Come November 6, these people fall into our hands. If we put any of them back in, we can only blame ourselves for collapse of the state that will surely follow.

How about just going back to basics and teaching history, art, music, reading, writing and arithmetic, with some sports thrown in? It seems that this got most of us by and on to college if we wanted. Our scores used to be one of the best, so you cant say it didnt work.

And lets get rid of the illegals who take up space in the class room. They hold back English speaking kids and make school boring and unchallenging for them. Send them back to their own country along with their illegal parents. That would solve a lot of CA’s problems. Why in the heck to we have to educate the other half of the world on our dime?

Firefighter: “You want answers?”

Taxpayer: “I want the truth!”

Firefighter: “You can’t handle the truth!”

[pauses]

Firefighter: “Taxpayer, we live in a world that has fires, and those fires have to be extinguished by men and women with hoses. Whose gonna do it? You? You, other Taxpayer? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for lower taxes, and you curse our chili cookouts. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That our obscene salaries, overtime, benefits, and pensions, while immoral, probably saved my vacation home in Lake Tahoe. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, provides jobs for those who clean my houses and wash my cars. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at unemployment and foreclosure support groups, you want to be, you need to be me, because you’re unemployed and your house is in foreclosure. We use words like overtime orgy, pension spiking, free taxpayer-paid gas for our personal vehicles. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending our obscene salaries, overtime, benefits, and pensions. You use them as a cry for mercy. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a taxpayer who rises and sleeps under the unaffordable illusion of public safety that I provide, and then questions the compensation I extort from you to provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a ladder, and rescue a kitten stuck in a storm drain. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to.”

Taxpayer: “Did you screw the taxpayers?”

Firefighter: “I did the job I…”

Taxpayer: “Did you screw the taxpayers?”

Firefighter: “You’re Goddamned right I did!”

Federal Courthouse;

http://www.prlog.org/10377645-las-vegas-courthouse-steps.jpg

State Justice Center;
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Las_Vegas_Regional_Justice_Center.jpg

I can’t help but notice how virtually every new public building is seemingly designed by, as you say, Architectural Digest award winners. The $60 million OC Fire Authority headquarters, a new public gymnasium in Orange, virtually all the new schools I pass by. Even the damn restrooms in Irvine parks, clad in flagstone with stone walkways in place of concrete.

I began noticing this a few years ago, usually muttering out loud “Just what the heck is going on here!?” (Any friends who accompany me just roll their eyes…LOL)

The comparisons to 1950s and 1960s era public facilities are shocking. Functional, utilitarian schools, libraries, etc. Nothing fancy, but they filled the role for which they were built. Most still do.

I just don’t get it. Our legislature has created such a dog’s breakfast of regulation, what with the highest of green standards and ADA compliance and I am sure dozens more requirements that escape me right now that it is seemingly impossible to build anything that could be described as “functional” or “utilitarian” or most certainly “cost-effective”.

It is out of control. Crumbling neighborhoods, long-deferred maintenance of streets, water and sewer systems, but by golly that new school is a LEED award winner.

This state is insane. The people who run this state, the legislatures and county boards and various other commissions are insane. And the voters, for the most part, haven’t a clue.

So depressing.