-- “People think we’re becoming a Third World country,” said Ms. Sims, 55. “They don’t understand.”
It’s a story that’s being repeated all across California – and throughout the United States – as cash-strapped state and local governments grapple with collapsed tax revenues and swelling budget gaps. Mass layoffs, slashed health and welfare services, closed parks, crumbling superhighways and ever-larger public school class sizes are all part of the new normal.
California’s fiscal hole is now so large that the state would have to liberate 168,000 prison inmates and permanently shutter 240 university and community college campuses to balance its budget in the fiscal year that begins July 1.
Think of California as Greece on the Pacific: bankrupt and desperately needing a bailout...
Comment: In the meanwhile the euro is moving back towards 1.25 - well, anyway, more than anything else the Greek comedy has shown drastically how far away we have moved from sound assessment. Wisdom, prudence (in the classical sense), circumspection, sound scholarship, all of that is lacking while the clattering class babbles louder every day.
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