Jerry Is Why CA Doesn't Work

John Seiler:

Speaking to a firefighters’ conference Wednesday about his palmy days as governor back in the 1970s, once-again Gov. Jerry Brown said:

Everything worked. California was a golden state. A poppy bloomed on every corner.

Nowadays, he must be smoking poppies on every corner. Because he’s a major reason the state no longer “works.”

In 1978, he signed into law the Dills Act, which allowed collective bargaining for government-worker unions. That meant, as one union boss put it in November 2010, “This is our own opportunity to elect our own bosses.”

It meant that the unions would entirely take over the state government, and most local governments. Union money power — deriving from massive dues grabbed from members’ tax-paid salaries — buys any election.

Just last year, their $30 million in campaign ads ensured that Jerry would become governor.

In the 33 years since Jerry signed the Dills Act, public-employee unions’ bought-and-paid-for legislators have goosed union members’ pay and spiked their pensions — so much that the state now is broke and $26 billion in deficit this year.

As Zen Jerry might put it, it’s California Karma — what goes around comes around.

April 8, 2011