people do not want to budge, nor do we want to pay more taxes.

1. Quit paying for social programs forever. It doesn't work.
2. Align retirement programs with the private sector.
3. Quit paying for illegal programs unless they are paying their fair share in taxes.
4. Balance the fucking budget. If you don't have it, people don't get it. Simple as that.

There simple.

CA needs to fix it's own problems independant of government intervention. If bankrupcty is what is going to have to happen to realign all of the entitlement programs, then so be it.