Former child star Gary Coleman is dead at the age of 42 from a brain hemorrhage, but he has left us with a legacy of comedy gold. I'm not only talking about his eight-year stint as Arnold on Diff'rent Strokes, but his run for Governor of California in 2003. When Grey Davis faced recall in that year, Coleman's backers gathered 6500 signatures for a petition and raised 3600 dollars to file the necessary paperwork, in what amounted to a protest of the recall. Gary was joined by a plethora of other celebrities as well as relative unknowns. Above Coleman is pictured with one of his "opponents", porn star Mary Cary.
However, Coleman's run was not only hilarious, but ironic. When he heard Arnold Schwarzenegger was running, he stated that, while he would not withdraw from the race, he would not campaign.
Sure it was a moot point, and nobody would have taken him seriously regardless, but its really too bad, as he would have been closer to Ronald Reagan than anyone else running. He expressed a desire to cut spending and taxes. Its easy to speculate on the absurd notion of what might have happened had he been elected. He would have been chewed up and spat out on the floor of the California Legislature, undoubtedly. There will probably never be another Ronald Reagan in California as it is, but such a position would require a person who demands respect, not laughter, derision, and pity.
Yet, in the face of California's current debt crisis, can there be any doubt that Coleman would have stood head and shoulders above most of the other serious candidates of the day, such as Arianna Huffington? Instead, California has been stuck with a RINO who married into the Kennedy family and seems to forget that he was elected by the people, and has an admittedly thankless job to do, one not best performed by compromise with the same party that has brought California to the brink of ruin.
As a result of Arnold's failures to reign in the excesses of the California Legislature and the unions, among others, California is now saddled with a twenty billion dollar budget deficit. Think about that. A twenty billion dollar, not budget, but budget D-E-F-I-C-I-T!!!! That's three billion dollars more than Kentucky's entire recently passed state budget. And that's a two-year budget, by the way. And that's not all. California's actual total debt, when factoring in things like union pension funds and California's stake in the overall national economy, is a whopping TWO TRILLION DOLLARS!
Yet, the California Legislature's only response is to propose more borrowing, more taxes, and more spending. In other words, just more of the same shit that got them into this mess to begin with, s mess which makes Europe's problems with Greece seem to pale in comparison. There's a reason it seems that way-Greece's debt does pale in comparison. To put it in perspective, suppose that instead of Greece being bankrupt, it were Britain, or Germany. Ponder what that would mean to the EU, and you can see why the US has cause for grave concern.
California is hemorrhaging on life support, and sooner or later somebody somewhere is going to have to pull the plug. Californians might want to think their state is too big to fail, but it may fail regardless. California has already lost many vital businesses to other less intrusive states, with less taxes and regulations, taking with it significant numbers of jobs and their previous contributions to that tax base that just got to be too much for them to be profitable. If something doesn't happen to reverse the current crisis, the once great state of California is doomed. And you know what they always say-as California goes, so goes the nation.
Somewhere Gary Coleman is having the last laugh. But I suspect he's been laughing for a good while now. After all, if they had listened to him at the time, and stuck with it, California would not be in the mess its in now.
