Posted on 10/26/2009 6:53:27 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
California is a mess, but I love it all the same--especially the Bay Area, where I lived for 15 years. I went to Berkeley in 1962--a refugee from Amherst College, which at that time was dominated by frat boys with high SAT scores. I didn't go to Berkeley to go to school, but to be a bus ride away from North Beach and the Jazz Workshop. In a broader sense, I went to California for the same reason that other émigrés had been going since the 1840s. I was knocking on the Golden Door.
Immigrants from Europe had come to America seeking happiness and a break with their unhappy pasts. But many Americans--from the '49ers of the Gold Rush to Mark Twain to a young Ronald Reagan--had gone to California to find renewal. California was part of the American frontier, but, as Carey McWilliams points out in California: The Great Exception, it developed outside the framework of the American frontier. It was not an extension of the East or Midwest, but became a state in 1850 before other Western states. It was an island in the sun without Pilgrim winters or windswept prairies. It nourished its own dream of wealth and well-being. It was the American dream all over again, but dreamt within America.
California has fulfilled many of those dreams. It has extended and enhanced the promise of America--from the discovery of gold to the introduction of the movies and television, the aerospace industry, Silicon Valley, and the Central Valley's giant farms that supply a quarter of America's food. It has also been a political and cultural vanguard--from John C. Fremont, the first presidential candidate of the anti-slavery Republican Party, to Progressive Governor Hiram Johnson, Socialist Upton Sinclair, old-age-pension agitator Francis Townsend, and down to Richard Nixon, Earl Warren, and Reagan. The New Left staged its first mass protests in Berkeley. Gay rights came out of Los Angeles and San Francisco. And the New Right was spurred by California's tax revolt and by the backlash against illegal immigration.
I was drawn to California by Jack Kerouac's On the Road, but, by the time I arrived, the era of the beatniks was over. The Caffé Trieste had become a tourist hangout. Still, within a few years, I was trekking to the Fillmore to hear the Grateful Dead, living in sin, smoking pot, and marching against racial discrimination and the Vietnam war. That heady period, marked by the Free Speech Movement and Haight-Ashbury, faded by the early 1970s, but it helped inspire the rise of Apple, the personal computer, the movement for open-source software, and, later, the virtual community of the Internet and the dot-coms. (This is not some oddball observation of mine: It's documented in Steven Levy's book Hackers and in John Markoff's What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer.)
But could California's days as a politico-cultural vanguard and economic bellwether be coming to an end? The state has endured swings and has come back better than ever. Writing in 1949, with unemployment at 14 percent, McWilliams questioned whether California exceptionalism had finally come to an end, but, with the onset of the cold war, Southern California benefited from an aerospace boom. Again, in the early 1990s, California seemed to be falling into a black hole: Cutbacks in military spending decimated the state's defense industries, and, by the end of 1992, unemployment was 9.9 percent, 2.5 points higher than the national rate; that year, Kemper Securities rated California's economy fifty-first in investment prospects among the 50 states and the District of Columbia. But the growth of dot-coms, a global entertainment industry, and biotech led its rebound.
Last month, California's unemployment rate hit 12.2 percent, a 70-year high. Its bond rating is the lowest of the 50 states. Earlier, the state government had to issue IOUs. Its political system--once the envy of other states--has become dysfunctional. And its educational system, which former University of California president Clark Kerr described as "bait to be dangled in front of industry," is riven by conflict and reeling from budget cuts. Is this déjà vu all over again, or has the California dream finally become a nightmare? There are troubling signs.
I'm not big on traveling, but when I get a chance to visit California, I take it. Last month, I traveled back west as a guest of Stanford's Hoover Institution to attend a conference on educational reform. Education's not a specialty of mine, but I hoped that studying California's tarnished system, which was once the jewel in the state's crown, would provide a window into what is happening in the state. I was not disappointed.
When I first went to California, its elementary and high schools were thought to be among the nation's best. The schools were generously endowed--the fifth-highest in spending per pupil among the states--and about half of California's high school graduates went to college, compared with less than one-third in the rest of the nation. And Kerr and Governor Pat Brown were determined to go further.
