{"id":10442,"date":"2009-11-09T04:14:09","date_gmt":"2009-11-09T04:14:09","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-11-09T04:14:09","modified_gmt":"2009-11-09T04:14:09","slug":"peak-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2009\/11\/09\/peak-california\/","title":{"rendered":"Peak California"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the last few weeks a debate has raged online and in print about whether California is a failed state<\/a>. By now you likely know my answer: it is<\/a>, but we can and must revive the California Dream for the 21st century<\/a>. Doing so, however, requires some rather fundamental changes to the way the state is governed and to our basic assumptions about where our prosperity comes from, especially in how we use the land.<\/p>\n

Since those changes seem further away than ever, it ought to come as no surprise that according to a new LA Times\/USC poll<\/a>, Californians believe “the best years have passed”:<\/p>\n

There was little confidence that the next governor, whoever he or she may be, would be able to successfully battle California’s problems. Voters were split over whether the winning candidate would be able to bring about “real change.” More than half of voters said that California’s problems are long-term in nature and will not ease substantially when the national economy recovers.<\/p>\n

“I just feel like we are spinning our wheels,” said Tracey Blair, a mother of two from Mar Vista who described herself in a follow-up interview as an independent-minded Democrat. “I don’t feel like it’s going anywhere at the moment…. It’s a feeling of — like we’ve peaked.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s difficult to argue with Ms. Blair. California is running on the fumes of the great engine of prosperity built by Pat Brown in the 1960s. Our politics are dominated by those who seek to protect the unequal distribution of wealth, where even widely popular efforts to address our multifaceted crisis, like high speed rail, are getting bogged down by those who adamantly refuse to accept the need to change.<\/p>\n

California is destroying its educational system, shredding what little remains of job growth and innovation, and strangling the middle- and working classes. In a state where most voters want expanded government services and have shown a willingness to pay for them, politicians from both parties instead fall all over themselves to offer budget cuts, deathly afraid to offer genuine solutions. Our best years are indeed behind us, at least for the time being.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t have to be that way. But nobody running for governor in 2010 is offering a positive vision of future prosperity and sustainability. Jerry Brown seems determined to stick to the status quo instead of offering Californians a vision for the next 30 years. Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner are battling each other to see who can burn down what’s left of the state the fastest, and Tom Campbell merely wants to take it apart more slowly and more methodically.<\/p>\n

In that light, consider the other numbers from the LA Times\/USC poll<\/a> on the governor and US Senate races:<\/p>\n

GOP US Senate:<\/b> Fiorina 27, DeVore 27,  Undecided 40<\/p>\n

GOP CA Governor:<\/b> Whitman 35, Campbell 27, Poizner 10, Undecided 23<\/p>\n

Unfortunately they didn’t poll some of the head-to-head matchups for the general election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the last few weeks a debate has raged online and in print about whether California is a failed state<\/a>. By now you likely know my answer: it is<\/a>, but we can and must revive the California Dream for the 21st century<\/a>. Doing so, however, requires some rather fundamental changes to the way the state is governed and to our basic assumptions about where our prosperity comes from, especially in how we use the land.<\/p>\n

Since those changes seem further away than ever, it ought to come as no surprise that according to a new LA Times\/USC poll<\/a>, Californians believe “the best years have passed”:<\/p>\n

There was little confidence that the next governor, whoever he or she may be, would be able to successfully battle California’s problems. Voters were split over whether the winning candidate would be able to bring about “real change.” More than half of voters said that California’s problems are long-term in nature and will not ease substantially when the national economy recovers.<\/p>\n

“I just feel like we are spinning our wheels,” said Tracey Blair, a mother of two from Mar Vista who described herself in a follow-up interview as an independent-minded Democrat. “I don’t feel like it’s going anywhere at the moment…. It’s a feeling of — like we’ve peaked.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s difficult to argue with Ms. Blair. California is running on the fumes of the great engine of prosperity built by Pat Brown in the 1960s. Our politics are dominated by those who seek to protect the unequal distribution of wealth, where even widely popular efforts to address our multifaceted crisis, like high speed rail, are getting bogged down by those who adamantly refuse to accept the need to change.<\/p>\n

California is destroying its educational system, shredding what little remains of job growth and innovation, and strangling the middle- and working classes. In a state where most voters want expanded government services and have shown a willingness to pay for them, politicians from both parties instead fall all over themselves to offer budget cuts, deathly afraid to offer genuine solutions. Our best years are indeed behind us, at least for the time being.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t have to be that way. But nobody running for governor in 2010 is offering a positive vision of future prosperity and sustainability. Jerry Brown seems determined to stick to the status quo instead of offering Californians a vision for the next 30 years. Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner are battling each other to see who can burn down what’s left of the state the fastest, and Tom Campbell merely wants to take it apart more slowly and more methodically.<\/p>\n

In that light, consider the other numbers from the LA Times\/USC poll<\/a> on the governor and US Senate races:<\/p>\n

GOP US Senate:<\/b> Fiorina 27, DeVore 27,  Undecided 40<\/p>\n

GOP CA Governor:<\/b> Whitman 35, Campbell 27, Poizner 10, Undecided 23<\/p>\n

Unfortunately they didn’t poll some of the head-to-head matchups for the general election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1990],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1990"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2Iq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10442\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}