I don’t know the last time George Will has actually set foot in California, but his complete hash of a column about the state suggests he doesn’t know a thing about it.  Most of it is a rehash of the same tired, false conservative tropes – that job creators are fleeing the state (not, um, true), that state spending is out of control (not, um, true), that public employees and their unions are bankrupting the state (California has the second-lowest number of full-time government employees per capita among all states, so, wrong again, George).  But putting that aside, it is simply astonishing that anyone could write an entire column about California budget issues without bothering to mention the inconvenient fact of the 2/3 requirement for budgets and taxes.  Will’s notion that the Democratic legislature has made the state “liberalism’s laboratory” cannot be reconciled by the conservative veto over any tax hikes or budget solutions.  

Unsurprisingly, Will (who probably got paid handsomely by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association to write this drivel) rejects the May 19 ballot measures, as do Calitics.  But he completely and totally misreads the issues facing the legislature, the structural constraints upon them, and the solutions necessary to move the state forward.  Showing himself to know nothing about California, maybe Will should stick to lying about climate change repeatedly.