Was the person who built your car high on the job?

Was the mechanic who just fixed your plane high on the job?

Is the Anesthesiologist who is about to put “you under,” under the influence?

Proposition 19 could make that all a possibility.

On Election Day there will be an initiative on the California ballot to legalize the sale and cultivation of recreational marijuana.

As California goes, so does the rest of the country. Your state will be next.

The Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988 requires Federal contractors and Federal grantees to agree that they will provide drug-free workplaces as a condition of receiving a contract or grant from a Federal agency. If your state legalizes recreational marijuana, a drug-free workplace will disappear. How much money does your state stand to lose? Billions of dollars, and tens of thousands of lost jobs!

Your state will lose all of its federal funding. Consider how much the following will lose by legalizing pot:

• Florida: $149,872,000,000.00
• Illinois: $100,672,000,000.00
• New York: $174,071,000,000.00
• Pennsylvania: $121,551,000,000.00
• Texas: $210,005,000,000.00

Smoking dope on the job? If recreational marijuana is legalized, employers will no longer be able to prevent employees from being high on the job. If an employer allows employees cigarette smoking breaks and/or certain areas in which cigarette smoking is allowed, they would have to allow marijuana smoking as well. Is your doctor stoned? Is your child’s teacher? You won’t know. On average, someone is killed by a drunk driver every 45 minutes. How often will someone be killed by a stoned driver? Let’s not find out!

Peter Foy discusses California’s shockingly underfunded public pension funds.

Think of it as Greece on the Pacific: A place with beautiful scenery where the government spent so far beyond its means that mass layoffs, welfare reductions that leave a million children and the poor and elderly without needed services and failing infrastructure are now the norm.

California’s fiscal hole reportedly is now so large that the state would have to free 168,000 prison inmates and permanently close 240 university and community college campuses to balance its budget in the fiscal year that begins July 1, reports Moneynews’ Julie Crawshaw.

“We are on the verge of system failure,” Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project, told the Globe and Mail.

“We have to get some federal money,” Ross says. “It would be bad for the U.S. and, arguably, bad for the world to do the shock-therapy approach.”

Peter Dreier, a professor of politics at Occidental College, calls this a classic American dilemma.

“Americans expect a lot of their government,” Dreier says. “But politicians have convinced them they’re not getting what they want.”

Budget analysts say Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has no choice but to ask Washington for bailout funds, and that Washington has no choice but to agree because not bailing out the Golden State could put the entire U.S. economy at risk.

It seems that California — which at one time had the third-largest economy in the world — is like the biggest U.S. banks: Too big to fail.

Neither Democrat Jerry Brown nor Republican Meg Whitman has offered details in their campaigns to become the state’s next governor about how to close this year’s $19 billion budget deficit or handle next year’s anticipated $37 billion deficit, the Mercury News reports.

The State of California is trying like hell to get Obamacare implemented before the federal deadline. In this video, AFP California’s David Spady talks about that and how socialized medicine is burdening Canada.

California voters fed up with politics as usual scrapped their partisan primary system Tuesday in favor of an open one in which voters can cast ballots for any candidate.

The passage of Proposition 14 reflects voter anger in California and across the nation at a system that critics complained has been dominated by a small coterie of political activists in each of the two major political parties.

Backers of the California measure included Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has long argued that centrist candidates from either major party rarely win primaries.

An open primary, Schwarzenegger and other proponents of Proposition 14 say, gives an advantage to more moderate candidates who, once elected, might succeed in getting more done.

Schwarzenegger’s own campaign committee donated $2 million to support the effort and the California Chamber of Commerce gave $720,000 more.

Until now, voters have been limited in most primary elections to casting ballots for candidates of only the political party they are registered with. But beginning next year, a voter can cast a ballot for any candidate, regardless of party affiliation.

Under the new system, two candidates of the same party could face off in a general election in state and federal races.

Republican and Democratic parties complained that Proposition 14 would give well-funded special interests the greatest sway over the election process, arguing that candidates would be beholden to big-money donors, not voters.

Third parties said they feared their candidates would be shut out of general elections because minor candidates typically draw fewer votes. The Green and the Peace and Freedom parties ran radio and television ads opposing Proposition 14, but their fundraising was dwarfed by backers of the measure.

Proposition 14 is patterned after a law in Washington state that has been in effect since 2008. That law was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, although some provisions are still in litigation.

Louisiana also has a similar open contest for its general election and sends the top two vote-getters to a runoff.

GOP leaders in California believe they can ride the momentum from Tuesday’s primary all the way to victory in November, perhaps triggering a political resurgence for Republicans in the Golden State in the process, reports David A. Patten of Newsmax.

One reason for their optimism: Recent voter registration trends that show a sharp uptick for the GOP after a prolonged decline.

“I think much of it has been generated from what you see in Washington, where Barack Obama and the Democrats have chosen not to govern from the center but rather from their own party’s left,” the chairman of California’s Republican Party, Ron Nehring, tells Newsmax. “That’s clearly driving the discussion right now in California, and in every other state.”

“If you look most recent data within the past 140 days,” Nehring says, “Republican registrations rose by 28,359, while Democratic registrations gained only 7,492.”

There are several other indicators of newfound GOP strength in deep blue California. Surveys of voter enthusiasm and intensity point to a Republican advantage.

