Time for CA to revisit secession from the Union?
4
Re: "...Sure enough, this week Donald Trump effectively declared war on California on two fronts. He’s trying to take away the Golden State’s ability to regulate pollution generated by its 15 million cars, and, more bizarrely, he’s seeking to have the Environmental Protection Agency declare that California’s homeless population constitutes an environmental threat..."
Decades, past,I owned an 'Alice's Restaurant-like' Vw van; ...While a good product, the recent 'faked emissions results' scandal means I no longer consider 'VW' as a 'product' line...
I haven't owned a car since I was laughed, out of my local police pct., (Eastchester Rd. Bronx, NY), after trying, (...twice!!), to secure a 'GLA' report for insurance purposes...
That was 1990.
IF I ever own another car it WILL conform to the latest / greatest anti-pollution reg's, (aka, California's...at present...), or...it can blink, it's 'lonely' headlights at me as I travel, by the dealership!!
1
Is anyone else in California, besides me, up for secession?
2
The Atlantic is pretty liberal. Let’s see what they say:
“Medieval Diseases Are Infecting California's Homeless. Typhus, tuberculosis, and other illnesses are spreading quickly through camps and shelters. ... Infectious diseases—some that ravaged populations in the Middle Ages—are resurging in California and around the country, and are hitting homeless populations especially hard ...”
It makes you want to go, “Hmmmm...”
5
Hey California, like your sign.
3
Intellectual Imperviousness!
I love this description of the modern conservative.
(white, patriarchal, man-splaining)
FACTS BE DAMNED!
California progressives will find a way to continue their good work, and are strong enough to ignore the put-down.
3
California should secede.
When last in Washington DC you could trip over homeless persons on the streets. POTUS needs to clean up our capital before he criticizes others
6
It is hardly surprising that California has a housing shortage when it enthusiastically welcomes unlimited illegal immigration as a sanctuary state which also provides free health care to anyone who can get across the southern border. We once had among the best public education systems in the country, but now our schools rank with Louisiana and Mississippi, in significant part because so many kids don't speak English and teachers have to neglect the rest of the class to deal with those who can't understand. Democrats crow about changing demographics, and their policies clearly recognize that this is entirely due to many decades of illegal immigration. In order to maintain their grip on power, the Dems have turned California into the northernmost state of Mexico.
3
We need a new definition of “poverty.” We can’t simply use a dollar amount set at the federal level to define “poverty” for the whole nation. According to the government, Cleveland, Ohio is one of the most impoverished cities in America. I lived there and I can tell you that they don’t have a homelessness crisis that even compares to what I’ve seen in California, because housing is much more affordable in Cleveland. It doesn’t matter what your income is, when you’re sleeping on the street, you’re impoverished.
6
Seems there are two schools of thought about what the right-wing think about California's liberal rise, versus the Kansas failure. Some think that *of course* they want people to be healthy, prosperous, and well-educated, living happy lives, but disagree on what policies best produce those results.
The other side, darker, thinks that the actual results of right-wing policy are the desired ones: a population that, except for the very rich, is poor, ill-educated, sick, scared, and unhappy, but powerless to change these things. This group is probably easier to control, will take ANY job, housing (or not) situation; illness, crime, etc., and accept it as their "place". More than Gilded Age inequality--more like medieval inequality. They even have the preachers on tap to tell those miserable ones that it's all their fault, what with SIN and all, and they will, in the words of the parody, "eat pie in the sky when they die. As Pete Seeger always added, "That's a lie!"
6
I love Paul's columns. I think the last full paragraph is the absolute definition of today's Republican party and trump:
"More ominously, the apparent weaponization of the EPA is more evidence that Trump — whose party fundamentally doesn’t believe in democracy — is following the modern authoritarian playbook, in which every institution is corrupted, every function of government is perverted into a tool for rewarding friends and punishing enemies."
Instead of fixing-the-problem, trump only has the mental capacity to fix-the-blame; he is not a man of solutions unless the solution is one where he can beat his adversary and then his bully chest while expecting (begging) for the required applause.
4
Enemies. Trump needs enemies to rile up his people whom he convinces are all victims of those enemies. Because of the Electoral College he has nothing to lose in California. He's never going to carry it. So why not them?
4
California and other states totaling about 1/3 the populations of the country about 105 million people also sued Trump.
1
The short definition of fascism is a merger of government and corporate interests. Krugman states it another way:
"...modern authoritarian playbook, in which every institution is corrupted, every function of government is perverted into a tool for rewarding friends and punishing enemies."
And he's right.
5
We have to pray that there is not a great earthquak ein california whole trump and his cult hold power. They would gleefully deny timely assistance. Schadenfreude is their leitmotif.
1
There are 195 countries in the world, and fifty states in the United States of America; one of those states, California, has the fifth largest economy in the world. That means it does better than 190 countries on this planet.
Trump digest that fact before you criticize us again!
A proud Californian!
5
Time for California to respond in kind. But will the fake liberals of LA and SoCal have the stomach? Thank God we have Northern California to keep the state on a progressive path.
Trump has nothing to offer about the real and present crises we face as a nation. That's bad enough given the small window of opportunity we have before they become intractable and our options go from bad to worse.
Exacerbating the worst case scenarios is the fact that before we can try fix structural problems, we'll spend years repairing the damage Trump has inflicted on the nation's capacity to fix anything at all.
If things can't possibly be worse, add Trump's preternatural need to create whole new problems, new crises just because he can.
He loves arson because he likes playing the fire chief and yelling fire!
His desperation is obvious when his polling team tells him to attack California to fire-up his base and their loathing of the Peoples Republic of Cali with its peacock feathers and hot tubs.
Trump may think he's a conservationist because the state's most endangered species is the GOP Speckled Chicken-Hawk, a non-native species once invasive but now dwindled from loss of its Orange County habitat.
We are the capital of homelessness because we're land's end and there's nowhere the desperate who come here from other states can go. Homelessness is an American crisis that Californians deal with because other states don't.
California is past, present and future. We succeed as the 6th or 7th largest economy in the world because we try to fix problems, not create new ones to hide unsolved ones.
Our biggest contribution will be a solid blue vote come 2020.
6
I think the president is right to revoke the California gas waiver. There should only be one standard across all states and that standard should be set by Washington not by a state. States should not interfere with national standards.
1
California has grown to have the 6th largest economy in the WORLD. Whatever California is doing the rest of the states need to emulate. There is evidence that is happening in my neighboring state of Kansas. After being the great republican economic experiment Kansas ended up with its public school budgets being determined by the Kansas Supreme Court because Governor Brownback and the republican state senate and house kept cutting school funding to pay for other essential state services. After they couldn't access school funding anymore they started cutting essential services.
The great republican economic experiment ended with a revolution in the Kansas senate and house. Brownback was kicked out of office, A democratic woman was elected governor, and a gay woman was elected to represent her district in the US house. Kansas is in recovery.
7
I don't know to what extent homeless people generally remain homeless in the cities that they've always lived in--probably a lot. But my understanding has been that sun-belt states have long had a larger homeless population if for no other reason than that it's easier to survive when you're not sleeping on a bench in freezing weather. Not that this really addresses the core point of the op-ed, but I'm not sure how much the cost of housing matters to a person who can't even dream of paying the rent.
6
I've lost count the number of times my friends and I have commented on how glad we are to live in California over the last several years. The expression, "as goes California, so goes the rest of the nation," (eventually); is as true today as it was 30 or 40 years ago.
For the far right who sits in wait for California's demise, a story: When Jerry Brown was elected governor in 2011 he reached out to Republicans asking to find common ground they could find for governing. A handful said yes, and they were involved in meetings and bill drafting. But when it came time for voting on the bills, (adjusted to suit them), Republicans didn't generate a single vote. Brown didn't need their votes, he had a majority. After several of these episodes, Brown told Republicans they could sit on the sidelines. And the Democratic Legislature and he had a economy expanding two term success. Republicans in the state today continue to act as obstructionists, as if there is any result to their positions.
11
With what we are seeing from this criminal administration and the utter abuse of power, it may be time for some states such as California - Oregon - Washington to simply ignore what Trump is going on about, and whatever his EPA pronouncements may be (although continuing the pressure on the litigation side), and simply do whatever it was going to do anyway. I don't see the POTUS successfully sending in the military to secure the state in the name of lower emissions standards and fewer homeless being visible to the overly sensitive rich white GOP - let the GOP stay in their gated communities if they are offended by life in the streets. This will not exactly be a "civil war" as such; more like passive resistance, with the high likelihood that the auto manufacturers will give in to the reality that they have to have those states approval to sell vehicles in the states, and will continue to make cars meeting the higher standards, regardless of the protestations from Trump and his criminal cabal. As Trump would say, then "we'll see what happens."
9
I'd disagree with the assumption that housing costs are a primary driver of homelessness. I have a parent in Trump country in a low cost of living area and it's got a significant homelessness problem, even with plenty of affordable housing around. Other issues may be more likely to be causative; namely, lack of treatment options for mental health and addiction issues, lack of economic opportunity, restrictions on law enforcement, limited shelter space, and the fact that some areas are just more attractive to homeless populations. If you were sleeping outside, wouldn't you pick a large city with a permissive attitude and a temperate climate rather than, say, a small town in North Dakota?
5
@Eric Miller
"Restrictions on law enforcement"?
1
I'm betting on California.
BTW, doesn't Trump own real estate in California?
If he does, CA state courts have jurisdiction over him and his company. I certainly hope no one slips and falls while in one of his buildings there.
5
Remember: President Trump and most Republicans and conservatives are the ones who decry "federal overreach" and staunchly prioritize "states' rights" -- until a state like California implements a policy which angers them.
16
As my son, put it there are a lot worst places to be living on the streets than CA. I live in the small town /country area of PA and we have homeless here, they have a much tougher existence than in CA. Weather must have something to do with it.
6
Well worth noting that Trump is concerned about homelessness in California because it looks bad to "foreign real estate investors". So much for America First. Again. And you do have to wonder which "foreign real estate investors" are playing him this time.
7
@1DCAce
The Post noted that the Trump organization also owns real estate in both Los Angeles and San Francisco. One imagines that "property values" are as important in these developments and human ones.
2
@Deborah
He certainly does! This is the "brilliant" real estate expert who bought a golf course near Palos Verdes point. A big chunk of it promptly fell into the ocean. He can pick them, can't he?
2
In addition to everything Krugman mentions, California also has a multimillion-dollar budget surplus and has put much of that into a rainy day fund. I cannot think of a single GOP-run state that has done this.
California certainly has its problems, but many of them, including homelessness, are rooted in GOP policies of the past. It's always more difficult to clean up someone else's messes. At least my state is making serious attempts at doing so and at working for the common good.
20
Among its pollution regulatory measures, California has introduced a cap-and-trade carbon tax in addition to the tighter pollution regulation of its 15 million cars.
Parts of southeastern North Carolina, with some of these regions already struggling economically, were devastated by last year's hurricane Michael; and this year the Outer Banks of NC suffered costly water damage from this year's hurricane Dorian, with many in these areas still recovering from them. Although in California, the recent more lengthy, hotter, and arid forest fire seasons have too exacted a terrible toll.
The new federal individual income tax regs limit the taxpayers deductions for state income, real estate, sales, or overall state and municipal taxes, termed the SALT tax deductions, to only $10,000 annually on federal returns, which aggravates the housing shortage in California.
[09/20/2019 3:29 pm Friday Greenville NC]
6
I live in San Francisco, in the Soma neighborhood, in the absolute epicenter of the "homelessness crisis". I can tell you this: it's not caused by a lack of housing. What I see is an extreme drug crisis, specifically fentanyl. We've been told it's coming for years, and now it's here, and the syringes are everywhere as are the tent cities. These people aren't displaced, at least not by rising rents. These are opiate addicts, from all over the country. I hope the real problem can be addressed and not politicized.
12
@Alec B
As somebody who used to live in SOMA and who still works there; it is a housing crisis. Condos, new office buildings and now a new arena are driving the Homeless out of their traditional areas. If you have moved to SOMA in the last ten years those old buildings are where they used to live. Alternatively where the new condos have been built is the land where they used to have their campers and tents. They most definitely have been displaced
3
As a Californian, thank you doctor. Nobody comes here anymore. It's too crowded. And thank you, Yogi.
1
Didn't see one big reason for Trump's war on California in your otherwise persuasive analysis of his "California Scheming".
That reason: The largest state on the left coast, the world's 10th largest economy if memory serves aright, is chock full of Hispanics, an ethnic group against which the President continually fulminates.
In the good old days, as Paul Krugman says, California was a conservative place. It was also bigoted, which explains the passage of Proposition 187. The spectacular collapse of 187 removed every shred of respectability from such bigotry.
Now Trump has made dislike of Hispanics a re-election plank. What better way to discredit them than messing with California?
65
@Frank McNeil, with a GDP of nearly $3 trillion, it's the world's 5th largest, if a separate country, behind Germany, but ahead of the UK and France. Just within 100 miles of downtown LA, there is about $1 trillion of economic activity, which all by itself would be 15th in the world. California is quite astounding.
25
The Trumpublican't house of cards can't survive. Republican House members are "retiring" in flocks, Mitch is using a nail-gun to seal his Party's casket in the Senate and even Trump's "base" is shrinking, as tariffs bankrupt farmers and businesses. Stating a war with Iran won't help him, and his clownish attempts to distract attention from dire economic issues won't be successful.
More likely sooner than later, someone or something will be revealed that will topple the Tower of Trump, and damage the GO-P Party beyond repair.
" It’s an ugly story, and it’s scary, too."
4
Gee, if the rest of the USA doesn't want us, we can always succeed.
2
I appreciate all the positive remarks about Cali, but nonetheless -and as much as I love the west coast, the problems of living here are enormous. It costs too much and there are too many of us. Neo liberalism and NIMBY ism rule. This is not only a Cali problem, it represents the way in which the nation is going, with the concentration of wealth and all that follows from that. Trump should stay out of our business though, we are figuring it out without his help, thank you very much. The inanity of tampering with our pollution laws is mind boggling. Although we don't look so good right now, give us some time and we will lead the country by example out of our climate and unhoused woes. Maybe.
2
Keep in mind, many if not most of the homeless in California
are refugees from other states .Our homeless problem is in
large part due to the low tax red states unwillingness to
provide basic services to its own citizens. They flee to the
humane states like California.
11
As a native of Los Angeles, I can tell you the homeless problem started with Gov. Reagan's "California model" under which the mentally ill were removed from institutions and placed back in their communities, where they were supposed to receive treatment and housing support. It was never funded but the psych hospitals were closed. Then war and veterans returning mentally ill, addicted and homeless. Add to the mix, Southern California is a magnet for the homeless of other states because it has lovely weather, a very important factor when you can't afford to live inside.
162
@vspdance Exactly!
6
Re: "...Gov. Reagan's "California model" under which the mentally ill were removed from institutions and placed back in their communities, where they were supposed to receive treatment and housing support....It was never funded but the psych hospitals were closed..." {@vspdance}
A classic example of 'trickle, down', (aka, 'Republican'...), healthcare!
12
Will California prevail in the courts? Or do we need to elect a Democratic president in 2020 to make that happen?
3
People may misunderstand that CA is a "High-tax" state. But for the vast majority, paradoxically, it's a "low-tax" state:
In MO the top state income tax rate is under 6% though in CA top rate is 13.3%.
But in MO any income over $9K has to pay at the top rate, whether it is $20K, $200K or $2 million.
In CA that 6% is levied only on over $58K, for joint filers; up to $37K the rate is only just 2% or less.
Because millionaires pay up to 13.3%, the per capita state income tax revenue is far higher than in MO. In other words, the bulk of the sate income tax revenue comes from the working poor & middle class while the rich contribute very little compared with their ability to pay.
However, CA needs to do something drastic about homelessness. Rents & Real Estate prices are sky high. If large numbers of subsidized rental units are built at strategic locations & mass transit to their work places are provided, homelessness can be alleviated.
If affordable housing is available in CA, the state is a model for the rest of America. Even otherwise, CA model state income taxes should be copied by other states.
3
Every single eligible voter in California could vote against Trump and he could still win.
He knows this, and is using an anti-California strategy to motivate his base.
Due to the Electoral College, he could lose the popular vote by 5 or 10 million nationally and get re-elected.
If this occurs, it will further strain our already un-democratic political structure, and move us a step closer to devolution into regional nation-states.
As a resident of WA state, I welcome the devolution of our ungovernable "nation" into autonomous regions. I have more in common with British Columbia than I do with Alabama, and am frustrated with the undemocratic Senate and the Electoral College.
I am tired of minority rule in this country.
11
I think a more accurate headline would be that California declares war on Trump. He knows how much he is reviled there - and truly on the whole West Coast - and is striking back.......but he is essentially powerless because the laws are on his side.
It is likely to come down to a state's rights issue, and that is one discussion I would like to see. A state with the size and influence of California is a good one to test the limits. It could herald the beginning of the breakup of this country if Trump continues to be in power.
I'd like to think that we West Coasters will then say "we're out of here" and start our own progressive and prosperous country, leaving the red taker states to realize the errors of their policies.
5
Mr. Krugman: As usual, you are right. Our President now challenges Californians to toe the Trumpism line, or be punished with edicts regarding the homeless, the threat of more rampant offshore oil drilling and the destruction of our environment. Mind you—none of this comprises good public policy. It’s punishment for providing Hillary Clinton with the 3 million votes that caused the Donald to lose the 2016 election. Now, we’re really in for it. Don’t be surprised when we see more punishment in the future, in particular if the Donald wins the Electoral College in 2020. It’s an immutable rule that for every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction. Here’s how that rule applies. More punishment coming our way will provide the impetus to succeed from the Union. We’ll comprise the world’s fifth leading economy and leave the Donald’s country with its deserved legacy of disfunction, destruction and environmental catastrophe. Good luck talking us out of this one.
3
Anyone remember the smog in Pasadena during the 70's and early 80's? It was so strong that you couldn't even see the beautiful San Gabriel Mountains which are about 20 miles away.
Today the mountains stand out mightily! All bc CA took it upon themselves to change the pollution/emissions from cars.
https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=Awr9IkyBKIVdglMACC9XNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTEydnRpNHJtBGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDQjg3NDVfMQRzZWMDc2M-?p=before+and+after+san+gabriel+mountains&fr=yfp-t-s
9
@Dolly Patterson
Smog in Pasadena during the 1980s?
Oh, yes, I remember. I was there.
Despite the pioneering state legislation in the 1960s, and the Federal-level Clean Air Act in 1970s, reducing the LA Basin smog problem took _decades._
I thought I had left behind "Ozone Action Alert Days" when I graduated and moved on to places in the midwest. Not so. Turns out that the nubbins of the Appalachian Mountains and the Jones Valley here in Birmingham are _ideal_ geography for creating inversion layers. Combine cheap land values, suburban sprawl, high-schoolers who drive SUVs while their parents commute separately to their jobs, and a lack of mass-transit, and Birmingham's air pollution problem can rival Pasadena on a bad day back in the day.
4
C'mon, Dr. Krugman. I expect so much better of you than this:
"In particular, it has sky-high housing costs, which in turn are probably the main reason it has a large population of homeless residents."
If you were a homeless person, where you would rather be: CA, especially the CA south of San Francisco, with its livable and favorable climate and acceptance or a Red State, especially a Red State that is cold, hot, prone to tornadoes or hurricanes and generally unfriendly?
8
Unfortunately, the homeless problem stems, also, from the fact that in America the freedom of movement from state to state is unhampered. You can move to any state any time. The State should regulate the movement of population otherwise you have excess people in some states at any moment that you can't accomdate.
14
@rafaelx....There you go again, taking away people's freedoms and giving the government more power. Dictatorships like Communist Russia and China required residency permits and had the kind of restrictions on population movements that you are proposing.
24
@rafaelx: It’s difficult to tell whether this is a serious proposal or dark humor. When we start instituting interstate immigration quotas, I believe we’ve abandoned the basic notion of a “United States.”
23
@rafaelx
"The homeless problem stems, also, from the fact that in America the freedom of movement from state to state is unhampered."
With all respect, I've never heard anyone suggest that. Unbelievable. "United" States? Maybe we all should start going around with our passports all the time...
14
Hey, DJT, we're happy to secede! I'm sure Kansas can pick up the revenue slack!
13
Am amazed to see commenters blaming Reagan for any ills of today. R quit being prez in 1989. Surely there has been time to correct any policies from that era.
There are still a few mental hospitals but I guess we only confine people now after they have committed a massacre, not before.
Conditions of fantastic filth and disease have been allowed to prevail in our cities. Up until recently, the topic was on the MSM no no list; one could only see it discussed privately, but the nyt has allowed it, to my amazement. I used to visit SF sometimes when I lived in CA, a beautiful state. What an elegant place it was.
How badly governed we are.
2
@Liz
Those comments refer to when he was GOVERNOR.
5
@Liz Ummm, these are problems Reagan created when he was governor of California. Read some history.
@Jules Even sillier. He quit being gov. in 1975. CA can't fix something done in 1975? Really.
This piece doesn't mention one of the key ways in which California is in opposition to the Trumpian world view.
As a long-time Californian, I can tell you that most residents of the state understand that people from Mexico and Central America are the backbone of our economy. We see them doing the most backbreaking jobs with no safety net.
In the land of Trump, these are people to fear. In California, they are our friends and neighbors.
737
@Joe- Here in California undocumented workers contributed $180 billion to the economy last year and account for 50 percent of all hired field and crop workers, making them essential to the success and continued viability of American farms.
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/trumps-immigration-cutbacks-hurt-economy-191808438.html
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/12/06/671879631/report-facts-about-migrants-dont-always-match-what-the-headlines-say
71
@Joe
As here in Texas, Sir. Friends and ... family.
51
@Joe No, the exploitation of migrant labor from Central America is NOT the backbone of California's economy. It astonishes me to see liberals celebrating the fact that farm workers do backbreaking jobs for low wages and no benefits. With all the sunshine and irrigation water, farming in California will always be viable. If farmers had to pay fair wages to their employees, then farmers would not be as wealthy, but they would still farm. If the pipeline of illegal immigrants was cut off, then free markets would drive farm worker wages up.
At times, the hypocrisy of California liberals is breathtaking.
9
All the California or West Coast Tech firms are located in Europe ( fiscally they are not US corporations ) where they invade the European markets and pay no taxes.
But they also pay no taxes in the USA .
That is Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Starbucks, Netflix, and others .
They just create a rich elite but they don't participate in the social fabric .So the poor and lower classes end up paying all the taxes for infrastructure, education, police, etc...while they are working like slaves for the elite.
2
@JPH,
Um, did you read the article? Have you lived in California recently?
Taxes on the wealthy were increased, not the average Californian. The tech firms do pay taxes in the US and Europe (granted recent reports indicate Amazon (based in Seattle WA, not CA) did not pay any federal income taxes in 2018), just not high rates. That's not the corporations' fault - if they voluntarily paid more in taxes than legally required, they could be sued by their shareholders.
The fault for low or no income tax revenue from all corporations rests right with the GOP, whose 2017 "tax reform" mysteriously got a name change to "tax reduction" after it was passed without a single hearing (unlike the year-long hearings on the various sections of the ACA).
Corporations pay only the taxes the are legally required to pay. The GOP has been setting that bar lower and lower ever since January 1995 when they took over the House.
One last reminder: The House (where all tax and spending bills must originate) has been controlled by the GOP for all but 4 of the past 24+ years. The Senate has been controlled by the GOP (by majority or 40+ filibuster-proof obstructionism) for all but 18 months of the last 24+ years. Last, by rule changes passed by the GOP in 1995, the minority party in the House (i.e., the Democrats for most of this time) have exactly ZERO power to do anything - pass bills, conduct investigations, etc.
6
@John I wrote CA and West Coast ( about Amazon, Starbucks ). No the US Tech firms pay close to zero taxes in Europe. In 2018 Google repatriated 20 Billion euro from its European business without paying 1 $ in tax to the European union.
The fiscal fraud of US firms in Europe amounts to at least 20 % of the budget or the equivalent of the European deficit annually. if it was not about the dishonest activities of US firms in Europe , the budget of the EU would be balanced.
Then all your excuses about the GOP, etc... It is the American people and the American business .
It is dishonest business in Europe but also dishonest business in the USA .
Liberal in Europe means the contrary. It means liberal economically.
In that consideration, the economy of California and the west coast is very liberal in the sense of not being "liberal " in the American sense.
The economy does not participate in the budget of the states of CA or WA or whatever state. So indeed, since 90 % of the US population lives on 20 % of the wealth because the ret is owned by the 10 % upper class, they are indeed also those who are paying most of the taxes. It is a mathematical fact.
"California ... has sky-high housing costs, which in turn are probably the main reason it has a large population of homeless residents."
Not necessarily. I live in Florida which has a high homeless population. But, here's the interesting thing - many are from other states who purposely came to Florida for the warm climate. They didn't care about being homeless so much as being homeless in a state with a climate in which they could survive.
Yes, I know that sounds strange. But, do not underestimate the rational decisions of even the homeless. I lived nearly 15 years in San Jose CA near a park known for it homeless population. This being the only place to walk my dog, I got to know many of the park's "permanent" residents, along with the many "visitors" from other areas. While some (IMHO) were in need of mental health services, and many were homeless because of circumstances beyond their control. A majority were homeless in California by choice because of the mild climate (not the social services, which most did not or could not use).
Not being homeless, this initially came as a surprise to me, but as one of the "permanent" park resident ( a former Connecticut resident) stated several times, "Where would you rather be homeless - California or Florida? Or, Connecticut or Michigan?"
5
“It’s an ugly story, and it’s scary, too.”
An even scarier aspect of this phenomenon is how eagerly greeted we see the use of any tool to hurt them bad, bad liberals. The abject abandonment of states’ rights ideology by the GOP under Trump shows us that states’ rights arguments were never anything more than an expedient—a means to an end. When a minority of conservative states wanted to keep a federal government dominated by centrist-liberal types at arms' length, states’ rights were portrayed as a fundamental part of the American landscape going right back to the founding of the nation. Now that conservatives are in a position to use the federal government to enforce their vision, states’ rights are an aberration, an irritant, and an obstacle to be smashed. We’ll have to make sure we remember this when the pendulum swings the other way.
8
@Ian Leary: The bad drive the good out of any human activity when their are no enforced minimum standards of conduct that will result in expulsion if violated. The states that send drones to Washington to avoid meeting standards of equally protective law have no bottom to their conduct.
2
Life is horrible here in Palo Alto. I live 1.5m from Stanford. Stanford is a corrupt failing university.
There are Taco trucks on every corner that sell drugs to children. Homeless people, garbage and tent cities are everywhere. The schools are decrepit and full of vermin. Guns proliferate.
The smog is dense, people have to wear masks on most days. Healthy food is scarce. Widowed old ladies are trampled.
MS-13 gangs roam the streets at night. Illegal immigrants live in luxury with free food, health care, and 4-star lodging. They don't work while good hardworking new age churchgoers cower amongst the godless.
Governor Gavin Newsom is amoral. Hillary and Barack vacation together locally. We have the highest taxes anywhere in the world. Diseases are rampant, etc., etc.
Trump is right as usual. We should be severely punished and thwarted from spreading and infecting our nefarious, polluted culture and ideals to other states. The US should build a wall on the eastern side of the state to ensure that we keep our clean air standards local.
11
You talking about East Palo Alto?
I don't think Trump actually likes pollution, but he is obviously punishing California in this case.
It's also about Trump gaslighting the entire country. It's a control thing - if he succeeds in reducing the self-confidence of more people, then there's more room for his propaganda lies.
Remember when Trump recently blamed LED light bulbs for making him look orange, and he wanted those ol' inefficient incandescent bulbs back? It was reactionism against future trends, maybe, but it was also gaslighting.
2
@Astrochimp: LED lightbulbs should be mandatory whenever possible because they run so cool that they never start fires.
