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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (5283)	8/28/2002 12:46:32 PM
From: pogbull	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Moody's has downgraded the state of North Carolina's THE INTERNATIONAL FORECASTER August, 2002 ( 4 ) Part 2 Moody's has downgraded the state of North Carolina's General Obligation rating to Aa1, from Aaa, affecting $3.5 billion in long-term debt. The outlook for the state is stable. Of course, the state blames everything but its own shortcomings. They are adverse economic and fiscal events, legal judgments related to tax policy, costs for hurricanes and floods, the recession and the stock market bubble. Their problem, like that of many states, is that incompetents run the state. Their answer is a sales tax increase and a lottery. Why don't they try cutting expenses? Or is that politically unacceptable? The unemployment rate was 6.8 per cent in June. The Rainy Day Fund was drawn down from $522 million in 1999 to $125 million at the end of fiscal 2002. Reserves over the last four years dropped from $445 million to a deficit. Tax collections for fiscal 2000 were $141 million below budget. There has been three years of deficits and the state refused to come to grips with the problem. The shortfall was almost $600 million in fiscal 2001. What were these people thinking about? The economy is going deeper into recession and they want to raise taxes and get their citizens to gamble. Almost every state is in the same fix and we have at least another 2-3 years of recession or depression coming. Preliminary indications show that mutual fund investors probably pulled $50 billion more out of funds in July than they invested. This would easily exceed the record withdrawal of $30 billion in September 2001. $50 billion would represent 1.6 per cent of fund industry's stock assets. The loss was $18 million in June. In July, investors added a net $30 billion to bond funds and $60 billion to money market funds. Socialism and Marxism have been shown to be failed systems of government and economy, but those lessons were apparently lost on the majority of Californians. Moscow in the west trudges on to disaster. Governor Gray Davis, another Jerry Moonbeam, signed a $3.5 billion increase in workers' compensation benefits, after rejecting a virtually identical bill three times as a job killer. He also signed a bill on greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks, which will mean higher auto costs for everyone in America. He previously rejected that as well. Mr. Davis wants to get reelected so he'll sign just about anything for environmentalists, labor unions and trial lawyers, liberals all. He will next sign legislation mandating binding arbitration in disputes between farm workers, most of whom are illegal aliens, and growers. He will also sign a bill allowing local governments to develop their own labor laws, such as living wages or that business hire only union workers if it wants government contracts. Soon the People's Republic of Santa Monica Senator Sheila Kuehl, from the home of Hanoi Jane, will pass a bill to force nearly every business in the state, no matter how small, to offer paid family leave. Paying workers for not working while breeding will cost businesses $2 billion a year. Trial lawyers want to limit confidential lawsuits, a way to guarantee more litigation and longer trials. They want expanded rights to sue health plans and require employers to retain two different accounting firms and a rule that if companies offer severance pay to any worker they must offer it to all workers. Then there are the Native Americans, a misnomer, bill to block development by designating sacred tribal sites on either public or private land. The legal precedent will be oral Indian history. This bill would be anti-development and pro-racial identity. There will be no George A. Custer monuments in California. These decisions are the product of the flower children of the 60s and 70s. A whole generation, at least in California, virtually destroyed - at least mentally. All this as the state economy is overrun by illegal aliens who have become objects of worship, a budding recession and a structural state budget deficit of some $50 billion over the next five years. How's that for irresponsibility? Wait until the inmates of this asylum see the tax increases after the election. There has been an exodus of middle-class whites over the last 13 years, which will now accelerate. Businesses can't move fast enough. Our sage advice is if you live there sell your house and move out. You soon may be stuck there in what is becoming a foreign land. The beginning and end of the article is posted on SI in two posts at: Message 17922553 Message 17922563