If you think your state has hit hard times recently check out Hawaii:

The state of Hawaii turns 50 this year (it joined the union on Aug. 21, 1959). People there should be happy. But it’s hard.

The economy is really bad. The housing market and construction industry are in deep slumps. Tourism has been hammered by the recession and swine flu. Unemployment is double what it was a year ago. To close a $688 million budget gap, the governor announced the most drastic furlough program in the country. She’s closing state offices three days a month, for two years. Aloha Friday, where people go to work in aloha shirts and muumuus, is going to be Furlough Friday, where they stay home in pajamas and look for jobs on the Internet.

And now, to top everything off, a communist dictator supposedly wants to blow up Hawaii. A Japanese newspaper, The Yomiuri Shimbun, reported this week that NorthKorea planned to launch a ballistic missile in Hawaii’s direction around the Fourth of July.  [New York Times]

Hawaii has a balanced budget amendment for the state that forced the governor to make steep cuts in domestic spending.  When the recession ends Hawaii will be better off for it when it isn’t saddled with massive debt. Governor Lingle in Hawaii has been going through a huge fight to make the spending cuts, could you imagine the fight the lobbyist would put up if the US government had to have a balanced budget as well?

I had to laugh at the part later on in the article though when the writer says that Hawaii is the onlystate that faces an “existential threat from global warming and rising oceans”.   For you all in  Hawaii yes the economic crisis is real, but at least you don’t have to worry about being swallowed by the ocean.