If you visit Venice Beach, you get an up close view of the challenges a liberal state like California faces. On the one hand you have the Ocean, nice homes and beautiful beaches and businesses a long the board walk. But camped in front of the storefronts are homeless people and all their belongings and tents scattered over the public beaches and the strong foul odor of urine in the unoccupied spaces between buildings. How do you fairly deal with the interests of homeless people who suffer from mental illness and drug addiction versus the rights of tax paying citizens to live and work in a safe environment. The homeless in Venice routinely camp out on street corners, alleyways, in front of people's homes and break in and steal from the yards of Venice residents. It is hard for the progressive and liberal residents of Venice to feel sympathy for these people who have become a terrible nuisance. The rights of the homeless seems to supersede the rights of homeowners in LA county and soon there will be a huge backlash against the homeless in California if things do not change. The answers are difficult and they include the homeless taking more responsibility for improving their plight and the government creating affordable/subsidized housing in states like California and forcing these people off the streets. The answers don't include anything Trump or his EPA lies about.
3
@EPMD:
We have eyes and can see the same situation as what you did. Please provide specific suggestions as to what can be done. And, blaming everything on liberals as a catch-all solution is not viable. We too think the situation is unacceptable.
1
claiming trump is at war with "California" is ludicrous. He might be at war with its banana republic-anarchists left winged democratic politicians, but there are many in California who support most of trump's policies, support that he is challenging the banana republic, and also donate for his campaign - we know that from his recent visit. The left winged politicians in California are disliked by a large fraction of well educated and productive California residents, because they are harmed the most by the banana republic-anarchy
4
@sh
Did you forget that if your air gets dirtier YOU are going to suffer the consequence?
You resent the Democratic politicians a lot. Fine, I respect that. But how can you then follow a carnival barker, lier, cheater, dim wit who hates California? Why not work on making California better together with decent like minded people?
As Yoda might say hate is taking you to the dark side.
@sh Yes, California voters hate "left-winged" [!] politicians so much that they have voted in a legislature consisting of an Assembly made up of 61 Democrats and 18 Republicans, with one vacancy, and a Senate composed of 29 Democrats and 11 Republicans.
Trump is our nation's drunk uncle, pontificating at the Thanksgiving dinner table.
Critical of everything, but when he offers solutions, everyone sees immediately that they're useless. He thinks in black and white. He sees a problem, attributes it to the Democrats, then claims anything he comes up is a better solution. But he enacts nothing.
He knew how to fix Obamacare. He know how to reform immigration. He knew how to solve the conflicts in the Middle East. He knew how to work with North Korea.
He knew how to deliver so much winning that we would be sick of it.
We're sick of it.
6
Dear Mr Krugman,
your quote:
that Trump — whose party fundamentally doesn’t believe in democracy
acts within your democratic playground.
My question:
Is your democratic system time-barred ?
Could it be that Trump is not the problem, but your system!
fr regards
adam
I nominate Jim Wilson for a Pulitzer in photo journalism.
2
Realizing where we are today one has to shamefully ask "how did all of sudden in just a few years did our country come to where we are now." We use to be vibrant, excited, smiling, ambitious, proud, and yet now the words have all changed, and we are partisan in our thoughts, we are right and left in our politics, we are greedy, we place our nation's resources in the top 1%, and we expect the middle and lower class to work harder, to pay the bills created by a government that borrows $trillions so it can say our economy is strong while the rest of the world is worse off, is weak and has a falling economy. It is sad, pitiful, but we have deceived ourselves. We now believe the lies Trump tells us, and forget the truths that built our great country.
5
Clearly Paul Krugman isn’t a resident of our fair state and neither contends with nor accurately characterizes the quality-of-life challenges we Californians daily face, namely crime and homelessness.
Due to misguided criminal justice reforms of jail realignment and the reduction of some felonies to misdemeanors by Proposition 47 , career petty criminals now operate in our neighborhoods with impunity. In my formerly “ safe” suburban county, auto smash and grabs have increased 400% and home burglaries are also on the rise, and commonly occur in broad daylight.
Homelessness is not a housing issue ( witness the thousands of illegal immigrants absorbed annually) but a public health crisis of epic proportions. The vast majority of California homeless are mentally ill and addicts. The filthy streets and tent cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco pose a health hazard to all, engendering a soaring rat population and medieval diseases like typhus, leprosy and bubonic plague. Human waste from 50,000 homeless residents in Los Angeles drains untreated into the Pacific Ocean, killing sealife.
While Trump’s characterization of homelessness may seem like hyperbole, it’s not that far off the mark.
4
@Caterina How did the Dems let the areas sink to this level?
@Liz obviously by misconceived policies and failed governance.
"...he’s seeking to have the Environmental Protection Agency declare that California’s homeless population constitutes an environmental threat."
And Canada is a threat to U.S. security. I wonder how the good folks of Gander, Newfoundland, who took in three or four thousand Americans stranded by the 9-11 attacks feel about that.
We live in interesting times.
2
Pretty much true, but homelessness and housing are both more complex than Paul suggests.
One thing to remember is that a lot of the homeless have substance abuse or mental health issues. For them it's not a simple economic issue. I also suspect that part of the reason that California has such a big homeless population is simply that the climate allows it. Being homeless in NYC is brutal, in LA it's not so bad.
And yes, a significant part of the housing problem is NIMBY-ism, but part is also geography. Buildable land in the SF Bay area is rare and already packed. Look at a map: half the area is either bay or mountains. And earthquakes also complicate matters, making high rises more difficult and expensive to build.
There are other (small) complaints I have, but overall Krugman has it right. California is the anti-Trump, and he hates that. All hail the California Republic!
3
I love living in California and I'm so proud of my home state. For forty years I've watched Republicans predict the eminent demise of the Golden State.
We've had some rough patches. But we've learned one thing - reduce Republicans to an afterthought and things improve across the board.
It's not just demographics that have fueled this political change. I'm from Orange County - Reagan Country. The birthplace of the crazy John Birch Society.
In the 2018 election Orange County turned blue. Democrats won every House seat possible.
The 2020 election is going to be a tough one for Orange County. It's going to be a fight to the finish. But it IS going to be a fight and that alone is a welcome improvement.
So here's to the willfully blind that have been predicting the demise of the home of the Beach Boys, the Eagles and Frank Zappa. You've been wrong for forty years. Let's hope you're wrong for another forty.
9
"....it has sky-high housing costs, which in turn are probably the main reason it has a large population of homeless residents."
High housing costs are surely a contributing factor. However, I walked to work in downtown Sacramento for many years, and what I saw in the homeless was mental illness and/or drug addiction. Many of them appear schizophrenic and shout to the wind.
I realize this is only anecdotal. Still, if there are a lot of homeless due to high rents or joblessness or eviction, they must all be in shelters or staying with family. I would like to see a statistical report detailing the back story of all our homeless.
3
I'm a native Northern Californian (SF Bay Area), and my wife of 45 years is a native San Franciscan. We left California 39+ years ago with our degrees in hand, and never looked back.
Well, that's not entirely true--We once enjoyed going back to The City annually (as it once was respectfully referred to) for professional conferences.
But that ended in the early 2000s, as Lefty politicians allowed The City to transmogrify into The Dump.
It remains a Dump, as do the other major cities in California: San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, etc.
If Trump is picking on liberal California, it's because it DESERVES it.
Get lost, Dr. Krugman.
4
@Zee
Then it's a good thing you moved to New Mexico, right?
3
@eheck--
You got that right.
And my parents and grandparents hailed from Parma, Ohio.None of us much like the bugs there.
New Mexico-- no bugs, no natural hazards, and lots of sunlight. Eat your heart out.
@eheck--
Well, you've got that right!
I won't comment about the fiscal and social state of California because I don't know it. Much as I love the state, I haven't been able to visit in ten years.
The above said, I do recall, when I'd visit California in the early seventies from my perch in grad school at the University of Oregon, that the state had some severe pollution problems. The Los Angeles basin could get choked with smog.
About that same time, the first of the California state auto pollution regulations went into effect. Friends in grad school who moved back there had to retrofit their VW bug with pollution control equipment.
California instituted pollution regulations for new cars too. Others states, like my home state of Massachusetts, adopted these regulations. If I recall the Clear Air Act, federal regulations constituted a base-line for pollution control, and states could go further.
My 1982 Volvo, purchased in Massachusetts, was built to the California standard. To get a safety sticker for the car, emissions had to meet or exceed the state standard. That Volvo bettered the state standard by something like 80 percent, an astonishingly clean car for that era.
All this is a long-winded way of saying that, without California and other states raising the bar, the air would be far worse today. On that trip ten years ago, I saw that the L.A. basin air was clear.
Mr. Trump's actions, and the GOP agenda, against California are both politically petty and a danger to the health of the planet.
7
As a reader from California, I entirely agree with Krugman's assessment. Trump hates us because we are liberals and because we stand against his tyranny. Yes, we do have a problem with homelessness, much exacerbated by wildfires that have burned thousands of homes (5,000 homes in my home town of Santa Rosa burned 2 years ago and most are not yet rebuilt). And what is causing these massive fires? Climate change has extended our fire season by two months. We must defeat the climate change deniers to save our State.
8
Mr. Krugman,
The fundamental problem is directly related to our system of taxation. Paul Romer's insight upon visiting Burning Man made me think:
1. Unlimited personal freedom leads to anarchy.
2. Each society is defined by the boundaries it places on personal freedom.
3. The mechanism for codifying and enforcing those boundaries is government.
4. Governing requires resources. For most nations those resources are gathered by taxation, and by definition every tax is a “taking”.
5. Whether the tax (the taking) is progressive* or regressive** is determined by identifying whose personal freedom is more (or less) limited by the tax.
*Progressive Taxation: The rate of taxation increases in sync with the ability of the taxpayer to pay the tax; the resulting burden of taxation is relatively equal for all taxpayers at each level.
**Taxation unrelated to the taxpayer’s ability to pay is by definition Regressive.
Conclusion: regressive taxation is antithetical to personal freedom; progressive taxation promotes and reinforces maximum freedom for all.
I would appreciate your thoughts on this.
Thank you.
3
I think that you wrote a good comment, Grumpy. But I disagree with your idea that taxation is a "taking." Rather, I consider taxation as a payment of service to the government which provides us a civil society. As president of the the United States, George Washington toured the thirteen states of the new republic to help solidify the union. A constant theme of his speeches exhorted his fellow citizens to pay their taxes to the government which vouchsafed their liberty. And for people who don't want to pay their taxes, they should remember that President Washington led the U.S. Army against tax protesters during the Whiskey Rebellion, to make sure that they did pay their fair share in support of the government which guaranteed their freedom
4
Trump is the president of a small subset of Americans and the rest of us are the great unwashed as far as he is concerned.
Notice that he was not averse to collecting $millions in Californian campaign contributions on the QT. No splashy rallies for California. You won't see him greeting Californians on the evening news, just slipping into remote locations with wealthy donors and big-money-a-plate dinners.
He hates Baltimore, Puerto Rico, California. Name a blue state and he cringes. He is not our president. He is the darling of the most paranoid and religious right whose joys are gained by treating people outside their group as badly as they can and yearning for the rise of the mistreated white folks who can never catch a break except at a Trump rally.
7
Trump is stabbing the earth to death and the right isn't speaking up. Where are the Republicans who love the earth? Do they exist anymore?
4
California has one big thing going for it....They didn't vote for a wanna be Dictator. We saw through him from the git go.
9
Many comments here are getting in the weeds bickering over the merits or flaws of California. This is missing the point. We have a president who has a personal vendetta against a state, is trampling on states' rights, threatening to endanger its environment and warring against its homeless. What's next? Bring in the National Guard when California doesn't cooperate? And you conservatives out there, whatever happened to your love of federalism and states' rights? Regardless of what state we're from, we should all be appalled that we have an autocrat as a president who feels he has the right to punish and invade a state. That so few comments here are talking about this, and instead prefer to talk about how great/bad California is, shows the deep level of denial Americans are in right now.
8
Trump has just issued a "Reconstruction" plan for California. The objective is to turn it into Arkansas.
3
Krugman is right about California being a success story, and not many here, as the photo shows, want Trump to visit our country. (A few of us favor independence from the U.S.)
Lack of housing is mainly due to excess regulation, and the politicians aren't squarely facing this reality. Here's an example of how they are "solving" the problem.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/08/20/homeless-people-los-angeles-la-builds-pricey-koreatown-apartments/1984064001/
Illegal immigrants are not a problem for us; the government has taken a few steps away from treating them as second class citizens, but not quite.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/california-to-provide-full-health-benefits-to-illegal-immigrants-under-age-26/
Medi-Cal is for low income and disabled people, not everyone; "some" doctors accept this insurance.
Schwarzenegger was a mediocre politician at best, inheriting a huge financial problem, which he left to Gov. Jerry Brown who overcame it with program cuts and tax hikes.
Krugman might be trying too hard to make California, even though not an egalitarian society, sound a bit more like a "progressive" utopia. He'd have better luck looking to Europe.
4
Sorry, Dr. Krugman, President Trump has NOT declared war on California, he is ENDING the war California declared on the rest of the US!
4
Just another example of Trump yelling at his opponents when he has little or no knowledge of what he is saying. True, LA and SF have a huge homeless problem, but so do most cities on the West Coast because of housing costs. It would be a breath of fresh air to see Trump actually do or say something positive presenting solutions on a nationwide basis to the homeless problem. Not gonna happen. He's not interested in the people, only about making money for him and his family.
Cut to the chase. His pronouncements are meaningless. Trump is not mentally fit to be president. Impeach Trump ASAP.
1
One of the worst things Trump did, which may result in a California real estate recession, is basically eliminate the state and local income tax deduction. This is a big deal in California where state income taxes are high (to pay for great higher education, etc.) and property values/prices/taxes are very high compared to the national average. Middle and upper middle class people are just starting to feel the effects of this tax change. These are the people who generate money for the economy. California is a bellweather state. As goes California, so goes the nation.
P.S. If recession drives Trump from office, it can't happen soon enough.
143
@Paco, Not just local income taxes, also local property taxes. Sorry I forgot to mention that, above.
13
@Paco:"One of the worst things Trump did, which may result in a California real estate recession, is basically eliminate the state and local income tax deduction."
It wasn't "basically eliminated", it was limited.
And California residents aren't the only ones being hit by this. I was limited in my state and local tax deduction for 2018.
Looking at changes we might see from a Democratic presidency, we should get used to this. Those with net worth closely tied into assumed tax breaks will be taking a hit.
I suppose some provisions will be made for folks in SF or NYC since it takes $1,398,075.39 per year just to barely squeeze by as middle class there. You wouldn't want your children to attend public schools there.
3
@Paco It's not just California. Property taxes are high in Pennsylvania, too. As a swing state, you would think Trump would be concerned over him directly increasing PA taxpayers' burden.
11
I grew up in Los Angeles back in the late 50's and 60's. Although we lived in a hilly area of the city, on many days we couldn't see them. Now I can see mountains that are nearly 40 miles away on most days. Over that course of time, our population has nearly doubled and with that the cars that we drive. If not for the AQMD, our city would look like Beijing. On another note, I had a brother who was schizophrenic. He was in a state hospital until he was released during Reagan's term as governor. He then was homeless for years and that caused much anxiety for my parents, not knowing where their son was at. I never forgave Reagan for that.
8
@Harley--
And, of course, neither your parents nor you took care of your brother?
No, I didn't think so.
1
@Zee
If they did not know where he was, it would have been hard to take care of him.
1
We've lived out here for almost 40 years, and they have been good years!
Our area of Los Angeles has superior schools, low crime and neighbors who care about each other. People help each other all the time, whether they know each other or not.
Our condo has been paid for, and we are happily living the retirement life of two people who carefully saved and invested correctly over the years.
Those who are leaving cannot afford to live here because they never saved nor invested correctly.
1
75 degrees and sunny right now. No humidity and no bugs. Hard to argue with that.
3
Good post, Dr Krugman, and your last paragraphs are the crux: Trump is corrupting government like Hungary's Orban or a banana republic's president. A similar action is described in yesterday's NY Times article about the Education Dept using its rules to pursue Middle East study programs from Duke and UNC.
The question is, what can we do about it?
P.S.: Don't take Latinos' left-wing support for granted -- they (we) can be deeply conservative in the old-fashioned family- and main-stream-religion-based way (as opposed to Trump and the current GOP). A politician ignores those inclinations at their peril.
2
Compare the quality of life in California when it was "a hotbed of conservatism" to today's "progressive stronghold." I moved to the once-great state in 1971, when Reagan was governor. It was beautiful. By the time I left in 2009, it was an illustration of every social pathology imaginable. That's probably just a coincidence.
3
California airports should deny landing rights for Air Force One and block Trump's travel to the state, on the grounds that his presence in the state creates a public nuisance.
9
What is Trump's end game? After all, he is an obese 73-year-old who may not live to a healthy old age. Is to set up his family as a dynasty? Does he really care about anyone else enough to want to do that? Does he want more buildings named after him? Doesn't he have enough already? Is it to accumulate as much money as possible? Is that the way he keeps score, and the presidency is more lucrative than being a businessman was? Is he getting back at his father for sending him off to military school? Did he feel inadequate as a child and now he's not only getting back at those people but everyone? Is it to inflict the greatest amount of pain on the largest number of people possible? Is that what brings him pleasure? Does he have a plan or is he just seeing how far he can get before being brought down?
3
@Burnham Holmes You forgot to mention his fine, orange complexion!
I'm an east coast transplant to California. I grew up in New York and when the USMC sent me to California, I knew immediately that I'd move here when I left the military. Yes, it's too expensive. Yes, we have challenges to overcome. But there is no other state that I'd like to live in. By the way, since 1950, New York's population has increased by about 25% while California's has grown by almost four times. It doesn't seem as though Californians are rushing to leave.
Trump hates California because the state is overwhelmingly Democratic. But of course, his home state of NY also votes against him. His malignant and bitter and spiteful effort to turn back our environmental laws only reflects his miserable self-loathing, pathological failings.
12
California - the state where they care more about illegal immigrants than homeless American citizens.
4
Raw sewage and medical waste are flowing into your streams and rivers.
When ever your movie stars talk about income-inequality, they don't mention their $15M, ocean view mansion, while dictating to the masses in their $400000 fixer-upper.
You have tech billionaires, that farm out their company jobs over seas.
And this life expectancy number being higher than the rest of the country? Does a flood of young illegal aliens have anything to do with that?
And, you want to leave the Union? Where will your oil come from? If you can run a state on sunshine and happy thoughts, do it. Show us how it's done.
2
This is all about retaliation towards Democrats by Trump. CA is a grand state -- so beautiful, thriving in colleges (5 of the top 10 universities are in CA), arts, outdoor sports, jobs, care for children, economics etc.
Do you realize California is the 6th (!) largest economy in the world and provides 40% (!) of the USA's national budget? We help cover monetary spending for most red states like Kansas, Kentucky, Alabama, etc.
I would love for us to secede from the USA. I think WA and OR would join us, and who knows, maybe even NY and MA!
The picture with this story is 100% true: California hates Trump! Leave us Alone!
11
Scary? It's the freggin' End of the World As We Know It and I don't feel fine. Trump is what the status quo does. We are not a nation where everyone is equal under the law. We are not a nation of upward mobility. We are a nation of stagnation where the investor class has been able to live off the fictional economy propped up by the plunder of 2008. Forget about whether our relationship with Saudi is the bold expression of it all. C'mon Mr. Krugman, when do you get to the next step? Nobel Memorial Prize notwithstanding.
2
California under far left democratic rule now for around 20 years his tart into almost the description of a 3rd world country. By this I mean you have the 0.01% Tech executives with their stock options that live in their gated mansions and literally in port water and tankers from Colorado to water their mansions. The middle and upper middle class that are paying 12 to 15% state income tax rates regulations that make it very difficult to start a business or maintain it are leaving in droves This 0.01% depends on very inexpensive often a legal help almost as their serfs. For the taxes people are paying in California they should have the best infrastructure the best colleges except for as they did in the sixties and seventies but now or in the bottom 3rd of the country. One example is there over regulation of the current history which is trump is trying to prevent. The rush to insist cars have 60 miles per gallon means than an entry level car is basically gonna be the Tesla 3 model which sells for about 50 to 60000 not the 38000 that was promised. The reason is this technology has not progressed to the point where affordable cars like a Toyota Corolla that you can buy for $18000. Because California insist on these and affordable cars and so many cars are bought in California they basically are forcing the rest of the country that does not want 40 to $50000 entry level cars
2
The Silicon Valley donors are likely the reason for this effort to remove the homeless from the streets of California. After some thought as to how to do this, the administration came up with using the EPA to declare the homeless an environmental hazard. Similar to how they found that Canadian steel was a national security threat. Policy making starts with golf buddies saying something on the golf cart. Or perhaps providing a reminder of a campaign promise to do something about the steel industry. Then the task to come up with a way is given to an underling. The side benefit of this story about homeless people in California is that the right wing media has something to shout about for a few days.
2
"especially combined with the way California has outperformed states like Kansas ... "
Interesting statement. "Outperformed" in which way? I used to live in California, but left because I couldn't afford to live there. Skyhigh cost, especially housing. Moved to Kansas, where I now live a much higher quality life at a fraction of the cost. A beautiful home and land is easily available for less that $165,000. Fodd, gas, etc. all cost only a fraction of what it does out West. Thus, I conclude that Kansas is outperforming California – and as the constant exodus of the middle class from that state confirms, I am not alone in that thought.
5
The problem is California is much more attractive; interesting; and beautiful without even mentioning the weather.
11
@Paul Keep your cold, freezing, buggy existence.
We'll happily stay here.
2
The same day Donny John was in town for his secret cash grab Ben Carson was in San Francisco touring a housing project.
While Trump was engaged in more clue free California bashing His Secretary of Housing and Urban Development refused to meet with the Mayor and other city officials concerning the housing issue. It's not just that he didn't meet with these people, he was invited and refused.
Speaks volumes if you ask me.
10
Californians live with the state's many problems, up close and personal. I'm sure if Trump, conservative thinkers, or the Republican Party had something constructive and helpful to offer us, we'd welcome it. However, flying in and high-handedly announcing we will all now suffer increased air pollution does not seem to be the best place to start. The eastern littoral of California, agricultural and rural, largely supports Trump - but at the lower elevations it also contends with some of the worst air quality in the nation. People's children breathe that air, whether Republican or Democrat.
6
Fine article, it's possible to quibble with a few points especially about housing but California is a beautiful wonderful state with amazing people. Since Bay area housing is expensive it must be the best place to live, the free hand of the marketplace has spoken. The attacks on Californians by the Federal Government are unprecedented. Why are citizens of one state being punished and overtaxed by the Federal Government for being successful? Where is the logic of Californians paying taxes to the Feds in order to hurt them? It's time to consider increased autonomy for California and other states in the US.
13
2 States, Actual California and the Fox California. Fox and the GOP have so stoked the anger and fear of the right that they cannot process objective facts, such as those you cite here.
When the GOP embraced the Religious Right I thought, that's not a good idea. Then they jumped on the anti-abortion issue. I thought that's not a good idea. Then they started outright lying to our faces (Gingrich, Rove). I thought that's an insane idea.
Then they embraced the tea party, and it became clear that the GOP doesn't care about America. They only care to be in power and wield it over everyone, left and right. The tea party was nothing but a bunch of old white people ( a group which I guess I'm in at 63) that were mad they weren't getting what they want and afraid of demographic reality.
You can't embrace anger and resentment and control where it goes. Unfortunately, the Gaming Over People party don't even care if they control it. They just want to use it to hold power. Even if it includes punishing a whole state or group of states, or all states.
VOTE THEM OUT.
13
High housing costs are not responsible for the horrible homeless situation in SF. Most of the homeless aren’t locals. Most are alcoholics, addicts, and mentally ill, not people displaced by high housing costs. SF spends 1/4 of a BILLION dollars a year on homeless programs, yet the homeless problem gets worse and worse. One can’t help wonder where all this money is going. Results suggest that it’s just a political slush fund used by politicians to reward their allies.
3
I have only a couple of questions for you, do you live in San Francisco or California and if not where do you live and where did you get your information?
That $1 billion figure is not accurate. It does not represent San Francisco’s budget for homelessness. It’s the estimated cost of homelessness to the economy. It represents how much San Francisco should be willing to — but does not — spend to solve its homeless problem.
And, yes, in fact homelessness is partly the product of the cost of housing, which is in fact the product of zoning. Any effort to house the homeless is expensive in proportion to the cost of housing. Housing the homeless costs more if housing is more expensive, no matter who pays for it how.
2
@James K. Lowden
1/4 of a Billion. With all due respect, you are incorrect.
http://hsh.sfgov.org/overview/budget/
This sad development, including trump's attempt to gut California's clean air statutes, a shining model for the entire country, makes me recall Kurt Vonnegut's famous story, 'Harrison Bergeron', where the ruling administration has made everyone 'average'. So any that are above the average are encumbered with handicaps: great dancers forced to wear crippling weights and clumsy shoes; great intellects blasted with loud unpleasant sound to keep them from coherent thought. At the end of the story two ballet dancers slip those impediments, soar, and are shot dead midflight.
Mr trump should have no fear of being thought above average.
4
Krugman: "Trump Declares War on California"
Woman holding sign: "California HATES YOU"
OK, fine. So Trump lost California by 4 million votes in 2016 and lost the whole country by 3 million votes. So Trump will lose California in 2020 by 5 or maybe 6 million votes. And California may just get to HATE Trump until January of 2025.
1
Modern conservatives know exactly what they're doing. They manufacture facts for their ultimate goal of making us poor and dirty again along with their along with their contempt of the Bill of Rights and desire for federal control of communities they detest. FDR joked to reporters that his opponents "want to throw old people on the trash heap like wrinkled rinds". They've upped their game to include the poor and infirm. Democrats have the opportunity to distinguish the difference between Republicans who have always favored an imperial presidency and what should be state's rights as their wheel house, protected by our Bill of Rights as Jefferson wrote Madison from Paris that "puts a legal check in the hands of the judiciary" to protect our liberties. Unfortunately, they've packed our courts with justices who will protect those who believe private greed always trumps the common good.
5
Conservative ideology seems to be shrinking down to a few core "beliefs", especially under Trump's leadership. In fact, there seems to be little remaining of the old Republican Party, other than: (1) oppose to your dying breath anything that causes you any emotional discomfort whatsoever, and (2) a firm belief that all Humanity is doomed anyway, so just concentrate on (1). Unfortunately, pointing out that they're being despicable seems to reinforce both ideas!
2
At some point in time the Trumpian Cold War on California my turn hot once the the conversion of the National Government to Authoritarianism is complete.
Of course the Liberal Sate of California will be doomed as they have systematically gone to great lengths to disarm itself both physically and physiologically from being able to actually fight in anything but the virtual world.
1
The virtual world is where it’s at, just ask Russia.
1
Proposition 187
It lost in court and Calif was well on its way to obliterating the useless feckless Republican Party
At one time in modern history Ronald Reagan was its’s governor, San Diego had a Republican mayor Orange County was 110% Right wing republican
The republicans did this to themselves..chasing away a natural constituency socially conservative immigrants
They haven’t learned. Neither has 45
The GOP will be in the wilderness in a few tears for many years to come
Their visceral hatred of those that disagree with them is to put it mildly, really poor political strategy
Calif is the largest & shiniest example of what’s coming
3
Years and years ago, my brother was a member of SDS or or those of you under 60, Students for a Democratic Society.
He lives in LA. And its surreal policies of allowing homeless people to pitch a tent in front of his house, the incredible taxes and its "give illegals anything and everything"policies has turned him into a Trump supporter.
4
The Republicans and Democrats as a Football analogy... The Republicans are the Oakland Raiders of the early 80's and McConnell is Lyle Alzado. The Democrats are good, but not great, curling team from Canada. That's a match-up that has but one outcome.
California (and OR and WA) will be here long after trump is gone. In the meantime, We will continue to thrive and oppose his ludicrous administration every step of the way. Note to automakers: suggest you continue to target CA efficiency standards in spite of trump’s idiocy.
4
Where are you decent Republicans? You are out there, I know you are. How much are you willing to accept, how long will you remain moot? Trump will not be held responsible, you will. It's not too late. America needs you.
2
California declares war on Trump!
2
Thanks to rising Hispanic and Asian populations and top line
educational institutions for its residents.
