One of the reasons why Bill Whittle’s new video on California going out of business hits home is that it’s a reminder that, to borrow from the title of Fred Siegel’s book on America’s cities (including Los Angeles), the future once happened here.
In the 1960s and ‘70s, NASA and the Air Force were testing the most advanced aircraft ever built – the X-15, the XB-70, the wingless lifting body series, and ultimately, the Space Shuttle, the first spacecraft that would land on a runway and be (sorta-kinda) reusable at Edwards Air Force Base. Hollywood in the 1960s was showing us the wonders of the far-future with Star Trek. In the 1970s, some scruffy-looking guys in plaid shirts and blue jeans figured out how to mass-market the personal computer; even scruffier looking guys in plaid shirts and jeans figured out how to tie a film camera into a computer and revolutionized Hollywood’s special effects.
Even to everyday people not in Hollywood or high tech, California itself appeared clean, expansive and forward-thinking, as Jennifer Rubin noted in one of her last pieces for Commentary a few years ago on what it was like to move to California in the 1960s.
Flash-forward to today. As Peggy Noonan writes (on a topic that’s a perennial Cri de coeur from conservative pundits):
When Americans go to Europe they see everything but the taxes. The taxes are terrible. But that’s Europe’s business and they’ll have to figure it out. Yes what happens there has implications for us but still, they’re there and we’re here.
What Americans are worried about, take as a warning sign, and are heavily invested in is California—that mythic place where Sutter struck gold, where the movies were invented, where the geniuses of the Internet age planted their flag, built their campuses, changed our world.
We care about California. We read every day of the bankruptcies, the reduced city services, the businesses fleeing. California is going down. How amazing is it that this is happening in the middle of a presidential campaign and our candidates aren’t even talking about it?
Well, Romney has talked about Solyndra, even visiting their plant to illustrate the dangers of Obama’s crony venture socialism. But like Detroit, California is the logical end-point of Obama-nomics. Why would Obama complain? Besides, having blown-up the American auto industry, the energy industry, and heck even Gibson Guitars, presumably Obama thinks that Sacramento are a bunch of pikers when it comes to threatening businesses. Or as Troy Senik of Ricochet adds in a post titled “California, the Cautionary Tale:”
Every year, CEO magazine – a publication targeted at the nation’s captains of industry – ranks the 50 states based on how friendly their respective economic climates are for business. In 2012 – for the eighth straight year – California finished dead last.
As JP Donlon put it in the piece accompanying the magazine’s rankings, “Once the most attractive business environment, the Golden State appears to slip deeper into the ninth circle of business hell. The economy, which used to outperform the rest of the country, now substantially underperforms. And its status as the most ruinously contentious place to operate remains undisturbed.”
Harsh words, but hardly a new diagnosis from America’s business community. In 2010, the magazine called the Golden State “the Venezuela of North America” for its overt hostility to any commerce that doesn’t originate via legislative fiat. If this were the diagnosis of a single, industry-specific publication, perhaps CEO’s condemnations could be taken with a grain of salt. But the numbers bear out the magazine’s claim at every turn.
Pick a metric for public sector performance across the 50 states and it’s likely you’ll find California at or near the bottom. The Tax Foundation ranks the state 48th in the nation for its overall business tax climate, and 50th for individual income taxes. The state has the highest number of public employees (nearly 2.5 million according to a 2011 report by MarketWatch) in the country.
The future used to happen in California. Having transformed itself into Europe on the Pacific, like its Continental inspiration, the formerly Golden State appears to have no future. And having once set its sites on outer space, California is now lucky if it can simply keep the power on.
Romney’s not going to win California, but as Noonan writes, he can and should use it constantly in his speeches as an example of an increasingly leftwing and sclerotic government in total control of a state and remind voters that when they see the once-Golden State now tarnished and rusted, they’re seeing the endgame of Obama’s vision. (With Detroit representing the endzone, as an earlier video from PJTV starkly illustrated.)
(Originally posted at Ed Driscoll.com.)
CA legislature, dumbest on the planet and the laughingstock of the nation.
Pathetically, they actually see themselves as leaders and trendsetters. Delusional to the point of insanity…
You have just defined all liberals with that comment.
State of Hell, Gavin Newsom recently was quoted in a local newspaper as putting together a committee (gold rush), something like that. It will look into bringing businesses back to California. Not once did he say anything about the taxes and regulations that are killing our state. We need a committee for this? The solution is staring them right in the eyes. Where are the Reagan’s or Wilson’s to lead us out of this huge mess?
The future used to happen in California
It still does. Be scared, be very scared.
How amazing is it that this is happening in the middle of a presidential campaign and our candidates aren’t even talking about it?
De Nile ain’t just a river in Egypt. Anyway, it might upset all those Hollywood luminaries filling up the Democratic war chest in Obambus’ constant travels to Los Angeles, and those VCs ditto in NorCal kissing up because they want more federal Solyndra funds. The VCs may smarten up sooner.
The “train to nowhere”, on top of the last election making EVERY state office democratic, puts Kalifornistan into the modern disaster category, completely lost control. Bad stuff is going to happen here, very bad stuff, before it turns around. And that too may be a harbinger of national events.
People’s Democratic Republic of California…
Please, that’s the “People’s Social Democratic Republic of California”; gotta give the socialists their due, too.
– is spreading to the rest of the United States. Soon you will all be like Vallejo…
13 pct of population
33 pct of welfare recipients in US
Is immigration really good?
I make a point of NOT listening to Peggy Noonan. In 2008, she went over to the Enemy, taking joy in every attack on us by herself or by others among Those Who Are No Longer Our Countrymen. In the last 6 months to a year, she has been trying to get back into the good graces of the Patriot Movement. She should not be listened to, except as a declared supporter of Obama. She should definitely not be trusted to have either our, or the country’s interests at heart.
She may care about California, but I suspect because it is because she wants to be fashionable amongst the beautiful people out there the way she became popular in the Beltway when she changed sides.
I look at California, and agree with Mr. Driscoll:
It is hopeless. It is a lost cause. Its ills are deliberately self-inflicted with the certainty that if there are bad consequences to their decisions [and that is a concept that borders on fiction for them]; somehow we are obligated to fix it for them at no cost.
I no longer “care” about California. If they have their way, they will destroy my country and the Constitution. I have a daughter and son in law there who own a business. Said business is portable, and I hope that they move it soon. I have been urging them to return to America for some time.
I realize that the concept of the San Andreas Fault slipping and dropping California into the sea is at best wishful thinking. But once my family is out …
If they want to be a Third World country, they are welcome to. Already they are on the road there.
Subotai Bahadur