Bring On The Pirates

by digby

Right but wrong:

The James Madison Institute is a libertarian think tank in Florida, and the cover of its latest Journal is a mock Central Intelligence Agency report on "the world's top 10 failed states."

It lists Somalia as the No. 1 failed state and adds eight other Third World nations before it gets to No. 10 - the Golden State of California - and asks "Will Florida join the list of failed states?"

It's the latest in a recent string of out-of-state publications riffing on California's social, political economic and budgetary woes and warning that its civic disease could spread.

J. Robert McClure, the institute's president, writes that "the jury is still out as to whether Florida - at the end of the decade ahead - will be prospering like Texas or foundering like California, Wisconsin, New York, and other states where government evidently exists primarily for the benefit of the governing, and onerous taxes and regulations consistently drive away the most productive citizens, harming the economy and eroding the quality of life."

I don't disagree that California is a failed state, I just disagree a teensy bit about the causes. It's the anti-tax conservative and libertarian zealots who have made this state ungovernable by lying to the people about the costs of their cynical experiment in defunding government. The question is whether or not other states will continue to fall for it, and with Colorado's repeal of its restrictive tax referendum last year and Oregon's vote this week, it's just possible that the rest of the country has wised up.

But if they don't, they may indeed catch our "disease." In fact, since we all live so cozily in our Union, the rest of the country tends to get sick whenever California does anyway, so I would probably go easy on the schadenfreude.

But hey, if Florida doesn't mind tripling its poverty rate, then it too can be a big success like Texas. But then right wing libertarians don't give a damn about poverty, do they?


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