After recent euphoria, the Bay Area is in for a serious hangover.  The party was great:  The SF Giants won a first World Series against those Bush-infused Texas Rangers, and blue state locals let the red state tea-totalers know they had no intention of calling it a night.  Unfortunately, reality is about to hit hard. As The Wall Street Journal put it:  California has become the Lindsay Lohan State.  Meanwhile, the NYT is reporting that bondholders are balking at the bill.  In the end, the Giants' win was epic, but still vicarious entertainment.  And what Tea Party goers might lack in spelling skills, they make up for in true insight:  it is time to sober up.

By objective measures, California's state government has failed.  California ranks at the bottom of every scale of accountability.  Despite our temperate climate, we have the nation's second worst roads and bridges.  We rank 36th for crime incidents and public safety.  Our public education lags well behind the nation.  Public development is moribund and critical public works are interminable.  Environmental stewardship is stagnant.  Our debt is unsustainable without federal bailout funds, which are not coming from the next Congress.  Public pension obligations are dramatically underfunded, drawing billions of our tax dollars that should go to services.

The only thing we know for certain:  California’s failure is not due to a lack of government resources or the energy and commitment of its people, but to the gross negligence and a failure of civic duty by its leaders.  Our sales tax (10%), property taxes (14 mils), and income taxes (10%, including ordinary income rates on capital gains) rank as the second most onerous in the nation.  Fees, fines, fares, and tolls are ubiquitous and historically high.  It is official:  Californians pay the most and get the least for their money.  Just how is it we suffer some of the worst government management since the days of Caligula?  

A large part of the problem is the inmates run the asylum.  Incredibly, public unions use our tax dollars by the millions in campaigns to defame anyone who comes close to threatening what can only be described as a quasi-criminal enterprise.  $900,000 per year salaries for Bell city managers, $750,000 per year for Alameda county health care administrators, $8 million pensions for San Francisco assistant police chiefs.   These are no longer public servants.  They are public malefactors.  If it bothers me that Buster Posey or Tim Lincecum made millions, I can avoid the Giants.  If I didn't like Meg Whitman's salary, I could have stopped using EBay. A problem with Carly Fiorina's management?  I could change jobs.  But if I find the management of California's public bodies outrageous, my only choice is to uproot my entire family, career and business and go to another state.  Unfortunately, both inside and outside of California that equation has become all too apparent.

As a political culture, California has always had an eclectic blend of transplanted liberalism, unbridled personal ambition, and a native Western libertarian streak – both the intellectual and cowboy sort.  With physical beauty, a savory climate and energetic transplants from across the country and the world, we could get it together when needed.  We put the past aside and planned the future – often the future of the world. History? Tradition?  Not as interesting when you have the next, next thing.  Or at least Twitter and Zynga.  Unfortunately, historical amnesia has a price.  In the face of adversity, amnesiacs lose perspective, regress, cling to illusions, and draw blanks.  Their imagination looks not to the travails and triumphs of the past for bearing and strength, but to the fickle flirtations, impulses and “why not me” envies of this year's accidental successes (movie stars, dot com wonders, sport titans).  When these infatuations fail, as they invariably do, regression sets in.  

The 2010 California electoral results were just such an exercise in collective historical amnesia and failure of nerve.  Californians were offered up two dedicated, accomplished women (Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina) with desperately needed leadership and management talents.  But they saw only the risk and not the reward.  This was a moment when California society took one of those regrettable turns.  Otherwise capable of so much innovation, creativity, and sense of challenge, Californians sought solace from the economic downturn anywhere but in the real world of cause and consequence -- the daily stuff of leaders like Meg and Carly.   In fairness to the voters of California, Meg and Carly did not do nearly enough by way of prior public service (as opposed to business) accomplishment to prove that either of them was a risk worth the taking.  Meg Whitman couldn't even be bothered to vote.

Still, the case against Barbara Boxer and Jerry Brown was much stronger.  As placeholders for nearly six collective decades in failing organizations, they were simply instruments of collective denial.  This pair has accomplished little for others in their aggregate 140 years on the planet.   A pet project here or there.   A huge dose of self-interest and corruption everywhere else.  They represent anti-leaders – drab wallflowers that have achieved significant personal comfort despite mediocrity.  They maintain their station by incessantly tearing down their betters and playing to regressive elements.  Like the segregationist Democrats of the old South, change is anathema and hopelessness pervades their efforts.  Will the man who gave public unions collective bargaining be the one to undo their disastrous consequences?  Very doubtful.

One spring leaf of hope on the horizon came from Proposition 20, which the voters overwhelmingly approved.   One might debate this particular solution on the issued of redistricting, but the fact is Californians know the patient is sick and dying.   They know Sacramento is simply not a place that can be trusted with fundamental liberties.   That is a sad commentary, but at least people are aware of the disease.

My fervent hope is that we can punch the accelerator of real change before it is too late.