Turnout is the Key in Close Governor’s Race
Looking at the polls on the governor’s race, the candidate that can motivate their voters to go to the polls will determine the next governor of California. There is little enthusiasm for the election, which will likely limit voter participation and, in turn, determine the outcome.
The USC/Los Angeles Times poll came out over the weekend and like other recent surveys, it indicates the race is close, pretty much within the margin of error.
Jerry Brown had a five point lead in this poll, but the Whitman campaign said the poll skewered too hard to the left, noting that 55% of the self-identified respondents labeled themselves leaning the Democratic way to 35% offering up a Republican label. The 20-point spread is larger than is expected election day.
My Interview with Jerry Brown’s Obscene Surplus
I’d been trying to track down the most-talked-about player in the 2010 gubernatorial campaign, but I didn’t have a phone number and I’d heard he’s too old to have email or a cell. I’d just about given up when the phone rang yesterday.
"It’s me, the Surplus," the voice said.
"You mean, Jerry Brown’s Obscene Surplus, from before Prop 13?" I asked.
The Brownian Motion of the California Workforce
The California economy is often described today as stagnant. The latest state unemployment numbers covering August 2010 showed unemployment changed only slightly to 12.4% and minimal movement in net payroll jobs-a loss of 33,500 payroll jobs over the month out of 13,827,900 payroll jobs overall in California.
Of course, below the surface of these numbers , there is enormous movement of jobs and workers. I have posted several times of the enormous job creation and destruction going on each month in California (roughly 220,000-250,000 jobs continue to be created each month and an equal number destroyed, even during the Recession). Data recently released in the federal Department of Labor’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover (JOLTS) report indicate the Brownian motion of workers among existing jobs. Even in the Recession, workers are moving in and out of jobs at a rapid pace. Some of this movement reflects voluntary separations ("quits") , a greater amount of the movement is due to involuntary separations ( "layoffs/discharges")
The chart below, taken from this JOLTS report, indicates nationwide the number of Separations-quits and layoffs/discharges-both before and during the current Recession, through July of this year.
California’s Failed Statesmen
Cross-posted with Newgeography.com
The good news? Like
most rock or movie stars, there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with
California. It’s still talented, and retains great physical gifts. Our
climate, fertility and location remain without parallel. The state
remains pre-eminent in a host of critical fields from agriculture to
technology, entertainment to Pacific Rim trade.
California can come back only if it takes a 12-step program to jettison
its delusions. This requires, perhaps more than anything, a return to
adult supervision. Most legislators, in both parties, appear to be
hacks, ideologues and time-servers. This time, when the danger is even
greater, we see no such sense of urgency. Instead we have a government
that reminds one more of the brutally childish anarchy of William
Golding’s 1954 novel "Lord of the Flies."
Arnold Schwarzenegger has not turned out to be that supervision. Rather
than the "post-partisan" leader hailed by the East Coast press, he has
proven to be the political equivalent of the multi-personality Sybil.
One day he’s a tough pro-business fiscal conservative; next he’s the
Jolly Green Giant who seems determined to push the green agenda to a
point of making California ever more uncompetitive.