It's Janet Dagley with another Riverside rant... Sorry, Republicans. Our state has not failed. It's a ploy as old as politics itself. Make a clearly false statement, all the while acting as if it's an accepted fact. For added effect, nod and look around while stating it as if everyone in the room agrees with you. Here's an example from the current crop of Republicans campaigning in our primary election. California is a failed state, they declare repeatedly, nodding authoritatively. Excuse me. They act so sure of themselves when they say it. But they are, to put it politely, sorely mistaken. In the first place, they don't even know what a failed state is. If they did, they wouldn't be so foolish as to try to pull that one over on us. A failed state is a nation whose government cannot provide even basic services or security to its citizens. Somalia, for example, is generally considered a failed state. Other nations that have recently been considered failed states include Afghanistan, Haiti, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where a precarious shell of a government is now struggling with a deadly Ebola virus outbreak. That's what a failed state looks like. Here in California, our government is fully functional, our laws are enforced, and we provide more services to our residents by far than most other US States. Outgoing term limited governor Gavin Newsom just presented his final budget to the legislature, a balanced budget that not only would eliminate the deficit through 2028, but build reserves for the future, all while making transformative investments in child care, education, public safety, health care, housing, clean energy, businesses and natural resources. Even the DMV runs smoothly and efficiently. Not only are we far from failure, but the Golden State has grown to become the world's fourth largest economy, recently surpassing Japan. Not coincidentally, our state is controlled by Democrats in both houses of the legislature, the governor's office, the secretary of state and attorney general. It's been that way in the legislature for 30 years, although we did have a Republican governator for a few years. In fact, the closest thing to a threat to the stability of our state government has been Republican generated recall attempts. One in 2003, which replaced Governor Gray Davis with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and another in 2021 in which voters reaffirmed our support for duly re elected governor Gavin Newsom. And both of those recall elections were done by the book. All those facts make it difficult for the opposition party. They have to insist that we need change desperately and that they are just the change we need. I'm not saying that California has no problems. We do. But that doesn't make us unique, let alone a failure. Life is expensive here. We don't have enough affordable housing or enough doctors. Our over dependence on the automobile leaves us particularly vulnerable when gas prices spike, as they have since our president attacked Iran without consulting either Congress, military experts, or even a map that would have shown him the strategic importance of the Strait of Hormuz. California has environmental problems. Prolonged drought and climate change have left us vulnerable to devastating wildfires, along with water shortages and eroding beaches. And eventually we're going to have to do something about the shrinking Salton Sea. But we're at least working on finding solutions to all of those, plus the new problems piled on us by the antagonistic Trump administration. What solutions are Republicans offering? The same old tired tricks. Cutting taxes for the wealthy and rolling back regulations that's all they ever offer, along with hateful divisiveness to nudge their voters to the polls. And dividing our diverse California culture into us and them doesn't work as well here as it might in, say, Alabama. Besides, tax breaks for the rich and deregulation will only make our problems worse. The failed state fallacy might be merely a spelling error. F A I L E D should be spelled D O N O R. We are a perennial donor state, which means we contribute far more to the federal government than we receive. The states most likely to call us a failed state are also those most dependent upon those contributions. Go figure. Even though we give more than we get, we are woefully underrepresented in Washington. We only get two senators to represent all 40 million of us. Wyoming, with under 600,000 residents, also gets two. Occasionally someone suggests that California could address that inequity. But splitting into two states, those campaigns, 220 of them in Golden State history, never get very far. One of them even suggested dividing us into six states. If any of those proposals ever succeeded, we might indeed have more senators, but the power of the world's fourth largest economy would be severely diluted. Then there are those who argue that California should secede from the Union and become an independent republic, as it was for 25 days in 1846. But we are big fans of the concept of e pluribus unum out of many one rather than the other way around. Besides, you know who would really love that? Vladimir Putin, among others. So call us what you will, Republicans, sticks and stones and all that. We are an indisputable success under Democratic leadership, and I hope we will be for decades to come. And a note to my fellow Democrats, if you haven't voted already. Don't delay. Our continued success depends on it. This is Janet Dagley, proud member of the Riverside County Democratic Party.
