California shows us hope

Barry:

California is a lost cause...their people are soft and whiners......better it should go bankrupt and start over. But even that may not help with the airheads their legislature seems to be populated with. And the electorate who put them there.

Arithmetic is real easy. If you have $1000, and you budget carefully, and you spend less than that, the pressure is off and you save a little. If you spend more than that and there is scant hope of getting more, you have a problem. California has a problem.................they do not know elementary arithmetic.

Now they must do what any savvy homeowner does. You cut back......way back......even in what you may think is essential. The problem is that the Californians (and many others) too many think everyone else owes them a living................and they have no idea what is essential and what is not. Government salaries, programs and expenses are not written in stone, although some think they should be. Either the government employees take a pay cut across the board or they get laid off. When unemployment runs out...........they are really in a hole and only they can dig themselves out. If not, they fail.

I was five years old when I first learned what it was like to live through a depression. A kid of five requires only a warm, dry , safe place to live, and three squares a day. One day I saw a group of men with digging tools over their shoulders marching up High Street where we lived in Dedham Mass. The foreman was counting cadence, if you please. These were older guys who had fought in WW 1. They were in the WPA (Works Progress Administration). Paid $2.00 a day! $12.00 a six-day week! Hand, hard labor........and glad to get it. Imagine supporting a family on $12.00 a week!

But they did it! Everyone had to adjust. Workers took paycuts in order to work at all. Landlords cut rents in order to keep their buildings occupied. Professionals cut their fees. Storekeepers and wholesalers cut prices to keep their doors open. Banks, if they stayed open, readjusted mortgages, and cut salaries. Everyone adjusted. Some made it, some failed. And so it went.

Then, five years later I was ten.............on December 7th, 1941. I remember asking Dad where Pearl Harbor was. ...........I was the only one listening to the radio at the time. Dad asked me why I wanted to know. I told him the Japanese were bombing it. I remember he turned white. The next day, not a man in town was to be found anywhere but in the line at the recruiting office. And why not..................we, and they, did what we had to do........all of us.

So screw the softies and whiners in California. Let them stew in their own juice. I remember the old days, and the old guys, who did what they had to do, they fought the war and the depression, and when the war and depression were over and times got better, they got better with the times. God Bless Them.

Frank

Actually Frank, I wasn't suggesting a bail out for CA. Although I suspect after the Governator's pleas as a Neo Liberal he will probably get one and then change his affiliation like Specter. As you probably know I do not believe in bail outs as such, buy outs and sell off ALA S&L would have been better for AIG and others and the car companies are not to big to fail, they will anyway with or without our money.