The choice of Republican mental lightweight Presidents has
been too much to bear for thinking Californians.
5
The Republican Party, as an institution, is a danger to the rule of law and the integrity of our democracy.
The problem is not just Donald Trump, it’s Republicans conscious decision to collaborate with him.
The best hope of defending the country from Trump’s Republican enablers is to vote against Republicans at every opportunity, until the party either rights itself or implodes.
5
California is the leading economic powerhouse in the US economy. California generates more wealth than any other State and leads the nation in education, healthcare, and social programs. It is also a leading producer of agricultural products and manufacturing, given its comparatively large size and population. Given California’s expansive liberal political agenda, it’s a grand target for the conservative political right that is focused on the individual’s struggle for economic well-being only produced by the individual’s hard work and not in the success of technological and social progress as well as service-based endeavors. The ideological differences between the liberal left and the conservative right have created the atmosphere that Trump’s trade war with China has succeeded in rallying the right-wing to succumb to believing China is an enemy. The reality is that China by supplying the US with consumer goods at lower pricing available compared to domestic production has immensely benefited us, making us relatively wealthier. What we see are the political consequences of conservative principles failing to keep America on pace to be the global leader by failing to meet our economic, educational and societal needs.
5
As I have posted previously on other articles, the biggest existential threat to the future of the United States confederation is the potential withdrawal of California (as well as possibly Oregon and Washington state, the so-called "Pacifica") from the Union by a future generation of Californians who are tired of supporting the rest of the country without having adequate representation in the federal government.
The current distribution system of Electoral College and US Senate votes is not sustainable. For the plain fact is that California no longer derives any benefit from belonging to the United States. It has over 12 percent of the national population and represents 15 percent of the national GDP, but gets only 4 percent of the US Senate representation.
As the world's fifth largest economy, California is completely self-sustaining. If it were to become an independent country today, it would immediately be the global leader in manufacturing, higher education, technology, aeronautics and aerospace, data processing, agriculture and entertainment, with strategic control of the vital Pacific shipping lanes.
At some future point, Californians will simply grow tired of supporting the unproductive areas of the country, which are largely represented by the GOP, without an adequate say and representation as to how its national surplus is distributed to the rest of the country.
Thus, Trump and the GOP are playing with fire when they try to bait the California Golden Bear.
15
@John M
Sorry but as great as California's economy is, it's not self-sustaining. All those tech companies rely on foreign manufacturing and raw materials from foreign countries to produce those shiny electronic gadgets they sell.
Also the number of immigrants employed in the tech and agricultural sectors is another example of California not being self-sustaining.
The truth is in the modern world no developed economy is self-sustaining. We live in an interdependent world economy with exchanges in technology, natural resources and human capital.
All they have to do is negotiate their own trade deals and immigration policies, then succeed from the union. Seriously, who would blame them?
1
First Sir before you declare CA successful because political leadership, you should address that CA as a state should be successful regardless of the party in power. I think you should attribute its economic success to natural resources, ie a coastline with natural harbors, abundant natural resources (oil, timber, minerals, ocean access, on and an) a temperate climate with good soils for all types of agriculture, tourism etc. No other state can boast of abundance of opportunity like CA. CA has its problems and they have only grown more entrenched and the data is incontrovertible. Simply look at income inequalities as your measure. It’s equivalent to Guatemala. Guatemala! (Look it up). Single party rule cannot devise ways to mitigate problems. I fear the adherence to liberal orthodoxy drives out the needed diversity of ideas that should be tried. So the problems will continue.
1
@Paul If Republicans acted as if they really want to govern honorably... Well, there is no sign of that happening: Issa, Dornan, etc. show the way backward.
2
I won’t defend the republicans. Just pointing out CA has a massive natural head start over most and should succeed regardless of politics. Don’t give credit where it isn’t due.
Those natural resources didn’t create California’s wealth. C’mon. The richest cities are Los Angeles, a desert, and San Francisco, an earthquake zone. Their wealth came from their people, not the coastline.
In both cases, money poured in from outside. In Los Angeles, Hollywood. In San Francisco, the Pentagon underwrote work for decades at Stanford. Without defense contracts, San Francisco today would be a quaint fishing village.
California’s booming economy is really just tech, and that’s contributing very directly to the housing crisis in the state. Trump’s America is abhorrent but California isn’t presenting anything like a sustainable alternative—both are variations on theme of imperial capitalism. California is the “kinder, gentler” version but as it turns out, that version is pretty brutal too, under the surface.
2
What Paul does not add in his column, California has only worked because the Feds allowed ridiculous Federal tax deductions for State income and property taxes. That's over, you can pay your own way now.
Essentially everyone outside of New York, New Jersey and California were subsidizing their over taxed states.
New Jersey is going to fall first, just to show California what is ahead.
1
Incorrect. Paying taxes to the state for services not provided by the federal government is only a choice, not a subsidy.
For your argument to be coherent, NO state and local taxes should be deductible.
1
Paul:
I'm sorry - but CA is a mess. We rank in the high 40's for lowest education results, yet spend more on education than any other state. Per Willy Brown $0.90 of every dollar spent goes directly to pensions/benefits. Our roads and infrastructure rank about the same - ever drive in SoCal lately? The solution here is always tax and spend more and more - mostly driven by that an almost $1B in unfunded pension costs that the state cannot cover. The middle class continue to flee out of state due to the costs, and we lose jobs continuously to other areas. Oh and Silicon Valley - why are almost all the mid-large companies expanding outside of CA because the climate for doing business and cost are horrific. But hey - we have great weather which keeps most of us here - despite that even the 1% are finding it harder and harder to put up with the chaos. Please do not tout the CA miracle - that sadly went away many years ago.
3
The growing US economy that Trump touts can be largely attributed to California's burgeoning, innovative industries.
(This applies to those of the other large, left-leaning metropolitan areas across the country)
So, instead of criticizing the Golden State and other bastions of liberalism, he should be very appreciative of their contribution to his 'success'.
But, NO, he can't do that; that would go against his politics that appeal to the poorly-educated, resentful, older white males, of which there are too many.
5
What is really alarming is seeing how rapidly it has been possible for corporate/agro-industry-owned puppet autocrats like Trump and Bolsanaroto to manipulate, misuse or downright abolish democratic and public-interest institutions. How easy it has been for them to mix government and state, in order to undermine or destroy the latter for their own hate- and money-filled agenda.
Californian is powerful and its residents, with the help of people like Mary Nichols, so many colleagues I have heard from in Stanford and UCLA, celebrities like Schwarzenegger etc, and many innovative, forward-looking companies will surely be able to resist Planet Trump's "war on California".
A call to all good citizens, officials and scientists in the US and above all, Fridays for Future-like youth to resist and make it clear to yesterday's men (even their parents on the wrong side of history) that this attack will not work!
9
Once again the liberal/forward looking states are almost exclusively on the eastern and western coasts of our country. If this president can't abide with the way the citizens of those states decide to live, function and prosper, maybe he would be in support of these states leaving the union so he and his "base" wouldn't have to deal with them.
Just imagine a costal republics of america coming into being and its effects on all the trumpistas with their McConnell foot soldiers and "originalist" judges being unable to force their brand of failed government on the "remainers" through their faulty interpretations of the American Constitution. All the remaining states would be able then to have the same opinions and economies and forget science and voting. Living in a conservative republican promised land might be punishment enough to welcome these residents into the 21st century of the greatest democratic land of freedom for all.
6
@Dick M
Imagine the United States economy without the economic power-house engines of revenue, taxed income and job creation coming out of California and the East coast the last 50 years? Trump is envious that these powerhouse entities are predominately blue.
4
If Trump prevails in regard to the EPA can't California heavily tax cars over a certain weight in order to accomplish much the same goal?
People for 30 years have been saying California and NYC are shrinking in population. NYC isn't is it equally untrue of California?
I live in California and can say it’s generally a great place. However, the Republican Party no longer exists here. The Democrats are ruling politically unchecked. I can tell you that this doesn’t bode well for our future. I say this as a member of the Democratic Party
3
It's fair to compare what Donald Trump is doing to the early stages of Orban in Hungary and Kaczynski in Poland. We still have time to prevent things here from getting that bad. If Donald Trump is re-elected in 2020, it still will be necessary to resist his efforts to destroy democracy and the rule of law here, but it will be much, much harder.
8
I live in Charleston, WV and there has been a homeless issue here for 4 or 5 years now, in spite of very low cost of living and plenty of empty houses and apartments. There's an encampment in the woods behind my neighborhood. But Trump will never mentioned this because he has to portray a state that voted for him as a Garden of Eden. Of course we now have a democratic mayor since January of this year, but this problem started several years ago under a long time Republican mayor. Party politics and the homeless problem don't mix. It's a nationwide issue that has different causes in different places (for example here, the opioid addiction is a big factor in our homeless problem).
12
Can you say Proposition 187? Before this Proposition CA was a Purple State. This should be a cautionary lesson to Republicans who would like to survive the demographic future of the US.
1
Since adulthood, I've lived in nine states from the East Coast to the West Coast, the Midwest, the Southwest and the Deep South. This includes California. I'd take the Golden State any day even if I had to compromise on how big a house I wanted.
11
@JB
What if you cannot afford even a tiny home?
@gliderdriver,
You live in Pennsylvania, you poor thing ! We may have some problems out here but you ought to give life a try out West. I guarantee you will love it !
Paul, it may be more of a case that California declared war on Trump long ago. Then again, it seems that much of California is also at war with itself...especially on The 405.
2
The real reason housing costs are skyrocketing is that, though middle class and working class Californians are leaving, they are being replaced by high-income international tech professionals, who bid up the price of real estate (not NIMBYism). Here are the facts:
According to recently released data from the US Census, about 38,000 more people left California than entered it in 2018. This is the second straight year that migration to the state was negative, and it’s a trend that is speeding up. Every year since 2014, net migration has fallen.
California’s population did still increase in 2018 by almost 160,000 people, largely due to the 480,000 people born in the state. But while migration out of the state has accelerated over the past few years, the number of annual births has been steady. The trend suggests in the next decade California’s population will begin to decline.
Besides births, the main reason California’s population hasn’t already started falling has been international migration into the state. Every year since 2011, net domestic migration has been negative—i.e., more people leave California than move in from other states. But from 2011 to 2016, the number of international migrants moving into California was larger than the number of locals who were moving out.
2
@Don
Thank you for at least citing evidence. Seems like a rarity among conservative commenters, from what I see.
1
Meanwhile gas prices jumped by about 25 cents per gallon in the last week or so in Alabama. The state recently imposed a 6 cent-per gallon tax, but I'm pretty sure the rest of the rise can be attributed to the attack on Saudi Arabia and US dependency on fossils fuels. So, while Trump pretended to mollify markets and consumers with some tweet about possibly releasing oil from the strategic petroleum reserve and claims he is the world’s greatest environmentalist, he is abusing the office and power of the presidency to attack California for actually doing something to conserve energy and protect the planet.
8
Let's call California a bell weather state of affairs. How do economists explain the booming economy has failed to provide adequate affordable housing? What's the lag -- financing such projects, zoning regulation, construction logistics such as labor availability? Why aren't carpenters and plumbers making $200k / yr and churning out multi unit residences ahead of demand? Why isn't foreign investment building entirely new cities? How can an economy boom when people spend 50% of their income on housing? If there's that much money going into the housing sector, why doesn't it produce more product? Ha -- techies would have to ask why doesn't that market space provide more spaces for people to live? Where does the money go?
I declined a job offer in the tech valley years ago because housing was not affordable relative to pay. Perhaps I'd be a multi millionaire if I'd gone, perhaps bankrupt without any stake beyond the experience of working for the truly wealthy. Is that where we are all headed?
2
… so the party of “State’s Rights” and “smaller government” is telling California it can no longer regulate its own emissions? The hypocrisy of Republicans knows no bounds.
15
Letter to the editor in our local paper. Reader was upset about the homeless sleeping under the Interstate. She said she thought that had "been taken care of." Clueless and privileged.
This is at the base of the homeless "problem."
5
Mr Krugman was all about the uninsured and the poor. But here the homeless are a single line.
Trump's latest attack on democracy won't hurt California's environment ... no sane auto company CEO is going to retool assembly lines and change future designs in a warming world based on a tantrum from a 73 year old sundowning demagogue with a 40% approval rating.
But Trump might kill any residue credibility the Supreme Court has left if the GOP partisans on the Court approve of this nonsense. Especially since they would inevitably rediscover their love for State Rights the moment President Warren is inaugurated.
My guess: Justice Roberts will run out the clock on this one.
12
On balance red states are poor and blue states are rich
If conservative is so good how can this be?
14
Trump is out to break our union apart. Since we have a dysfunctional Congress, there is nothing else to do than to keep the administration tied up in court battles until hopefully he is gone. I have concluded trump is insane and his base is on a death wish. Trump and his base refuse to accept the 21st century. The world is moving on as we fight among ourselves. Progress and change happens no matter whether we like it or not, it can be delayed and fought but I feel optimistic that the moral right will always prevail over trumps dysfunction and decay.
8
Is it lost on anyone that this individual came to CA, took the money and insulted the state as he walked away with his pockets bulging? Why oh why do people support this? How anyone can feel good about giving him money and then watching these responses is beyond me.
9
Trump is here in CA yapping about our homelessness and is ignoring the weather devastation in Texas, AR, and other red states. These states are his so-called "base" and what do they get? Nothing. These people have lost their income, medical care, and the endless mobile home parks they live in. Dont even talk about covering their losses with insurance. They cant afford it. What are they thinking when they vote Republican?
9
Trump has an obsessive goal: undo everything that Obama administration has done, especially as it pertains to climate change! No amount of factual data will ever convince this bully that the country is in trouble when it comes to climate change,
I hope California snubs Trump.
5
Trump's remarks about the homeless bear a measure of disgust which fails to recognize that these are fellow human beings caught in terrible circumstances. Trump sees only the issue of what their presence might do to upscale landlords like himself. It's about money and appearances - two things he cares about. Human beings - not so much.
11
California is filled with liberal thinking people for the most part, liberal minded people are creative people they see possibilities where others only see a problem, this mindset is what has created human progress over the centuries.
This openness to possibilities is what has created whole new industries over the course of just my 60 years and by the way none of them have come out of Alabama. This is why conservatives love to hate California.
4
@Chris
Well, quite a bit of the space program was centered in Huntsville, but point taken.
On the other hand, and sarcastically, if it was not for the harsh policies and realities in southern states after Reconstruction, especially sharecropping, but also convict leasing and Jim Crow and taking away voting rights, we would not have had rhythm and blues and country music. That's one of my takeaways from the Ken Burns series.
Trump's attack on California's emissions rules only show his indebtedness to the corporate oligarchs that dangle his leash.
But, California does have economic issues, especially its bloated pension system. Perhaps that's why Californians are living longer. Low stress high income retirements.
https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2019/05/04/editorial-alarming-data-shows-public-employee-pension-crisis-worsening/
3
Trump Declares War on California
Well, the state government of California has declared war on its own residents. Do the grandees of CA state governance not understand that all Trump has to do is show up in SF or LA, with all the attendant video of the current scene, to expose what the liberal government of CA has wrought?
3
If Kansas and North Carolina were better places to live, the homeless in California would move there. Very few of the right elite live in Red states because they want goo schools and neighborhoods for their families.
3
@Andrew Mitchell
Yeah, this always gets me. When Fox News personalities are railing on and on against failed liberal policies, they are doing so from the comfort of midtown Manhattan.
2
Maybe it's time for the Coastal Commission to examine the stability of the slopes around Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles. Perhaps the coastal erosion of the Palos Verdes Peninsula means part if not all of the property should be condemned. Is it even properly insured, with appropriate premium charged?
EDS should also make sure California employment laws are followed. Maybe LADWP can finally do the upgrades in sewer pipes along Western Ave and PCH. FTB should make sure taxes are paid properly.
3
Yes, it should be punished.
Our Pres won the election fair and square with Putin-help and there is no reason Repubs should not go on winning with a minority of the electorate as they have been doing, winning by losing by millions of votes.
In 2020 our Pres could lose by as much as 6 million votes or more ... and if millions don't like that the electoral college declares him the winner again they can go to the streets to get arrested in our not-so-smoothly running autocratic oligrachy/plutocracy.
4
And we declare war right back at him.
I say, either he goes in the next election, or we go - CALEXIT -and invite Oregon and Washington to go with us.
Or I, for one, will leave the country. I can barely afford to live here anyway.
5
Having lived there for years in the 90's and now happily ensconsed in the nation's heartland, I can happily reply to the lady in the picture - I hate California right back.
1
@RJ
She wasn't addressing you, dear soul. Unless you like to take things personally.
And I didn't know NH was part of the heartland, but whatever...
3
@RJ and that's exactly what Trump wants you to do: hate. He's done his job well in sowing the seeds of division throughout the country. And your response is just a symptom.
5
I think "compassionate conservatism" is officially dead when when the homeless are labeled an environmental hazard. Only a real estate mobster, worried about what his wealthy tenants will make of the streets outside his towers, couldn't come up with this approach. Donald Trump, champion of the little guy, if that guy is wealthy enough to join one of his golf clubs...
It will be interesting to see the Roberts court twist itself into a pretzel trying to explain to its "strict constructionist" backers how states right don't apply if a state is north or west of the Mason-Dixon line...
5
Many middle class Californians are leaving the state and moving to places like Texas and Florida where the taxes are lower and they get more for their money. They can no longer afford to live in California and soon it will be populated by the rich and the poor. The liberal polices are driving these people out of their state. They are tired of giving all of their money to government programs that benefit those who are looking for a handout. It is generous to those who look for a free ride. Those who work hard get little in return but high taxes.
32
@KMW What evidence do you have for this? The people I know that have left the state have done so for one reason: high cost of housing. The "liberal policies are driving these people out of their state" argument doesn't match reality - it's a fabrication. Californians pay higher taxes in hopes of a more equitable and just way of life. And the _top_ income rate of 13.3% is for people making over 1M per year.
149
@KMW—I am in Ct, and people want to move to those states for the weather, and low taxes. But NOBODY wants to send their kids to school there. There is more to the picture.
78
@KMW
Since they voted for the emissions standards, etc it seem pretty questionable to judge from across a continent and convenient diversioon.
Trump lives in NYC so he has to tread more lightly-- because it is in his interest and not because of some grand strategic policy.
10
The CA experiment is hardly as benign as Paul Krugman would suggest. Income inequality in CA leads the nation with the hollowing out of the middle class. Housing is only one element of this. Manufacturing has given way to an education driven service economy that skews away from the middle class. Despite taxes being the highest in the nation along side of NY, CA boasts homelessness, terrible social services and one of the highest illegal population in the country. The "woke" population of CA professes liberal ideas while they exploit illegals in their yards to agriculture while the companies have a hardly liberally balanced workforce. It's actually a mix of libertarian ideals, exploitation, liberal social sensabilities (as long as it does apply to me or my company) and liberal tax policies. Considering CA is also experiencing net migration to other states. Trump has an easy target and like most of his primitive attempts to rile his base, this one follows his tried and true approach. That said, CA is not the nirvana of the left
32
@Chris Air pollution has been a major factor in net
migration. Hence, California rejection of Trump as a
useful President.
8
@Chris
What is that you are saying?
1
@Chris, really? "That said, CA is not the nirvana of the left" NO ONE claims that! In fact, Dr. Krugman goes out of his way to detail some of the problems CA has to deal with.
trump attacks Baltimore as 'rat infested'. No one claimed Baltimore was a leftist Nirvana; republicans jumped on the hate wagon by themselves! And here you are, dutifully directing us to trump's new target.
Honestly, why do you dismiss trump's horrid division as simply his 'tried and true approach'? You accept it's just trump being trump; we can forget this 'states rights' foolishness we USED to believe!?
'Conservatives' seem super content to agree with a man who points at their fellow Americans in giant swaths, whining 'enemies!' INDIVISIBLE and UNITED WE STAND are forgotten. When he insults entire states/cities, they perk up. If he says Puerto Rico was never us, well, that's reasonable. If he says all non-FOX news sources are suddenly traitors, YES! they see it now! When trump claims that he, as president, can never be investigated, that's alright, cuz that's just his 'tried and true approach.'? Shame.
If trump told me that all people who live in YOUR zip code were Socialist Communist illegal alien MS13 members who need their voting rights suspended, and all rounded up for security processing, I hope you know that I'd stand up for YOU, my fellow American. Not a dictator like trump. You're welcome.
53
The attack on California's emission standards is, in some regards, ironic. Before any strict standards existed hybrid and electric cars were selling well in California. Now Prius and Tesla models are in demand, not because the car manufacturers had to make them, but because the market values them.
The price of gas keeps going up. The emission standards exist to offer the benefits of expensive hybrid and electric cars to the general market. Once again, Trump punishes the middle and lower classes by forcing them to pay exorbitant gas prices. To him, the effect on the environment is not an issue.
1
Do folk come from far and wide to be "homeless" in California? It looks that way. If that is the case, the chances of "building" their way out of the problem are remote. I cannot think of another place where homelessness seems to be a political issue.
I take it you have not visited San Francisco recently. CA is probably not a good example to use for successful government. Even with one party rule, CA has the greatest number of homeless, highest degree of inequality, and least amount of affordable housing in the country. And that's with one of the highest taxes in the country. They are awash in money (current budget surplus 21 Million), but have not addressed crumbling infrastructure. The CA economy is booming not because of CA politics, but because people in the high tech and entertainment industries like good weather as much as anyone else, and because they are so rich that California's' taxes are a pittance to them. And in spite of this robust economy, the unfunded liabilities of public union contracts has caused multiple counties to declare bankruptcy and threatens the solvency of the entire state over the next decade.
3
Sorry Mr Krugman but you should actually visit rather than just read the statistics. California is in deep deep trouble.
28
@Jason McDonald Not in the California I live in. Why don't you give the heartland a spin..and see how long you might last there...or the deep South? You might change your tune a little...
86
@Jason McDonald
We actually do live there, and if California is in "trouble", it's the kind of "trouble" we should all be so lucky to be in!
It is big, bold and beautiful, prosperous and generous and should and could be its own nation.
We are happy to solve our own problem and try to be innovative when doing it. We (along with NY, Mass and several other wealthy states) are subsidizing the backward right-wing nut states that are so jealous of us.
And if you think places like "Little Minded" Texas are so wonderful, go there...
We're 40 million proud and our beauty and the beauty of our people is unmatched!
118
@Jason McDonald
Read the article. Mr. Krugman acknowledges California's big problems. It's all relative. Go visit a red state, like Mississippi or Alabama.
73
There is an old saying that "faraway cows have long horns". You, professor, are far from California so things may look rosy to you. To us, with 12% of the nation's population and 50% of the nation's homeless, saying we have a homeless problem is like saying the Titanic had an iceberg problem. To you our public health problem may seem to be exaggerated by some. Here in San Diego we just had about 500 people sickened by Hepatitis A, a disease spread by human feces, which they seem to have picked up on the streets. About 20 of them died. I wonder what their families thought about the exaggeration of California's health problem. To me it seemed third world. We, the wealthiest state have among the worst public school systems. I don't particularly like Trump, yet his performance in office seems closer to Swift's hero who made two ears of corn grow where one grew before, as a benefactor of mankind, than any of his liberal haters. The most important thing for any politician, liberal or conservative, is to improve the lot of the citizens. Our present crop of leaders are so consumed by vanity projects like suing Trump and building high speed rail to nowhere that they don't have time to solve our problems. A chorus of praise from people like you only eggs them on.
4
@Michael Feely Prop 13, Mr Feely, Prop 13. Tax giveaway to the wealthy..."improve the lot of its citizens"? Which citizens find their lot most improved by GOP policy? The homeless on 16th street in San Diego where I lived (across the street from the shelter) for 15 years? Or the developers who just built 3 luxury high rise towers there? Massive construction projects all over downtown during the Hep A outbreak, while the homeless had no facilities or sanitation. So someone's lot was being improved while someone else's was deteriorating. Is rolling back the emission standards of our state improving the lot of the citizens? Never mind the citizens of California, what about the citizens of planet Earth? And you should ask the young people who are moving to Bakersfield and Fresno because they can no longer afford to live in LA or San Francisco if high speed rail goes to "nowhere". As for suing Trump, you've got it all backwards too. Trump is a vanity project, an illegal one. Suing him will not be in vain.
2
@Michael Feely
California does NOT have "50% of the nation's homeless." It has around 25% of the nation's homeless. That's obviously a problem that needs addressing, but your claim is terribly exaggerated. https://www.politifact.com/california/statements/2018/mar/27/travis-allen/has-californias-homeless-population-skyrocketed-an/
And this claim is just risible: "I don't particularly like Trump, yet his performance in office seems closer to Swift's hero who made two ears of corn grow where one grew before, as a benefactor of mankind, than any of his liberal haters..."
1
I have lived in Michigan, Florida, California and Arizona. My favorite, by many metrics, was California. Yes, it has problems. But of those four states, it is the one who best epitomizes what makes the US great. I am not at all surprised that trump is attacking it, as he has no clue what the consequences to this country would be if he succeeded in punishing the citizens of California. It should be unimaginable that the President would seek to harm a state that provides this country with so much, but here we are. I am comforted, and proud, of California for having the temerity and the intestinal fortitude to fight back against the guy occupying our White House.
8
Dear Paul Krugman,
I completely enjoyed reading your wit about the tRump VS CA and the DEMS! I really like the line; "the modern right, which never, ever lets awkward facts disturb its preconceptions."
Thank you very much!
4
I clicked on the link "economic suicide" and it lead to the site:
International Liberty
Restraining Government in America and Around the World
I want to point out the "restraining government" in the mission statement. Conservatives have no interest in restraining government. Trump at the moment is attempting to take away California's "states right" to regulate auto pollution. He wants to make California's homelessness, a local problem if ever there was one, into a federal environmental concern.
Do conservatives want to restrain government from interfering with women's right to abortion, from inappropriate behavior by police officers, from interference with legal immigrants, from cruel behavior towards asylum seekers, from people like Joe Arpaio, or from the death penalty? When was a conservative aghast to find out that a black man has spent 20 years in jail because of prosecutorial misconduct?
The only time conservatives want governmental restraint is when the government would spend money to solve a social problem, be it health care, unemployment, global warming, or cleaning national parks.
3
If you can't brag about Republican success stories like Kansas, Kentucky, West Virginia etc. then you might as well try and trash and discredit the liberal success stories like California and New York and Massachusetts. Again there are no Republican policies that benefit the majority of us. They have NO plans except cut taxes to take from the poor and give to the rich.
5
State’s rights are very important, unless it’s inconvenient for your petulant leader. Nothing matters to Republicans, not the Constitution, not the welfare of the country. Party over country.
5
Ugly story, yes! Scary, yes!
Are Trump and the Republicans stoppable! Yes!
However you want to look at this it must be stopped. We do not have a democracy, we do not have decency. The chaos, the indecency, that has been created by Trump and ALL OF THE REPUBLICANS is unreal. They do not just want the money, they want control. It is hard to believe they can keep such a coordinated attack.
Regardless, we now can see some crumbling of their methods and their evilness. We all have a lot of work to do, we will win.
2
The height of Hypocrisy for the one who denies science, facts, and all regulations that protect our water, air, food, work environments, now believes the homeless are a threat to the Environment. Hilarious. Not a humanitarian concern of his, just another group for him to detain and imprison; just another group in his very thinly veiled program of ethnic cleansing; Only the sick, evil, and misanthropic minds of the haters & misfits, Steven Miller and Steven Miller, could construct this evil plot that 45 loves so much. Have we not learned that when we see other groups of humans being violated that there will always be the next group, and the only surviving group in these Hunger Games will be those who are white and uber wealthy. If you are not qualified in both those categories, you should be very afraid.
3
I just completed trips to NYC and DC, two of Trump’s “homes.” I saw homeless sleeping on the streets and homeless encampments just like in California. Clearly he ignores these while attacking the Golden State for political purposes. This man is a scourge on our way of life!
7
The state of California welcomes Criminal Trump's attacks. It would be fitting if he ended up doing his time in a federal prison here, preferably in San Francisco.
