California now has the highest poverty rate in the nation.

Success! California now has the highest poverty rate in the nation.

California’s state legislature and governorship have both been held by the Democrats for years. Both have repeatedly raised taxes. Both have repeatedly failed to balance the state’s budget. And both have been and continue to be eager to increase government regulation on the state’s citizenry. What could go wrong?

Update: In related news, Los Angeles’ film and television industry has lost 16,100 jobs in past seven years, mostly due to businesses leaving the state.

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Hostess Brands — already in bankruptcy — has decided to shut down because one of its unions refused to end a strike.

Be careful what you wish for: Hostess Brands — already in bankruptcy — has decided to shut down because one of its unions refused to end a strike.

The closing will result in Hostess’ nearly 18,500 workers losing their jobs as the company shuts 33 bakeries and 565 distribution centers nationwide, as well as 570 outlet stores. The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union represents around 5,000 Hostess employees. “We deeply regret the necessity of today’s decision, but we do not have the financial resources to weather an extended nationwide strike,” said CEO Gregory Rayburn in a statement.

So, because 5,000 union workers wanted more from a company that had nothing more to give, 18,500 lose their jobs, including those same union workers.

Sounds sensible, and right in line with most leftwing math.

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The Democratic senator seeking the chairmanship of the Senate Budget Committee has refused to promise to write a budget next year.

What Americans apparently wanted: The Democratic senator seeking the chairmanship of the Senate Budget Committee has refused to promise to write a budget next year.

This will be the fourth year in a row that the Democrats in the Senate have failed to write a budget. And note, they don’t need a single Republican vote to do it, since budget bills cannot be fillibusted.

As I like to say, the day of reckoning looms.

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Bankruptcy

It appears that Barack Obama has won another four years in office. Despite what many consider to be one of the weakest and most incompetent presidencies in history, the American people have decided to stick with this man. Even worse, the Democrats look like they will gain seats in the Senate, even though it was the Democratic majority in that Senate that has refused to pass a budget — as required by law — for the last three years. For that dereliction of duty, the American people have decided to reward them with more power.

Overall, it appears that the polls that favored Democrats in their sampling were actually capturing the tone of the country. The public wants big government and a restriction in freedom. 2010 was a fluke, not a trend. I was wrong.

We are stuck with Obamacare. We are stuck with trillion dollar deficits. We are stuck with bankruptcy. I have little hope now for the near future. It will probably take fifty years or more to fix the problems that the past four years and the next four years will create.

This is not even a conservative perspective. No policy can survive, even good leftwing policy, when the government is bankrupt. And with trillion dollar deficits the new normal, we are guaranteed that the government will go bankrupt. And it will take everything else down with it.

Even worse, this willingness of the American public and its intellectual class to ignore this reality, to make believe that trillion dollar deficits don’t matter, suggests an intellectual bankruptcy that is even more appalling. For you can’t fix a problem if you refuse to face it.

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The federal government is expected to hit its debt ceiling before the end of the year.

The day of reckoning looms: The federal government is expected to hit its debt ceiling before the end of the year.

The federal government is bankrupting the country, and it will take hard sacrifices to rein in that federal government. I fear that, regardless of how today’s election ends, neither party will be willing to propose those sacrifices, mostly because they will believe the voters are not willing either.

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