"ungovernable" California and those who wish to try

Comment: long article on California from the NYTimes

Who Can Possibly Govern California?

Excerpts:

California always seems to produce more spectacle than anywhere else in the country, and that goes for its meltdowns too. Calamity is just part of the equation here, as if God gave California so much glamour and grandeur and great weather that he had to throw in some apocalyptic menace to provide a little balance. Earthquakes, say. Or Sacramento.

...

The state’s most urgent problem is its lumbering wreck of an economy. Not surprisingly, given California’s size, more people have lost jobs and more homes have been foreclosed on and more big banks have failed here in the last year than in any other state in the country. The state faces a $24 billion deficit, and Schwarzenegger recently joked that his finance director has been placed “on suicide watch.” “California’s day of reckoning is here,”

...

In the view of many, the origins of the mud slog began with the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, the landmark referendum that capped property taxes. “Over 50 percent of our revenue is dependent on personal income tax, and that’s a very important part of explaining the boom-and-bust cycle,”

...

This dependence on income tax was the first thing Dianne Feinstein mentioned when I asked her to assess California’s problems. “In most states, it’s one-third property tax, one-third sales tax and one-third income tax,” Feinstein said. “It’s 55 percent income tax in California. And 45 percent of that comes from the top brackets.” When the economy is booming, the stock market soaring and jobs abundant, relying on income taxes is not a problem.

...

The insurance commissioner [Steve Poizner ] then itemized his anything-but-sunny assessment of California:

“Three thousand people are leaving this state every day.”

“This has become a no man’s land for new tech jobs. . . . Google, Cisco, Intel — they’ve all pretty much said, ‘California, no way.’ ”

“Eighty percent of people here think the state’s on the wrong track.”

“There’s a huge consensus that the state is broken.”

Final comments: I personally do not blame Proposition 13. Property taxes were being raised and homeowners were riled. (Minnesota needs a Proposition 13!). The blame is on freewheeling spending. The article is very entertaining as the various successors to Arnold are profiled.