With the ongoing fiscal meltdown in the Golden State, the only example for which anyone should use California should be only as a warning to others.  The Washington Examiner can hardly believe that Barack Obama thinks that California has been a success story in energy conservation, let alone hold it up as an example for the rest of the nation to follow:

While promoting his new cap-and-trade energy tax bill, which passed the U.S. House last week, President Obama revealed in a White House address on Monday his model for the nation’s economy – California. “In the late 1970s, the state of California enacted tougher energy-efficiency policies,” Obama said, noting that the state and its residents use less energy today per capita than the national average. “Think about that,” he said, “California producing jobs, their economy keeping pace with the rest of the country and yet they’ve been able to maintain their energy usage in a much lower level than the rest of the country.”

Er, California producing jobs?  Even before the financial collapse, California had a higher unemployment rate than the national average.  It’s been in double digits this entire year, it’s over 11% now, and will probably get close to 13% before leveling off.  And what kind of jobs has California lost?  The Examiner continues:

Between 2000 and 2007, before the current recession, the state shed nearly 21 percent of its manufacturing jobs, driving down its industrial electrical consumption by 21 percent. California’s industrial users pay electric rates twice as high as their Midwestern counterparts – which helps explain why so much heavy industry has fled the state. In addition to alienating its industry, California has also curbed energy use through exorbitant residential electric rates (50 percent higher than the national average) and massive net out-migration. Between 2005 and 2007, 2.14 million Californians moved to other states, while only 1.44 million people from elsewhere moved to the Golden State, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Don’t be surprised when the 2010 Census finds even more people leaving to escape California’s 11.5 percent unemployment. And, as jobs and residents fled California, its tax revenues have declined, while its politicians went on a spending binge, creating a severe budget crisis.

The California economy has gone belly-up, and was declining even before the crisis, which is why revenues had fallen short of expectations for the last couple of years.  If Obama thinks the rest of the nation should have California’s economy and employment levels … that explains a lot about his economic policies, actually. (via The Corner)

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