4
Time for us Californians to secede from the Union!
No offense to all of the other states, but compared to the gorgeous Golden State, all of the rest of you (excepting possibly Texas and NY) are leaning toward dross.
California has a GDP that is equal to many countries; state-wise, its GDP is #1 (14.50%,) followed by Texas (8.70%) and New York (8.70%.) We have a vibrant economy that really didn't need a tax stimulus to "make it," a culturally diverse population, lots of foreign investment and business-dealings, a highly educated work force that leans Liberal (OH, MY GOSH) and we ABSOLUTELY refute the dirty-dealing criminal politics of the present CORRUPT administration!
But, forget I said this--we don't want you to move here...
5
@Susan
Best idea I have heard in a long time! Do it.
1
The only way to get out of the hole Republicans have put our republic in is for the people to learn to be members of our representative democracy and to work together to direct our representatives to make a country that works for all of us not just the rich.
3
Apparently Trump thinks he can make CA great again, like he did for (Winter's Bone) West Virginia
2
given Trump's lack of advisors to temper his more idiotic ideas (see: Greenland, nuking hurricanes), maybe he's actually gotten it into his head that he can solve the homeless problem and in the process split off enough Democratic support to win California in 2020; a recent article claims that he has completely unrealistic ideas about which states are worth fighting for.
2
"The future Mr. Gittes, the future." Noah Cross said once. But the future of California looks bleak and uninviting. From hundreds of thousands of illegals, to tens of thousands of homeless, to soulless cities of programmers, you can have it.
2
Had to laugh at the stupidity of the current administration threatening to force the EPA to declare Cali homeless as an environmental threat. Reminded me of something an old professor of mine (in the 80s!) used to say: "people are pollution".
I'd never heard anyone else ever say something like that before, and it kind of blew my mind. Who'd've thought individual one-of all people-would conclude something similar (granted: trump's attempt to do this is merely one of his "stupid-autocrat" attempts to punish his 'enemies' (aka: everyone that isn't part of the cult).
2
WRT the protester's sign at the opening of the article: "California Hates You."
Davenant speaks: "Do you hate him so much?"
Duke of Avon: "Hate him? Bah! Does one hate an adder? Because it is loathsome and vile, one crushes it underfoot."
1
@John Brews
Bravo! Your comment is spot on. Media included, we all treat Trump as though he were really running things. In reality, he is not smart enough even to know where to begin. "Marionette" is the perfect term for him. He has a near perfect record of doing the wrong thing always. This is not by accident.
6
Wow! Follow the link to the chart that Dr. Krugman references as "second-highest life expectancy" (as usual, Dr. Krugman cites a highly credible source, the Journal of the American Medical Association).
If there is any doubt as to which party values life, take a look at those numbers. The top ten states for life expectancy: all deep blue. The bottom ten: all super red. And the contrast for California mentioned in the column: in 1990, when Republicans controlled (though weren't completely dominant) in California, the Golden State was right in the middle on life expectancy, ranking #24. In 2016, after several years of Democratic super-dominance, it ranks 2nd.
And its no surprise. Laws protecting the environment, expanding access to health care, promoting worker safety, enforcing gun safety. All have led--in a few short years--to California now being only second to Hawai'i in American life expectancy.
In Mike Pence's Indiana (he was at the end of his term as governor in 2016), the state went from moderate conservatism to hard right and saw its life expectancy plunge from 27th place to #42--one of only two non-Southern states in the bottom 10 (deep red West Virginia is the other).
When state government serves only those at the top rather than the entire population, this is what you get. The correlation between Republican dominance and reduced life expectancy is genuinely shocking.
Yet not surprising at all.
8
I really would be careful about declaring war on California. First of all, most Northeastern states will declare neutrality at best, but at worst some might gladly join with them. Throwing wave after wave of good Kentucky boys against the Sierra Nevadas or worse, the southern deserts, just is not gonna play well.
Plus, what exactly is the causus belli? That some miscreant rich kid-cum-adult is having a spell?
This is the problem with Trumpism. If you can only pry it loose from its crusty bed as basically a trifling reality TV show, it immediately evaporates into simply a terrible viewing mistake, along the lines of "OMG why did I just watch 15 minutes of Big Brother??"
And people will then jump to change the channel asap. Trumpism thrives when we are allowed to wallow in an almost narcotic shallowness. Make it real, and people wake up quick.
Is that already happening? I think more than we might realize.
I refuse to believe that the American people are now no more than political slugs, invertebrate little shells with barely any brain. I just think we have been caught napping.
Wakey wakey.
3
The West Coast and New England (plus New York) should both secede and leave the red states to turn into the banana republic they so obviously want to become.
3
California hates bullies and Trump...take your pick. We don’t fight back...we just vote.
5
California Dreaming....lead the charge, please, for the future of our planet and country. The regulations set by forward thinking policies in your state are the envy of the rest of this country and parts of the world. Please keep up the fight, we need all hands on deck to wrestle this country from the hands of the most dangerous, uneducated imbecile ever elected to office. California’s policies should be the standard to be met by all states. Dismal what is going on here my side of the country, envious and proud of our West coast brothers and sisters fighting the good fight and winning.
3
I expect the GOP War on California to get worse.
1
I'm frustrated that the author doesn't propose any solutions
1
Solution is easy...VOTE
The Republicans once again prove that they are just massive hypocrites, with no concern for democracy.
1
Bring back Scott Pruitt!!
Just kidding.
Cant wait to see how those originalists on the supreme court handle this one. They deny California on their car regs gonna make it hard to make abortion a states right.
2
"It’s a liberal state, so it must be punished."
No.
It’s a liberal state was allowed to - and did - exceed its constitutional authority by the statist collectivist Barack Obama, so it must be punished.
Krigman nails this one.
By attacking California, Trump plans to get rusty red states to vote for him.
1
I have lived in California for sixty years and grew up in the capital of Sacramento plugged in to its politics. The illegitimate president only cares about himself, and has no ethics or morals beyond actions that will benefit himself, his friends and family. He cares not at all, just like all the other authoritarian, demagogic dictatorial leaders. He plays to his conned base, his toadies and super-wealthy friends through feigned patriotism and racist nationalism. He only serves himself and fellow 1% folks. He is completely devoid of compassion, sympathy and empathy for the health of the earth and the plight of the homeless. California's state and local governments are taking steps to deal with its homeless by passing rent control and bonds to fund homeless programs in Los Angeles County. We have many programs to deal with climate change. If the corrupt politics in Washington does not go away, we will become our own country. The extreme right(most of Republican party and its followers) will then have to find another scapegoat to avoid dealing with their utter lack of heart and soul. All authoritarian nations eventually fall like the USSR. California rises because many of its leaders truly care about the plight of others.
2
The Democratic party should come to terms with the libertarians and traditional conservatives of the Republican party to declare that the rest of the party is an undemocratic, authoritarian and treasonous enterprise. Trump will seek to invalidate the election results that will unseat him, a branch of the Republican party will be complicit in this exercise. They should pay with their lives for this perversion of our democracy
2
From the normally vocal GOP'ers, there's been absolute silence on the Federal government's assault on one State's rights and laws. Federalism exists only for red states!
4
This is another example of fake GOP principles. Supposedly states rights are a big deal for them, citing the Consitution and all that. Except when it involves something they don't like, such as a less polluted environment, and then they are eager to shred states rights.
3
It must be difficult for right-wing extremists (most Republicans, apparently and sadly) to have to read Krugman's dogmatically fact-based praise for liberal policies that will destroy America as we know it even though they work.
1
California reflect what America should be, a place where people of all persuasions and all politics try to work together to improve lives, their own and others. We don't waste our energies trying to deny what our eyes and ears tell us, i.e. the facts of life. Krugman gets it right, the right wing has a bunker mentality, and if you want to see people get nutty, just watch what happens to people living in a bunker creating all sorts of imaginary threats in the non bunker world.
172
@Paul I think they live in Archie Bunker world!
7
@Paul: "California reflect what America should be, "
Keep in mind what got California to the position it is today. The genius of Manifest Destiny, the Mexican-American War, WW2 and the military industrial complex that grew out of the war put it on the path if finds itself today. We also owe much to Chinese immigrants who played as an important role as European immigrants in opening and settling the West. Credit belongs to these Chinese immigrants as much as it does the Europeans settlers.
In terms of diversity, have you seen the change African-American population numbers for SF?
Great climate also helps.
No doubt these things gave us the great state of California and the city of SF we have today. Enjoy the fruits of those actions.
2
@Kent G:"Paul I think they live in Archie Bunker world!"
Yeah Archie Bunker.
My favorite episode was when Archie purchased a pistol as well as a tape of a dog barking as a burglar alarm.
His house was burglarized and as the burglars were entering they looked at each other and sarcastically noted there was another dog barking alarm. The pistol also fell into their hands which sure showed Archie. The burglars just made fun of Archie and family and that was that - laughs for all! Boy that Archie...
Fast forward from that time to the mid-1980s. One evening the phone lines to our house on the near east side of Detroit (by that time the neighborhood was essentially a war zone) were cut. I had to chase two would be perps off with a firearm we had in the house. I'm thankful we had the weapon in the house. There had been a series of break-ins and assaults on elderly home owners (my parents were elderly) along our street.
Perhaps the lads who cut the lines just wanted to come in and discuss politics without being interrupted by a phone call. No?
Thank you lady with sign and a beautiful smile! Your fellow Californians salute you.
4
The Old South and Greater Appalachia are running the country right now. How is that going?
I'll take California politics any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
5
Pick your battles wisely. He is definitely not going to win that one.
2
As goes California so goes the nation... oh wait that applied only when St. Ronnie was destroying the best public education system in the US, among other things.
The chickens are coming home to roost. Nothing ominous or ugly in that, except for the GOP.
1
This is the government of the rich, and the rich are not democrats, the reason why the rich founders of the Constitution designed that contraption known as the "Electoral College", to prevent the "rabble", that is "us", the no rich, to elect a president.
Justice Scalia put it very well "the people do not vote for the president."
When Democrats take over again, they are going to have to punish the wrong-doers from the President on down. No pats on the wrist or just looking the other way like Obama did with wall street. As Republicans are so corrupt and they corrupt everything they touch, not only will examples have to be made, the wrong doers need to have the full extent of existing law thrown at them, including hard time.
1
We'll be here long after Trump is just bump in the road and a heat mirage on Rt. 66.
Trump is a aberration, at a point in time, Moscow Mitch on the other hand is a knowing, witting, and enabling accomplice.
The GOP will go down with their leader, and the History books will be brutal to the principals.
1
Over time California walked away from the Republicans due to their views.
They have gotten worse.
1
"Whatever starts in California unfortunately has an inclination to spread."
Jimmy Carter
Of course republicans fear California, it's progressive and successful.
4
Beautiful late summer weather, and air, in Northern and Southern California. I recall the days in the early 70s' when my chest would hurt after PE. Why does Trump wish this upon his fellow citizens once again ? He is a terrible terrible human being Make Good Air Bad Again. There's a campaign slogan.
5
Giveaways...in the billions...for the farm states, punishment in the form of tax increases for urban zones and now war on California. Trumpism gone wild. You have no right!, California, to try to make your air cleaner and to fight global climate change. You have no right!, California, to have a lingering homelessness problem.
This is conservative, moderate government?
Never again will I take seriously any proclamation of principles from a so called conservative Republican. I knew previously that it was a sham but, at least, it was hidden, covered over with a veil of sincerity based on some fundamental American ideals, some of which came from the pen of Thomas Jefferson and other intellectual politicians in our past. Now we know it is a sham covered by nothing but another sham called Trump.
How do these people who call themselves Republicans live with themselves as they watch, silent as dead cats, while their president rips up and throws away virtually everything they said they stood for over the last six or more decades? They just don't care. It is all about winning, which consists, at the present time, of stuffing broken dreams down Democrat's throats, smiling oily, selfish smiles all the while.
It is becoming more and more clear that Republicans will not tolerate the functioning of democracy and are likely to call for the dissolution of the American union if they can't get their way. Still, they will try to defeat democracy while they wait for that moment.
2
Where did the cry of "state's rights!" go, a presumptive central cause of Republicanism and a lie used to try to justify the American Civil War? There are no state's rights if Trump says there aren't. Oh, these rights apply only to states that vote Republican?
When I see that lady with the sign, it is clear to me that it is directed at me and the 60 million Americans that voted for Trump. The hate is real.
1
If Trump wants to paint California as an unmitigated disaster in the eyes of his voters, that's fine by me if it keeps them from moving here or convinces them to leave. Admittedly, that's not very generous to other parts of the country that might be saddled with them.
It is time to divide California into six non-gerrymandered states, each with two Senators.
As a resident of CA, it would be nice to have six senators. But I prefer to keep CA intact so that when the nation descends once again into Civil War, we will be strong enough to form a separate Union inviting other states who want to live in a free and democratic society an alternative to a Trumpian dictatorship.
1
Whatever the problem the fact of the matter is San Francisco has become a very unsafe to park your car in broad daylight..basic facts on the ground are very unpleasant...let’s not hide our heads in the sand...
2
It just gives Calexit some more arguments --- and maybe support. Being an East Coaster (although originally from the MidWest) I'd like to see a simialr movement here in the NorthEast --- NExit. The New England states, NY east of the Hudson, NJ, DE, Eastern MD and PA and Northern VA would make a nice country, ready to join the 21st Century --- while Trumpistan can go back to the 16th (or the 14th). Meanwhile CA,Oregon and WA could also move out, while places like Chicago and Austin could be our West Berlins.
I absolutely despise Trump and the modern GOP, and I'm not one to rail on California, but let's be honest: California, with one of the highest rates of poverty, homelessness, and inequality, is not exactly an economic poster child to be strutting around as a success. Sure, they generate wealth on a macro scale, largely due to the tech sector in the north, the entertainment sector in the south, their vast agricultural lands, and their position as a shipping/transport hub for the pacific ocean... but let's not forget how they nonetheless leave behind vast swathes of poor Californians as well. California has some significant challenges much of which is of their own creation, and to scapegoat the federal government or anyone else outside their state is being willfully ignorant and living in denial.
3
I suspect that there are many more Connecticut natives living homeless in CA than their are CA natives living homeless in Connecticut.
@Joe Arena - They are the sixth largest economy in the world.
@Molora Vadnais So? What does any of that have to do with California's management of their economy?
Maybe during his tortured stop at the Bay Area ATM, someone could have whispered a brief history of Prop 187 in Donald’s ear...
In 1994, the state of Nixon and Reagan voted to drop the equivalent of a legislative cluster bomb on all things immigrant; the straight line between that vote and the virtual extinction of the Republican Party in California two decades later is Sharpie-quality clear.
California is a huge, rumbling, beautiful mess of ideas, interests, and intuition. It’s a country within a country- 1 in 8 Americans live here- and you could plausibly argue, it’s where Americans have gone to see what’s possible.
Stephen Miller was 9, and Donald was busy prepping to sell the Plaza to the Saudis (for an $83 million loss) in 1994- otherwise they might have seen their future.
If you do not discourage the homeless from erecting shelters then you are effectively encouraging it.
1
It drives Republicans crazy that California rejected conservatives resoundingly over the last couple of decades and has done better for it.
Kansas was the great American experiment in conservatism and it failed miserably.
This is all you really need to know.
2
I purposely moved to California two years ago. Being here has brought me joy especially due to its size, it’s growth, it’s liberalism and its strong fight against this imposter trumps deregulation’s. I feel safer here with this imposter President in charge, than in any other state in the union. Yep I pay higher taxes. But I’m happy. Thank god.
It’s worth it. My new home state.
Now it seems to be confirmed ; Trump is playing the role of a Dictator....and
the GOP in Congress is gladly letting Trump get away with playing at being Dictator; so-called 'Republicans' in Congress are revoking states rights.....does this not mean
that The Republicans are destroying what is known as republicanism: and therefore what has existed as our Republic and our democracy.
1
Whenever Trump does something ludicrous dealing with the environment, such as this silly “war” on California, he reinforces a not so weird idea that keeps popping up in my mind, to wit: he is intentionally attempting to hasten the “point of no return” of climate change. I truly believe that he is sufficiently deluded that if and when it happens, he can declare martial law, and, along with Putin and Xi, with the three largest military machines, establish domination of the planet. To accomplish his agenda, if he loses the 2020 election, he will declare it and the census null and void, and declare martial law in the ensuing turmoil. End of story. I am no crazier than he is!
First, California is not a "liberal state"--the voting-precinct map very clearly shows that California, like the US in general, is pretty much solid red except in the coastal cities. I.e., urban liberals are ruining the state for everyone else.
Second, with their "sanctuary" policies, effectively conspiring to aid and abet millions of illegal aliens in evading federal immigration laws, California has basically declared war on the US government and, by extension, the rest of America. (Note the sign being held by the woman in the photo at the top of the piece.)
As to Mr Krugman's defences of California, he appears to be ignoring the fact that billions of dollars of wealth, thousands of businesses, and hundreds of thousands or millions of people have fled the state over the last few years. Apparently, regardless of Mr Krugman's approval, Big (Intrusive) Government and outrageous taxation are not universally loved in the (formerly) Golden State.
3
Eric Holder and many others were hired to lead the California war on Trump.
The US has been at war with China for many years but didn't fight to win, China did. So too, California went to war against the US long before the US under Trump leadership responded.
So a declaration of war is just an acknowledgment of being attacked on many fronts by California.
2
The right-wing nuts in my small corner of the world believe Trump should build around California.
More than a few people have suggested that Californians build the wall to keep the likes of Trump out.
Whatever became of Darryl Issa? Holding some sinecure in the Trumpian swamp? Now, if the left-coasties would just throw Nunes over the wall.
2
Speaking of "awkward facts," when the cost of living is taken into account, California has the nation's highest poverty rate. https://la.curbed.com/2018/9/14/17856870/california-poverty-rate-housing-cost-of-living
But the elites in Malibu and Silicon Valley are doing great, so there's that.
3
As the Swindler in Chief has said many times he wants get even, and California has raised his desire to get even with us.
At the risk of having my comment kept by the secret Times computer from being posted, which has occurred frequently lately, on prime reason for our high homeless rate is the weather. Why be cold in Kansas, when you can be warm here?
We have a large low paid group, they work in agriculture. They hide in the shadows from ICE and other anti immigrant groups, they are the working poor. We also have a large proportion of mentally ill on the streets. At one time we had state institutions where they were taken care of. When drugs were discovered that helped many of them, St Ronnie closed these places to save us money, that is the way the parsimonious Republican thinks,save money now, it gets them votes, let the rest of us pay more later. We have seen that, and we see the GOP for what it is, a fraud.
We are an affront to this paragon of the GOP, he has to keep his fragile ego from self destruction. If he lived here, we would give him a room in Napa, or even Atascadero, and keep him on his meds.
Trump's affrontive ignorance is astounding.
Californians say NIMBY to Trump.
3
I guess states rights only matter to Republicans when they want to disenfranchise African Americans.
4
@Clovis Or enslave women by taking away their reproductive freedom.
1
The secession of California, Oregon and Washington would make for a far more just and egalitarian country on the West Coast.
2
The roots of California’s socialism can be found in propaganda such as this socialist manifesto:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. . . “
It is very obvious that this sort of propaganda doesn’t sit well with the Trump regime. He much prefers the style of Russia and North Korea.
7
Too easy. Socialist California is full of guys half Trump's age worth 10x as much, and they earned their wealth creating entirely new industries and changing the way we all live. Trump is a schlockmiester, a joke...a joke who became President thanks to Russia's brilliant intervention in the election. California all by itself gave Clinton 3 million popular votes more than Trump got...and he's plenty sore about it, you betcha.
5
I only wish I could be wrong as often as Mr. Krugman and stay employed.
1
And the GOP ignores additional Trumpian needs for impeachment. Why does the GOP hate the US?
2
A better headline would be, ‘America Declares War On California’.
Byline: Having had enough of woke celebrities, out of step Federal justices, and news stories about the State’s massive number of homeless, America says, ‘enough already’!
1
Trump supporters, many of whom are low-income and in need of health insurance, will vote for him because of their hatred of non-whites. They would rather risk losing health insurance, i.e., they would rather die, than help another human being with a different skin color.
1
war on california is easier than war with iran
1
California is such a beautiful place...pity to waste it on Californians.
Putin declared WAR on America after he got kicked out of the G8 for robbing Ukraine of Crimea. Trump is only his surrogate, his hand puppet. Now, that puppet is trying to force the G7 to re-admit his Dark Knight master.
I just wanted to add this to the dialogue so that we keep our eyes on the real ball. Trump is so dumb, every utterance he makes is so incoherent his puppet masters have to keep changing his keepers to find fools who will try to understand him. California is the crown jewel of what could be so there is no way that the GOP wants Cal to show its prosperity by doing right for its people, across ethnic lines under well intentioned modern Democrats.
So California has a homelessness problem....bigger than the rest of the country. If you are going to be homeless, what better place than sunny California? The people of California have a decision to make. Create low cost housing and, god forbid, give people a place to live and use the bathroom in their neighborhoods or step over them on the street. Trumps answer is treat these folks like litter and create a human landfill to deposit them in. Worked with garbage, didn't it? Next step will be to put them on barges and take them out in the ocean and toss them off. Deal with the wash-up on the beaches later. Or better yet...if we can just get a trade deal with China, we can resume sending our garbage there and sneak in the homeless people. Trump will always have a solution. And no matter what it is the base will view it as genius ideas.
I've counted up my news sources, both print and media, and they number an even dozen. None of them cover the stories that right wing media lead with every night. Light Bulbs, Peter Strock, L.A. homelessness, Socialism, ANTIFA, the Clinton Foundation, Caravans, Forced vegetarianism..Etc. It must be twice as hard to work for the right wing propaganda machine because you not only need to report the news, you have to make it up first.
2
Despite his passing, the spirit of Robert Mugabe lives on.
It's clear that this coward+bully wants to prey on whoever he deems the most unable to fight back. First undocumented aliens, now the homeless. Who will be next? And next? And next? How long before he gets to everyone?
1
This was little Stevie Miller cackling in trump's ear about how hilariously ironic it would be to use the EPA to own the libs. That's it. Nothing more.
3
Good luck, California; the rest of us are rooting for you. We assume you are going to sue the (expletive deleted) out of the Trump administration, over the emissions issue and the ludicrous claim that the homeless cause pollution (as if the administration cared a whit about pollution). In the mean time, is there a fund to contribute to California’s legal costs? It would be money well spent.
2
Please do not move to the Left Coast states. We have more than enough people.
2
Trump doesn’t mention the hordes of homeless living under the viaducts of Dallas or Houston. Wonder why.
1
The housing crisis brought on by Silicon Valley was actually a plot point in a recent Lee Child “Jack Reacher” novel!
On a recent Bill Maher “Real Time” panel of wealthy Libertarians no one even knew what the term NIMBY even meant! Including Bill.
There are folks in lower middle class jobs that must drive 4 hours each way just to get to their quickly thrown up trailer parks that cost 4-5 times normal price and they don’t even own the land these pre-manufactured homes are on--that’s a separate lease hold!
I hold Tim “Apple” Cook and his equally blinders on cohorts for the housing crisis in the San Francisco/Silicon Valley area. US representative Nancy Pelosi has made millions on insider trading from info she gathers in closed door “Gang of Eight” financial meetings. She’s a Democrat?
Tim Apple (Sorry, I think DJT re-named him truthfully) built a $25 BILLION cathedral to himself as his Apple campus. A building so modern and so bizarre that he put in curved glass walls which employees keep running into! This would NEVER have been built by Steve Jobs...kinda like the three camera iPhone 11 just released.
Tim Apple and the rest of the tech superdudes are so out of touch with reality that they simply don’t want non-billionaires to inhabit THEIR world. Just like DJT they don’t want to look at the poor.
They could EASILY build beautiful yet affordable housing w mass transportation w bullet trains. OR move all their tech companies to Wyoming, Montana or even the Dakotas!
2
Wait. Iran attacks Saudi Arabia and Trump attacks California? OMG. The man is a genius! Just think about it, it’s obvious. If it’s not obvious to you, don’t ask. Follow Lincoln’s advice instead: Better to be silent and thought a fool, than speak and prove it true. You get it now, right?
The people of California are far more able to deal with their own problems than is a bonehead like Trump. Pollution follows Trump around like a shadow.
Proud to be from Calfornia USA.
Hey Donnie we don't care what you think.
California strong.
1
I am waiting for Trump to announce his way to end homelessness. It is Soylant Green.
1
I must be living in some other California than the one Trump sees. It's certainly preferable to his bedbug-infested golf resort.
1
The idea that the federal government would seek to eliminate a state's right to regulate activities within its borders should be anathema to every anti-regulation, states' rights Republican in the country. Imagine if a Democratic president tried to limit the ability of Texas to institute its own gun laws in the state? Outrage is a mild description of what the reaction of the Right would be. But, because it's California and the regulations have to do with the environment, there's not a peep out of the states' rights loving contingent. Figures.
2
The Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, which takes cost of living into account, shows that California is by far the poorest state with 19 percent of its residents subsisting below poverty level. The national poverty rate is 14.1 percent
Source: Table A-5. Number and Percentage of People in Poverty by State Using 3-Year Average Over: 2015, 2016, and 2017—page 26
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-265.pdf
@William Case
And what is your point? California is also the "wealthiest state" when looked at only in terms of economic output. See? I can cherry pick information and come to erroneous conclusions as well.
1
@Max Deitenbeck
California has the nation's largest economy because it is the nation's most populous state, but it is also the state with the largest percent of poor people.
Checks and balances. The San Francisco supervisors live deep in their own reality distortion field. The homeless in general, as well as vicious anti-social homeless, have been a bad problem for at least a decade. No other checks and balances have worked. If it takes Trump to get the Supervisors to start cleaning up their own front yard, so be it.
From an economist, I would have expected deeper comments on the homeless crisis. Glad to see mentioned that the high cost of housing in rent-controlled property-tax-limited SF has something to do with it. An additional economic point is that the homeless can and should move to more affordable venues, the Mojave desert or wherever.
There is a barrier to entering San Francisco now, only the rich and the destitute are allowed to move in. It's no way to run my home town.
1
Perhaps another reason California has a higher population of homeless people is that it's WARM and it doesn't rain all the time. I have heard from a fairly reliable source that some tiny towns in the Northwest give vagrants with drug or mental health issues bus tickets to California where "they have more services." And, of course, much nicer to be homeless in the winter in Berkeley than in some tiny outpost in Wyoming.
California is far from perfect, but it does offer an alternative to the Republican dismantling of the administrative state. California tells us that taxes, regulation, and even a proactive government do not stifle hard work, creativity, prosperity, and democracy. The successes of California however do threaten the Republican view that both economic and social orders require the many to endure great hardship for the promise of a decent, meaningful life.
Some supporters of this President believe that he is ordained by the one and true God to restore the natural order to all things. The true believers believe that recent moves against California are justified as their God is both vengeful and strong in wrath. As for the non-believers in the Republican party, the moves against California advance the cause by showing that state government does not and cannot work for citizens and therefore the dismantling must continue at all levels of government.
Yes, this is scary indeed. We have a constitutional government. The constitution has no power in itself. It is a covenant by all who agree to be governed by it to play by the rules no matter what. Unfortunately, we have a group of people in our federal government who are not playing by the rules we all agreed to follow.
Imagine a basketball game in which the players just decided to not follow the rules. You could have 20 referees officiating and still be be unable to avoid chaos. If we didn't have basketball players willing to follow the basketball constitution (i.e., rulebook) there would be no March Madness.
Paul, this is indeed scary. Please publish your list of countries that are still democracies and accept refugees from the U.S. If we can't remove those who won't follow the rules that is the alternative.
@CharlieY Sounds like you are describing the game from the old Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, Calvin Ball: Calvinball has no rules; the players make up their own rules as they go along; rules cannot be used twice (except for the rule that rules cannot be used twice), and any plays made in one game may not be made again in any future games.
It's been clear for a while now that Trump--and the Republicans in general--are gluttons for delivering punishment. Punish refugees and migrants, punish transgenders, punish gays, punish women, punish anyone who criticizes a Trump action or who praises an Obama regulation, punish the sick and injured, punish Democrats--there are innumerable people to punish and blame. But look around at the powerful characters Trump doesn't punish, and one can see where his ambitions are focused.
