The ungovernable state

As California ceases to function like a sensible state, a new constitution looks both necessary and likely

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Readers' comments



California is a mess, but its resources coupled with the chaos make it a glorious one. I recall the comment from Orson Welles' Harry Lime character in the movie The Third Man:



You complain of too much democracy but we all have suffered from that each occasion our Party loses out to the other e g at the moment I have no President representing me. The real issue for California, and USA, is too much Government and insufficient liberty.
It would be good for the nation if California fails financially. They can then ask themselves whether they require such a large bureaucracy and so many laws. Take education, where the results of their public school system is uneducated and unprepared young people, and you will find a the highest average teacher salary in the USA ($70,000) and tenure arrangements which make it impossible to sack a teacher however bad after 3 years service. I favor high teacher salaries, but not job security for life at taxpayer expense. I am a retired teacher!


The one "fix" dismissed out of hand in your excellent essay on my state is that the Governor and the legislators of both parties act like adults. Call me crazy, but if the propositions fail, they may just have to.


Katie10, do you have any credible sources for your statistics? I don't mean some partisan group's website. I just did a brief search on some of them, such as:

"2/3s of all births in Los Angeles county are to illegals are
paid for by Medical(taxpayers)"

and found them to be bogus. In 2001, under 2/3 of live births were from Hispanic mothers. That would mean 100% of those Hispanic mothers were illegal immigrants. Not very likely.


The article failed to the fact that there is a standing commission on state constitutional reform. I have two reforms that I think would solve a lot of the problems
1) it needs to be made illegal to pay or receive money for the collection of signatures for initiatives and referendums.

2) The size of both houses of the legislature needs to be substantially increased. Too something like 250 in the assembly and 100 in the State Senate.
The size of the legislature has not changed since 1879 when there were less people in the whole state than there are in San Diego County now.
A big part of the reason why you don't hear anyone saying anything negative about a constitutional convention is potential for a political free-for-all. a budgetary car wreck is probably required to get some real budgetary reform. The two biggest areas of growth in state spending over the last 15 years are prisons and medical care. The prison guards need a pay cut.
Katie10 statistics without source are frequently lies of convenience.


The laws need to be changed so we have less prisoners and prisons. Legalize marijuana.


To bpai; what an eloquent analogy - as a former Californian I tend to see the essence of this thoughtful article as an idealist's dream skewered by short sighted sycophants who neither experienced the struggle, nor understood its meaning. Think about the rebels of the Beat Generation, they had no one from which to pattern themselves but still took chances. Now, though internet access and invasive mass media, anyone can take up the cause like one of Mao’s cultural revolutionists. (However, upholding the values of the true “flower child”, I don’t advocate violence of any kind as a means toward pragmatic coexistence, either bodily or intellectually.)



I'm new to California, and walking around Sacramento, it's amazing how many government agencies California has that no other state bothers with. Take the Federal EPA for example. EPA's pesticide registration program is duplicated by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation, vehicle emissions requirements are duplicated by the Air Resources Board (but smog tests are regulated by the Bureau of Auto Repair), and there's also a California Environmental Protection Agency.

As for the rest of the country, California is definitely "too big to fail". What goes on in California is too important to the other 49 states to let it go to hell in a handbasket.

California's taxes and 'fees' have caused me, a former Massachusetts resident, to strike the word "Taxachusetts" from my vocabulary and replace it with "Taxifornia." I never expected that I would actually miss Massachusetts taxes or call them low, but I find myself doing both now.


Simply recognize that California is a---SANCTUARY STATE---and by removing millions of illegal immigrants and their families will assist on balancing the budget. So vote---NO--on all propositions as you are supporting parasite businesses that hire illegal cheap labor. Taxpayers are unknowingly paying billions of dollars in State benefits to underwrite education, health care, housing and other benefits. Learn more at NUMBERSUSA, JUDICIALWATCH.

A Voice of Reason

Next to Legislators voting on a US$780 billion spending bill without even reading the bill, Ballot-Box-Budgeting is the single most irresponsible practice of government, and should be prohibited.

If our elected officials cannot be trusted to make responsible budget decisions, then reduce their salaries and perks accordingly; or simply don't vote for them. Elections are popularity contests, to be sure, but they carry more serious implications than those we witnessed in our school days.

While I agree that voters should take personal responsibility for understanding how their taxes are spent, it is unrealistic to think that the average voter has the time or inclination to understand how each individual ballot propostion will impact the overall budget (or as is the case in California this year, how they impact each other). Furthermore, giving decision-making authority to people who don't understand an issue is dangerous: Something bad will eventually result; it's just a question of when.


