California

California just demonstrated a shocking moment of sanity.

As I'm about to go to bed at 11:06 local, the state has thoroughly trounced the politician's wish list.

All but one of the major ballot initiatives are losing by more than 60%, including the big one, Prop 1A, which currently stands at 64.7% "No" to 35.3% "Yes" with 71.6% of the votes counted. This was a bill that at one time the Republican party threw away more than half a million dollars in campaign money to pass, before a rank-and-file revolt got the party to realize that Republicans are supposed to oppose more spending and more taxes. Schwartzennegger was strongly on board, afraid of the kind of painful cuts that are finally necessary. The Dems, of course, wanted this bill...at least the politicians did. And most importantly of all: public employee unions wanted it really bad.

According to polls taken over the weekend, Republican voters were strongly rejecting it, moderates, only a little less strongly, and even among Democratic voters it was struggling.

Tomorrow morning the politicians will finally have to deal with the fact that the party's over. The people of California...at least those who haven't yet moved to Texas...can't be squeezed for one more dollar.

Time to reduce the number of public employees. Time to stop spending billions on stupid light rail lines or on high speed lines between San Fran and LA. Time to undo the idiotic stem cell bond initiative from a previous referendum--which forced California to take out 3 BILLION in bonds to fund stem cell research. Time to end the wasteful and completely unnecessary school building extravaganza under way in Los Angeles, to the tune of 20 BILLION dollars--at a time when enrollment is tanking. You could make a list of about a dozen bone-headed, pie-in-the-sky spending projects. What a waste!

By the way, one of the referendum today is passing with support as strong as the opposition is on the rest. Even this is a stick in the eye of the politicians. The only successful referendum is to limit pay increases for politicians if they have not balanced the budget.