208
@Carol Robinson
Scapegoating has been the hallmark of the Trump/GOP all along.
Disagreements become hatreds and hatreds lead to hands full of rocks.
It is heartbreaking to see America stumble down that road again.
11
@Carol Robinson They are very, very mean people. I wonder how these "Christians" would treat Jesus, if he returned.
12
Our electoral system would change overnight if California threatens to secede over fair representation in Congress. With the fifth largest economy California's leaving the Union would impact the rest of the country far more than changing the electoral system for the better.
1
@Jane. Seceding from the Union caused the Civil War. I’ll take the US Military over the California National Guard. Seizing control from California liberals is a good idea.
What's interesting Is many homeless people would rather live on the streets of Los Angeles, California than live in a house in a red state like Kansas or North Carolina.
4
@Leftcoastlefty, As if they had the choice. Do you realize what you saying?
@Leftcoastlefty. Ya, heroin is much cheaper in California, and drug use is permitted. What junkie wouldn’t want to live their?
1
@Jay since you're apparently from Cleveland OH:
As of 2017, out of 50 states plus the District of Columbia, Ohio had the 2nd highest rate of drug overdoses in the nation- 46.3 per 100,000
Neighboring West Virginia was in 1st place: 57.8 per 100,000
California was 45th, with a drug overdose rate of 11.7 per 100,000
(Washington State was 36th; Oregon 41st)
https://www.statista.com/statistics/686415/top-ten-leading-states-concerning-death-rate-of-drug-overdose-in-the-us/
this factual data has been brought to you by the Reality-Based Community.
It should also be pointed out that Trump stalled aid for Puerto Rico leveled by Hurricane Maria (while making sure Texas and Florida received all the emergency aid they needed) and also threatened to withhold aid for California devastated by wildfires. In Midwest where states were battered by flooding, I believe Trump released Army Corp of Engineer/FEMA funds for one so-called red state and threatened to withhold them from the adjoining so-called blue state. (I can't locate that link, however.)
https://www.npr.org/2019/03/05/696995788/search-the-thousands-of-disaster-buyouts-fema-didnt-want-you-to-see
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-threatens-to-block-emergency-funds-for-california-fire-relief-11547046997
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/29/18285367/congress-disaster-relief-trump-puerto-rico
1
The cover photo pretty much says it all, and shares my feelings towards this President and his Administration.
California (and a few other populous, progressive states) should declare war on the numerous ‘red states’ that California’s economy and federal tax base has subsidized for years. I can tell you right now who wins, without firing a shot. Hint: it won’t be West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee...
1
The Republicans are indeed punishing the blue states. Witness the fact that, in addition to the actions summarized in this editorial, they raised our taxes by taking away our SALT deductions. They did this despite (or because of) the fact that the blue states subsidize the red states.
Two can play this game, I'll vote for any Presidential candidate who promises to punish the red states. We need to pull their subsidies to show them the effect of their 'hate big government' ideology. We need to defund welfare states like Kentucky, Alabama and Mississippi. And we need to have a federal education program to educate the poor people of the red states so that they can become productive members of our society. I'm tired of carrying those sanctimonious hypocrites.
1
Because declaring war on California worked out so well for Enron.
Governor Gavin Newsom has confronted Trump many times about his lies and bad policies. Trump cannot handle people in government that do not lick his boots.
So there is that too.
1
Trump lost California by 4 million votes. Don't laugh, but he's probably going to declare Californians ineligible to vote in 2020 due to their alleged polluting ways. Mafia Don is getting crazier and more vicious by the hour. If we can pry our military away from Trump's luxury resorts, maybe together we can prevent his almost guaranteed attempt to overthrow out democracy.
Trump can not forgive CA for Voting for Hillary in 2016. He just can not get that our of his craw where it festers like ingrown toenail.
Instead of trying to mend fences and understand that CA is not the same as NY, he starts kicking up a hissy fit thinking he can bully the whole state into surrendering to him and the Petroleum industry.
Trump is declaring war on California. And his acts are a harbinger of a larger split in this country. Trump is punishing California because the majority of people in that state believe in facts and science, want to do something about climate change, want to protect a woman's right to end her pregnancy, want to ensure that their employees are paid fair wages, and want to ensure that all of their residents are treated as equal under the law - no favoritism based on religion or color.
All these beliefs are diametrically opposed to the America that Trump voters want. This war Trump is waging is very much a proxy war on their behalf. They have a very different vision of America than do the rest of us. Trump voters want a country in which white Christians are favored, where women are treated as nothing more than birthing vessels who must carry their pregnancies to term even in the case of rape, incest or where the life of the mother is at stake, where people of color should be content with the scraps of second-class citizenship, and where their religion, Christianity, may be used as a blunt force instrument to punish those of us who do not believe as they do.
So there we have it. There are now two Americas: the America we want, that tries to remain true to its ideals of opportunity and tolerance, and the America Trump voters want, an ignorant racist Republic of Gilead. Trump voters have no interest in compromise. There is only one way forward: partition the country.
1
Trump has been, is, and will always be a bully. So, what he is doing with regard to CA is not surprising. CA should ignore him and go with what they are doing. That's what you do with bullies.
1
Let’s face it! Trump is an authoritarian and delusional demagogue. He has no desire to lead our country to a better place and deal with existential crises like global warming, environmental degradation, infrastructure renovation, and healthcare failures.
He prefers to scapegoat minorities and vulnerable immigrants and defame the achievements of a vibrant and economically successful state such as progressive California. Who else but a madman like Trump would want to increase pollution with its dire environmental and climate change consequences?
America is in a dangerous place and very near catastrophe!
Donald Trump's hatred of California is one of the more obvious symptom's of his narcissism. California stands up to Trump on a regular basis, challenging his belief in his own ultimate authority. Attacking the state with the largest economy in the entire union is a sign of desperation that, properly managed, can lead to his political demise. I hope California can unceremoniously end Trump's political career.
1
I don’t hate Trump, because I was taught in Sunday school not to hate anyone. But I do hate most everything about him...the way he says things like bigly, rocket man, sad. His gaudy taste. But the critical thing is I hate his policies, his fear mongering, his bragging. No wonder New York, a city full of outsized personalities, can’t stand him. I believe Bernie can beat him, and Isend that campaign $27 whenever I can. I would love to see a New York face- off! Go Bernie!
1
I read the Penn State Behrend Magazine. We are truly blessed to live here, understanding the problems.
In olden days,(2000-2010 I hated reading comments Paul's column received. Oh, the names he was called! What a difference a decade makes, now it is a pleasure!
This attack on California is a play to widen his base: his goal is to show tarnish this "Democratic Exemplar" state & then gather up the resulting disgruntled voters
Taxation without representation!
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right...” Can anyone ever foresee this president saying similar words of hope and reconciliation to our nation?
I think we know the answer.
Lets make sure he doesn’t get a second inaugural address... California... Keep leading the way!
Homelessness is not a San Francisco problem, it is a national disgrace! We’re the leading economy in the world and we should be able to provide enough jobs, healthcare, housing and drug treatment to not have people living on the streets. I agree with you Mr. Trump, it is a disgrace. But to really Make America Great Again you must do something about economic inequalities and insure that all people are taken care of with jobs, healthcare, housing and drug treatment!
1
Oh, the outrageous irony of an abjectly anti-environmental president throwing environmental laws at homeless Americans.
2
We have a president who believes that eviscerating emissions standards will stoke the economy, even though it won't, because automobile manufacturers don't want that. They are concerned about the public's desire for better mileage standards as well as climate change.
Does Trump have a grudge against California? Sure. They don't vote for him, and Nancy Pelosi is from San Francisco, and he's already opened up offshore drilling there. Does he have a grudge against Obama? Sure. Trump is an overt racist, and he promoted the birther movement, and Obama then humiliated him at the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner.
Are you part of Trump's "base" in a red state? In particular, do you live in an urban area like Miami, Orlando, Jacksonville, Atlanta, Charlotte, Richmond, Indianapolis, Louisville, Nashville, New Orleans, Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City, Denver, Albuquerque, Las Vegas or Boise?
You need to realize that Trump doesn't care about you, either. He will readily sacrifice your health and well-being, and that of your children, simply to stay the course with another one of his absurd policies in order to prove that he is always right.
You should think long and hard about that when you go to that polls next year.
2
Let’s not forget the Trump administration’s war on its own federal scientists.
Moving federal headquarters from DC to the Midwest and other actions are creating a BRAIN DRAIN that will take decades to recover from.
Not just shameful or sad it is treasonous.
1
Sheer vindictiveness. If you don't like me, then I'll beat you up as an example to others of my power to cause pain. This scorched earth policy on his enemies is straight out of the villains playbook mostly employed in comic books and fiction. Sad that all Americans can recognize the evil sickness of this in the movies, but wave their flags over it in the trumposphere.
3
Donald Trump is literally consumed by vengeance and vindictiveness. From suggesting his political rivals be investigated to punishing entire states that didn’t vote for him, Trump’s pettiness is on full display. He cares not about what or who he destroys in the bargain, but only about his own emotional needs. Considering this, his political base needs to realize that they are only a tool that Trump employs for his own personal gain. They are really nothing more than that to him.
2
That whistleblower leak concerning Trump's phone calls to the leader of a foreign government -- my guess is Ukraine or Russia -- can't explode publicly too soon for me. Trump is a runaway train and it will take a wreck to stop him.
Fourteen more months of this horror just seems to much to bear.
2
I used to think the well-earned motto of the Trump Administration was, "Doing Poorly That Which Needn't Be Done At All". With actions like these, let's revise that to, "Doing Ignorantly And Maliciously That Which Will Cause The Greatest Harm". History will not be kind to 45 and his henchmen.
2
Proud of Governor Newsom and Attorney General Becerra for refusing to knuckle under to this administration's horrific bullying, while maintaining their dignity, unlike Trump.
3
Maybe it's time for California, the fifth largest economy in the world (surpassing the UK), to take its $2.7 Trillion GDP, majority of US produce & indominable tech-sector, and CALEXIT!
4
The homeless issue only serves to prove that whether you have a mansion or nothing but a pup tent, most would rather live on the West Coast.
2
Just as we are facing war and economic crisis as a result of an attack on Saudi oil facilities, Trump decides to force a rollback of gasoline efficiency standards set by California that would reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. No less than his habit of divulging intelligence assets and compromising agents, Trump’s egomaniacal obsessions and lack of judgement in his treatment of California endangers American security, Trump is not just a traitor to our country - he is a traitor to the whole planet. Why has it taken so long to impeach him?
1
Trump’s cause is to promote trump. And punish everyone else. Once you realize this and stop giving him any redeeming qualities, it all becomes clear. Just try this concept yourself. You will never go back.
1
It must all be a Russian-driven master plan —to break off California from a corrupt and disgraced Federal Government.
California sends more tax money than it receives, it’s a leader in every industry of relevance in the 21st Century, has a booming population, young, educated, and also low-skilled, so Silicon Valley and the Central Valley drive an powerhouse supercharged by immigrants making their State the American Dream.
What is there for California to remain in this sorry, bankrupt, non-functional Union?
The actions of Trump no longer surprise me, rather, it's the actions (or inaction) of the nation. Why is Trump tolerated? How can the US citizenry be so enfeebled that it permits such a vile man to perpetrate so much evil?
1
Well, Paul is getting closer to the facts, but continues to blame all this malfeasance upon Trump. Trump is just the marionette, the circus barker, for a coterie of baleful billionaires behind all this. They’ve been working at it for decades and now are at the tipping point. They run the GOP, the Senate, the Trump Administration, half the Supreme Court and 30 State Legislatures. They also operate a brainwashing machine that has mesmerized almost half of voters glued to alternative facts and phoney conspiracies.
Blaming developments just on Trump ignores the real depth and seriousness of today’s mess.
3
I am a strong believer in the strength and potential of Unions - whether it is the EU or labor Unions or the “Union” of the United States. I think the evidence for the overall positive results if people, interest groups, or nations unite to achieve certain goals together and try to solve today’s global issues is strong. That is why I for instance am deeply saddened by BREXIT.
However, and at the same time, I get this sneaky feeling, that my above convictions would be - uhm - challenged (to say the least), if I resided in California. Experiencing the constant under-representation in Congress and suffering this buffoon in the Oval Office must be quite painful. I can see why a Californian could be drawn to the idea of “Let’s try to do this alone!” (Question: would such a move be constitutionally possible at all?) - P.S.: I guess there’d be many disadvantages for California, too, of which I probably do not know enough. Brexiteers are learning that lesson as well just now ...
An excellent piece on the lunacy and immorality of this Administration. However, I wish the word, "blackened," wasn't used, but something like, "denigrated," was substituted. Stephen Miller probably rejoiced at this poor choice of words.
What is obvious to this writer is that Trump goes out of his way to keep demand for fossil fuels as high as possible.
Could this represent marching orders from his boss, Mr. Putin?
The Russian economy can't hold up much longer if oil prices remain low.
Just a thought.
Ugh, I think we are falling into another Trump trap.
Trump uses the shock jock tactic of doing something so outrageous that others "need" to talk about it, which just ends up amplifying his message.
Everything you said is true, but dissolves quickly. Trump's crusty message remains behind: California has a terrible homeless problem and so everything about it is bad.
You painted the picture of a thriving California, and the facts are on your side. But facts and figures don't make a lasting impression. Trump does. And once Trump's story is established, he distorts it further and uses it in deceptive ways. Please don't enable him.
The EPA thing is a pure PR stunt. As long as it is getting in the news and his name is spelled correctly, it is effective. Please stop treating it like real policy, recognize it as a PR stunt and just ignore it.
1
Trump has nothing to offer about the real and present crises we face as a nation. That's bad enough given the small window of opportunity we have before they become intractable and our options go from bad to worse.
Exacerbating the worst case scenarios is the fact that before we can try fix structural problems, we'll spend years repairing the damage Trump has inflicted on the nation's capacity to fix anything at all.
If things can't possibly be worse, add Trump's preternatural need to create whole new problems, new crises just because he can.
He loves arson because he likes playing the fire chief and yelling fire!
His desperation is obvious when his polling team tells him to attack California to fire-up his base and their loathing of the Peoples Republic of Cali with its peacock feathers and hot tubs.
Trump may think he's a conservationist because the state's most endangered species is the GOP Speckled Chicken-Hawk, a non-native species once invasive but now dwindled from loss of its Orange County habitat.
We are the capital of homelessness because we're land's end and there's nowhere the desperate who come here from other states can go. Homelessness is an American crisis that Californians deal with because other states don't.
California is past, present and future. We succeed as the 6th or 7th largest economy in the world because we try to fix problems, not create new ones to hide unsolved ones.
Our biggest contribution will be a solid blue vote come 2020.
6
I love California. Here in Oz we play different sports. We have different trees and animals. We drive in cars with the steering wheel on the other side of the car on the other side of the road. And we speak and spell English a bit differently. But otherwise it's exactly the same. Trust me.
Also a map of California looks a bit like a map of New Zealand so I guess that makes Californians honorary Aussies too. They should be sure to visit and stay as long as they like. Like Kiwis.
(Sorry - I write my own jokes. What's this article about?)
1
Homelessness. Maybe we could get the Secretary of HUD to address this. Ha ha. Just kidding.
2
If Trump succeeds in blocking California emission standards with help from his buddies in the Supreme Court the seeds of virtual secession of blue states will be planted. It will not take the form of declaring independence but rather as a concerted effort to ignore Presidential executive orders and replace some Federal agencies with State ones. There are legitimate reasons to enact Federal standards to ensure harmony between states. Forcing a state to lower environmental standards or reduce public expenditures in no way can be seen as necessary for better relations between states, it is a capricious use of Federal power.
1
Like most narcissistic sociopath, Trump is driven by fear. He plays Cervantes Don Quichote perfectly by constantly finding new windmills to attack.
Mr Trump truly declares a war of environmental annihilation on Americans
Meanwhile, Mr Trump uses pet names for a North Korean dictator
1
California should secede. And Oregon should go with it.
2
@AP18 The Northeast will join you.
1
@AP18
Can we in the Northeast come too?
If the Trump Organization didn't have any business in California, then from Trump's viewpoint, he would have nothing to lose by bashing the state. But, alas, he does have business there. He owns an oceanfront golf course in Rancho Palos Verdes, just south of Los Angeles, and is a part owner of the old Bank of America tower in San Francisco.
Talk about "Stupid is as stupid does."
2
If liberalism was such a success, why did California end up the way it is? Los Angeles and San Francisco rival the Black Hole of Calcutta! Rife with rodents, diseases, many we thought consigned to history returning. Go to war with California? If we do, I hope California loses, because that will mean America wins!
1
@Ira M. Pesserilo
I think you have no idea what the Black Hole of Calcutta was, and I think you have no idea what LA and SF are like.
@Ira M. Pesserilo
America works for its top 40%. California works for its top 70%.
Time to enforce public safety/decency/nuisance/littering laws. Time to create sanitation stations in places where us clean freaks don't have to see them, with lockable toilets, showers, washing machines. You want to be homeless, here's where you have to live. Homeless whose camps are too visible or too far from portable toilets have to get their stuff scooped up by garbage trucks.
Paul must be personally moderating all comments because there is not a single one in opposition to his editorial.
When you really get down to it, if the American War Between
the States had not, in actuality been predicated upon moral resistance to an economic system based upon chattel slavery, our country today would look real different.
Britain has brexit and the right to self-determination by whatever group of people should be paramount.
Cal, Ore and Wash would make a great country, one of the most economically successful and advanced in the world.
All those poor, retarded Red States would have to pay their own way, and the remains of the USA would almost be a third world country.
Chop it up, secede, back out now.
Free Pacifica!
Build a better wall.
1
CA residents are about 10% of US population and contribute nearly 20% of GDP for USA. Message to Trump and his base red states: step up or shut up. CA is tired of paying your welfare.
3
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expect different results. Cities have been ruled by leftist through their city councils, creating zoning, rent control, and environmental regulations that have priced many people out of housing., making their elected officials the author of their homelessness.
1
Why do you think the new robber barons are spending so much buying New Zealand citizenship and property? It’s their refuge for when they’ve taken the last bit of wealth out of this country, leaving the hull for the rest of us. It’s like every dystopian sci-fi novel I’ve read. Stockpile coffee and scotch, they’ll be worth their weight in gold....
1
The Republicans are proven to be complete frauds. Anyone who votes Republican is anti-American and anti-democracy. You can’t equivocate any longer. Vote Republican- you are the problem.
2
Mr Krugman needs to go back to economics. This article has twisted so many facts it is laughable.
Whites and blacks life expectancy in Ca. is amongst lowest in America. Asian and Latinos are amongst the highest.
Mental illness, drug abuse and addiction, failure to be trained for current economy, illegal immigration,,failure of social services are all more responsible for homeless crisis, not just housing costs.
Would you swim in California beaches or eat fish caught of its shores?
1
When something, anything, does not work as imagined, stupid people just take and make more of it.
JUSTIFFED!
There are needles everywhere out here. You can't even walk down the street without someone throwing a used needle out the window. I think that's what they do in those expensive high rises--play spin the needle or maybe some other bizarre West Coast game, and then just throw the needles out. Swimming in the ocean here, so many needles pricking you, you would think you were swimming in Florida with all those jelly fish (for real). And when they do street cleaning with those giant street sweepers, and there is a wind, which is most of the time, there are giant swirls of needles and syringes all over the place--hard to even walk around. I'll bet it's those swirls that Trump saw from his airplane, when he was here to extort money from the 1%. That's what he does to force loyalty, extort, whenever he can get away with it.
1
California should secede from the Union.
Go California! To bad you can't secede.
1
California should build a wall to keep Trumpistan out.
3
petty tyrant
1
A recent Times picture in California showed a big sign saying "Not Our President". That is the flip side of Trump deciding to focus on his base and ignore the rest of the citizenry. If the rest are not his people, naturally there is no reason for them to consider him their president, particularly when he was not really elected to the office.
2
Really, Trump was elected president. Google 2018 Presidential election "Trump wins" "Hillary loses" and read all about it.
In a way, America has been conducting an experiment. Right wing Kansas and Left wing California are good examples. Each choose a particular set of actions and passed certain laws in support of beliefs each held concerning what is best for the state. And folks, the results are in. Life is better in CA than Kansas, by just about any measure you want to use. Life is generally better in a Blue state than a Red state, by just about any measure you want to use. And what does that tell us?
PS. Please don't reply with the stats concerning how many from the Blue states are moving South. Please remember its what they earned in the North that allows them to retire to the South and lord it over the people who are from there.
5
Yes, he declared war on them.
He did this before in his tax bill that had some detrimental effects on homeowners in those "coastal elite" states with high home values.
He punished them because they were smart enough not to vote for him.
He punished them with taxes
Then California tried to keep candidates off the ballot who do not release their tax returns - meaning Trump
So he punished them again - by taking away their right to set their own fuel efficiency standards.
He knows he can never win CA so he will use them to fuel the hatred in his base.
CA is the state version of the correspondents dinner that caused him to lose his mind and engage in endless revenge on par with a Shakespearean tragic comedy.
One wonders what a soliloquy would look like for our tragic villain of too small a heart and brain.
Would it resemble a performance of the like not seen since Vogon poetry?
Would he moan about crowd size, marking pens, and the homeless who are ruining the best quality doorways?
I don't know.
I also don't know how Warren will pay for Medicare for All.
Perhaps "resistance is useless."
2
@So he punished them again - by taking away their right to set their own fuel efficiency standards.
Uh, California has no right to establish its own fuel efficiency standards.
Read all about the Commerce Clause in the US Constitution.
Federal District Judge Lawrence J. O’Neill, Eastern District of California, ruled on Thursday that the State of California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) program is in violation of the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution and issued an injunction prohibiting its enforcement. (
In the USA 10 % of the population owns 80 % of the wealth .The other 90 % survive on the 20 % crumbs left . The USA are a world of lies and fake facade . The 10 % show luxury in the face of everybody, eat in 300 $ a meal restaurants, stay in 1000 $ a night hotels, live in several million dollar houses , travel across the world because they own those 80 % of the wealth created by all but the other 90 % just toil around, work 2 jobs, commute long hours, live in bad lodging, have no chance to education, no health care , no life . 25 % of Americans own less than 10 000 $ .
600 000 US citizens are homeless. Almost the number of soldiers in the US army worldwide. 2.5 million Americans are in jail, almost 1 % of all US adult citizens.
The modern right foes not have preconceptions any more than a mean dog has preconceptions.
It just wants to feed its urges.
2
As a native Californian who has lived in Texas for nearly 40 years, I miss it. But I can't afford to move back.
I like California. Don’t especially want to live there, but it’s a great place. Like Canada or New Zealand, places where I spent more than two months of this year.
Maybe California should secede and become a nation-state. A Calexit, if you will. This is a recurrent topic: it has economy to do so, and it would be harder for Trump to use it as a punching bag.
Then I’d be more inclined to move there.
@Noley
secession would almost certainly bring about civil war, which California has no chance of winning since they're actively trying to get rid of their best guns!
All of these commenters advocating a "Calexit" would do well to remember the Civil War.
The flyover states use terms like "Hollyweird", yet I'm sure they still watch movies.
California might do well to quit the union if Trump keeps up his bullying and destructive nature.
The republican plan for a total and absolute takeover, ignores the reality of secession, civil war, or anarchy.
I'd like to think that no matter how the courts rule on Trump's tax returns, someone who works at the accounting firm, would leak the documents. Deflating Trump now could leave many of his supporters to finally realize that they got conned.
2
For a sitting president to attack any state is far beyond anything the office he holds stands for. Trump took an oath to be the president of our entire nation, not just a few select states. Why is this not a violation of his duties as president?
What Trump is doing is using California as a punching bag to pump up his base. As Krugman points out in his essay, CA is the dreaded socialist enemy that the right fears. So he denigrates and attacks it in hopes that he will rile up his base.
What Trump fails to realize is that most Americans like California. We look at it as an integral and outstanding component of our nation. His attacks are based in the thinking that CA will vote against him anyway, so might as well go after the place. In doing so, he is attacking many other states and the voters they hold.
Trump is like a man whose arm is pinned under a fallen rock. The only way he can escape and survive is to cut off his own arm. His arm, in this case is California. Except, when he makes the cut, he won't be able to stop the bleeding and will not be able to survive.
Trump is committing political suicide by attacking California in this fashion. He cannot win with only his 36%. The rest of us will not reward him for his assault on one the nation's crown jewels.
Trump thinks he can divide and conquer. He can only divide which will cause him to be conquered.
369
@Bruce Rozenblit
I agree that Trump wants to run against California in the next election. He will never carry this state's electoral votes anyway. California is as good a foil as "the squad" which he has described as the face of the Democratic party.
Rather than attack California for the homeless, he could have HUD assist with the homeless problem nationwide. This would be actual, normal leadership.
44
@Bruce Rozenblit Bruce, thank you for your words that “most Americans like California.” Your fine statement is indeed not only a Times’ Pick but also a “Kathy Pick.” So many of us who live here truly did not want him to visit. But his words and actions against us stung. Yes, we should consider the source..a man of arrested and stunted development, soulless and heartless. Yet we take our environment seriously. And the homeless are always on our minds. We truly want to end their plight and help them.
53
@Kathy Lollock I lived in Marin and Sonoma counties for almost 35 years before moving to San Diego Co.
Being recently widowed, I made the decision to stay in my Alpine, CA home where i have many friends and family. Could I have moved as several of my friends did to AZ or NV to save a few dollars, yes, but friends are more important than a few dollars and the weather and beaches can't be beat.
Now if I could only get rid of the gophers.
26
While searching forlornly for his bigly moment, Trump continues with his vindictive wrecking ball of all Obama's accomplishments - and even many of those rules that only seem as if they should have been Obama's. In that, Trump has already had his bigly moment; he will forever go down in history as the biggest, most moronic, vindictive wrecker of the environment ever - as well as a wrecker of the economy, our friendships with allies, American foreign policy, national security, homeland security, squanderer of military funds, destroying America's longstanding, valuable, wilderness areas, American's healthcare, and on and on. All the while raking in taxpayer's cash to sustain his failing properties. Yup, Pinnochio Don, the ultimate coward, will be historic alright, like no one has ever seen before - and hopefully never will again.
1
Trump has declared war on America. And he's winning.
1
Big and ugly. Yes.
Killing the planet and all on it for the sake of money, control and ideology. The light of the free world, the United States of America, has become enshrouded in darkness. Trump is, in his own twisted way, the Angel of Darkness.
In order to divert attention away from his crimes against the constitution and the planet, he will go to war. He will find a way to do it without Congress and he will convince his base that a war is for their protection, regardless of any consequences or price. Then, in a few months, he will say he has "won" and "saved America" -- riding to victory on their votes, no matter who the Dems run.
The perfect storm of groups with their own issues: Libertarians, Tea Partiers, religious anti-abortionists, white supremacists, good ole boys, corporate big wigs and the odd collection of lost, uneducated souls who watch FOX 24/7, all gathered together to elect DJT with help from the Anti-Hillary people, Maureen Dowd, and Mr. Putin, who has been laughing since the Donald won.
California should do what Trump's administration does -- ignore whatever happens in the courts and do whatever it wants.
If you could go back to 1967 and ask my high school graduating class if this current scenario was even remotely possible as our future, we would have laughed our collective Woodstock heads off. Beyond a bad nightmare, yet here we all are. Huuuuggeee and UGLEE!!
All I can say is "Go, California!"
I wonder which state that voted Democratic in 2016 is next on Trump’s list for an attack?
Trump continues to degrade and politicize the departments of government so that he can reward his friends and punish his enemies. This is not only the worst kind of partisan governing but also extremely dangerous to our democracy. When are the Democrats going to grow a backbone and impeach this mentally unstable person? Even though the Party Before Country Republicans in the Senate will never convict him, a successful Impeachment may at least slow him down.
Now, let’s compare and contrast California with Alabama. Or even Kansas. The 21st Century, or the 19th. And that, folks is the difference between Democrats and the GOP/NRA Party.
