Who’s Responsible for this Mess?

(Published in the Mendocino Beacon on July 16, 2009)

The failing economy and job security seemed to be on everyone’s minds this past week. At the gym, I overheard two women lament that their husbands, apparently in the building trades, were informed by their employers that there is no new work for them. A friend from church recently lost his job as a logger and is making ends meeting by doing odd jobs for me and my neighbors. While walking my dog, I met a nice young woman with a six-month old baby whose job at Mendocino Redwood was eliminated. My daughter, who is also a nice young woman, was told by her employer, the California State University, to expect furloughs that would amount to a 10% salary cut. They did promise to pay her remaining salary with cash instead of IOUs so overall she feels that matters could have been worse.

California is bleeding jobs and the evidence is not all anecdotal. On June 23rd, the Milken Institute released a report entitled Manufacturing 2.0: A More Prosperous California that carefully looked at the state of manufacturing in California. The key findings should be of great concern to everyone:

• California is losing a larger share of manufacturing employment overall, high-tech in particular, and at a faster rate compared to neighboring states;
• This is due in part to the burden of an onerous regulatory climate and some of the highest taxes in the United States;
• California has a reputation for being a state that is unfriendly to business, which harms its overall competitiveness.

Years and years of enacting Democrat policies have brought about this train wreck. My daughter, whose vote helps to send Democrats to Sacramento, tells me that she isn’t interested in assigning blame, but in fixing things. We disagree, as usual, because I am, very interested in assigning blame to what caused the problem—how else to change things for the better? And the cause of California’s failing economy and the loss of jobs here in Mendocino are the policies enacted by the Democrats in Sacramento, as typified by their reckless spending.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure this out. Still, contemplate the words of a real genius, Albert Einstein: "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." Please, please, please, hold that thought until the next election.

John Redding
Mendocino, CA