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Originally Posted by bnk
Califorina was at one time from the 60's- to early 80's was probably the best place to live in the entire world. Of course when I first visited cali in the early 80's it seemed like the best place in the entire world.
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I moved to SF in 1982 after visiting frairly frequently for 5 years before that. In the early 1980s, the city government was a mixture of "progressives" from the eastern side of the city and conservatives from the western and extreme northern parts. Also, at that time, all supervisors were elected city-wide so they had to be moderate enough to get votes from both extremes.
Then an initiative brought in district elections so supervisor candidates only had to win the votes of their own little part of town. Typically, that means on the Board there will be one or two "moderates" and the rest flaming liberals--no true conservatives. Interestingly, the Castro District, known world-wide as "the gay neighborhood" tends to elect someone moderately left of center but not extreme. That's because today houses in that area cost millions (mostly throughly renovated Victorian gems) and the owners are mostly middle aged or seniors, having moved to town when I did or earlier.
On the other hand, the Mayor is still elected city-wide of course and the in recent memory the most conservative candidate (but still left wing by national standards) has won. Right now the newly elected mayor is a moderate black woman, before her a moderate Chinese man.
But overall, the tone of city government is much farther left than before we got district supervisorial elections.
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Jerry Brown and the Cali state house and Senate made it easy to steal votes, or register only the votes they wanted.
That 2018 midterm election alone turned the blue small tide into a blue wave. The voter collection process needs to be looked at from the SCOTUS because all you need to do is sign your name and your person that takes your ballet to the voting booth will fill out their vote. If there are any GOP collected votes they are thrown in the circular dumpster fire.
How did California lose 10 GOP reps? Google it.
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Outsiders don't understand Jerry Brown. The 80 year old Jerry Brown (yes, he is) is not the liberal "moonbeam" of the 1960s. Before he was governor for the second time, he was a "law and order" mayor in Oakland and far tougher on crime than, for example, Rahm Emanuel. As governor, he has been a fiscal hawk, swinging a state budget in deficit (due to Republican Arnold Schwarzeneggar) to a large surplus and building a $16 billion "rainy day" fund.
I'll quote you from the Wall Street Journal, no lefty media resource:
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Jerry Brown steps down next month as California’s governor, and to much of the country, he is West Coast liberalism personified, having battled the Trump administration on climate change, immigration and other hot-button issues. But in the state capital of Sacramento, the liberal lion has made his mark in a different and perhaps surprising way: balancing California’s unwieldy state budget.
Mr. Brown earned a reputation for fiscal prudence through political will and good fortune. He rejected new spending from his own Democratic Party, paid down a wall of debt, campaigned for voter-approved tax increases and passed a constitutional amendment requiring new saving during flush times. He also presided over a sustained economic boom that yielded $16 billion worth of reserves, despite ambitious spending on education and other priorities.
When Mr. Brown took over from Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state had a $27 billion deficit and was considering auctioning buildings for cash. The new governor soon issued a historic veto of a budget passed by legislative Democrats that relied on borrowing and higher taxes; he called its projections unrealistic and warned that “very strong medicine must be taken.” Mr. Brown slashed social services, cut programs for the poor and scrapped redevelopment agencies. He also went all-in on a 2012 initiative that primarily raised income taxes on the state’s highest earners, convincing state voters to pass it by a margin of 55% to 45%.
As the state’s economy improved and revenue poured in, Mr. Brown increased spending on schools and health care but resisted calls to return welfare spending to its prerecession levels. He prioritized paying debts from past recessions and campaigned for another ballot measure: a “rainy day” fund to hold some of the state’s surpluses in reserve. It passed in 2014.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mix...s&page=1&pos=2
Frankly, I'm going to miss him because the next governor, former SF Mayor Newsom, is much farther left and is likely to undo much of what Brown accomplished. But for now, the CA budget is in MUCH better shape than, for example, Illinois's.
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