Seriously.
2
The way the Republicans describe the disaster that is California cannot but remind me the way the North Korean regime described the USA 15 or 20 years ago as a way to keep its own population docile: a place ridden with epidemics, and where starvation was rampant. The Republicans have no qualms using a totalitarian regime’s book.
Never more proud than to be a Californian.
1
Proud to be from California USA.
The Calfornia state song lyrics were written by Francis Beatty Silverwood
Love You, California"
I.
I love you, California, you're the greatest state of all.
I love you in the winter, summer, spring and in the fall.
I love your fertile valleys; your dear mountains I adore.
I love your grand old ocean and I love her rugged shore.
Chorus
When the snow crowned Golden Sierras
Keep their watch o'er the valleys bloom,
It is there I would be in our land by the sea,
Every breeze bearing rich perfume.
It is here nature gives of her rarest. It is Home Sweet Home to me,
And I know when I die I shall breathe my last sigh
For my sunny California.
II.
I love your red-wood forests – love your fields of yellow grain.
I love your summer breezes and I love your winter rain.
I love you, land of flowers; land of honey, fruit and wine.
I love you, California; you have won this heart of mine.
III.
I love your old gray Missions – love your vineyards stretching far.
I love you, California, with your Golden Gate ajar.
I love your purple sun-sets, love your skies of azure blue.
I love you, California; I just can't help loving you.
IV.
I love you, Catalina, you are very dear to me.
I love you, Tamalpais, and I love Yosemite.
I love you, Land of Sunshine, half your beauties are untold.
I loved you in my childhood, and I'll love you when I'm old.
2
He won without California last time and is sure they won’t vote for him this time. Same with New York and Massachusetts. If you’re not with Trump, you’re his enemy. It’s that simple.
On the other hand, if you’re with him, like Alabama, he takes his little Sharpie and draws you into the NOAA hurricane map!
1
What a great picture!
1
Trump's homelessness attack is, primarily, the elevator pitch to his A-list red base, timed for his CA fundraiser. Don't look for any further sense in it, the shell of greed and spite is as deep as it goes.
What's a president to do? Imagine being stuck with having the 7th largest economy in the world, California, in your United States of America. What a drag. Worse, they question your authority. That calls for some serious repercussions. He can't get what he wants out of big foreign economies by bullying, sanctioning and/or tariffing, so why not try it on California. He's coming for you Golden State, the place where I spent my Wonder Bread youth.
Yes it is war. You have committed acts of war by your very existence. Carry on.
if what u say about the trump gangs dishonesty n morals is true, does that mean the 35% of Americans who support him share those traits? is is spite? i do not understand why people support him unless they like those traits...... i guess, i don't know.
1
And why not “weaponize” the Environmental Protection Agency? Our Dear Orange Leader has already weaponized the Justice Department (e.g., selective antitrust “enforcement” against four auto manufacturers abiding by the California emission standards) and, indeed, the federal judiciary. So, having done so without objection, why stop there?
Where are the DNC ads making the backsliding GOP look like complete buffoons? Run ads of how smog used to make everything look varying shades of orange. Show joggers, pregnant women and school children walking, running and picnicking in that garbage while wearing surgical masks. The spot will end with a clean clear day honed by responsible Democratic emissions legislation. Superimposed on the screen at the end of the spot: The Dystopic Republican Future is the Democrat Past. Which do you prefer?
One could easily imagine him pulling a Puerto Rico on us if a major earthquake should strike while he was in office. Lord help us. Meanwhile, he'll just starting treating us like another one of those places where they aren't *really* Americans.
Hey! Actually Trump could save a lot of money on his Wall if he just gave the state back to Mexico... use the mountains as a barrier instead. Total win-win for everyone! Heck, maybe he could even trade us for Greenland at the UN, or something. Isn't that how that works?
The Dems deserve whatever disdain they get for allowing the cities they run to deteriorate so horribly.
In California we have a two word response to The Moral and Intellectual Black Hole in the Oval Office. The second word is "you." The first is up to the reader's imagination.
California isn’t like any other state. It literally has all it needs - food, technology, education, entertainment, fuel and finance. Californians know full well they have to solve their own problems because there is no help coming from east of the Sierras. So Trump is just a fly on the wall that will go back East and get distracted by something and forget what he said and California will continue to go it’s own way.
1
So, how long do you think it will be before the nation of Cascadia, consisting of the Washington/Oregon/California coastal areas, and perhaps Hawaii, becomes more than just an amusing topic of summer afternoon beach conversation?
Natural experiments on econ and policy choices:
- California
-Kansas
This is, perhaps, as close as one can get to putting entire states in the lab.
1
We shouldn’t care if Gavin Newsom, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, or Santa Clause solve the problem of homelessness. In reality, it is a shared non-partisan problem in search for a solution. Get on with it! Or my vote goes to someone who has policy that does.
Thank you, Paul, for the shout-out. As soon as I learned Trump was coming to our state, I could only think: This means trouble. However, with his latest threats, I am sputtering with anger. Sorry...when someone as destructive, amoral, and unethical, impugns my home it ranks right there when as a young mom someone criticized my kids and my parenting. A line has been crossed. But think about these childlike outbursts from this school yard bully. They are preposterous, actually insane. There are very few if any Californians who do not take climate change, water, and air pollution seriously. And Northern, Southern, and Central CA are literally burning up and lives and livelihoods have been lost. Then there are our homeless. Yes, it is a growing problem. But I can assure you that our mayors from SF to LA are doing everything they can to assuage this problem that should not be in a wealthy state. After venting during this comment of mine, I just realized that actually Trump was unintentionally complimenting us. For you see, we must consider the source. And The Source is a non-entity without a human soul and heart.
4
While skyrocketing real estate prices can lead to homelessness in our state, the actual cause is the decision during the Reagan administration to close the hospitals for the physically and mentally disabled and to provide smaller housing units for them. This has never materialized for a variety of reasons. The majority of the homeless people are those who are physically and mentally incapacitated.
298
@GG
I agree. The horrors of post-WW2 mental hospitals were brought to postwar public attention by books and movies such as "The Snake Pit" and especially "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Ne." The publicity and the development of antipsychotic medications led to campaigns to close the institutions. Many more than Reagan are implicated in this. The outcome was supposed to be a return to normal community life for the mentally ill. California shows what really happened. And it isn't primarly because of a low cost housing shortage.
30
@GG
The vote to freeze property taxes is also an issue. Had property taxes risen as they should have home prices would have remained in check. Now people of modest income own multi-million dollar homes that would be worth a generous 200K anywhere else in the country all because property taxes were set at an artificial low decades ago.
23
@GG
The problem was not closing the miserable institutions that warehoused the mentally ill in horrible conditions so the rest of us didn't have to know they existed, the problem was failing to follow up with any local services.
My father was on the board of a group developing the local services for our area. He commented that the board looked at it as an opportunity to expand services for what he called 'the worried well' --- kids struggling with their parents' divorce for example. At no point did they look at who was being deinstiutionalized and what services would be needed for them. Instead, NIMBY was the solution to that.
25
Trump is, as best I can tell, our first cartoon president. He says anything he pleases. Relevance and reality don't matter. Media coverage generated by divisive rhetoric is his bread and butter. I propose a media blackout. National ignore Trump week. What better way to acknowledge his leadership skills.
271
@fgros
I absolutely love the idea of ignore Trump week.
22
@fgros
The best advice given in 3 years!!!
13
@fgros Could we make it at least 2 weeks?
20
Lived in CA for much of my adult life, in San Francisco, Berkeley, and Palo Alto. I and my family loved it. One could live a very rich life in the Bay Area on a modest income then. The housing issue needs to be resolved, and if it is we may return.
Living in a red state, on the other hand, reveals the downside of the GOP rigid ideology. "Govt is bad", a left over from that actor who proceeded to destroy much of what made a middle class in the US possible, e.g. unions. This results in poor investments in human capital, infrastructure, and public transportation. People suffer quietly because 'that's just the way it is' without realizing something can be done.
Are we waking up to this? Hopeful signs abound but it will still take a concerted effort on our part to prevail.
14
@Harold The good Professor has made me homesick.
Trump has been running his presidency as if it were a made for TV and the audience he seeks are the the same ones that turn in to Fox news. He enjoys generating tweets and lines that he knows conform to the biases of his base and likes to telegraph in short phrases that like chants are easy to remember. For Trump california is another way to spell DEMOCRAT ! He uses the term California as a way of heaping derision on the accomplishments of democrats and on the goals they have set for the country.
Clean air, climate change, housing are of no concern to him, what is of concern is that other states will follow the democratic lead as exemplified in california and his goal is to thwart California's efforts as a warning to other states and democrats across the country.
What trump does not get however is that states do have rights and when the federal government fails to take care of the air, water and well being of its citizens , states will step in and have the right to do so...something that Trump seems to be in denial of, but which states are very well aware of !
1
It's been clear for some time that Trump "doesn't believe in democracy" and, as his "war on California" indicates, is well on his way to creating an autocracy. Ironically, California has, in San Francisco liberal, Nancy Pelosi, the newly re-installed Speaker of the House, just the person to fight back against the Trump autocracy. But Pelosi, ironically like Trump, is hesitant to pull the trigger and authorize the House to begin the impeachment of Donald Trump. At the rate Trump is corrupting and weaponizing the bureaucracy and obstructing Congress, Pelosi's decision not to defend the Constitution, but to wait for the November 2020 election may prove fatal to the survival of our democracy.
3
@Paul Wortman
Under the US Constitution, to which California subscribed on admission as a state in 1850, under a (theoretically) limited number of circumstances, the state acknowledged the supremacy of the authority of the federal government. This isn't "autocracy," this is just the way this country was designed to work.
Further, as has been repeated ad nauseam, the US as a whole is a federal republic, not a democracy, the Founders knowing full well that letting a few high-population states dictate to the balance of the country would destroy the republic.
@Henry Miller, Libertarian Yes, there is "the rule of law" which includes the 1976 Clean Air Act along with the "separation of powers"--all of which Trump is violating among dozens of other actions.
@Paul Wortman
And California has been operating under a waiver issued by the EPA, an executive-branch agency ultimately under the President and thus subject to presidential discretion to revoke.
Paul,
I actually agree with the principle that we should have one standard of fuel economy for the entire nation. Cars are like air and water - they flow from one state to the next. I think even States' Rightsters (thoughtful ones, anyway) would agree, that for things that are fluid, we should have one standard set at the federal level.
How would the rest of us feel, if a Democrat becomes president, and Texas adopts a HIGH pollution standard? I see a lot of Texas license plates in my state.
Where I disagree with the Trump administration is that, I think, California has it about right; and that IT'S standard should be the one adopted for the whole nation.
(It's hard to believe, but it seems that Trump is actively attempting to wreck the environment. When he came into office, most of us expected him to be indifferent to the environment, but to be actively pursuing policies the destroy it? There's probably another explanation, but does it matter? The result is the same.)
5
States have different laws, different speed limits, different driving laws, they are not homogeneous, mileage requirements and emissions are no different.
@Thucydides
Barron's mom needs to speak up. He's the one who's going to have to live with the polluted country that his dad wants to create.
Higher life expectancy in California - Do you think their tough regulations on clean air and water has something to do with it?
If that is the case then Trump is imposing bad health on the entire population of California!
4
@Jaque One of his ways of squashing his perceived enemies.
According to the Constitution, the purpose of the Presidency is to execute laws passed by Congress, not to wield power himself. When the Constitution wanted to restrict the powers of government, it usually phrased it as "Congress shall pass no law that ---".
50 Years ago there was concern about an "imperial Presidency", but it got confused with a fight specifically against Richard Nixon. Once he was forced out of office, everybody stopped working. Now the imperial presidency is back.
11
@Charlesbalpha
Unfortunately, Montesquieu's theory, so popular with our Founders, that the executive and legislative powers of government should be separated, was misguided. It is actually impossible to separate a law from its execution, as how a law is executed defines what it really is. And the real power lies not with the person or body that writes the law, but with the person or body that executes it.
For much of our history the structural flaw of separating executive and legislative power was benign. This was because our national government had a relatively limited role, and because we really did have separate and distinct state and regional concerns that predominated over national. Since the Great Depression, however, the national government has acquired an ever expanding role in both foreign and domestic affairs. State and regional identities have also been subsumed to the national identity. While many on the right decry this increase in significance of the national government, it is necessary given the modern economy's national and global scale. The current world demands a strong, active national government.
Our Constitution was written, however, to make the national government weak, fragmented, and only modestly responsive to the popular will. It actually creates a power void that must be filled, but that can only effectively be filled by the president. The imperial presidency is the direct result of an 18th century Constitution applied to a 21st century world.
3
@617to416
Usually the separation of powers in a democracy is considered to be a safety feature to ensure that neither the executive nor the legislature can ultimately seize power.
Unfortunately because of particular features of the Constitution of the United States this safety mechanism does not appear to work, as you correctly point out, and instead creates a power vacuum.
This, if it remains, unchanged will lead to a US autocracy and by the time this happens it will be too late to stop.
1
@RHR
One of the problems of the US Constitution is the there is no "boss"—a body that is ultimately the final decision-maker when conflicts arise. In a parliamentary system, the people's house is that boss and the executive is ultimately responsible to legislature. The legislature itself is responsive to the people—it being the elected body and the only elected body, and therefore the only body that has the people's authority, and the legitimacy that authority conveys, behind it. In the US, not only is power divided between the executive and legislative branches, but both can equally claim to have the will of the people behind them. That the US electoral system distorts that will while, at the same time, giving every competing power centre a claim to be legitimized by that will, makes the whole mess of a system even worse.
1
It's a war he will lose. You can't keep making war on economies -- either China's, the world's second largest, or California's, the world's sixth largest -- without hurting the U.S. economy, the world's largest. Sooner or later the LED lightbulbs will start going on in the heads of Trump's corporate supporters and it will be lights out for Trump's administration.
17
All the big US and west coast tech firms are fiscally registered in the EU, in Europe, not in the USA, and pay no taxes there while invading the European markets ,stealing jobs, destroying the economies, using the infrastructures, not participating in its maintenance and free education and health care .
The social trouble they cause in California, they bring worse in Europe.
That is Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Starbucks, Yahoo, Google, Starbucks, Netflix and others. All in Europe, not in the USA . Cheating. Causing a 20 % fiscal fraud on the European budget .
In California, they raise the cost of housing, feed an elite with luxury, create a low proletariat of servants working for peanuts and having to commute hours per day, polluting , but they don't participate in the social fabric .
Mr Krugman, as an economist, you should write about that dishonest US economy to inform US citizens .
With numbers, concepts, circulation of money, benefices, tax evasion routes, offshore US banks stashing the cash, etc...showing how the real US economy works under the tables and behind the facade .
11
One of my Dad's famous sayings was: "If it isn't broke, don't fix it." In Trump's world the saying goes: "Break it, and forget about fixing it."
16
@Amanda Jones
Or if it works really well but has Obama's name on it, break it.
1
California often sets the example so, as it passes laws on emissions, environment, clean air, civil rights, workers' protections, the rest of the country follows.
Most certainly, Trump can't stand a state that leads the country
40
California’s exemption on air pollution is, as I understand it, part of the Environmental Protection Law of the 1970s. As such that would make their exemption a legislative and federal exemption but not one established by a simple rule issued from the EPA. It apparently then rests on and in federal law and should therefore be a lot more difficult to shove aside on the simple grounds of “state’s rights.” In this case, it would appear that the Congress established that exemption in law. It isn’t just an assertion on the part of California.
The upside down, inside out “logic” of Trumpette in trying to make a case for what he wants California to do is the latest in his denial of truth and reality, another brick in his construction of the US tyranny he is establishing.
13
@B. Rothman I can’t be the only one who still remembers California emissions from The Price is Right circa 1976 (first number 3, maybe 4 if real snazzy)
California has a lot of problems but I’ll take them any day over what a lot of the rest of the country has to put up with.
I’m proud of how California is leading the nation on environmental and human rights issues.
We have a terrible homelessness problem but so does the rest of the country. That’s because it’s a problem that needs a national solution. This can’t be left to the states or to individual cities.
I’m proud of how California is regarded internationally. I’m traveling outside the country right now and when I’m asked where I’m from I say California - not USA.
15
@Sam Francisco: Every person living consumes some area and some energy. Humans sterilize where we live.
Yet another scary but accurate article on the Republicans move away from democracy to you know where. The comment "The striking thing about the right’s new focus on homelessness, however, is that it’s hard to detect any concern about the plight of the homeless themselves. Instead, it’s all about the discomfort and alleged threat the homeless create for the affluent." I found to be a very accurate assessment of the conservative viewpoint.
26
California has the highest state tax rates, skewed to tax the wealthiest with the highest rates. Yet business is prospering there, and there's no mass emigration out -- despite Texas's claim to the contrary. Unlike most states, California puts education first. So its citizens are knowledgeable enough to reject the current Tweeter-in-Chief and the political party he heads.
36
"First, it's yet another illustration of the intellectual imperviousness of the modern right." Well i would say that it is quite a euphemism.
14
@Siegfried
Several years ago the Republican's propaganda committee discussed having all its politicians refer to their opposition as the "Democratic Socialist Party", exploiting many Americans' phobia about socialism.
The attempt failed, but ever since then I've thought that the GOP should be referred to as the Republican Stupidity Party, since they target uneducated voters and chose an idiot as a leader.
2
High housing costs are "probably" the main cause of homelessness in California?
Two points in reaction:
1. California also has the nicest weather in the nation (when it isn't burning) and the most generous social safety net, whereas other jurisdictions tend to criminalize homelessness and offer a bare safety net. So how many homeless people have voted with their feet?
2. The high housing costs are part and parcel of America's hyper-capitalist economy that benefits some people at the expense of others. California is not immune, it is one of the epicenters. Ironic isn't it? Just another argument to rein in the excesses of capitalism but be careful how we do it. Unintended consequences are inevitable.
15
Paul, I am no fan of Trump. But, how about, for a change, a fair and balanced commentary. Why not write about the imbalance of equity in the state, with the most progressive billionaires in America. How about writing about how the homelessness problem is really not being addressed. You tend to formulate and direct most if not all of your arguments (because that is what they are) against Republicans and the administration. I admit, they are doing a pitiful job. Yet, the Democratic Governor and State politicians are doing a horrendous job as well. It starts in ones own backyard, so to speak. Why is it most, if not all the rich progressives in the state want to address the issue of homelessness, as long as it is kept far away from them, and where they live? How about addressing that?
3
@bsb
We have a Nobel-prize winning economist and we have an idiot who is surprised to find that healthcare is a complicated issue. And the idiot is president of the US. That's a problem right there.
2
@bsb: Krugman's essay is about Trump's war on California. Your concern for a balanced assessment of California, while reasonable in the abstract, is misplaced here. There are plenty of things to criticize about California but the point of this column is that Trump (and many on the far Right) seem to have come down with California Derangement Syndrome. The result, as Krugman writes, is an ugly story, and a scary one. Your comments don't refute that. So what are we to do about Trump's attempts to twist the government to support his destructive, irrational aims?
@bsb. Read it again. He did address it, and condemned their NIMBY attitude in maintaining an inhumane situation.
1
If States' rights trump Federal rights, then we'd still be Jim Crow. The issue of power is the issue of who is liable for the health and environmental damages for unclean air. If the States own that power, then they are each singly responsible when sued by the States they cause the damages in. Polluted air that spills over to Oregon from California would be California's responsibility. If the Federal Government has the authority, then it has the responsibility to pay for the damages, for policy, when implemented, means the buck stops with policy making body. Trump is simply shooting himself in the foot with this matter.
1
@Max And Max
This is a case where a state is trying to have HIGHEr standards than the federal government, not lower. In Medicaid programs run by the state and the federal government the rules say that if the state has stricter standards, offers more coverage etc. then the Provider must follow those standards. The federal government should set the floor- not the ceiling.
15
@The East Wind
The specifics are of course relevant, however, the issue of power is who is liable and responsible. If the Federal Government wins the kind of control over air quality that it hopes to get from the State, then the Federal Government is responsible for the law suits filed against it for issuing policies that are harmful to the public. Federal power means Federal responsibility. Trump is arguing for increasing Federal responsibility and simultaneously decreasing safety and public health. That sets the Federal Government up for major legal assaults. He should want the States to have the power and let them fight each other, but he is actually doing the opposite. If air and water standards are low, the Federal government has to answer to that in court. States will sue the Federal Government, as will individuals in class action suits.
1
California has shown that government of the people, by the people and for the people can deliver results. Conservatives, who thrive on condemning government, have to explain why California is succeeding in a challenging world while red states are failing to compete.
24
@Norwester
Isn't it an irony that the man who said "government is the problem" was a former governor of California?
2
"In particular, it has sky-high housing costs, which in turn are probably the main reason it has a large population of homeless residents." -P. Krugman
Not probably, but actually. Housing is a commodity and therefore has both use value and exchange value. Exchange value refers to the particular physical characteristics that allow the commodity to satisfy human needs and wants, e.g., housing provides shelter and warmth. Exchange value refers to the quantitative worth or price. The exchange value of the commodity is most important for capitalist commodity producers. One of the prime implications of this fact is that if you don't have the money to purchase it, e.g., housing, then you don't receive it.
This is why homelessness exists. Geez!
6
@stewarjt Let's not forget lack of mental health treatment. Probably other reasons as well.
1
@stewarjt
Correction: "Exchange value refers to..." should read "Use value refers to the particular physical characteristics that allow the commodity to satisfy human needs and wants..."
Sorry.
Wasn’t a reduction of oil dependency a national security issue at one point? I remember a lot of discussion about that after 9/11. If Trump disdains environmentally friendly regulations so much, then perhaps he should be reminded of the national security implications. I know this wouldn’t be popular with his buddy MBS, put approaching it from this angle would pin Tump down by pointing out that he’s enriching his friends in the oil and gas business at the expense of national security.
17
Time to quit discussing the GOP as a monolith. Check out Stanley Greenberg’s new book, RIP GOP. There are persuadable people on the right, maybe as many as half. The Tea Party and Evangelicals make up 40-50 percent and they are true believers. But some Catholics and especially secular Republicans and among them especially women, aren’t great fans of all things Trump. So reaching out to them with more nuanced analysis might be very important in about a year.
25
Thanks for another great piece! This is what's so frustrating. Capitalism (cue warm tingly feeling in Repubs) works BETTER in states like California and New York. Red states are poor; blue states are comparatively rich. Red states have little economic mobility (despite growing GDP); blue states have more. Red states have lower life expectancy; blue states are doing quite well. For a party that warships the "free market," you would think they would love states in which that market is doing the best. However, working class white folks actively undermining their own interests out of a vague fear of the Other is not new; that is how the southern plantation aristocracy maintained power, and it's how the Repubs keep poor whites without access to healthcare in their fold. Sometimes it really is that simple. It's also expressly clear that Repubs don't believe in democracy. If they did, they would have mobilized against Trump by now. There is no defense for this, so don't exhaust yourself trying to do so.
50
@RB
This bears repeating: "Capitalism... works BETTER in states like California and New York."
The reason for this is that while capitalism is the engine of our prosperity, it is not inherently stable and requires regulation. Unfettered capitalism gave us the gilded age, the 2008 housing recession, air and water pollution of the 1970s and unsafe working environments. Regulation moderates capitalism to avoid these excesses. Democrats understand this essential balance.
20
@RB This! May I add that those on the right who profess unfettered devotion to the wisdom of the free market might consider exactly why housing almost universally costs more in blue states and in blue areas of red states. Turns out that when folks have a choice, they actually prefer to live where $ are invested in education, health care and such.
6
“a party that warships the ‘free market’”
Perfect typo.
1
Affordable housing needs to be discussed as much as health care and climate change. Think those of us on the coasts have concerns about the homeless now? Imagine what our streets will be like when unemployment hits 6 to 8 pct. The despair will be heart wrenching and without an appropriate safety net, crime is likey to rise significantly.
I abhor Trump but this is an issue he knows, and I would support any positive and reasonable solution he and his real estate buddies can create to make housing affordable while also profitable. Create a model that works for everyone! He should get on this as it could be his only enduring positive legacy.
1
@Joe: "I abhor Trump but this is an issue he knows, and I would support any positive and reasonable solution he and his real estate buddies can create... that works for everyone." All of Trump's solutions are, and have always been, aimed at one thing and one thing only: to enrich Trump. He is incapable of thinking about other people's needs. Other people only exist as allies or obstacles. He doesn't "know this issue" except as a way of benefiting himself.
9
@Joe
I don't trust anything Trump does. When he's not evil he's incompetent. It's good to be open to innovative ideas. But you have to know who to trust. Trump is not among them.
1
Republicans believe in me, Democrats believe in we. When one compares Kansas to California that is pretty apparent and the evidence shows which approach is more successful. Of course Republicans have never been known to actually care about facts or evidence.
19
I think the reason people on the right do this is that they have heavily invested in these misconceptions. And just like with financial investments, they want hefty returns from them for many more years to come. One such return is carelessness. They don't want thinking about emissions spoil their esthetic experience of buying a gas-guzzling car and enjoying the tickling feeling of its roaring engine. Another return is carelessness. Notice how they don't take the problem of homelessness as a cue to get intellectually involved with the solution. The only thing it is good for is to stir up shame in the accused and thus devolve responsibility. Heaven forbid they would actually have to analyze problems and propose pragmatic solutions ...
10
California went down the tubes in the sixties and seventies when half the country moved there. The notion that the subtle and delicate environment found in southern california could support that madness shows how the country works to this day. I moved to Idaho.
4
@john fiva
California was a wonderful place in the 1970s. I lived there. Then the GOP pushed through Proposition 13, destroying the public school system and starving higher education, including the University of California, the best public university system in America. Decades of tight budgets allowed infrastructure to crumble.
In 2011, under Jerry Brown, the Democrats took control, raised taxes and invested in the people and the state. Less than a decade later, California is the economic jewel of the nation.
In fact, the whole Democrat-led West Coast is thriving, with fascinatingly diverse cultures, high-growth economies and trusted leadership.
Meanwhile, Kansas implemented Reaganomics and had to fire teachers due to budget cuts, South Carolina remains an economic backwater with 1.6% growth, North Carolina, with its dishonest state legislature and corrupted elections has an emerging housing bubble and Kentucky is among the lowest ranked in the nation for education, opportunity and healthcare.
Tell me again why the GOP gets any votes at all?
10
@Norwester You know why: God, guns, flag and taxes.
@john fiva Apparently, you miss Keugman’a points about what the numbers show about life in CA since 90.
whatever is wrong with California has driven most of my family away at this time. However my stepsister and family maintain a house here in the bay area while they work elsewhere. She is doing well in her field, the husband not a well but they are thriving .
there is a constant noise about how we (California) have the worlds 5th largest economy. if this was separate from the USA totals, what would the American economy be rated.? just a question.
the president wars with all the wrong people. Please go vote next year.
21
@daniel r potter California is about 1/7 of the US economy. If you use straight dollar rankings, subtracting California's $3.0 trillion GDP from the US's $20.8 trilion would leave the US with $17.8 trillion, so the US would still be ahead of China (but would fall behind the European Union).
If you use purchasing power parity (PPP) rankings, the US is currently #2, behind China; take away California and the US would fall to #3, behind the European Union.
(Of course Brexit would diminish the EU's rankings.)
17
@Alexander Bain
thank you Alexander
1
@Alexander Bain-Thank you for this math. If 2020 delivers another election heist, California should secede along with other states who want to join us for sane government.
2
It is clear that Trump's attack on California, like everything else he does, is based on lies. California, other than the housing costs, is a great place for the most part. I spend what amounted to a week there this summer and it was essentially the same as always. It was crowded with plenty of traffic. I did not face violence or theft.
I grew up in the Bay Area and the homeless issue has always been there. Housing costs have contributed to the homeless crisis, but good weather also contributes to the problem. I know this is shocking, but I live in an extreme weather area now, and we have an amazing lack of homeless people. It is way too hot or too cold for most people to endure the weather. I played numerous baseball games in San Francisco as a child with homeless people sleeping in the stands. That is just the City.
