There is such a thing as good government

Today I spotted on one of the chalkboards in a hallway,

Wake up America, before you lose all your freedoms! How can the "Fed" fix your grandmother's heart when it can't even fix the pothole in front of your driveway?

I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that the "Fed" doesn't fix potholes on local roads: that would be the state and local governments.

That aside, the author had a point. In these parts, the local governments are always complaining that they don't have enough money to perform basic services like, say, fixing potholes on local roads, or putting lights on local roads. When they do spend money, they do it in slipshod ways: interstate highways in Mississippi have short acceleration lanes, and I have yet to see a rest stop (not counting the "Welcome Center" at the border). Every other state in the union has rest stops; God alone knows what Mississippi does with that money.

Don't get me started on how they paint the roads around here. It's like they're asking for accidents.

But hey, however bad it is here, at least we're not as badly run as California.

California, which is struggling to close a $24.3 billion budget gap, faces the prospect of a "multi-notch" downgrade in its credit rating if the state's legislature fails to act quickly to produce a budget, Moody's Investors Service warned on Friday. …The state's current A2 credit rating is Moody's sixth-highest investment grade and makes California the lowest rated of the 50 states.

The A2 rating is just five notches above speculative status and Moody's raised the potential for the rating to tumble toward "junk" status…

(emphasis added)