Is California Ungovernable?
As Californians anxiously watch our state government convulse with the difficulties of righting its financial ship, a new discussion of reform has sprung anew in the most unfortunate of places — the legislature itself.
When the legislature starts talking about reforming itself, that’s usually a sign of great concern, and for good reason. Few broken systems have ever been capable of self reform – Soviet Russia comes to mind!
That’s not to say it can’t be done — but it is to say it shouldn’t engender anyone’s confidence that it will. One might even question whether the effort is anything more than political theater.
Outside groups are calling for Constitutional conventions and significant systemic reforms are being bandied about as rational discourse for the first time in a century. And lawmakers, both current and former, are hell bent on making sure it doesn’t happen.
Still, the unintended consequences of a constitutional convention could be calamitous, say legislative leaders, and I have to admit — they may be right.
Reducing greenhouse gases in California – they still won’t tell us the cost
Next Thursday the California Air Resources Board (CARB) will achieve a milestone in environmental regulation when it will likely adopt a Final Scoping Plan to implement the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. Perhaps the most far-reaching regulatory effort ever undertaken by a governmental agency, this plan will touch every aspect of Californians’ lives and the economy. But lost in the ceremony surrounding the plan – adopted even as California tumbles into the worst recession in a quarter century – is an honest assessment of its effect on Californians and our economy.
The Board has proposed an exhaustive list of measures to achieve a 30 percent reduction in California’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 – from what would have been a “business as usual” pace, or an absolute 15 percent reduction from today’s levels. This will require enormous investments in renewable energy technologies, smaller and more fuel efficient automobiles, and pervasive, expensive energy efficiency measures, as well as reduced driving and other energy-intensive economic activities.
Riding the Prop 1A Rail with Ms Pauline Kael
The new Public Policy Institute (PPIC) poll is out and I’m sure there will be extensive analysis of the numbers in the presidential race and the gay marriage measure, Proposition 8. Unlike most other commentators, however, I want to spend one last moment on Prop1A, the high-speed rail bond.
I know what you’re thinking. Get over it. You lost. But, I keep hearing from California political experts and even some tune-in-to-politics-a week-before-the-election types asking the same question: How did a $10-billion bond measure on railroads pass with the state running a massive deficit?
I guess I fall into the same obtuse category of political observation with the legendary film critic Pauline Kael, who supposedly said of Richard Nixon’s landslide victory over George McGovern, “How could that be? I don’t know anybody who voted for him?”
Free Fallin’
“I’m free, free fallin”
“Yeah I’m free, free fallin” – Tom Petty ©EMI April Music, Inc.
“The fourth quarter of 2008 is experiencing an economic free fall,” pronounced Richard Dekaser, Head Economist of National City Corp, Cleveland, adding “we haven’t this kind of collapse in a very long time.” (Yahoo News, reported by Steven C. Johnson). And we haven’t even heard the dreaded government report on jobs lost in November which will come out this Friday, the number of which some expect to clear 300,000 and then some, the worst since right after 9/11.