24
For once, I would appreciate someone including the ruinous effects of Prop 13 into a discussion of the root causes of our state's housing woes. Prop 13 - passed in 1978 - limits increases in the value of a home for property tax purposes to 2% per year - regardless of how great is the % increase in that home's market value. Two homeowners living across the street from each other in a nice suburb, with identical floor plans and lots, can have wildly different "assessed values" depending on when they purchased their homes. The neighbor who purchased in the 1970's has an assessed value of $150k while the neighbor who bought last year has an assessed value of $1.5 million and pays 10x the property tax. It's like rent control for seniors and begets real distortions in the secondary real estate market. Often labelled as "the third rail" of California politics, we need to have a real discussion of how to fix the distortions caused by Prop 13 in Sacramento.
44
@Eileen McPeake. Wait a minute. Leave home owners out of this. The problem with Prop 13 is that it also includes commercial property. Fix that. Otherwise, you’ll be kicking people out of their homes who can’t afford the escalating taxes.
5
@Eileen McPeake
Yes, Jarvis, Gann under Regan's watch, devastated the Calif. economy at the time.
The Prop. 13 benefit can be passed on to heirs, also; the gift keeps giving.
2
"The striking thing about the right’s new focus on homelessness, however, is that it’s hard to detect any concern about the plight of the homeless themselves. Instead, it’s all about the discomfort and alleged threat the homeless create for the affluent."
The one thing Trump does for us all is challenge our assumptions. It's not a silver lining, by no means, but I learn a lot more about my country from Trump's gross misrepresentations than I do from blind acceptance of the status quo.
Take the homelessness claim, which is quite rich since few have done as little for the homeless--or even contributed to the homeless problem wherever he builds--than slumlord Donald Trump.
And consider Trump's solution to call homelessness a state crime against the environment. When has Trump cared one iota about the environment? It's a slick--and sick--way to jab at the golden state.
To use Trump's logic, he should jailed for EPA violations at the border and on his many golf courses subsidized by taxpayers to line his pockets.
47
@ChristineMcM
Trump's visit was primarily to attend a fundraiser. He couldn't care less about the homeless.
His criticism and threats to relocate the homeless are just theater for the base.
The issue faded from his genius brain before he left the tarmac back to Washington.
As someone currently living in South Asia, I all but kneel down and kiss the tarmac every time the plane lands in SFO. To breathe fresh air is a gift the citizens of California bestow upon ourselves and all who journey to our land.
Not surprisingly, trump has no appreciation for such. A man whose lack of appreciation for life is only superseded by his unquenchable desire to eviscerate his predecessor. Such a sad cartoon character.
69
Spend more, drive less sums up Trump’s push to give even more billions to polluters. Save more and pollute less is what we’re up to in California. In my household we’ve been saving hundreds per month by getting out from under both gouging gasoline and utility providers with a low-interest fixed rate loan for both solar panels that charge our quiet, maintenance-free electric car and we never have to spend any time stopping to gas it up. Look into it and see if it can work for you. The cleaner, quieter future is available now for more people than realize it.
19
That sign is true.
Unfortunately for California, it cannot govern the country alone, nor just with the big cities of the Northeast.
Flyover country must be won. That means its real needs must be considered. No, Republicans don't really. Neither did the Democrats the last time.
Don't do it again.
12
@Mark Thomason A few of questions for you: 1. What portion of the population did the Affordable Care Act most help? 2. Which of the two candidates for president in 2016 have a plan to strengthen and protect Social Security? 3. Which of the two candidates had a plan to expand job training for workers displaced by changes caused by the automation of manufacturing?
I could go on. This garbage about democrats didn't concern themselves with the plight of the working class really needs to die, but, like absurd Republican beliefs, it goes on.
1
There's another sense in which California poses a threat to conservative viewpoints and agendas. It is a state that reflects the future, not the past. The future shape of the economy, the country's future demographics, the future direction of our cities, and more -- all of these, along with the promises and problems that they present, have been and are now embodied in various ways in California.
I believe a true conservative would want to think about these matters ... and act on them, albeit conservatively. But that is not how a lot of today's conservatives roll.
20
A president 'declaring war' on a state in this 'union' is the very definition of a president with far too much power.
A new Constitutional Convention is needed right away. The old set of operating instructions are failing.
31
@Plennie Wingo
Unfortunately, the last I heard, most of the people excited about a "new Constitutional Convention " are conservatives who want to write their agenda in the new Constitution. This is too bad because Trump's presidency has highlighted many problems in the current Constitution that need fixing -- the electoral college, too much power given a single senator, difficulty in restraining an idiot president, etc.
Paul - California is not a liberal state due to the Hispanic and Asian population. It is liberal due to the creation of the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, after voters passed Prop 11 the Voters First Act.
The Act contained 6 criteria for redrawing the districts map. The emphasis on population equality (one person, one vote) and geographic contiguity (areas within a district must be connected to each other) could provide a national model for fair district mapping.
This ended the gerrymandered map that kept so many seats safe in both parties. Many seats that hadn't been competitive for years, suddenly were.
Without gerrymandering, the state became a blue super-majority. It became a truer reflection of the people's will.
By party registration nationwide, Democrats outnumber Republicans by about 12 million. The country leans more liberal than one would ever know, given the way many people get their news, and given the GOP's stranglehold on honesty, decency, and the rule of law.
I suspect with fairly drawn districts, several purple states would also become blue. This must be why Republicans play so dirty.
170
@Jules, I agree with the first part of your statement but using party registration statistics is misleading. Many voters are not registered with any party and some are registered with one party but vote the other. Remember the KY county clerk who refused a marriage license to a gay couple? She was a registered Dem who after the controversy switched to GOP. I suspect there are many old registered Dems especially from the area she is from who vote GOP.
4
@expat
I registered to vote when I was 18 and I am now 64. At no point did anybody ask me to register "with a party". I dislike both the Democrats and the Republicans and my philosophy is to decide what the lesser of two evils is in each election. At the moment, the Republicans are definitely more evil.
3
@Jules
A Libertarian friend has posited that only sociopaths are drawn to political power because they want to dominant others.
My assertion is that the more sociopathic, the more Republican.
Would that there were a 'conversion therapy' for them.
I'd be happy to force brainwashing on every last one of them. Lasso first, Old West style; tie to chairs second, until the cry of "Uncle," is heard throughout the land: "Yes," , we will leave others to make personal decisions!" And until they take their hands out of my pocket.
2
Paul, you are one the best, always fighting the great fight and educating your readers with each column. I don’t know how you keep going, but please don’t ever give up.
54
Like many others. Mr. Krugman has mastered the political issues involved here. But he appears not to have a clue about how the legal case will be decided. When this matter is before the courts, the decisive issue will be what powers belong to the state and what powers belong to the feds. This a classic federalism case. What is best for the environment is pretty much beside the point. What matters in court is who has the right to decide. Any discussion of this matter that ignores the federalism question is academic. If you want to know how it will play out, consult a federalism expert.
4
@michjas
When the issue is abortion in kansas and oklahoma, or your 2nd amendment in arizona and texas, states rights prevails. When states like California and Illinois don't want their residents killed in mass shootings or poisoned by automobile pollution, or not wage a useless war on marijuana, federal law trumps states rights. What kind of country allows 4 million oklahomans to force their right wing religious will on 40 million Californians?
California's large Hispanic and Asian populations are known for being conservative, not liberal, and much of its earlier non-minority population comes from the Midwest, also conservative. So the reason California tends to lead the nation in so many ways is that all these people are hard working and want to conserve their environment. Virtues like these have been abandoned by the Trumpians. Trump knows his nonsense will get nowhere in California, but will play well for his base, which has become even more base every month.
41
First Trump and the Republicans declared war on California. Eventually, they'll declare war on your state too, if they don't control it already. It's another page out of Putin's playbook, and Putin is smiling broadly.
48
@Alexander Bain
I live in a county in Illinois that is one of the "collar counties" that ring the city of Chicago. It is very suburban and has a history of voting Republican. Currently, nearly every county wide elected official is a Democrat. Sheriff, treasurer, etc are Democrats and they won handily in 2018. My county is a typical affluent suburban county and it's already turned blue. It is likely to stay that way now that Trump has made the Republican Party in his image, which is an awful one.
7
Trump and his administration have decided to maintain power they have to attack and demonize parts of America. Has a president ever acted with such vengeance against American states, groups or individuals for not supporting his every whim? It has become such a daily occurrence of Trump declaring war on someone or something that it doesn’t surprise anyone.
24
California's uniqueness and success is largely explained by its good weather - it attracts, retains and maintains smart, healthy and productive people. It also attracts and retains the homeless, but that is another story. Without the good weather, in combination with the newly imposed dismal left winged banana republic - anarchy politics, it would be a very decrepit place indeed. And a large number of the well educated "knowledge" class agree with this statement, unlike what is being reported in the news media. Many are concerned by a dysfunctional government led by the state legislature and Newsom, in contrast to the former functional government led by the Browns and multiple republicans. - California's success was generated in the recent past. Many smart and well educated Calif residents do not see this continuing.
3
@sh
Of course California's success won't continue, given trump's policies that are destroying America's competitiveness. While trump bans Huawei products in the United States, Huawei's market share continues to grow around the world, to the detriment of Apple and Google. trump is doing everything he can to stop California's high speed rail, even though it will benefit the Republican central valley while the Bay Area and Los Angeles pay for it. Thre are alot of places around the world with good weather, yet the best and brightest are moving to California.
12
You mean decrepit like West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky, Arkansas, Kansas and the other ruby red states? I don’t think so. You obviously aren’t very familiar with your own state.
1
@sh. I see you're offering an example of intellectual imperviousness. California routinely churns out major new policy initiatives and programs. Many things California's government may be, but dysfunctional it most definitely is not.
As one of the smartest and well-educated Californians, who works with many many others, I don't know a single one who thinks this. Some leave because it's too expensive, but none leave because they think it will collapse.
The one thing California is not doing well (but then no where in the U.S. is) is invest in education. Other than that, the place is far far moer functional than most of the U.S.
1
Having lived in California for 35 years and also worked in three psychiatric facilities including Mendocino State Hospital near Ukiah, I can attest that the homeless problem is largely a result of closing the state hospitals.
Most homeless in California are dual diagnosed with both drug addiction and mental illness. If most state hospitals in America were still open, they would be providing a safe haven for thousands of people now living on the street.
Closing the state hospitals and failing to make good on the promise of community mental health centers was the worst mistake politicians made in the last thirty years
185
@Michael Kittle And when did this happen? It happened when California last swung to the right during the governorship of St. Ronald of Reagan, of course.
67
That's it exactly! It was the closing of the state mental hospitals and the passage of Prop 13 that created so many of California's problems. I've lived here my whole life, and I get frustrated with the high home prices and traffic, but I am really proud of California right now. Mr. Trump, it's on! California won't give up.
15
@Warren Wood For those short on a historical reference. The legislation to close State mental health facilities in California during the Reagan era was devised and passed in both houses. Ronald Reagan did NOT write the law. He signed the law to bring mental health care for Californians from the purview of the State to local communities. All this was done with the blessing of no less than the ACLU. Blaming then Governor Reagan proves you know nothing about the issues. BTW, Saint Jerry Brown continued these policies under his following Governorship.
3
There are great places and great people all across this big country of ours.
But they don’t have our weather!
Our state public servants might not solve every problem in the Bay Area, but they try. By generating inclusive, considered solutions they provide new ideas and hope. They deserve credit for showing that government can be a force for a better life for our citizens.
33
@CA Govt Fan.....as a Masters Degree holder in vocational rehabilitation counseling and a thirty year veteran of the California Department of Rehabilitation, I thank you for your support.
There are many unsung heroes in government jobs that slave away quietly in America who fade into retirement having never received credit for their contribution.
1
The Trump Administration's war on California is a huge political mistake. These roll-backs of environmental regulations assures that Mr Trump's popularity will continue to drop and Californians who have larger problems to solve like water, wildfires and seismic shocks convinces Californians and the blue coast that this President and his team are incompetent.
California is a donor state that contributes to the future of this country and the World. We are fortunate to have beautiful Federal assets in place and several large creative communities on the Left Coast to find solutions to the post carbon economy.
My colleagues and I have proposed creating a high speed superconducting Maglev transport artery along the rights of way of Interstate 5 from Vancouver to San Diego to interconnect the metropolitan areas of the West Coast as the first step to opening large areas of the Coast for more housing. This is the most efficient, no emissions system, I can think of to move the goods, and passengers at an investment cost that will pay for itself in lower fares and lower costs per ton mile. This would be the key route to connect with the heavily traveled East Coast Maglev route. Our Nation has a huge logistics problem that must be solved if we are to continue to improve our quality of living.
A 29,000 mile long National Maglev Network along our existing infrastructure could dramatically change the U.S. for the good simply by investing in developing and testing this remarkable system.
40
@james jordan. I wish you the best of luck. Sounds very exciting. Can't wait!
8
@james jordan We in Northern California have invested in the SMART train from Santa Rosa to San Rafael and are constructing it farther north too. We still have many naysayers, although it relieves congestion on 101 to San Francisco. Sometimes you just can't win!
1
It sounds like Mr Trump would like to make California less like Australia. Our prime minister is visiting you. He'd like to make Australia less like Australia too. Being an American ally is rough. Like being a progressive American state, I guess.
I bet the homeless population of Brisbane is higher than that of Sydney or Melbourne despite being a smaller city. How many homeless people in California have relocated there from interstate for the sun?
8
I fear for our state. I fear for the EPA. This can’t continue. How can a president be allowed to pick on a state. Presidents are supposed to help not hurt our country.
71
- or they move. Where I work, all the Trumpeteers plan to retire to Idaho, with lower taxes and more guns. Paradise for the common man. The feeling is that it is much Redder, and much Whiter, than the new Blue California, and that because everyone is armed (see ownership rates) everyone is so much more polite. Of course suicide by bullet is among the top ten in the nation or close to it, but then folks are so much freer there. I wish them well, and that they live long and prosper, and when it comes time to help their grandkids get into college, they pay full tuition in another state. Our colleges might educate them to question things like capitalism and socialism, or do comparative analysis of the costs of high gun ownership.
57
One hopes that the social stratification caused by California's massive wealth and its related income disparity isn't the blueprint for the rest of the USA.
8
@Tournachonadar
California already a donor state, and wealth and income disparity is largely a result of Republican tax policy. How the Republicans continue to convince their uneducated, poor rural base that progressive taxes are bad is beyond me, but not beyond Sean Hannity.
11
@Tournachonadar. Indeed. The rest of the country surely does'nt want our super vibrant company that churns out billionaires hand over fist.
Some redistribution is definitely in order.
Homelessness is an environmental problem as well as a medical/social/ethical problem. Think of it as a distributed refugee camp, notoriously unhealthy places. The way to handle pollution is to clean it up at the source, that is, get people into settings where sanitation is plausible. Another project for Infrastructure Week no doubt.
Yet recognizing homelessness as an environmental problem is a step; maybe even nimbies will come to realize they live in an environment.
2
I’ve got a Pacifica plug-in hybrid minivan & a Tesla in my driveway.
Just sayin’
12
@Chris M. -Awesome. We also have solar panels which charges our electric car.
10
I’m working on that - for now, I just kick in a little extra with my utility’s green power program.
Yes We Can !
Krugman is wrong to blame homelessness on "nimbyism." He is falling for the argument that local zoning is the problem, ignoring the fact that new housing, without stringent requirements to include units for low and moderate renters, will only be built to rent or sell for prices at the marginal rate, that is for the highest price that can currently be charged. Berkeley is full of new multi-story housing, all at rents affordable only for groups of well-to-do students or Silicon valley commuters. The homeless live in tents. Unfortunately the Democratic legislature is heavily in the pockets of the real estate industry so a real solution is be hard to come by.
13
This is an intelligent insightful article. In addition to the reasons Paul Krugman gives for Trump forcing California to roll back car mileage standards is money. Cars that get less miles per gallon translate into more dollars for oil companies and their executives who can then donate more dollars to Trump.
I flew into Los Angeles in the late sixties and early seventies, and you could see a brownish haze over the city. You don't see that now. The air is much healthier now. How misguided to want to reverse that progress.
73
Have you checked how many of the homeless in California came from other states? California is lucky enough to have a mild climate and a large population of people who refuse to be cruel to "others". They will not put up a wall against other states where the climate is more severe. Other states "solve" their homeless problem by letting freezing winters take care of it. The state of California does more than its part to be a good citizen of these United States by making a larger economic contribution to our prosperity than any other state.
142
@Barbara. No idea about whether the homeless come from other states (our local social services people tell us no) but I can confirm that I see multiple and various and distant out of state license plates on cars parked on my little residential street every single day.
6
@Flaminia Having been someone (I’m now retired) who interacted with the homeless in San Francisco on a regular basis, I can assure you that a high percentage, if not the majority are from out of State. The numbers become skewed when the census takers count out of Staters who have “lived” in California for five years or more as “residents”. I knew of a couple of men from out of State who “lived on the streets” for over 20 years.
15
I think you’re absolutely correct. Someone needs to do a comprehensive study of who the homeless are, why they’re homeless and where they came from. There is no reason why California should have proportionally more homeless when its economy has boomed and unemployment is very low. And high housing prices are NOT a significant reason either. California housing prices have been high for decades prior to the homelessness crisis. And the vast majority of the homeless couldn’t afford the average cost of an apartment in Mississippi.
10
Trump badly needed to attack a big target to deflect attention from recent allegations he's been robbing his own government blind to keep his businesses afloat - a practice so vile if fully exposed it could spell trouble for him in base-land. New York, the biggest target around, probably didn't qualify because, it made angry enough it could quite easily release his tax returns and because of the love he still gets from Bill's supporters upstate, so California was it. Luckily California, with its economic power and engaged cultural communities so strongly united behind the goal of outliving the internal combustion engine, has got this.
29
@Leigh--- spell "trouble" now. And spell "J-A-I-L" as soon as he leaves DC.
If no one holds trump to explain his word salad of reasons for the pulling the plug on the environmental progress in California, then I would blame the media. Keep hitting his defenders with this simple question: how does making cars have better gas mileage and pollute less make them less safe and more expensive? HOW? And how can we export vehicles that don't meet California standards to the rest of a world where these standards are the standard? Those two questions alone debunk his whole rational. When they stonewall you for these answers, don't continue until they answer them. Stop giving his enablers air time until they can answer simple questions like there, stop letting them use air time as propaganda tools. STOP THEM, from lying to the American people time and time again.
97
Thank you again, Paul, for pointing out some of the history of California, who has never threatened to secede nor established non-human rights obstacles to peoples advancements.
It may be impossible for certain reactionary thinkers to grasp how the Americas, including our United States, could have such arcane and irreconcilable teachings that are at once in keeping with the values of our predecessors even though they may not have been thinking of human rights. Perhaps some tried.
13
@Frank Correnti “nor established non-human rights obstacles to peoples advancements.” Ahem, Prop 8: a pretty deliberate attempt to stop the advancement of the rights of self-determination of gay and lesbians statewide. Of course that was more or less an anomaly in California’s long history of civil rights advancements, but must not be ignored.
You have to admit it's gutsy for a president to throw away California on the poltical calculation that the state won't vote for him. But that's what passes for presidential leadership in the Trump administration.
I don't see it working because lots of Americans come to California and, for all its big state problems, it's got a lot of money and jobs and smart people and good weather. Some folks even come here on vacation so they can judge for themselves if things are so bad, or if the president is lying.
32
No victorious Republican Presidential candidate in the last 30 years has won California and yet there have been 3 of them as compared to 2 Democrats.
3
And those Republicans even won the popular vote in 2 of the 4 elections that they won. BTW, the 2 victorious Democrats also won 4 elections, winning at least a plurality of the popular vote all 4 times.
11
Randy: you are correct! However, my point was to illustrate the fact that California is irrelevant in picking the Country’s President and has been since Ronald Reagan. All of the victorious Presidential candidates (both Republican and Democratic) won the Presidency without California’s electoral votes even being considered. In Reagan’s case, before California even finished voting. So, for a Republican candidate to write the State off is immaterial.
3
Nice commentary, Prof. Krugman, except: Though it may be convenient (not to mention simplistic) to blame "runaway NIMBYism that has prevented California from building remotely enough new housing to accommodate its rising population," I would think a Nobel laureate would be first to notice that the stagnant wages most working-class folks have endured since the Age of Reagan, combined with the greed-driven real-estate market, have a lot more to do with the homelessness problem than a few pockets of neighbors waving their imaginary pitchforks at the mortgage bankers, realtors, contractors and politicians wanting to up zone their towns and cities and profit from the slow destruction of their neighborhoods.
I believe you know the homelessness problem is far more complex than NIMBYism. But I must stop lecturing now. That's really your job, and you usually do it splendidly. What happened here?
25
@Dean Paton
Did Professor Krugman say NIMBYisn was the only cause for the housing shortage? Some people can be very critical to a column limited in length.
5
Come January, 2021, Mr. Trump is going to wish he wasn't so harsh on the political left or the great State of California. The pendulum swings and we intend to make his life and the lives of all his minions miserable. The power of the progressives and our money will see to this my friends. His treatment of our great Golden State will not be forgotten. Mark my words.
63
How long can it be before Trump declares California a rogue state within the Union and calls for it's breakup? Will Cali be designated as the 'socialist' capital of the USA by 'Troggs for Trump' - if it's not already. Trouble is - as Dr. Krugman points out - California for the most part works and perhaps that's the best response to the imperial capitalists of the GOP. There is 'socialism' and then there's The Golden State. If success measured through productivity and wealth is any indication of cherry picked and applied socialist ideals - California shines brightly. And how wonderfully ironic is it that Orange County turned Blue in 2016.
44
@Tom I meant the 2018 mid terms..not 2016 - apologies.
In the early 1970s, I moved to California from a "red" state, and never looked back. The difference between California and most "red" states: In California if people don't like something, they change it. In "red" states if people don't like something, they complain about it.
63
@John
Or kill it.
Or make it worse (ref Kansas & NC again).
California does not need to regulate vehicle emissions. It just needs to tax the sale of vehicles, according to how much pollution they create. This is fair to the manufacturers who want to voluntarily meet higher standards -- don't give the polluters a tax break.
31
Well, homeless people on city streets do tend to make expensive real estate less attractive. But, surely that can't be Spanky's concern, can it?
12
@JRW
Once he’s done grabbing all the money set aside for our military and gets his ghastly wall built, he’ll send the homeless to Mexico, you know, the country he swore would pay for it.
@jrw We could use some price reductions, but that isn't happening.
Let’s be clear that the “enemies” for Trump are those doing their jobs as faithful and loyal government employees, but have been unwilling to give complete loyalty to Trump. If you disagree with Trump (like no hurricane in Alabama) and refuse to support Trump’s views then you become an “enemy”. This is corrosive to our society. Again and again Trump uses very harmful, combative, derogatory descriptions to characterize those he dislikes or wants to harm. Whether he is talking about cities or immigrants from the south or the “fake” press or “blue” states he is pulling the country apart rather than uniting us. When it comes to climate and our environment we need to be a united nation to handle the many significant changes we will all need to make - together.
65
Republicans and Trump practice the maxim, If its working tare it down especially if Democrats created it After all all that success only points out Republican failures. In particular areas of North Carolina, for example, Democrats have created booking successes especially in the larger cities where capitalism paradoxically thrives. But Republicans in the rural areas areas are intent of taring that success down with voter suppression and low ball budget that attempt to go around Democratic influence. What Trump can not control he will try to destroy, but California I suspect is beyond any effort that Trump can try in his effort assert his fevered ego.
25
@just Robert We should hope you are correct.
I am very happy that state with liberal policies can demonstrate how foolish is the idea of less regulation and less taxes equals better economy.
Less regulations and public investment often means more monopolies, less choices, more inequality with lower education quality for the less affluent … Not a good way to attract talent isn't it.
In the knowledge economy, you can't win without willing participation of the top 5 to 10%. You can attract these people with backward policies, a war on facts (evolution, climate change) and women bodies,...
I moved from Oklahoma to California 20 years ago, nice people but we could not fit in as liberal and educated Europeans.
34
Geographic confusion seems to be a common affliction among Republican presidents. George W looked at an attack by Saudi nationals based in Afghanistan, and decided that the correct course of action was to invade Iraq. Trump reacted to an attack on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia by Iran by declaring war on California.
121
@Mobiguy
Let’s not forget New York, where we pay super high property taxes for teacher saleries and better education. Trump got rid of the deduction from federal income taxes on anything over 10K on property taxes. So, according to the feds, the ten grand I pay, over the first ten grand I paid, is just income! I’m getting taxed, on my taxes!
The way he figures it, he isn’t going to win in blue states anyway, it dosn’t matter. It can only get worse as he pits states against each other.
2
Thanks Paul from California. There are even conservatives right here in California complaining about it and saying they want to move away. It’s just because they don’t like progressIves. Or they are anti-tax. Or don’t like immigrants. The only justifiable reasons I can think of for moving away are, as you said, high housing prices, or just crowding in general. Otherwise we have it all: strong economy, diverse population, great weather, interesting geography, good access to the Asia-Pacific region, good universities, etc.
61
Dan: don’t forget human waste in the streets, homeless encampments on the sidewalks, used hypodermics in the parks....
Trump's war on California is the logical extension of his war on the average American. Why should we have breathable air, potable water, live in clean environments, be able to grow vegetables in uncontaminated soil? We're not the economic elite. We're the workers. In truth, Trump's vision of America doesn't include working people. His vision of America is selfish: as long as he can get what he wants by tweet or tantrum he's representing America, his America and he's happy.
Real America has some real problems. California is a state which has taken environmental protection quite seriously. Trump and the GOP don't like that. But they won't have to live with the results of their rollback or their removing California's right to have higher standards on car emissions and mileage. They won't be the ones paying for hospital visits or missing school days due to asthma attacks. They won't be the parents fired for missing too much work to care for an asthmatic child. They'll be the ones leading the cry to dismember programs that aid families and children.
Trump's America is for the rich and no one else. That's been clear since he took office.
9/19/2019 10:43pm first submit
181
@hen3ry The GOP's USA is for the rich and no one else. That's been clear since Reagan took office.
4
Our democracy is based on a system of checks and balances. But we have a Republican party (and president) that is both unchecked and unbalanced.
How any American can think this is a good thing is beyond me.
150
A little bracing candor, and here I had begun to think we could get it only from G.F. Trumper's Extract of West Indian Limes, and even then applied only externally.
1
How Orwellian that were talking about the Environmental Protection Agency that is now working for Trump to make it harder to protect the environment.
131
There is a cognitive dissonance in the right’s view of California as a socialist state and Trump’s pointing to the many homeless.
Only one of those things can be true; not both. Inasmuch as the homeless problem is very real, California, per force, cannot be a socialist state.
But we already knew that, didn’t we.
In fact, rampant homelessness is symptom of capitalism, in particular an uncontrolled real estate market.
243
@Ralph Averill Exactly! Thank you.
5
When Trump won the election and the dark ages commenced, some of my friends in California talked about leaving the country for greener pastures. When I pointed out that California, in many respects, already is a greener pasture, protected first by Brown and now by Newsom, the lightbulb came on and my friends decided to stay.
218
@Mynheer Peeperkorn = Yes, but was it an LED, or an incandescent bulb?
14
Manhear: are your friends among the State’s countless homeless?
I'm from California but moved to Hawaii when the eejit was elected because I know he's afraid to come here. When this nightmare is over, I'll probably move back home to the Golden State.
2
The Democratic presidential spectacle has to stop now or Trump will be re-elected. Everybody except Warren, Harris, and Joe has to bow out. Yes, even Bernie, since he is the most easily beaten by Trump. It would conceivably be done by the early commitment of each to a VP choice, e.g. Harris/Kobachar, Biden/Sestak, Warren/Booker.
O’Rourke should drop out and run for Senate although his egomania won't let him. All the rest should drop out now. Otherwise, Trump wins.
17
@Emory
There is still 13 months until the 2020 election. I actually see the continued crowded field as a bonus.
