As California Goes, So Does Nevada…Maybe

(Lori Piotrowski) – Californians like to brag…about their weather, their beaches, their ability to “lead.” For many years now, those of us who once called California home have been leaving. We love it, but we can’t live there.

Much of what we liked about California has changed. We can’t afford to buy a house, in fact, we can barely afford to rent. Pac Bell charges for local phone calls. The hospitals team with the uninsured receiving care at the cost of taxpayers. The school system overflows, with some schools lacking books and desks. The high schools are flooded with immigrants from around the world, speaking so many languages that the halls sound much like the United Nations on break.  

California, the leader in fashion, lifestyle, and government, has trained its electorate in socialistic tendencies. However, that tendency may have reached its peak. Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times reported that

California voters want government employees to give up some retirement benefits to help ease the state’s financial problems, favoring a cap on pensions and a later age for collecting them, according to a new poll.

These voters have woken from the California Dream to find that not even the American Dream is attainable.

Seventy percent of respondents said they supported a cap on pensions for current and future public employees. Nearly as many, 68%, approved of raising the amount of money government workers should be required to contribute to their retirement. Increasing the age at which government employees may collect pensions was favored by 52%.

Not only are our Western Republican neighbors leaning further to the right, but the Democrats in their midst are joining them.

“It’s one thing for Republican governors in Wisconsin and Indiana to support these types of changes, but seeing this type of support from California voters, even California Democrats, is really remarkable,” said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC and a former GOP strategist.

If it really is true that as California goes, so goes the nation, perhaps Nevada won’t be too far behind in this wake-up call.