Califoreclosure - "Golden" State downgrades to tin.

The Golden State seems to be not quite living up to it's middle name these days, with massive budget deficits, unemployment, foreclosures, personal bankruptcies, and scores of "Hoovervilles" popping up in the most unlikely places; California dreaming is starting to look more like a nightmare of epic proportions. The Guardian UK reported yesterday in a link via the Huffington Post, that California may become the first “failed state” in the U.S. (link http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/04/california-failing-state-debt )

This is not an unexpected headline, although the article eventually paints a very rosy future for the state. Apparently; according to the article, the state is going to ride to renewed suburban prosperity and growth based on a “green” revolution in which the state is going to duplicate the suburban model again, “with sturdy, wholesome suburban living for all; just more responsibly.” “Comfortable, and Eco friendly.” The signs of hope are; fifty thousand solar panels in a state where there were only five hundred a decade ago, and a “slow” “food guru” named Alice Waters, who “inspired” Michelle Obama to plant a garden... how impressive; it's like one Californian starts talking about what everybody in Vermont has been doing for hundreds of years, and they have themselves a green revolution recovery that is influencing, and leading the nation? 

The other obvious error in the article was the mention that only California has a “Dream” named for the state, I call bullshit on that one too. You bet there is a New York Dream, an Alaskan Dream, there is most certainly a Washington (State) Dream with coffee houses. They all involve the basics (house, car) with a little tweaking of the amenities to capture the local flavor; for instance the Minnesota Dream involves a place in the Twin Cities, and a Cabin on a lake with a boat. The Wisconsin version is exactly the same, but with Packers tickets a few times a year and Milwaukee substituting for Minneapolis. The Colorado Dream involves a very large house, at a very trendy resort area (or someplace that looks like one), the Arizona Dream is very similar to the California Dream (just at a slower pace with less traffic, no ocean, and no fame) and the Utah Dream involves a large house, large family, minivan, lots of involvement with the church, and summer weekends at Lagoon. And not all of the people in these places share the same wants and desires, nor do the people who are after these things that they can only get where they are, want to trade their local dream in on the California Dream, which seems to involve; at least 15 minutes of fame, over priced real estate on fault lines, in dry forests, that slide downhill when wet, Botox, valet parking, traffic jams, frivolous ballot initiatives, tofu, plastic tits, and the most bizarre caste system this side of Britain. But some do.

The Terminator is an interesting choice for Governor, but somehow quite fitting. Arnold and California do have a lot in common, and he is as representative as anyone as to the nature of the state. While he has done a number of respectable things with his life, like leaving home for a place with a different language, and starting from scratch. Just learning the language, getting a decent job, a spouse, and a house are impressive. The movie hero, married to a Kennedy, Mr Universe, and became Governor aspects of his life are overkill on what is truly impressive about his life.

But, unfortunately, Arnold Schwarzenegger is not qualified to hold the job of Governor of California; a trait that can be found in most of his predecessors. Very few of the men who held the office seemed very suited to it; Jerry Brown and Hiram Johnson being among the more notable exceptions.  The state's political machine has an especially strange way of functioning (using the term "functioning" rather loosely). The endless amendments to the constitution and propositions seem bizarre to the average outside observer. The Texas State Government is a heck of a lot more fun to watch, just because there is a clarity about the nature of Texas politics that just isn't present in Sacramento. With the exceptions of Governor, and a handful of celebrity U.S. representatives, the other players are hard to follow and elusive.

You can't swing a dead cat in Nebraska without hitting one of the forty nine members of the unicameral legislature. And if you drive all the way across the state, I guarantee that one or more of them will pass you (they have special license plates) and they drive very fast.

The 120 members of the California Senate and Assembly are almost never in the news, and are overshadowed by the states court system, elections (ballot initiatives), celebrity U.S. Congressmen, and Governors.

And in the face of Arnold, the California Senate and Assembly disappear from the national stage entirely. The Governator managed to get rich and have an entire career building nothing more than the man himself. I am not saying he didn't work hard, he did; but of the millions of pounds of steel that Arnold moved over the course of his lifetime did not build skyscrapers or cars; the only thing all that steel moving went to build, was Arnold. He is the product he produces and sells, there is nothing else there. The man is a horrible actor despite the box office receipts. He has gotten comfortable in front of the camera no doubt, but is pretty much type cast into one role; muscle man from Europe. And while he is no dummy, he is just not the Cambridge educated, Nobel Laureate type needed to straighten out the mess that is California today.

The 1991 Stephen King novel Needful Things will someday be seen as a metaphoric warning about the dangers of a society that sells discount illusion as a real commodity. The American Novelist not only writes a mean page turner and bestseller; but he can tap into what is truly creepy about the world, without ever bringing a ghost or demon into it. The book it's self is a yarn about the fictional Maine town of Castle Rock, and a demon who shows up in the form of a shopkeeper from Ohio. He sells people the possession that they would most like to have in the world, no matter how rare, and gives them a discount price in exchange for playing a little “prank” on a seemingly unrelated towns person. The pranks fuel suspicion and paranoia and it is not long before the formerly (sometimes barely) friendly townsfolk are at each others throats, at which point the demon sells them the weapons needed to take out the compact of civilization; then he is gone before they ever knew what they had been sold.