The well-oiled Republican hate machine doesn't know which Democrat to focus on and won't until the field narrows more. You can see this in how they switch from Biden to Warren to Bernie to Harris, etc.
There is plenty of time to narrow the field and sharpen the focus. We are still in the vision stage.
17
@Emory
This is how democracy works best, give each candidate a fair shot, and let the voters decide. In a few months a clear nominee will emerge, with clearly better policies than trump's. Then Putins operatives, and Sean Hannity will do everything possible to sew discontent. Even if our favorite candidate doesn't win, all the Democratic candidates are so far superior to the excuse for a president we have now, we have to stand together so the United States can rejoin th civilized world.
@Emory By not controlling/limiting the number of Demoratic candidates and the number of "debates, Democrats are chosing to re-elect Trump.
Sad. Tragic. Stupid. Shortsighted. Destruction.
One factor not mentioned that upsets the right wing is that those who oppose higher taxes and an activist government in California are fleeing the state as fast as U-Haul trailers will take them.
Still, the failure to resolve the homeless issue in such a rich state, with so many wealthy and near wealthy residents, drags down both its reputation and the quality of life. Some years ago in San Francisco, my wife and daughter were frightened to walk outside of our expensive hotel. On a later trip, we had to go through heavy duty drug users on the steps to get inside the post office.
California draws the homeless, the drug addled and the alcoholic for some of the same reasons others want to live there: the climate, the special quality of the light coming off the mountains and Pacific Ocean and because there are so many of like kind there. Plus, in the past San Francisco had a program of giving out $400. in cash every month to each homeless person, an incentive, if you have to be down and out, to choose to do it there
Could it be that California's great efforts to "do something" about homelessness are making it worse? Clearly, liberal efforts and right wing slurs not withstanding, there is trouble in this paradise. Getting ahead of the problem takes more than good will, it will take strong will and political courage
17
@Doug Terry Good pts. As a life-long resident of this beautiful state I think the problem is simply this: the average person w/ a gig economy job or living on SS can afford about $600/mth rent while most of the rentals I've seen are well over $1000-1500. I'm lucky. I live on SS and my rent is only $400/mth so I'm able to pay my bills and save. I live in a rural area in So Cal (Morongo Valley). My friend who lives in Pasadena recently had his rent raised from $1200/mth to $1500. I'm concerned for him. Gov Newsom recently passed a bill to keep rent increases to 3% which is good. If you don't own a home you're really in danger. More units of affordable housing is necessary.
26
@Doug Terry
Doug,
Your local area, DC, has the highest rate of homeless in the US, but I'd guess you never go into the city. I live in SF and experience life here every day. It's fine. Quit the hyperbole and go home, please.
rick
@Doug Terry
Maybe you're not old enough to know or remember.
Before Reagan there was no homeless problem in the USA. Yes we had "hobos and bums" but that was it.
After emptying the asylums and letting 2 million public housing units age out with no replacement.
Homelessness, like depressions and market crashes belong to the GOP
Sorry - come back when you know something
California's emission standards for cars are laudable, but increasingly irrelevant
Why ? Because as gas prices fell, American switched from fuel efficient cars to ever larger Pick Up Trucks and large SUV's with dismal gas milage
Here are the top selling models 2018 , model and number sold
1. Ford F-Series - 909,330
2.Chevrolet Silverado - 585,581
3. Dodge Ram - 536,980
where is the best selling passenger car ?
7. Toyota Camry - 343,439
As an economist, Mr. Krugman should know that the most effective method to increase gas mileage is to increase the tax on gasoline
Which , the State of CA, has every right to do. Right up to
EU levels. There is NO upper limit on the State gasoline tax
Does it work? Yes, here are the CO2 emissions, per capita, in metric tons per year . Transportation is the number one contributor
US 16.5 metric tons per capita and year
UK 6.5 metric tons per capita and year
France 4.6 metric tons per year
To foil Trump, and save the planet, CA needs only to rise the gas price to EU levels. And it CAN do it.
42
@Woof we did raise the gas tax. Many ppl are not happy about that. I don't think it's politically possible to do it again.
7
In general, I tend to agree with you, but unfortunately a gas tax further penalizes those that are living on the edge and need their vehicle to get to work.
23
@Jane K
True, which is why a carbon tax, with revenue at least partly returned to those hurt most, is the only sane answer.
12
Trump seems almost gleeful when he points out all what's wrong with cities. I'm sure it's just a coincidence they are all in Blue states. One day he might look at that vast swath of red states and pick out one city that he can hail as a city that meets his requirements of a great city.
23
@RNS HAs Trump noticed the homeless encampments in DC?
California's diversity is its strength, and the prosperous numbers come from the magnificent mix of different talents and cultures.
And that is what Trumpists hate... diversity, mix and global cultures.
Red states are in economic decline, blue states are booming: that is the best index to measure successful policies and leadership
85
And, speaking of authoritarianism, one solution the Trump administration has floated to solving California's problem is to relocate the urban homeless to federal land. I assume this means government camps. In addition, when Trump speaks of the homeless, it's not as a human/social problem but rather as a problem of public health and safety and property rights. This will be the rationale for rounding people up.
27
The homeless problem in California cannot be resolved without examining the economics of moving people of the street. Large corporations such as Google pledge $500 million, but given that a person needs at least $50,000 a year to barely squeak by, only 10,000 people can be helped for one year. Furthermore, many homeless people face mental illness, drug addiction or lack basic skills that preventing them from reintegrating into society. The affluent should view helping the homeless as a revitalization project with the goal of beautifying communities through outreach and support.
22
@Nick R
Homelessness is an endless and bottomless problem in California. Because we offer so many services, including housing, healthcare, and mental health care, in the Bay Area, many less attractive and healthy locations such as Nevada (which is dangerously hot during much of the year) ship their homeless populations here on buses, with one-way tickets. The moment we house our current 10,000 to 20,000 homeless people, the sooner their replacements arrive from places like Nevada. Homelessness is a national tragedy and can only be solve by providing government issue housing. Building the housing could train many homeless people with the skills to work in the private market but there is no political will to provide social housing for the middle class or poor people.
Younger people share apartments and houses for far longer times today than 20 years ago.
15
Reduce the advantages to being homeless and there will be fewer as it won’t be advantageous to be homeless. Like crooks who go where the money is it, people go where they will get the benefits.
Very little of California’s homeless problem is about home prices. We fund programs to help homeless and red states send their homeless populations over to our cities with one way tickets swamping available dollars. There is also a serious drug problem made worse sadly by liberal policies (and I’m a left wing liberal). The solution isn’t shipping these people away or housing in FEMA tents- it is in mandatory mental healthcare & drug treatment which require dollars and determination to fund and enforce. Trump offers no solutions to any of these issues
59
@Cynthia
Much of what you say is true. But, there is very little financial margin for error in California’s urban areas, and a major shift in homelessness occurred after the Great Recession - I recall reports of increases in homeless families in excess of 10% per year during that time.
It seems to me that it is such a multifactorial problem that there will have to be many, many ways that we invoke to try to help folks. To the extent that each of us can put our weight behind any of those, it will help.
The only thing you can be sure of, absolutely, is that the Trump administration is not really interested in any of them - or in the homeless for anything other than as a way to sow hate and division.
22
@Cynthia
It would be interesting to survey the homeless in California and ask them where they were 10 years ago. I think you are correct that "Not in California" would be a significant percentage of the homeless population.
15
@Cynthia Liberal policies are the best with respect to illicit drug use. Consider the example of Portugal. Decriminalisation and harm minimisation is the way to go. California is restricted from going down this route by US federal politics, I believe.
2
On Housing in California:
The first issue is that most coastal Californian cities are built on flat plains with the ocean on one side and mountains on the other. When the flat plains fill up, there is nowhere to expand and housing prices soar.
The second issue is that there are limits to how many people the transportation infrastructure can support. In Los Angeles and the South Bay the freeway systems are full and infill development could lead to congestion which would be very expensive to solve.
Some claim there is not enough water for more residents. This is untrue. 80% of California's water supply is used for farming. If cities were given priority over farmers, as they should be, there would be plenty of water for more residents.
However the biggest reason why California doesn't build enough housing is Democrats and environmentalists. Environmentalists call middle class housing "sprawl" and they have opposed it for decades. They are also opposed to highway building, and insist on mass transit solutions which are far more expensive to build than new freeways. Democrats love writing rules and regulations to stop people from doing things. They have managed to make it very difficult for people to build new housing anywhere where the climate is pleasant near the coast.
I should also mention that property taxes are very low due to state law (Prop 13). Local governments don't want more housing because the taxes don't cover the cost of services.
9.18EST 19th
3
What evidence do you have that freeways are more expensive than freeways?
The USA’s auto infrastructure is VERY expensive.
13
@Schrodinger:
Property taxed are re-set when a property turns over. Here in SF, the City coffers are growing.
The reason some local governments are fighting up-zoning follows from fears about the impact on their quality of life. This is a common concern throughout the United States, in both Red as well as in Blue states, not just in California.
11
@Schrodinger
Your comment about Prop 13 is very uninformed. New property will be accessed at todays sky high values and yield large real estate tax for the county. So Prop 13 is a problem, but not something making city say no to more construction. [ I am paying 26k in real estate taxes per year, not cheap, bought recently].
In the Bay area, there is simply no land left unless you go east quite a bit. Buying expensive land to put affordable housing is not going to be something private developer do. It's got to be publicly financed, no one want a public housing project built on their street, that's the main problem - a kind of class warfare motivated by the desired to protect individual investments.
7
California is in the top ten for states for youngest median population so they will be a force to reckon with for decades.
66
Even if Trump didn’t use the issue of homelessness to embarrass us, we should admit that California should do more about it. We have enough brilliant minds to do the planning. We have the political desire to end it. The trouble is, we have political saboteurs ready to attack any project that is created to help alleviate it.
41
War is the right word. Trump and the Republican Party have declared war on democracy and modern life. Every bit of progress our country has made in the last century - the rise of the middle class, union protections for workers, consumer and environmental protections for everyone, voting rights, gay rights, racial equality under the law and much more - are on these people’s hit list. Our Constitution and the rule of law are being dismantled at frightening speed.
We are fighting for our lives as a democracy and a modern society, and California is the front line.
Anyone who cares about anything listed above had better organize, donate, volunteer and vote for all they’re worth. There are no do-overs after 2020. Failure is not an option.
633
@David
You're absolutely right about America not being a modern society. If I didn't live in California, I'd be seriously considering shopping for a new country. If Trump wins another term, living in California may not be enough. The stress of wondering what the next outrage Trump and his Quislings will perpetrate is killing us.
12
When it comes to the housing crisis in CA, no one is talking about water. Where will all the water come from to support unsustainable growth during the next severe drought? Everyone has already forgotten the last one.
55
@Gaiter
I've recently been on a tour of the Silicon Valley Advanced Water Purification Center in San Jose. What it does is micro filtration, reverse-osmosis and ultraviolet disinfection starting with the output of the sewage-treatment plant. The sewage treatment plant output has-been cleaned-up enough to be OK to put into the bay and for purple-pipe irrigation. According the tour guide, sewage-treatment output is cleaner than the ocean water that desalination plants start with. The Advanced Water Purification output is drinking-water quality. Currently this highly-purified water is added to purple-pipe irrigation water, but the eventual plan is for it to be added to well-water and reservoir water as input into the drinking-water treatment plant.
Webpage: purewater4u.org
Anyway, no, the need for water to support growth has not been forgotten and work is being done to address the problem.
4
Absolutely. For as liberal as CA actively is, many older voters here, even if they vote blue, still have a strong sense of NIMBYism that stops the construction of low-income housing for fear that their otherwise skyrocketing property values will drop. That being said, a lot of new housing and infrastructure projects have been happening up and down the state as of late, so it's a start for now.
23
There’s an article online in The Atlantic which highlights the underlying problem with Krugman’s use of the term “NIMBY”.
In a nutshell, the problem is with backyards themselves: in the past quarter century, they’ve shrunk by 13 percent. Which means there’s now less of what people are fighting to keep other folks out of.
And this shrinking trend will only continue – eventually there will be no backyards, and no NIMBY.
9
@Observer
The backyard has already shrunk and most planning codes now allow an auxiliary housing unit of about 200 to 1200 SF in the back yard, depending upon the size of the residential lot.
This is great housing and good income for th home owner. When the kids go to college, the homeowner can move into the cottage in back and travel a lot o the rent! Life-cycle housing.
2
If the tables were turned, we know that the Republicans would have started impeachment proceedings, and the Democrats would be cooperating.
That is, unfortunately, the difference.
402
@Grove It’s unreal that every Republican in Congress is still afraid to speak out about Trump, Barr and Moscow hijacking our government.
It’s hard to understand the House Democrats who are refusing to endorse an impeachment inquiry/investigation. Unlike the Republicans least the Democrats are trying to to address the unprecedented bad behavior in our government led by Trump, Barr and McConnell.
3
@Grove
If the difference is in Democrats not behaving like Republicans, I say vive la difference!
2
Lack of affordable housing is a nationwide problem which has not and will not be solved by the "genius" of the marketplace. We have a government for just such emergencies and if anything is an emergency, its housing your population. I'm always astounded by stories from WWII where enormous projects like Oak Ridge, the Pentagon, the retooling of our factories, and later, under Eisenhower, the Interstate Highway System were constructed, by fiat. In many cases, the brief time frame was astonishing. The problem of housing is even more dire now, since a whole generation has grown up debilitated by student loan debt. The last thing they are looking for is a McMansion, yet that is what continues to be built.
66
@stan continople Surprisingly, I understand Utah is generous to the homeless, building them micro-homes.
Remember the right-wing’s fear mongering about “FEMA camps” where President Obama was going to imprison political opponents? Given that Republicans tend to accuse others of crimes they themselves plan on committing, I expect Trump’s next move will be to accuse the homeless of being undocumented immigrants, and have ICE round them up and imprison them. Lots of them lack identification, so he can make the specious argument. Sure it’s blatantly illegal - but that hasn’t stopped Trump yet.
82
Two points to make: one is that the electoral map favors cons in close elections two Barr is a huge believer in the Unitarian Executive. Democracy may be dying before our eyes.
68
Why we have to fight and win at the ballot box. Doubtful Trump will win again.
California is a very large and diverse state. To oversimplify things, there are 3 distinct zones. There is the San Francisco Bay area, which is liberal, has a lot of immigrants and has some of America's best universities.
There is Los Angeles, which is more than twice the size of the Bay Area and is less liberal. Then there is the San Joaquin Valley. This area consists of a number of medium sized low income cities. It is quite conservative. The economy depends on irrigated agriculture.
All Californian cities are in flat valleys surrounded by high mountains which trap the pollution. As a result, we have some of the worst air pollution in the country, despite having some of the strictest environmental laws. We need stricter air pollution laws than places like Dallas, where smoke just blows away over the plains.
Homelessness is not noticeable in most of the Bay Area. It is a huge problem in the downtown area of San Francisco where the tourists are. Homeless people are rarely seen in many other parts of the city where tourists never go. San Francisco has had a homeless problem for at least 30 years, although it has gotten worse in the past few years.
Housing construction is blocked by environmentalists, Democrats and liberals, who have placed many areas off limits as "open space preserves" and wildlife refuges. They have also failed to develop former military bases near SF, such as the Presidio, Alameda and Treasure Island.
8pm EST
16
@Schrodinger, you were making at least some sense until you got to the last paragraph. The CA housing crisis has been in the making for decades. Construction of housing has also been blocked not just be liberals and Democrates, but also by conservatives and Republicans, such as in San Diego and the wealthier LA suburbs. There's no need to shoehorn this into a right versus left argument.
101
@J - NIMBYism is a equal opportunity flaw on both the left and the right. San Francisco’s planning process is a kafkaesque nightmare of absurd policies - penalizing homeowners that want to upgrade their homes in a ill informed effort to preserve “affordable housing” while simultaneously making it impossible to build high density housing near transit because it might benefit “developers” - thereby keeping new high density housing off the market. Lastly, San Francisco is far too dependent on the market to solve its housing problems and needs to be more aggressive and proactive in bringing government owned subsidized units into the market.
10
@Schrodinger
I lived on Treasure Island for over 3 years and loved it. That was right after it became part of San Francisco in the late '90s.
The downside was that there wasn't so much as a convenience store on the island, so if you didn't remember to buy that gallon of milk or loaf of bread, you had to venture back out onto the Bay Bridge (which required a full stop at the end of the on ramp, then a merge with 50 mph traffic) and past downtown to find a grocery with a parking lot.
We did get a convenience store eventually, and there was much rejoicing. But the kind of development plans I see for Treasure Island are terrifying. The island is man-made, and it's constructed on top of landfill. One good earthquake and the city can kiss a lot of that new development goodbye. Or give it a few years, and the rising waters will swamp it, and Alameda too.
The Presidio is a national treasure and must be left alone, to the extent that's possible. The military housing there is already rented out by the same company that manages the units on TI.
The options seem to be more dense housing around transit hubs, as the city has done along the Ocean Avenue corridor; and BART and all the light rail needs to be expanded. There will have to be another BART tunnel under the bay.
High-speed rail, too.
Big issues require big commitments with an eye to the common good.
20
“...never mind past rhetoric about states’ rights.” Well, of course; states’ rights only becomes an issue for Republicans when it pertains to matters such as denying equal rights to people of color, voter suppression, gerrymandering and the like.
488
@Richard Levine
Don't forget sticking up to states rights when they want to use them to sell national lands to mining and oil companies, or flood the country with guns, restrict health care, etc. etc.
180
@Richard Levine And Republicans don't believe in local rights. Just look at what the the Republicans in Missouri have done to keep local communities from regulating huge factory farms and have passed laws to keep local communities from banning plastic bags.
16
@Bernard Waxman
Same thing in North Carolina despite the incredible toll of the factory pork farms from the repeat major hurricanes that have hit that state.
16
Nice piece. But let us remember that some of California's wealth is dependent upon state support of infrastructural projects that have led to massive, unsustainable capitalist agricultural projects. They were the marvels of the mid-20th century. But by today's light they look like the wrong direction taken. So let us not unwisely sing California's virtues. Instead, we need to carefully think out different futures...
7
Unfortunately, as happens all too often, Prof. Krugman could substitute Hungary for the United States in the article and there would be no difference.
19
Is homelessness not a problem in republican states? If so what are the reasons?
1) The republican states are so prosperous that no-one is homeless
2) Social services, in Republican states whether state run or otherwise are so good that all are taken care of
3) Republican states are so climatically inhospitable that homeless either freeze or escape to warmer areas
4) Republican administrations are so tough on the homeless that the homeless flee.
56
@Sgt Schulz Homelessness is a big problem in Mitch McConnell's home state of Kentucky. Here are some reasons:
1) poor schools due to poor funding due to funding based on real estate taxes. As the poorer counties have declined in population and income, their taxes have gone down.
2) Poor social services. Our former Governor, Steve Beshear, extended Medicaid under the Affordable Care act. His replacement, Trump's Minime Michael Bevin, immediately dumped that and then requested permission to make adult Medicaid recipients work for it. The vast majority of adult recipients are working. Most of the rest are elderly and in nursing homes.
3) We actually get a fair amount of homeless people due to our temperate climate. It's only cold for 2- 3 months a year. And our largest city, Louisivlle, is full of churches which have serious ministries.
97
@Sgt Schulz
The homeless in the Midwest all moved to California. The weather is better and there's more free stuff.
1
@Sgt Schulz
5) Republicans states give their homeless people bus tickets to San Francisco.
1
After tweets and rally rants, suing California. the next Trump tactic straight from his business playbook will be to refuse federal payments to California, something he proposed way back in 2017, in what we refer to as the good old days considering how things look today. And the Grand Old Party, champions of no federal activist judges, balanced budgets, and family values? They are all in. No socialism for them!
Oh we do have to ignore oil depletion allowances, farm subsidies, defense contractors, protectionist tariffs not counting the trade war ones, but I am running out of characters for this post.
63
Ah, but as a net donor state, CA would win that fight.
12
@Larry Heimendinger
You're right! It's his standard modus operandi. But California is big enough to sue him back, thank goodness.
How did you forget real estate depreciation tax write offs?
1
Isn’t the solution simple? All California has to do is amend its motor vehicle registration or inspection laws to require that a vehicle meet whatever emission standard it chooses. So a manufacturer can sell whatever vehicle it wants in California and there is no Commerce Clause issue. If a California resident cannot put the vehicle on the road so be it. If one choses to buy such a vehicle and keep it in the drive, that is his or her prerogative. If they choose not to buy such a vehicle that is also their prerogative. It’s called the free market. And motor vehicle registration being a state not federal action, and state’s rights being a cornerstone of conservative philosophy, everyone should be happy, right?
257
@Barry Newberger Actually, an interesting proposal. Cali (esp. SoCal) is wedded to its cars and highways, however, this might encourage fewer cars and use of and expanded public transportation if the costs of meeting the emission standards was assumed directly by the consumer. The cost of installing emission-control tech could be subsidized for those of lesser means and in areas not served by public transportation. But the net effect *could* be fewer cars, less congestion, reduced use of fossil fuels, etc. And a shot in the arm for the hybrid and electric car markets. Curious what the opposing view(s) would be...
26
@Barry Newberger
It doesn't matter whether a state law applies to manufacturers or buyers. The test is whether it unduly burdens interstate commerce. If so, it violates the Commerce Clause unless there is a very compelling *local* need for the regulation. (Saving the world isn't local enough).
10
@Chorizo Picante
The compelling need would seem to be the large size of emissions from the many cars and trucks, and the geography that tends to trap ensuing pollution,
22
I moved to the Bay Area in 1977 from Pittsburgh, right after the main BART system was finished, and all the right wing could do is complain about the cost of BART. Yet in hindsight, if BART hadn't been built during the economic hard times of the early and mid-70s, it would have been much harder to build later, and much more costly. Now the idea of a functioning Bay Area without BART moving over four hundred thousand people daily. The Republicans in San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Marin counties who blocked BART from encircling the bay in the first phase made a huge error.
The lesson: the best time to build the major infrastructure needed in the future is now. The best time to begin to building the new energy systems needed to replace fossil fuel systems is now. The best time to tackle major water projects and conservation projects is now. The best time to lay out a comprehensive plan to deal with overcrowding and homelessness is now. The best time for investing in education and healthcare is now.
Republicans have failed over and over in addressing future problems and needs, and no one should ever vote for Republicans who lie repeatedly on every important issue.
Addressing future problems and issues, and creating a safe multiracial community has allowed the Bay Area to create the greatest wealth engine the world has ever seen.
1153
@Paul Klemencic
This is so right on! But maybe even a Repub could see the benefit of building the best, most modern, environmentally friendly infrastructure. It could make many of them even richer.
40
@Paul Klemencic
The Republican response to the need for rebuilding infrastructure has become, "let's wait for the bridge to fall down," and "we can always take the helicopter."
59
@Paul KlemencI
Those remarks are accurate. I feel extremely fortuante to have decided to move to California in the late 1960's to take advantage of its superb public colleges.
I hesitated initially because I enjoy rain and California lacks rain for about 7 months a year from April through mid November. Initially, I didn't see that the relatively liberal political culture was responsible for the wide distribution of economic opportunity and education but I came to see that the politics produces great economic opportunities, if residents take advantage of them. My descendants are thrilled by that decision as well. Republicans are always dissing California and especially the bluest city in the bluest state because we are so successful. Trump's fund raising locations had to be secret because there would have been so many protestors. The weather is amazing also - truly always wonderful.
54
While the Republican President was on his fundraising tour of the largest Electoral College blue state, he was again caught afflicting the afflicted and comforting the comfortable. Which is what his 2016 campaign was really about, from the day he descended his golden escalator to make sure 2016 was not a continued national discussion of 2012's Romney hedge fund closing of auto plants, and Occupy Wall Street motivations - thus 45*'s term has been all about making democracy safe for gilt again, exalting over-the-top, unbridled wealth accumulation.
As the Republican President ran around Cali the last 3 days, badmouthing and trashing, it was odd to remember back to 2016 when Rick Perry (Gov. Goodhair to Molly fans) - from the largest Electoral College red state - was widely reported to be considering retirement to Cali, instead of staying in Texas where he had spent so many years cutting education budgets, refusing to expand Medicaid, and not spending on infrastructure.
Odd the Republican President didn't mention that, isn't it ?
309
@R. Law
Descending the golden escalator. Wasn't that the predictor!
48
@Thomas Zaslavsky
I am surprised in retrospect that there weren't nets above to release manna onto the crowd below at the moment of trump's golden-hued descent to the mundane.
Unfortunately trump's descent never stopped. He is well into the realm of depravity, having whizzed past indifference and meanspiritedness into cruelty. The escalator still chugs down. Who can jam a crowbar into the works?
3
@VJBortolot - Do crowbars work on an escalator descending into a black hole; wonder which rules of physics get bent, just as we've seen other normatives and 'guardrails' being bent/removed?
2
And it's not only the attack on air quality, it's also an attack on California's businesses: Apple, social media giants, even a San Francisco business I have no love for, Juul - not for any reason of social consciousness on the part of the Trump administration, just because they are in California.
The thing that makes us boiling mad is that without the completely unjust and anti-democratic biases against more populous states embedded in the Constitution, none of this would be happening. Do you think Republicans would own the Senate if California had its fair share of Senators (that would be 12 in a 100 person Senate)? Would Trump be president if the office were occupied by the person who actually got the most votes?
This situation amounts effectively to taxation without representation, which used to be fighting words at one time. It's why California is a donor state when it comes to Federal income taxes. Here's a revolutionary proposal: California should collect all Federal taxes and hold them until we get a real democracy - one person, one vote.
840
@Pete
What do you think of a compromise? Each state gets 1 senator + a number proportional to population. Thus, California might have 6 or 7, not an overwhelming number.
I know this is just game-playing, as the Constitution can't be amended without the support of small states (or a Constitutional Convention, which I fear running out of control).
37
@Thomas Zaslavsky
I think New York would also get a big boost in representation, maybe as many as 7. Wouldn't you like to know you have a fair chance at getting your Federal taxes spent in a way that meets the needs of New York state instead of the coalition of smaller states that demands more than their fair share?
68
@Thomas Zaslavsky
And to your point of small states needing to consent to an amendment: if the larger states suspend all payments into Federal coffers, I think the small states would be inclined to rethink their position. There are other ways to bring pressure to bear as well, all in the realm of economic boycott and non-cooperation. The larger states have the power, they just haven't gotten to the point of being willing to exercise it.
56
The Trump administration is worried about homelessness? Then why doesn’t it invest in low-cost housing? That would create jobs, of course, with the state gaining a huge return in the form of tax revenue from a more booming economy. It could match a state initiative on not only housing but health care, as well. OK; it’s a fantasy.
But this broken-down presidential steed is being ridden into the ground by the Republican Party. When Trump’s defeated, they’ll find another stand-in to saturation-bomb California. They turned a right-wing haven into a more accommodating state simply by less human than the liberals they were only too happy to excoriate.
The state has long recognized that its livability is mightily dependent upon something as mundane as being able to breathe without choking to death. And it’s long been a haven for Hispanics and Asians who are drawn to their prestigious educational institutions and, of course, Silicon Valley, the world’s technology mecca.
California is also a state whose diverse population is a giant reproof to the tired old, white male-run dynamic that seems to totter and stumble about, getting in everyone’s way without offering anything like a helpful discussion about the state’s future direction.
And states’ rights still resonates on the right until that state determines what’s best for all—not just a few—of its citizens. It’s called practical, progressive politics.
We have nothing like that in Washington. That’s what’s inherently dangerous.
293
@Red Sox, ‘04, ‘07, ‘13, ‘18, spot on as always. This upcoming 2020 election is a critical turning point.
2
@Red Sox, ‘04, ‘07, ‘13, ‘18
Hey, this is Trump we are talking about, only the best, first class construction that he would be proud to show off. Just like his wall, gold plated.
2
@Red Sox, ‘04, ‘07, ‘13, ‘18-Yep.
HUD secretary expected to push for cuts to low-income housing benefits, programs
https://www.marketplace.org/2019/04/03/hud-secretary-expected-push-cuts-low-income-housing-benefits-programs/
3