The bald, bespectacled Kerr, a labor economist, had a stormy tenure as university president--he was denounced by students as a technocrat who wanted to turn the university into a service center for the military-industrial complex, and by conservatives for refusing to crack down on the student rebels--but he turns out to have been one of the country's great educators. The Master Plan he devised in 1960 for California's higher education, which Brown got the legislature to adopt, represented a high-water mark of American progressivism and of the California dream. Kerr's idea was that every Californian who graduated from high school should be able to attend college. High school graduates in the top 12.5 percent of their class were to be admitted to the university system, headed by Berkeley and ucla. Students in the top third could go to one of the state colleges, and any graduate could gain admission to a community college from which, after graduation, he or she could transfer easily to a four-year college. Community college was virtually free, and the state universities charged very modest fees--$80 per semester when I attended Berkeley. (We of the New Left objected to the tracking implicit in Kerr's system--we insisted, in effect, that everyone should be able to go to Berkeley--but we had a vision of America that bore no resemblance to existing reality.)
That system, which was emulated by other states, has fallen into disrepair. California now ranks seventeenth of the 20 largest states in the percentage of ninth-graders who go to college--36.3 percent compared with a 41.8 percent national average and 58.2 percent in Minnesota. And it ranks eighteenth among the 20 largest states in the percentage of high school graduates who go directly to college. The problem comes partly from the state government's abandonment of the community college system: Community colleges receive about $5,500 in fees and state funding for each student each year, while the universities get $22,000 and the state colleges $12,000. But the heart of the problem lies in California's K-12 education: According to the Department of Education's National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests, California eighth-graders came in forty-eighth in 2007 among the 50 states and District of Columbia in reading and forty-fifth in math.
At the conference at Stanford, members of Hoover's Task Force on K-12 Education tried to explain why schools in California and elsewhere were performing poorly. The experts generally blamed bad teaching and the refusal of the teachers' unions to do anything about it. They want to improve the teaching through evaluations that weed out bad teachers, through merit pay to reward good ones, and by paying extra to teachers willing to teach in problematic schools. They also want to use school choice and, in some cases, vouchers, and the establishment of charter schools to pressure poorly performing schools. (With support from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has advanced a set of proposals along these lines.) For many reformers, everything begins and ends with bad teachers and union obstinacy.
At the gathering, held in a plush conference room, one of the experts projected tables and graphs comparing various states. It was there that I had my own "AHA!" moment. The states with thriving educational systems were generally northern, predominately white, and with relatively few immigrants: the New England states, North Dakota, and Minnesota. That bore out the late Senator Patrick Moynihan's quip that the strongest factor in predicting SAT scores was proximity to the Canadian border. The states grouped with California on the lower end of the bar graph were Deep South states like Mississippi and Alabama with a legacy of racism and with a relative absence of new-economy jobs; states like West Virginia that have relatively few jobs for college grads; and states like Nevada, New Mexico, and Hawaii that have huge numbers of non-English-speaking, downscale immigrants whose children are entering the schools. California clearly falls into the last group, suggesting that California's poor performance since the 1960s may not have been due to an influx of bad teachers, or the rise of teachers' unions, but to the growth of the state's immigrant population after the 1965 federal legislation on immigration opened the gates.
CLICK ON ABOVE LINK FOR THE REST..... (WISH I HAD GOOD NEWS, BUT IF THINGS DON'T TURN AROUND, I'M NOT SURE IF THIS STATE HAS A FUTURE WE ALL LIKE TO SEE ).
Two words:
Illegal Immigration.
I was born and raised in California and it was very beautiful when I was a child.
No longer.
Cali has been (bleeped) up since the end of WWII. I don't care if they voted GOP in national elections for the first few decades after.
Explanation for the toilet bowl of CA: Corrupt Socialist Liberal RATs (look at CA Assembly and Pelosi, Boxer, and Feinstein; case closed)
Two words:
Democrat Party.
My wife was born and raised in California. I lived there for years and really liked the San Diego area.
My wife is very motivated to move back but I’m putting the brakes on for now. I really don’t trust the state government to respect my private property rights.
Let alone Parental Rights in California. Go figure, they eliminated the terms "Mom" and "Dad".
Can we dissolve California and split it into two or three equal sized states? And in doing so, split up the electoral significance of Kaliforniastan?
The 49rs came to hang out on the beach and “reinvent” themselves?
What a load of crrp.
And it was the Kerouac types that destroyed this state with their poisonous anti-culture.
I read to the end of the article. The author thinks the problem with California is conservative Republicans and Prop 13.
Yawn.
California wouldn’t be such a bad
place if it weren’t for all the jerks
that moved here after 1849.
An excellent idea.
California is on a one-way downhill slide.
