California Media at a New Low

If you were a resident in the state with the nation’s highest poverty rate, wouldn’t you think you’d be aware of that fact? That a higher percentage of your family, friends, neighbors and others in your community struggled to make ends meet than the same folks in any of the other 49 states?

Of course. But here in California, where the incompetence of the media can scarcely be exaggerated, almost nobody is aware that the Golden State is no. 1 in economic misery.

This malpractice is nothing new. On the debate over whether California should encourage hydraulic fracturing of its massive oil reserves, the state media never note that the Obama administration considers fracking safe. On the debate over education policy, the state media never note that Gov. Brown’s prescription for education reform — local control — is the same flawed, status-quo-reinforcing policy choice that led to the two big education reform moments of the past 30 years. On AB 32, the state’s landmark 2006 climate-change law, the Los Angeles Times waited until March 2012 to note that it was a risk to California’s economic competitiveness to force its energy costs to be higher than rival states and nations. On this front, the L.A. Times trailed the New York Times by years.

So on the economy, why would the fact that California has the highest effective poverty rate in the nation be mentioned? If key details are routinely ignored on other big stories, why change the template on poverty and human misery?

The governor thinks he’s the bomb. Why won’t media push back?

Which brings me to my Sunday U-T San Diego editorial.

“… what one would never guess from his press clippings is that Brown presides over the state with by far the nation’s highest poverty rate. According to a 2012 Census report, once the cost of living is factored in, nearly one in four state residents — 23.5 percent — live below the poverty line. And according to a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics measure that includes those who have given up looking for work, California has the second worst unemployment rate in the nation. More than one in six Californians who want to work full-time — 18.3 percent — can’t find such jobs.

Via: California Political Review

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Golden State No More

The Golden State is not so golden anymore. California is broke. With a $20 billion dollar deficit and tax revenues down 27% from last year, Governor Schwarzenegger looks to Washington D.C. for a bail-out to rescue the state from financial ruin. Like the executive passing a beggar on a street corner, Washington looks the other way. Unemployment is statistically 12.3%, but functionally, it runs closer to 20% of the work force. Nowhere is unemployment more tragic than in the Central Valley, the fruit and vegetable producer of the world. The unemployment rate in arguably the most fertile land on the planet is near 30% as residents line up in bread lines to feed their families. How did this happen? What happened to the Golden State?

California is a victim of its own success.

For decades following WWII, people flooded into the golden state in search of weather, opportunity and the good life. California delivered. Under Governor Pat Brown in the 1960s, California had wonderful weather, plentiful water, new highways, and the best public school systems in America. Every student had access to a strong community college system and top students were guaranteed admission to the University of California. Agriculture, Hollywood, aerospace and construction provided more jobs than workers.

The 1970s brought harbingers of California’s future. The environmental movement muzzled a robust real estate industry with alphabet agencies like AQMD, CEQA, EIR and CCC. Building moratoriums raised home prices along the coast. Aggressive land use controls pushed development inland creating urban sprawl and long commutes as residents sought affordable housing inland. Governor Jerry Brown quipped, “If we do not build it, they will not come” and shut down highway construction, public school construction and added layers of new regulations. The people came anyway.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 dealt California a cruel blow. The peace dividend meant the end for many high paying aerospace jobs and defense contracts. The recession that followed was felt far deeper than in the rest of the country. California climbed out of its recession led by wave after wave of new millionaire software developers during the dot com revolution.

In 2001, the dot come bubble burst. The politicians in Sacramento, emboldened by an endless supply of money from the dotcommers to state coffers, spent over $100 billion while revenues fell to just $70 billion. They ran up a $38.2 billion deficit in 2002 under Governor Gray Davis – more than the other 49 states combined. The people recalled Davis in 2003 and replaced him with the Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Via: California Political Review

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A New Era of Prohibition: The Rise of the Californian Nanny State

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells his listeners that a man with a beam in his eye ought not to criticize another with a mere speck in his. The message: sort out your own crippling shortcomings before presuming to meddle in someone else’s. It’s good advice for an individual; it would be even better advice for the state of California. Good counsel, however, has a way of falling on deaf ears in the Golden State. While lawmakers have found themselves incapable of dealing with crippling budget deficits, a public-pension liability that hovers around a half-trillion dollars, and a business environment consistently ranked as the nation’s worst, they’ve decided that the state’s most pressing problem is its people—specifically, their culinary eccentricities.

On July 1, the state with the nation’s largest economy ushered in a new era of prohibition, banning the sale of foie gras, a French delicacy made out of the intentionally fattened liver of a duck or goose. As anyone who has ever patronized a Sacramento tavern while the legislature is in session knows, this is perhaps the first time in recorded history that state lawmakers regarded hepatic dysfunction as cause for alarm.

The ban was a long time coming. Like many of California’s logic-starved but passion-distended nanny state impulses, it traces its origins to the era of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who signed the bill into law in 2004. As written, the law’s apologists point out, the statute isn’t quite an outright prohibition; it simply makes illegal within state borders the sale or production of foie gras produced by force-feeding the birds—the only method that has ever brought widespread success. The nearly eight-year window between passage and implementation was intended to allow time to develop alternative methods of production. Outlawing proven business models while waiting for a superior alternative to emerge from whole cloth is what passes for cultivating entrepreneurialism in California.

Via: CA Political Review

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