I am quite certain that the moral of the story in Kings mind at the time he wrote it was to examine the delicate nature of civility, and what just a couple of misinterpreted “pranks” could do to fray the sometimes thin social fabric of our society. There was another moral hidden in the words of the horror story. It was not just the pranks that caused the breakdown, it was the desire for consumer products at low prices, products that in the end, have no value at all. This desire, despite the clear warning on a sign in the store, “caveat emptor”; was the beginning of the downfall of the townspeople. Pure selfish desire, and the prospect of having that desire overwhelm any sense of decency, was what gave the plot bite; and spelled the end of goodness for the residents of Castle Rock. The need to acquire consumer goods in California is quite a large business, "Dreams" are made in a "factory" there, and so are weapons.

The California economy is based on Agriculture, Aerospace/Defense, Tech, and Entertainment. Agriculture is dependent on water that the cities are in direct competition for, as well as massive petrol chemical inputs. Defense is a misnomer in that rarely are the items procured by the DOD used to defend anything, especially “freedom” (among the first casualties of war) as evidenced by the “Patriot Act” and the loss of liberties and privacy that followed. So California actually has an “offense” industry, and the bombs and jets made in the plants in Long Beach indiscriminately rain terror down on wedding parties and possible terrorists alike, all over the Middle East. That industry may provide jobs, but the Karma and blowback brought about by a bomb factory eventually outweighs the benefit of such industry. Next we have got the Tech Sector; and industry that will have to be increasingly cost conscious if it wishes to stay competitive, and the costs of doing business in California will have many companies fleeing to Nevada, Arizona, and Oregon. Finally there is the movie and television industry, thought to be “recession-proof” but when it comes down to going to a movie, keeping the cable, or buying groceries; most people will choose to eat when times get really, really bad.

Oh, and the “green” industries that are going to save California? The rapid drop in energy prices have once again put projects like solar panels on hold. The next time there is a price spike in fuel, there just won't be any capitol left to start ambitious projects.

Long billed as the “Dream Factory”; the reality of selling dreams as a tangible product is that a dream is not a real product. No more than Arnold Schwarzenegger is. He is a man, but he is not a real product. When you purchase the right to view an image of Schwarzenegger on a screen for ninety minutes, you have purchased nothing; and you have nothing to show for it afterward except the ability to mimic Arnold's catch phrase after the movie just like everybody else (“I'll be back”). Where exactly is the value in that?

When I was a teenager I attended a boarding school in Arizona that had a high percentage of Californians in attendance. They all talked about “Cali” nonstop, and sang the praises of how “cool” California was; and how everyplace else “sucked”. At this point in life I have spent a total of a month and a half in the Golden State, on six separate visits. I have been to Fresno, Merced, San Francisco, L.A., Long Beach, Riverside, Napa, Oakland, and Barstow. I failed to have fun on any of the trips, and the only experience that was remotely “cool” was an hour and a half dinner at some “Rat Pack” throwback steakhouse in Merced. The place had crushed red velvet wallpaper, and looked like a French whorehouse; but the food and ambiance were great! I actually felt like I had stepped back into the days before we entered WWII. Other than that I found sitting in traffic all the time to be quite tiresome, and everything else could be had more cheaply anywhere else... except New York.

I often wonder if the reason that Californians traveling outside California are so quick to point out that your state “sucks” and their state “is cool”, might be like a teenage boy bragging about sexual conquests; maybe their state isn't quite as “cool” as they claim it is. One of the prime reasons I have been given over the years that makes California so “hip” is that “You can snow ski and surf in the same day”.... I guess I have just never had the need to do that. As a matter of fact, I really don't have the desire to go swimming in the ocean in the same month that I have also gone snow skiing.... I wonder how many of the people who have bragged this ability have actually utilized it, I also wonder how much of that day is spent sitting in traffic rather than skiing or surfing.

When looking at the state one need not go much further than it's “prison” system to see if it is a state that can be taken seriously. In California the inmates run the show, the “guards” seem completely at the mercy of prison “gangs” who conduct all manner of criminal enterprise from behind bars. Look at any other Western State, and this is not the case. In Colorado they “don't fuck around” and people who have been guests of the state in Canyon City will tell you that the place is “no joke” and they spent their entire sentence locked in a room by themselves for twenty three hours a day, and did not even speak to anyone who was not a prison employee unless there was an inch of glass between them. There are no gangs, no drugs, no cigarettes, no rapes or shanking; and no opportunity for any activities of crime that one finds on the outside. There is no such thing as “general population” in Colorado, and there is no overcrowding.

California's prisons continue to be the laughing stock of the nation, and the state has made no attempt at gaining control of them whatsoever. If California can't even keep prisons under control what hope is there for any other state agency?

The endless assortment of crisis that make up the State of California; putting the suburbia in your suburban empire.