From the most-excellent San Diego blog, Words Have Power, a piece on how decades of republican governance can make the American Landscape look. Read this, and then pass the link on...it doesn't take much to see the linkage from the Grovel Nosetwist republicanism that's ruined San Diego to what's happening everywhere else.

"The council doesn't want to put taxes on the ballot, nor raise taxes," she said. "None of the mayoral candidates would talk about it either. The council hasn't had the political will to be honest with the public about what we can afford to do and what we can't."

San Diego isn't an isolated incident. It is an object lesson. What Republicans did in San Diego is what they are doing on the national level. Tax cuts without comensurate reductions in government services. Government funded by borrowing money collected for retirement benefits. It's the same pattern and it's cut from that same old cloth.