The shallowest of shallow analysis

While I'm in an anti Tim Blair mood, he today claims that California is "broke", linking to a LA Times story to show it.

What's this?,  I thought - I recently linked to stories showing that tax increases under Jerry Brown had paid off $32 billion of debt, leaving it debt free for the moment.

And indeed, that is still true, as the LA Times article shows.

It goes on to note, however, that long term commitments - payments to retired public servants is the biggest one mentioned - means that there is a lot of future projected debt. But the article shows it is Jerry Brown himself who has been warning of this future problem, which certainly indicates he is not avoiding it as an issue.    And it's a long term thing - the article does not specify over what period the projected $242 billion relates to.

If that's Blair shallow definition of "broke" - governments that have large future projected budget debts but haven't yet worked out how it will be funded - then he may as well be talking about the entire US government being broke and being made far more broke by Trump and the Republicans.  Oh, but they're part of his tribe, so he'll just talk about Trump Derangement Syndrome instead.

He's pretty dumb, let's face it.