Welcome to California: America without Republicans

◼ Democrats have also enjoyed complete control of the state legislature since 1997. And they have governed exactly the way you'd expect Democrats to govern. - Conn Carroll/Washington Examiner

...Spending has more than doubled, from $45.4 billion in 1996 to more than $92.5 billion today. Income, sales and car taxes have all been hiked. As a result, California has the most progressive income tax system in the nation, with seven income tax brackets, and the second-highest top marginal rate.

Even with all those tax hikes, California's 2012 budget is still $15.7 billion in the red. So what does Gov. Jerry Brown want to do? Raise taxes again, of course. He has proposed a ballot initiative that would: 1) raise sales taxes on everyone and 2) raise incomes taxes on those making more than $250,000 a year (like Obama has proposed to do nationally). But even this $8.5 billion tax hike would still leave the state $7.5 billion short. Where will California get that money? Who knows?...

With all of this unfunded government spending, Keynesian-Democratic thinking would predict that California's economy should be booming.

It isn't.

At 10.8 percent, California has the third-highest unemployment rate in the country. There are fewer private-sector jobs in the state today, 11.9 million, then there were in 2000, 12.2 million.

And thanks to liberal welfare requirements, a third of all the nation's welfare recipients live in California despite the state only containing one-eighth of the national population.

Contrast those numbers with Republican-controlled Texas, where private-sector jobs have grown from 7.8 million in 2000 to 9 million today.

Long before it became the nation's 31st state in 1850, California had been a target destination for Americans looking for a better life. Not anymore.

...The California dream is dead. Democrats killed it. Middle-class families can't escape the state fast enough. Conservatives must fight Obama and his agenda at every turn so that Californians still have other states to flee to.

◼ California Demon - A state fast becoming America's version of Greece. - John Fund/American Spectator

Then there are taxes. Even middle-class families earning $48,000 a year pay a state tax rate of 9.3 percent, a higher rate than millionaires pay in 47 other states. A ballot measure backed by liberal legislators will ask state voters this fall if they want to raise the top rate on high earners to a staggering 13.3 percent.

Naturally, this economic version of Dante’s circles of hell has driven jobs from the state at an increasing pace. One relocation firm calculates that last year, a total of 254 California companies moved some of their work and jobs out of state—a number that is 26 percent higher than that of 2010 and five times higher than 2009.

Andy Puzder, the CEO of CKE Restaurants, the parent company behind Hardee’s and Carl's Jr., is just one of the many corporate leaders who have been traumatized by California’s hostile business climate.

He tells me it takes six months to two years to secure permits to build a new Carl’s Jr. Restaurant in the Golden State, versus the six weeks it takes in Texas.