How the Browns have ruled California
By Adam Nagourney, New York Times
LOS ANGELES — When Edmund G. Brown Sr. was governor of California, people were moving in at a pace of 1,000 a day. With a jubilant Brown officiating, California commemorated the moment it became the nation’s largest state, in 1962, with a church-bell-ringing, four-day celebration. He was the boom-boom governor for a boom-boom time: championing highways, universities and, most consequential, a sprawling water network to feed the explosion of agriculture and development in the dry reaches of central and Southern California.
Nearly 50 years later, it has fallen to Brown’s only son, Gov. Jerry Brown, to manage the modern-day California that his father helped to create. The state is prospering, with a population of more than double the 15.5 million it had when Brown, known as Pat, became governor in 1959. But California, the seventh-largest economy in the world, is confronting fundamental questions about its limits and growth, fed by the collision of the severe drought dominating Jerry Brown’s final years as governor and the water and energy demands — from homes, industries and farms, not to mention pools, gardens and golf courses — driven by the aggressive growth policies advocated by his father during his two terms in office.
The stark challenge that confronts this state is putting a spotlight on a father and son who, as much as any two people, define modern-day California. They are strikingly different symbols of different eras, with divergent styles and distinct views of government, growth and the nature of California itself.
Misguided by illusions of anything is possible, they set out to drain the north state and have millions in the desert supported by creating deserts to do it. They are not anything to be admired, they are both environmental nim-wits who have caused and are trying to cause large scale dewatering and destruction for the north state. Not to mention blatant law breaking on the border, releasing tens of thousands of felons early, instead of building prison space, and creating crime waves and add the blatant ignoring of immigration laws and enabling a welfare class to drastically increase and create an impoverished state and causing the fleeing by the tens of thousands a month of taxpayers and retirees. Their legacy, behind their gated mansion walls, is a disaster just like the clueless clown in DC on the golf course or at the rap music party or at the fund raiser or on the taxpayer paid vacation and never on the job.
Jerry Brown has generally been an excellent, intelligent governor with finely honed political instincts, and frugal budget balancing tendencies compared to some legislative Democrats, with one major and confounding exception.
While his father initiated and grew many of the substantial and important infrastructure projects in the state in past years, Jerry seems to mess those up and pick the wrong horse to ride. And they’re big, expensive, and important. Cases in point:
– As mayor of Oakland, he insisted on a signature Bay Bridge replacement, which influenced the bridge selection panel. This went from an estimated $1.5 billion to $6.5 billion cost over time, and now is beset with myriad complex construction defects that will be difficult and expensive to fix. A far cheaper causeway would have been fine – the new tower is not even that good looking.
– High speed rail is an idea that may be good in some cases, but the project presented to the voters was an underestimated sham. I might support the idea if done correctly, but I voted against that initiative. If it gets built, like most other such large construction projects, I have little doubt it will be way over budget, with ridership far below projections. We cannot afford to subsidize this eventual thing with scarce California tax dollars. But guess what happens when/if it gets to that point? Feds aren’t going to pay, and businesses aren’t stepping up.
– Water tunnels. What a damned mess. Alternatives to enable much greater agricultural water conservation and less water intensive crops are far cheaper and doable. Hell, I’d even be willing for some of my taxes to go for bonds to help provide a partial subsidy for that, rather than the wasteful and expensive tunnels that would ship our water out to the desert oases for sumptuous overuse and harm the north state.
Where Brown gets his blind spots on these projects I’m not sure. Must be the legacy thing. He’s so much better than prior Republican governors at managing the state for all its varied constituents otherwise, but his support of these very flawed big infrastructure projects is befuddling.
Bayou is correct on the careless billions wasted by a belief in limitless taxpayer funds available to be spent and the bad results because of this failure of reality by people who have never worked in the private sector for real wages, the rest of the story is much more dangerous to the safety of the state and the environmental disaster that is Moonbeam Sr and Jr. The exodus of the taxpayers being covered up and the open borders and early release felon crime waves and the ever increasing welfare crises are the real disasters as much as the drought ever will be.