Beautiful state, if too arrid (ironic sitting next to the ocean, that CA suffers constant water shortage). However everything productive and positive has been taxed and regulated for so long, the Golden State is becoming the 21st century working example of Atlas Shrugged.
There is a massive growing, mostly uneducated population of residents who do not even self-identify as American. Speak no English. And really see non-Mexicans as interlopers.
The number of these “reconquistas” is growing, even as outward fleeing of productive taxpayers from the state reduces the number of people paying for the mess.
lol too late to do anything about illegal immigration, the Republican Party no longer has the numbers and to be blunt, White People just don’t have many kids, if at all.
California has lost its Culture.
No amount of money, protest, Gov’t planning or sunshine will change that.
Your wife wants to move *back* to California?
Has she been back recently?
I’m here. Loved it. But seriously. Moving (to) CA right now, would be a bit like having bought a McMansion on a variable rate Mortgage for a half million dollars, 5 years ago.
My job currently keeps me here - though clearly that will change at some point as the office has been almost entirely outsourced now.
This poster won’t be staying, after that.
IMHO California is about to fly apart at the seams.
I agree. The scene that the author remembers so fondly was the beginning of the end. Sad, really, because our 15 years in the Bay Area were really exhilarating. While California will continue the boom/bust pattern, the overall trend is down. The Bay Area is dominated by service companies, not high-tech manufacturing companies, and it gets increasingly difficult to grow employment. The business climate is unbelievably hostile to small business, and the success rate of start-ups is so poor that venture capital won’t fuel that growth any more. (We left at the beginning of the early 90’s bust.)
hh
Definitely toleratuion of the illegals who have taken over. The teachers have bombarded kids with communism ideals for forty years. The kids who bit became more teachers and politicians. So many of the college kids today are indoctrinated mind numb robots. The elephant is sitting in the living room and Californians can't see it through the pot smoke and lattes. Life is good.
Actually, Prop 13 had a lot to do with California’s economic growth in the 80’s....
hh
California is in the Ninth Circuit. I imagine that hasnt helped either.
What a load of lib crap. He describes the problems fairly enough, but then he goes off the rails
- “Republicans have had only 35% of seats in the legislature” - but it’s still their fault!
- “Republicans have become to Conservative.” But don’t mention the radical homosexuals, race-baiters and Marxists who have become the intellectual elders of the Democrat Party in California!
It’s human rubbish like the author that has ruined the state!
“California wouldn’t be such a bad
place if it weren’t for all the jerks
that moved here after 1849.”
I guess my wife and I are alright then since our ancestors moved to Southern California before 1847!
CA has come back before, but this time it’s hard to see how it might occur. The absolute insistence on providing endless services to an underclass and the relentless revenue pursuit of the classic set of producers would seem to be a formula for more of the same. And the frickin people of this state, they cannot vote anything but Democrat no matter what. It simply never connects that the glory years of CA (and I mean the actual glory years, not the years when we were too stoned to know the difference) occurred when the state was a bastion of conservatism. Either they do not see that there are consequences for voting for the future Barbara Boxers and Nancy Pelosis of the world or they are just too apathetic to give a damn.
Meanwhile, out of a misplaced sense of wanting to be in the lead on enviro issues, the state equivalent of the EPA, CARB, relentlessly enacts stupid regulations, most of which have done tremendous damage to industry and commerce from top to bottom. There is no question that CA has led the way in some areas, like earthquake safety standards, but life isn’t a scorecard on the Al Gore scale. Chase enough industry out and there won’t be any jobs left here at all. But nobody gets it.
I don’t think the author ever quit smoking dope.
My wife and I just visited the Peoples Republik of Kaliforia for a weekend. We bought some supplies at a store and I noticed on the receipt that every item had a I think it was CRF charge after it. I axed the clerk what the heck that was, she said “California Recovery Fund”.
Just another tax ... A case of bottled water that cost $3.99 had a CRF extra tax of $1.20, plus the regular sales tax! And even a bag of chips had the tax! So I’m thinking any product or packaging with plastic gets hit with the tax.
And they wonder why people and businesses are fleeing the state — just one of many many reasons right there.
the community colleges are now flooded with
students who have not mastered jr high and high school courses.
“Republicans have had only 35% of seats in the legislature” - but it’s still their fault!”
That’s the problem. If the dems had 2/3 the could raise taxes at will and solve these problems. Do I need a sarc tag ?
More words than that.
