Great Moments in Politics, California Edition

A fiscal emergency has been declared, but hey, Mr Villines, don't let that stop you from sounding like a drunken ideologue:

Republican lawmakers, who last week blocked a Democratic proposal to cut billions of dollars from schools, healthcare and welfare programs while tripling the vehicle license fee, quickly reiterated their opposition to any new taxes, which both Schwarzenegger and Democrats say are indispensable...
Assembly Republican leader Michael Villines (R-Clovis) rebutted Schwarzenegger's criticism that lawmakers are too rigid, saying in a statement that his party's anti-tax stance "is not blind ideology . . . but our sincere belief that higher taxes will hurt the economy and lead to more uncontrolled spending."

Right. A massive spending cut even as there's a real need for fiscal stimulus -- that'll be uncontrolled spending, that will.

Last night I was discussing with Mrs Movers, who's a Californian, whether New York or California had the more dysfunctional state politics. I still think it's New York, by a hair, but California's coming very close.

It does strike me that California's fiscal emergency comes despite the extremely low property taxes in the state. Clearly the housing boom did a reasonably good job of bleeding into the broader economy and boosting California's tax revenues, even without much in the way of direct property taxes.