California voters say a hefty NO to higher taxes and other ingenious schemes designed to prop up its bloated public sector.

Excellent.

The other day I heard a UK trade union official talk sensibly about a package of recommended shorter hours and pay-cuts for a few months to help a car manufacturer through its problems.

Not so for California:

If the budget proposals failed, Gov Schwarzenegger warned, California’s deficit would swell to $21.3bn.

If that happened, deeper cuts would mean the school year being shortened by 7.5 days and an end to health care for 225,000 low-income children.

The state government would take $2bn from local governments, which could have an effect on local police and fire departments, while thousands of undocumented illegal immigrants held in state facilities would be released into federal custody.

Trite blackmail.

Why not just cut the wages of everyone on the state payroll by 5%? Then start systematically to reduce staff numbers and state-run functions?

Because the state budget exists for state employees, not for California taxpayers.

Look at this amazing piece on the accelerating decay in the heart of ObamaLand:

Tent cities of displaced homeowners have sprung up in the state’s Central Valley–even in the capital, Sacramento … The squatters living in abandoned homes are a greater threat to the economy than unemployment and crashing housing, Lashinsky says. "The damage done to the homes makes the ultimate resolution of foreclosed properties even more expensive to investors and banks."

In Riverside suburb Lake Elsinore, families of bobcats have taken up residence in vacant homes. The cats miss just as many mortgage payments, but at least they don’t steal copper pipes…

… Santa Cruz, along with larger cities like Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, helped lead the screwball state to its worst performance ever in our annual rankings of Best Places for Business and Careers. Without Flint, Mich. competing, California would have had a stranglehold on the bottom six positions on our list. High business costs, negative job-growth projections, high unemployment and high crime make this a scary place.

California. The world’s most dire example of avoiding Reality – but not avoiding the consequences of avoiding Reality.

Update: Whoever is to blame, the state was bound to go broke one day, and hey, today’s that day!