Very few citizens in the history of democracy have more richly deserved a failed state than californians.


With public employee union members en mass sleeping on overtime, trading shifts to get overtime, and counting vacation into overtime with already outrageous salaries and enormous benefits (firefighters retire on $100,000 per year) while doing otherwise minimum wage jobs or jobs that accomplish absolutely nothing, Californians would be crazy to vote for higher taxes. Additionally, Californians are filling their prisons with people at $45,000 / year plus thousands of dollars in health care costs for offenses like possession of tiny amounts of drugs, receiving stolen property, petty theft, and possession of a firearm. There's nobody in government who will fix this, so hopefully Californians will at least vote no to starve the beast on May 19. Higher taxes? That's nuts.


California has too many laws that lock up too many people for too many years.

The unreasonably long sentences, unjustified parole denials, replacing mental hospitals with prison time, and the broken, overwhelmed parole system is ruining salvageable lives, not keeping us safer, and is bankrupting the state.

Many who never voted before the last election made the effort to vote for President Obama. We all need to pay attention to the issues and vote in every election.



There is a reason California has all of these agencies that Massachusetts and other states don't: It's not like other states. Take the federal EPA. It clearly hasn't worked in the interest of Californians. Neither has the federal Department of Justice, the Department of the Interior, and any number of others.

We receive 75 cents for every dollar we send to Washington--more than enough to resolve our budget crisis--in order to fund inland states with atrocious records on how that money is spent. They needn't worry themselves over deficits, though, because so many of their larger needs are met by federal dollars, while we're more often left to fend for ourselves.

By all means, let's gear up for a Constitutional Convention--there's more than enough to fix. But let's keep a new federal arrangement on the table, too. Californians don't need the added problem of non-Californians making decisions for us.


Most of us California receive Medicare at age 65 and full social security retirement at age 67. The typical California state employee receives both their retirement medical benefit and pension at age 52 (15 years earlier than the rest of us). If we increase all California state employee retirement dates to age 67 (same as the rest of us) then we could use the savings to make this fiscal mess go away without raising taxes and without cutting any state services.


As an immigrant myself, I hate to say it but Britannicus is right. California is too kind to illegals and those that help illegals. The state is a gateway, immigrants come, gain some semblence of legitimacy and then move onto other states. Unfortunately for California, they have to pay for the weeding out of the immigrant population through prisons, crowded schools and crumbling infastructure. The other states benefit from the more employable and motivated immigrants coming their way.

Salty Dog

I am a second generation California native. I live in a physically beautiful state. Unfortunately, from an economic view, the local and state governments have not kept pace with the private sector. The cost of doing business (due to taxes and regulations) forced most large and small companies during the burst of the ".com's". It simply became too expensive.

Additionally, defined benefit pension programs have been eliminated at most corporations, yet the California employee unions have not recognized this. City managers, fire chiefs, and other personnel are retiring at age 50, on more than the governor's salary in retirement earnings with paid health care benefits. Government retirees then move to another municipality, and start the process all over. The largest single growing employer in the state is the government.

We have re-engineered business, it is time to re-engineer government. There is no amount of politics, nor any voter passed measure, that will fix the financial problems our state faces. Due to pressure from government special interests, the legislature is out of touch with what's really needed to fix California. Deep, penetrating cuts and re-engineering of the way our infrastrucure is supported in California.


Folks, Let's face it. We can sum up all the failures in this state to one principal cause: 35 years of Democratic control of the State Assembly and legislature. Any Republican governor is largely powerless to change anything against this overwhelming opposition. Our extreme anti-business climate, our excessive taxation, our hugely expensive kooky 70's style social programs, our rock bottom credit rating, ALL can be squarely laid at the feet of the Democrats. Countless articles in The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, etc. ALL point to these factors as THE cause of this disaster.
Let's look at Texas. It has NONE of these problems and yet delivers all the services that California delivers. How do they do this? Answer: Little if any Democratic control.
Mark my words: When the country pulls out of the recession it will be states like Texas that take off while California sinks. We have no other choice. This state has to make a 180 degree change of direction. Where we are now is exactly where New York City ended up in the 80's. Bankrupt and begging at Washington's door. The laughing stock of the world.


Scrapping the current constitution and replacing it with a brand new one would also 'conveniently' remove amendments like the recently passed one defining marriage as being between a man and a woman.

I support gradual change for California. 'We' aren't doing that badly that our constitution has be completely replaced with a new one.



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