Such a Lovely Place

Apart from earthquakes, mudslides, droughts, and the possibility of a radioactive coastline from San Diego to Crescent City (thanks to the folks who brought you Fukushima),  California is an ideal state to live in. Yeah, well, what makes it ideal is Jerry Brown, the state's current governor, and his policies supporting economic growth and public amenities which are the opposite of what Washington, D.C. is promoting.  The state just passed a new budget that saves money for emergency expenditures while investing in public education, water projects and - wait for it - high-speed passenger rail, and Brown is able to do that with a solidly Democratic legislature.  And the Democrats in California can hope to continue doing well, as the policies that Brown and his party are espousing in California are clearly working.  While Democrat Pat Quinn in Illinois is struggling to win a second full term this year (and may very well lose, thanks to corruption and budget crises on his watch), Brown, running for re-election in November, is showing Democrats how to win by showing them how to govern.

Brown will easily be re-elected this year, and from all indications, Lieutenant Governor and former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom will likely run for the governorship in 2018.  Newsom is a hero to civil rights activists for pushing marriage equality for homosexuals before marriage equality was cool, but he's no hero to me. He recently announced that he was no longer supporting high-speed rail because he thought that more money for underprivileged children was more important.  Wait a minute, California's a big state, and it's one of  the richest states, if not the richest state, in the Union, and as far as I'm concerned, anyone who can't figure out how to spend money on both poor kids and fast trains shouldn't be governor of California. 

Oh yeah, if Big Oil manages to stop high-speed rail in California, then it's game over for American supertrains.  Big Oil has stopped high-speed rail just about everywhere else in the U.S.

By the way, so much attention was focused on who would get the right to vie for Henry Waxman's U.S. House seat in Los Angeles that I forgot about Sandra Fluke,  who considered running for Waxman's House seat but chose to run for the state Senate instead.  So what happened?  She came in second in the June 3 primary, behind another Democrat, Ben Allen, meaning that they will face each other in the general election.  I predict that the Democrat will win. :-D 

We all know about Sandra Fluke's position on contraceptives.  But what's her position on high-speed rail?  That's what I want to know.