The death foretold in the early months of the economic crisis was that of high finance. It has turned out instead to be California’s. Like the larger recession, the crack-up of the country’s wealthiest, most populous state has been long in the making. After many years of disguising its financial frailty with housing booms, California seems poised to collapse. At the time of this writing, the legislature is three months late in passing a budget. The state’s education system, once the envy of nations, drowns its students in tuition bills; the pension fund, long used as an excuse to deny wage increases in favor of benefits to come, reneges on old promises; voters sick of legislative inaction threaten their representatives, long settled into gerrymandered districts, with the boot and worse. The few remaining newspapers can’t afford to tell anyone what’s going on: they’re too poor.
Yet flitting through this long slow disaster was the sense that the crack-up offered an opportunity; that what was left of the state could be reclaimed. The governor was a disgrace, and so were the gubernatorial candidates; no one had much faith in elected officials to do anything. Power, at least a little of it, might be left lying in the streets. Who would pick it up? The usual wealthy interests, no doubt — those who could afford to capitalize on others’ financial distress; those who could spend enough to push through fiendishly crafted ballot initiatives. But the fragments of California’s once-famed left were resolved to try as well. full: http://nplusonemag.com/golden-state _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
