{"id":14596,"date":"2012-06-12T13:29:22","date_gmt":"2012-06-12T17:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=14596"},"modified":"2012-06-12T13:29:22","modified_gmt":"2012-06-12T17:29:22","slug":"california%e2%80%99s-perestroika-moment-near","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/14596\/california%e2%80%99s-perestroika-moment-near\/","title":{"rendered":"California\u2019s Perestroika Moment Near?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.newgeography.com\/content\/002895-is-perestroika-coming-in-california\" target=\"_blank\">Joel Kotkin<\/a> sees the groundwork being laid for a grand political restructuring (i.e. perestroika) in California now that each branch of the state\u2019s ruling class is fracturing.<\/p>\n<p>Environmentalists are split over Governor Jerry Brown\u2019s decision to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/california-high-speed-rail\/ci_20761210\/gov-jerry-brown-plans-fast-track-high-speed\" target=\"_blank\">shield the multi-billion dollar high-speed rail train<\/a> from California\u2019s tough environmental review process.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/latimesblogs.latimes.com\/california-politics\/2012\/05\/facebook-california-budget.html\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook\u2019s disastrous IPO<\/a> means liberals in Sacramento can\u2019t bank on tech industry riches to finance tax hikes.\u00a0 And with serious pension reform being enacted in <a href=\"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/index.php\/commentary\/53-employment-and-labor\/1450-voters-reward-courage-and-trust-in-wisconsin-san-jose-\" target=\"_blank\">San Jose<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.capitolweekly.net\/article.php?_c=10mxrhrbobc1t97&amp;xid=10mxqt1xvaell06&amp;done=.10mxrhrbobcat97\" target=\"_blank\">San Diego<\/a> last week public sector unions are no longer guaranteed to win every election.<\/p>\n<p>All that\u2019s needed now is a Democratic leader to stand up and acknowledge that California\u2019s system is broken and needs major restructuring.<\/p>\n<p>Too bad Jerry Brown is no Mikhail Gorbachev.\u00a0 The latter risked a revolt from his party to save his people from economic disaster.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/news.investors.com\/article\/606156\/201203301439\/california-mulls-top-state-income-tax-rate.htm?p=full\" target=\"_blank\">Brown just announced a truce<\/a> with the public employee unions to raise taxes even higher than he originally envisioned.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, Kotkin predicts that California is fast approaching a moment where the citizenry will be poised to reward \u201ca coherent vision \u2013 from either Independents, centrist Democrats or Republicans \u2013 that can unite business, private sector workers and taxpayers around a fiscally prudent, pro-economic growth agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If that sounds impossible, remember that the Soviet Union fell without a shot being fired.\u00a0 All that\u2019s needed is the right man with the right message at the right moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joel Kotkin sees the groundwork being laid for a grand political restructuring (i.e. perestroika) in California now that each branch of the state\u2019s ruling class is fracturing. Environmentalists are split over Governor Jerry Brown\u2019s decision to shield the multi-billion dollar high-speed rail train from California\u2019s tough environmental review process.\u00a0 Facebook\u2019s disastrous IPO means liberals in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[299,19,2035,3613,1447,71],"class_list":["post-14596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-california","tag-economy","tag-jerry-brown","tag-perestroika","tag-reform","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14596"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14603,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14596\/revisions\/14603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}