More important than the numbers, perhaps, are the candidates: The surging candidacies of gubernatorial challenger Meg Whitman and Senate challenger Carly Fiorina, combined with an aggressive GOP voter registration campaign and political shifts occurring on the national level, are fueling speculation that Tuesday’s elections could have a lasting political impact in California.

National political experts see an opportunity ahead for California Republicans as well.

“Whitman and Fiorina have two qualities that make the hearts of GOP leaders flutter,” University of Virginia Center for Politics director Larry J. Sabato tells Newsmax. “They are self-funders who can spend big, and they have a hook – gender — that attracts the news media and prods voters to reconsider their stereotype of Republicans.

“The midterm year ought to be a GOP-leaning year,” he adds. “That gives Republicans a chance even in deep blue states like California. The party will be very disappointed if at least one of these women doesn’t make a breakthrough in November.”

Bolstered by extensive television advertising, Whitman and Fiorina have established commanding, double-digit leads over their nearest GOP rivals.

A recent Field Poll shows Whitman, the former eBay CEO, leading high-tech entrepreneur Steve Poizner, the state’s insurance commissioner, by 51 percent to 25 percent.

Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO, actually trailed the five-term GOP Rep. Tom Campbell by 5 points in January. But now she holds a strong double-digit lead, 37 percent to 22 percent, according to Field.

Chuck DeVore, a favorite of California’s tea party activists, is polling just behind Campbell, at 19 percent.

If the polls prove accurate and Whitman and Fiorina cruise to victory Tuesday, they will offer California voters a formidable one-two punch with remarkable business credentials untainted by Washington politics. In an election cycle dominated by anti-incumbent fervor, that could prove decisive.

In the general election, Whitman if nominated would square off against Democratic insider and former Gov. Jerry Brown. Fiorina would be expected to mount a strong challenge to incumbent Sen. Barbara Boxer.

Those match-ups have GOP leaders in California salivating over the November campaign.

“I see that Democrats are relying upon old-style, outmoded, hard-core liberal careerists,” says Nehring. “Versus Republicans, who are putting forward leaders who have a proven record of success and a proven understanding of what it takes to create jobs and manage an organization. That’s a very stark contrast.”

Anecdotally, California Republicans tell Newsmax their offices are receiving an unusual number of calls from Democrats who want to switch parties. They report that Republicans are submitting early ballots by mail in disproportionate numbers – often seen as a measure of voter enthusiasm prior to Election Day.

“Many more Republicans than Democrats are indicating they are certain to vote in November. The world is run by those who show up, not by those who register to show up,” Nehring says.

Yet another factor that could point to a Republican resurgence in California: The swelling rolls of independent voters in the Golden State. They now comprise about 20 percent of the electorate, up from 18 percent in 2006.

Recent Rasmussen national polls show that among voters not affiliated with either major party, 42 percent now lean Republican on generic party ballots. That compares to just 18 percent who think they’re more likely to vote for a Democrat. A rising number of independents in California would appear to bode well for the GOP in November.

“I think the morale of Republicans across the country is sky high,” commentator and author Wayne Allyn Root tells Newsmax. “Speaking purely as an analyst, I predict everything is in motion for a gigantic, historic Republican victory in November.”

Of course, California Republicans know they will need every bit of their newfound enthusiasm to win in November. Democratic voter registrations outnumber Republican registrations by 44.57 percent and 30.79 percent, a gap that has widened significantly since 2006.

Encouraged by strong indicators and strong candidates, however, California Republican leaders are looking forward to Tuesday’s primary results — and to November.

Says Nehring: “The wind is at our backs.”

I do not want to suggest that the state of New York is on the verge of going broke. But as I have said on more than one occasion, numbers do not lie.

But if recent events mean anything, then it is very safe to say that the Empire State is on very shaky financial footing – to say the least.

The state had recently delayed paying some $2.5 billion (that’s with a B, folks) in bills as a so-called way to stave off insolvency, although all that does is make things worse, beginning around August and September. And this comes from State Budget Director Robert Megna. This would be the third time since December 2009 that New York has withheld funds.

Here are some of the numbers which, if you live in New York, might make you see red:

• The state’s general fund, which counts everything but federal aid and some specific revenues, ran in the red by some $500-600 million dollars.
• The state borrowed from other funds, including the short-term investment fund; about $1.5 billion of the withheld funds must be paid to the schools in June, with the rest to be paid in July.
• Governor David Paterson’s $135 billion budget has yet to be enacted by the state Legislature, although it was due on April 1.
• The state of New York is currently $9.2 billion in the red; the longer the Legislature argues over where cost savings come from, the time window for realizing savings will shrink.

Then you have to factor in what New York is going to do in regards to its layoff plans as they’re waiting to see how many state employees opt to take early retirement, a source of savings.

No matter what the end game is for the State Legislature, one thing is almost certain: Paterson’s successor will more than likely inherit the financial mess that the state is currently in as it appears that time is not on their side.

At the risk of sounding partisan here, it’s going to take a Republican to slowly get the state of New York out of its financial dire straits. And it would behoove them to take a page out of the playbook of New Jersey governor Chris Christie.

The state where I live, California, is around $27 billion or so in the red. And the State Legislature here? All they seem to do is agree to disagree on financial matters and Governor Schwarzenegger seems to be riding out the storm until his successor assumes office in late 2010.

But the bottom line is that New York needs to get on financial solid ground a ssoon as humanly possible. Otherwise, they will be the East Coast’s version of California – and one California is enough.