Spotting the basket cases

Want to know how to be able to tell the economically stable states from the basket case states? It’s easy. Check it out.

First, some news out of the Golden State.

The lowly regarded California Legislature is widely viewed as accomplishing so little that some critics say the solution is to cut back lawmakers’ hours — way back.

A proposed ballot initiative that would return the Legislature to part-time status, as it was until 1967, is getting considerable buzz on conservative talk radio and at Tea Party protests.

You talk to some long-time California residents and they’ll pinpoint the late 60s as the moment that things started to turn south in California. But having a full-time legislature isn’t indicative of fiscal Armageddon, is it?

The length of legislative sessions varies widely around the country, but according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, there are nine states where the legislatures are more or less full time — California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Forget full time. It’s like the pols are working overtime to make most all of those states above completely FEMA-worthy.

And in other totally related news:

Forbes magazine has completed a comprehensive look at "The Global Debt Bomb" and in the course of compiling the results found this very interesting tidbit:

"The five states in the worst financial condition--Illinois, New York, Connecticut, California and New Jersey--are all among the bluest of blue states. The five most fiscally fit states are more of a mix. Three--Utah, Nebraska and Texas--boast Republican majorities and two--New Hampshire and Virginia--skew Democratic."

But wait, it's actually more serious than that when you look at the 10 states in the worst financial condition, according to Forbes:

"Of the 10 states in the worst financial condition, eight are among a total of 23 defined by Gallup as "solidly Democratic," meaning the Democrats enjoy an advantage of 10 percentage points or greater in party affiliation. These states include the ones listed above as making up the bottom five, plus Massachusetts, Ohio and Wisconsin.

So, if you are scoring at home and if we could construct a Venn diagram for statist dysfunctionality that woud be: California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio and Wisconsin.

We’ll be darned. It’s like a trend or something. Economic basketcase states all have 3 things in common: full-time legislatures that go Democratic and which all happen to be relatively Big Labor states.