We’ll have to agree to disagree about unions causing this mess. I stand firmly by my assertion that we would not be in this mess if the financial sector were better regulated, and if Gray Davis’ pension boost never passed.

I’ll also add that we would have a much smaller budget problem (perhaps no budget problem) in California if someone would finally have the cojones to fix the illegal immigration problem. We could probably have gotten along with only 60-70% of the number of current public employees if we didn’t have illegal immigration.