Just two years ago, our state legislature was debating a 103 or 105 billion dollar budget. Thats billion. Keep in mind that this is only with the minority Republicans fighting tooth and nail to keep it that LOW. Of that budget, which finally got signed into law, from the top of my head something like thirty or forty percent was education, something similar was “social programs” of various sorts (read “vote buying”), fifteen or so was state employees salaries and pension and whatnot. And of the remaining few percent, just over one percent was dedicated to transportation. One of the biggest, and the most populous state in the union could only afford 1.3 billion or so for all the roads, trains, etc. in the whole state.

Since then, the budget has ballooned up even more, and taxes are pretty much guaranteed to go up as well. Even though we have the highest state taxes in the country, we get the least bang for our buck out of all the states, I’m willing to bet.

This will be the way our country goes for the foreseeable future. I’m not a pessimist, I just know how the left does things. The only good thing about this recession is that it is going to necessitate the Democrats slow or pause their plans for expanded federal services and programs, at least for a while.

The saddest part is that the Republicans just presided over the biggest increase in Federal spending ever, so who the hell is going to bring some sanity to all of this?

But we have to be realistic. With Dems in charge for the foreseeable future, I’m sorry, but there is no way it’s going to happen.

Even in the heyday of Reagan, we never really got close to the ideal.

But the change in direction was still a major positive.

So we should keep aiming high!