One of the nice things about democracy is that there is a kind of long run, collective sanity constraint. As Lincoln said: You can't fool all of the people all of the time.

Unfortunately when you have super majority requirements, as we have here in California, you don't have to.

You see not all Californians believe that you can get government services for free or live off the land in a state of rural idiocy. Its just that about a third of our fellow citizens here in the Golden State do and that is enough to make the rest of us suffer.

Kevin Fagan reports on one of these enclaves of Republicanism in today's SF Comical. That would be Modoc county:

Modoc has the highest Republican registration of any county in California, it unfailingly elects anti-tax Republicans to office, and the vote here against last month's ballot measure that would have raised a variety of taxes was one of the most lopsided in the state. And yet, per capita, Modoc County gets more state taxpayer dollars than all but one of California's 58 counties.

. . .

Most folks up here will tell you that no matter who is in office or what the big-city politicians do, the dearest wish of anyone living in Modoc is to be left alone - except for a little help for core needs like hospitals and schools.

Which little help would take the form of a net inflow of tax dollars in excess of $2,000 per person from the rest of the state. But the good people of Modoc county are sure that the state can balance its budget without cutting vital services which, they all acknowledge, would be a disaster:

In Modoc, the way it works is that if the cuts being proposed go through, near-catastrophe will reign, said County Administrative Officer Mark Charlton.

He said the entire road maintenance service would be closed except for snowplowing on a few main roads, the welfare-to-work CalWORKS program would be cut in half, many mental health patients would no longer be monitored and would relapse and wind up behind bars, and there would be fewer police patrols.

"You'll be able to translate these cuts into more accidents on the road, more people in jail, more people getting sick," Charlton said.

Their elected representative who is co chair of our budget committee wouldn't want that:

Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber (Tehama County), vice chairman of the Assembly budget committee, represents Modoc County. He said cutting social services is not what he has in mind when he talks about deficit reduction - it's chopping other things, such as regulatory oversight committees and government employees.

Although he and his fellow republicans have yet to come up with a budget that finds actual savings in these places. Maybe government employees should work for free?

Besides his country needs more money because it has so many handicaps to overcome:

He said health and road services cost more per capita in rural places like Modoc because they're remote and expensive to reach. So don't blame the sticks for consuming more funding per person, he said.

But sending our tax dollars - about $4,000 per person net contribution from the folks in the Bay Area - makes sense because our money buys so much out there in the sticks.

"There's no way you're going to have a booming county up there, so every penny we send counts," Nielsen said. "The funding there wouldn't buy (much) in San Francisco, but it goes a long way in Modoc."

Folk up in the northern wilds of California look back with nostalgia to the 1930's when people of the northern counties of California and the southern counties of Oregon started an independence movement. They called themselves The State of Jefferson and Wonks Anonymous imagines that there were a great many animated barroom discussions.

Really they just want to be left alone and Wonks Anonymous for one is prepared to let them alone. Please secede.