I Hate AP Articles Featured on Yahoo!

This one likewise incurs my gag reflex. How can one write an entire article, supposedly an in-depth analysis of California's dismal economic situation, and fail to even acknowledge how its stringent climate change legislation (and the consequent, though often, hidden taxation) may have possibly played a role?

My favorite part is this where it reads most like a liberal apologetic piece:

Conservatives claim California is a high tax state. In fact, California's taxes are similar to other high-tech, industrial states. According to the non-partisan Legislative Analyst Office and the Tax Foundation, California has comparatively high sales taxes and rates for corporate income, but very low property taxes. State income taxes are very progressive, with a large proportion of revenue comes from households earning more than $100,000, as well as from taxes on stock options and capital gains. Low-income households, meanwhile, face lower tax rates that in most other states.

California's taxes may be similar to other "high-tech, industrial states," but can you give me specific examples or are they on the brink of disaster as well? The only low taxes I see here are for property and low-income families and that is ignoring the fact that these families are likely paying more taxes indirectly through a higher cost of living.* When taxes are "very progressive" and a state has "comparatively high sales taxes and rates for corporate income," this means that that companies and the leaders in an economy are more limited in how many people they can hire and how cheaply they can (or will) sell their products or services. It goes without saying that global warming legislation only further increases these costs and in the long run hurts a state's population as it saps resources and damns productivity.

Now tell me again why the United States is supposed to emulate California with the cap and trade bill?

The cognitive dissonance in the discussion on California boggles the mind. On the one hand, it (with its green laws) is held up as the model of what the U.S. should be and on the other, it is currently the state with the worst fiscal standing in the union. When will someone, other than conservative talking heads, dare to put the two together?

In addition, read these links posted at Backyard Conservative's place to get another perspective on California's situation than that of the Yahoo! article and also a realistic assessment of what how likely a cap and trade program will be able to even maintain America's current level of prosperity. Think about it. We can go poor seeking to eliminate carbon emissions that may or may not be warming the planet or we can choose prosperity and then know we will have the resources at our disposal to solve any future natural disasters that come our way, be they from global warming or any other phenomenon.

Take your pick.


*By the way, people making more than $100,000, particularly in expensive California, are not rich.