"Now I am starting to care about California"

Bill Dupray sums up how I feel about California and, unfortunately, how many people should feel about New Jersey:

Now I am starting to care about California. But it is not because I am feeling altruistic, it is because their previously self-contained disaster has now spilled out into requests for bailout money from me. If I am going to be asked to bail out California, I want a right to go in and cut their spending, cut their taxes, and cut their regulations.

Damned right. If California is going to look to "the Federal government" (which is really just the rest of the states) for bailout money so they can keep spending, shouldn't "the Federal government" -- we -- tell them what they can do? Isn't that the same argument that the Feds used when they wanted a "pay czar"? When they wanted to determine what kinds of cars GM should build?

It seems to me that the Federal government told AIG what their executives could earn, and people like Andrew Cuomo threatened to make a lot of AIG names public if they kept their bonuses. Let's do the same to California: Yes, you can take our money, but to do it you'll have to take severe pay cuts and reduce services across the board. Get back in line with fiscal responsibility and we just might let you take control again -- once you've paid us back.

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