The Stakes of California's Surplus

Like Springfield, California is faced with a high stakes surplus

Yesterday brought the news that California has an almost $100 billion budget surplus this year, almost half of which can be spent on pretty much anything. This presents an amazing opportunity, one not just for California, but for the country at large.

In my lifetime state-level budgets and politics have been geared towards neoliberal austerity, and California has been no exception. A state where local public university students did not have to pay tuition now charges tens of thousands of dollars, for instance. Conservatives abhor budget surpluses because it does not allow them to proclaim that services must be cut and new programs avoided because "where is the money going to come from?" When I lived in Texas during the recession the state actually had a "rainy day fund" and didn't spend it during the downturn, using that as an excuse to slash the budgets of state universities. 

California has an opportunity right now to show the country what can be done with public money. In a state where housing costs are driving people out, it can fund new social housing. In a state where students are having to crowd into existing universities, it could build new campuses. In a state where the automobile rules, it could build more public transportation. In a state where schools crumble due to being starved by Proposition 13, it could rebuild them. In short, California can provide an example of how government can be used to benefit regular people.

It is hard for voters to think of social democracy as beneficial to them unless they see results. Otherwise, they will just be told by the other side that "wouldn't you rather have your tax money back in your pocket?" Texas likes to tout itself as an alternative to California in this regard. (Never mind that its regressive tax structure means that regular people there really don't pay lower taxes than in California.) Cheaper housing, modern schools, low tuition, efficient transportation, these are all things that would make an immediate impact.

I fear that the opportunity will be lost, that this money will be used to give gas tax rebates, build bigger highways, and give tanks and helicopters to police. The neoliberal state is okay with lavishing money, but only if it's car infrastructure and the carceral state. California has a tremendous opportunity to show another way forward. I hope they don't blow it. 

Feeling At Home And Uneasy In LA

I have not been writing as much because I am currently on vacation in California. I have spent the last four days in Los Angeles, a city that I have very quickly learned to like. In a weird way, I immediately felt at home here.

I grew up on the Great Plains, in Nebraska, and the sky here too is a vast, Western sky. The clouds are Western clouds. The dry, dusty air is Western air. The scrubby mountains I see in the distance are Western mountains. This is a fundamentally Western city, not oriented towards the East, but to the Pacific. Here the weather and natural elements are scary and unpredictable. The tornadoes, heat waves, and blizzards I grew up with are mirrored here by earthquakes and wildfires. In the West you can never escape the feeling that someday nature will come and just wipe you off of the map, and are reminded of the unnatural fact of your very existence in a place not fit for millions of people to live in. (Nebraska draws its life-giving water from underground, Los Angeles from rivers many miles away. Neither is ultimately sustainable.) Los Angeles is Western too in that it is a new city with people born elsewhere and a kind of haphazard construction. Nothing here feels permanent.

I have seen a lot on this trip, from the beaches of Santa Monica to the tourist traps of Hollywood to the hipster havens downtown to the rarified culture of the Getty Center. I have eaten Korean fried chicken, tacos al pastor, and a Los Feliz brunch. I've shopped at Amoeba and been to a movie at a 1920s movie palace.

As much as I have loved being here, there is something else that makes me uneasy. The contrasts between rich and poor may be even starker here than in New York, and that is saying a lot. The other day we drove through Skid Row on our way through downtown, an area of squalor so vast that it is named on the map. There were blocks of tents and people living in them. I've seen smaller tent cities all around the city in practically every neighborhood we have visited.

If the West has always symbolically represented a place of opportunity and reinvention, California is both its culmination and its dead end, since you can't pick up stakes and go further west after you've hit the ocean. In a place like this my country's failure to live up to its promises of plenty are stark. Just a few blocks from Skid Row old warehouses are being converted into microbreweries and apartments rent for astronomical prices. Come to Los Angeles, then, and see what has become of the "American Dream," both its possibilities and its limits.

Track of the Week: Sir Douglas Quintet "Mendocino"

I'm back from the Bay Area but still can't get over what an engaging place it was.  I've only immediately fallen in love with three cities in my life: Baltimore, New Orleans, and San Francisco, and in the latter case I fell super hard. (I guess I have a thing for port cities.)

Like New York City it's a place that has long drawn musicians in like a cultural magnet, often from far away places.  Doug Sahm and his original band the Sir Douglas Quintet hailed from Texas, where they cut one of the best garage rock tracks of the mid-60s, before heading out to the bay like so many other "gentle people."  This gang of Texans who favored the rhythms of 50s R&B and Mexican folk music must have been out of place amidst amidst all of the psychedelia, something referenced in songs like "At The Crossroads," which have longings for the Lone Star State.

While Sahm wrote a lot of other songs about Texas (where he eventually returned), one of his best is about a California town, "Mendocino."  It has his usual off-hand feel, starting with a little thank you leading into a memorable Farfisa organ hook over a choogling piano part driving things along. The organ is not psychedelic, but reminiscent of 50's sock hops, and the beat is more Tex-Mex than it is rock and roll.  Sahm and his band were a throwback to popular music as a soundtrack to a good time, as something you could dance to.  Sure, I like heavy rock and music that takes itself super seriously, but now that it's summer I just want something fun for letting the good times roll.  That's why every year when summer hits the dog days I listen to a little Doug Sahm on the road to a Mendocino of the mind.