California emigres should have to pass a brief economics test before being welcomed as Nevada voters. Something along the lines of: "Do you understand the role state government played in driving you from the Golden State? Do you agree not to vote to re-create here the same dysfunctional morass you just escaped?"

Otherwise, the mass economic and political suicide of California voters at the polls Tuesday is goods news for Nevadans, who can expect plenty more California employers and investors to pull up stakes and move this way, as a corrupt political class and runaway state employee unions were successful in winning a blank check from voters to continue "business as usual."

Apparently fed up with a bloated regulatory state clogging up the economy like a week's worth of bacon fat, Californians two years ago went to the polls in a recall election and swept a bright new face, free-market fan Arnold Schwarzenegger, into their governor's mansion.

The Governator has done his best, but found his path to sensible reform blocked at every turn by powerful state employee unions and entrenched legislators who serve districts so gerrymandered that voters can't possibly remove them.

Gov. Schwarzenegger drafted a series of sensible reforms and submitted them to his electorate.

Proposition 76 would have placed limits on the growth of state spending. Proposition 77 would have taken the drawing of state legislative district boundaries out of the hands of the entrenched political class, turning the task over to retired judges. Proposition 74 would have required teachers to work longer to obtain tenure. Proposition 75 would have required unions to get specific permission from their members before using their dues to promote partisan political flights of fancy.

Mind you, this in a state where cities including San Diego are hopelessly mired in unfunded employee pension mandates, and where state government threatens to follow the same path, like a team of oxen stampeding blindly toward the cliff.

Yet, offered an opportunity by their new governor to embrace a "Year of Reform," Californians decided Tuesday that state and local governments should continue growing at double-digit rates that will soon make them the biggest employers in the state; that the entrenched political class in Sacramento should not be bothered having to explain themselves to their constituents in competitive races in sensibly drawn new districts; and that unions should please continue to grab as much money as they want from workers and use it to further advance the radical left-wing agendas of the elite governing class -- without even getting the written permission of their dues-payers in advance.

The band members now return from their cabins bearing their life vests, assemble on the quarterdeck of the once grand ship of state, tune up and begin playing "Nearer My God to Thee."