How about the inmates running the asylum? The State legislature. The radicals, the malcontents the leeches. A clear message of where the country could be headed if the adults didn't assert themselves. A warning ignored.
When the marxists, the egalitarians, the ignorant and the entitlement mentality takes root, the rot spreads quickly from the bottom up.
By the time the legislature is overwhelmed, basic ideas like spending=income is routinely ignored.
Having the rot firmly entrenched at the national level now makes for interesting times.
Education is just the canary in the coal mine.
If Hussein is not removed from office,
the state of CA will be the least of your worries!
And don’t expect him to go quietly...whether by law or election...
Demo-crat Derby.
Criminal Victicrats.
Personal Fiefdom Public "Servants".
Protected Pervert Priorities.
Californians get the government they deserve.
All immigrants
Seems that a 'majority' of new immigrants head to Cali-forn-ya because, oddly, the State offers the best welfare of any of the US States - from free education, handouts and subsidized homes the gravy is famous world-wide.
So-called Entitlement programs have been the death of CA and will be the death of this Nation if not brought under control.
As it is 80% of FedGov Non-discretionary spending is entitlement funding.
A sobering look - http://www.heritage.org/research/features/budgetchartbook/federal-spending.aspx at FedGov spending.
“And what great state do you live in ? Is it a better place today than Kalifornia ?”
I live in Kansas.
Our unemployement rate is 6.9%
We shipped off our liberal governor to Washington DC.
The state is grumbling and cutting services but has a ballanced budget.
Our teachers are allowed to say mommy and daddy.
We are building two big coal plants to supply power to Colorado, Oklahoma and maybe Texas. (delayed for years by the liberal governor)
Our weather sucks, the view isn’t great and there are no beaches.
Overall, it is close call, but yeah, today, Kansas is a better place to be than California. I would really like to be back to San Diego, but like I said, I’m waiting to see how things turn out.
I am doubtful that the first begat the second. It would be like a whirling tornado producing a car out of a junkyard.
The schools spend 2 days teaching how horrible and violent Christianity is and spends 2 weeks getting the students to pretend to be Muslims and doing prayers to Allah, telling them that Islam respects women and other hogwash.
California is a failed states because leftism makes no sense and has no connection to reality.
http://www.brookesnews.com/092809sharia.html
Deal with the BIG PINK ELEPHANT in the corner, Illegal Immigration, and a whole lot of the problems simply go POOF!
“lol too late to do anything about illegal immigration, the Republican Party no longer has the numbers and to be blunt...”
When the Republicans had the majority they didn’t do squat!
BTW, I’ve been registered R since I began to vote, and could not be more disappointed in my party.
Moved here to AZ from CA only to see the same immigration problems crowding the schools (and welfare lines) with the numbers to push stats the same direction as CA.
The Federal Gov’t is responsible for defending our border, and the GOP did not lift a finger to fix this joke when they had ample opportunity. We can blame the Democrat Party, but the fault lies with a Republican Party that does not represent conservative values as advertised.
California: lunatic asylum and textbook example of the failure of socialism. This lesson is lost on California’s socialists, who continue to press for more state spending despite continuous (and illegal) budget deficits. Good possibility that the most liberal of all California governors, Jerry Brown, will be returned to office to continue the destruction.
Ah-nold is more liberal than Jerry.
So let's quit bitchin' about illegal immigration and discover a way to adapt.
If we don't like it, we can move somewhere like North Dakota. The last time I checked, it was too cold for Mexicans to live there.
As a side note about Jerry Brown. To solve state financial constraints, he reduced the California state Budget by offering early retirement to many of California's best civil servants. These civil servants gained full retirement and then went to work for outside consultant and contractors to do the same work under contract to the state. It was a costly shell game for California, that did nothing but made red ink go away.
I agree we have no choice but to adapt.
My complaint was, and is, a lazy, impotent GOP.
We cannot turn the clock back to give the Navajo back their land, or en-mass export Hispanics back to their native countries. We might could form and elect a party that represents conservative values. Hopefully it could be the Republican Party.
BTW, being from LA, many of my friends are Hispanic, and conservative.
It was at a chain store, the Smart and Final store, in Encinitas, CA. I’m looking at the receipt now. The abbreviation on the receipt is CRV, and as I said, when confronted, the clerk claimed it was for the “California Recovery Fund”. I was mistaken about charging me on a bag of chips — they charged me on the case of bottled water as I said, and 10 cents per bottle on bottles of Powerade.
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