California

The following commentaries reflect on life in the Great State of California

  

1. A California State of Mind

2. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Recall

3. City of Los Angeles - Made in Mexico

A California State of Mind

by Skip Keyser
(Originally published by The Napa Valley Register, March 26, 2004)

“Fans don’t boo nobodies.”  Reggie Jackson

It is popular these days to bash California.  We not only have the biggest oranges, we have the biggest deficits.  We not only have more elected officials and electoral votes, we also – when these officials don’t suit our wishes – terminate them more frequently and in more creative ways.

There is an adage that a pessimist sees the glass as half empty; an optimist sees it as half full.  When it comes to California I definitely fall into the category of an unabashed, unapologetic, and unrepentant optimist. 

I come to this point of view honestly, having been born and raised in the deep south (San Fernando Valley).  As a newcomer to Napa who only recently moved here 21-plus years ago, I probably have a slightly different viewpoint on California than those of my Napa neighbors who can proudly point to the homes where their great great grandparents (all 16 of them) lived. 

But, thanks to the government and some life-style choices made in my youth, I also have had the opportunity to live and work in several different states, among which Connecticut, Virginia, South Carolina, Idaho and Washington were the more memorable.  Nice places, all of them, full of kind and caring people, beautiful, interesting and historic sites, scenery you wouldn’t believe, and – in the case of Idaho – some of the most miserable weather you’d ever not want to encounter. 

That’s not to say some native Californians don’t enjoy living outside the state.  My brother has lived in Kansas for longer than I’ve lived in Napa and he and his family seem to enjoy it.  Perhaps they enjoy the flatness (Kansas having been recently proven by three researchers from Texas and Arizona State Universities to be about 150 times flatter than a pancake) or the street and highway systems that are laid out with the regularity of graph paper.  And, as they occasionally point out, it’s well established that California will fall off into the Pacific Ocean after the next significant seismic event. 

However, I suspect that the real reason a lot of people live east of the Sierra Nevadas is that they don’t realize they’re free to leave.  And for all the challenges we face in California over jobs and housing, that’s probably just as well.

So why do I remain optimistic about California? For one thing, California is – even in the midst of our current economic problems – a vibrant and dynamic economic powerhouse rivaled by only a few nations, with a unique climate and geography, and an intelligent, capable  - and diverse - population.  It is, in short, a 400-hitting, all-star, MVP, world series winning state.  It is definitely not a nobody, else no one – as Reggie Jackson pointed out – would bother to boo it. 

Consider, for example, that:

California – if it were an independent nation (as some in other parts of the U.S. no doubt wish it were) – would rank as the fifth-largest economy in the world, with a gross state product of $1,400,000,000,000, (that’s $1.4 trillion) surpassed only by the United States, China, France and Britain. 

In the United States, 1 out of every 7 people lives in California.  To put this in perspective, if you emptied California and started filling it with all the residents of other states from the Pacific Coast eastward, you’d have to work your way through every state west of the Missouri (except Texas - thank goodness) before you replenished the 35,000,000 plus who currently live in California.  If you believe people vote with their feet, then it looks like California gets a lot of votes.

California has one of – if not the most – diverse populations in the United States, attested to by the fact that some courts in California need translators fluent in 152 languages and dialects.  Far from being a problem, a reasonable case can be made that this diversity strengthens the social fabric of our society.  It certainly helps our ability to compete in the Pacific Rim economy.  And if you haven’t looked in your typical retail outlet recently, that’s where the action is.

Our spending on primary education notwithstanding, California has a secondary and post-graduate education system unrivaled anywhere in the world. Indeed, California has more Nobel laureates than the remaining 49 states put together.   And while there may be some who consider this a detriment rather than a benefit, it speaks to – among other things – the presence and viability of a research and development industry critical to the state’s – and the nation’s – future.

Far from – or perhaps in spite of – being perceived as hostile to business, fully 58 of the 500 fastest growing companies in the U.S., as pointed out in the August 2003 California Journal (a non-partisan, independent publication) come from California.  Indeed, based on a recent Inc. Magazine survey, 3 of the top 10 are from California.

So what does all this say about California?  It says that the Golden State is just that.  California may be challenging, difficult, and endlessly reinventing itself, but it’s never dull and seldom boring.  It’s a winner and it’s a great place to live and work. 

And for those who find it too challenging, too difficult or too diverse, Kansas awaits.

Keyser is a Napa businessman

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Recall

By Skip Keyser
(Originally published by The Napa Valley Register, October 4, 2003)

A full panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has spoken and October 7^th marks the vote on whether to recall Governor Gray Davis.  Once again, lawyers have intervened to set us on the straight and narrow.  It’s enough to make you want to become an attorney so you can have a say in how society is run. 

In addition to providing countless hours of broadcast dialogue and numerous inches of printed commentary, the upcoming election and the underlying recall process place California at the forefront of creative political machinations.

They also jeopardize the governmental process, not only in California but the nation at large.  If the recall effort is successful and we end up with a Republican governor, the calculus of the 2004 presidential election just got more complicated.  With a Republican governor in California, depending on who emerges as the presidential candidate from the Democratic Party’s current free for all, what’s shaping up as a Bush-peat one-term presidency could become a true horse race, the current economic miasma, foreign adventurism and squandering of America’s economic and military resources notwithstanding.

Interestingly, the recall provision in our constitution started in Los Angeles around the turn of the last century in response to Southern Pacific Railroad Company’s domination of state and local politics.  LA became the first city to adopt not only the recall but the initiative (voter initiation of city ordinances) and referendum (voter veto of city council acts).  Indeed – according to Rawls and Bean in California–An Interpretive History, LA was the first government anywhere to adopt the recall.  They promptly put it to use recalling a city councilman. 

Subsequently, with the 1906 Republican Party still firmly in the control of Southern Pacific, Democrats took a strong anti-railroad position and nominated Theodore A. Bell, a district attorney of the small northern California county of Napa, as their candidate for governor. 

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your view) the press – in the guise of William Randolph Hearst – sponsored a third-party nominee.  This split the Democrat vote and Republican James Gillett was elected governor.  In response, a number of grass roots efforts followed, culminating in the election of enough reform-minded legislators to allow the enactment of direct primary law in 1909.

Direct primaries were a blow to machine-controlled politics and allowed reform-backed politicians to successfully nominate Hiram Johnson as the 1910 Republican candidate for governor, running against Napa’s Theodore Bell.  Ironically, Bell – who had a strong reform record as DA - was viewed by the railroads as the lesser of two evils.  They subsequently endorsed him and, in a classic kiss of death scenario, the governorship went to Republican Johnson.

In the succeeding legislative session, numerous statewide reform measures were enacted, among which were the initiative, the referendum, and (background music from Jaws) the recall.

The latter remained unsuccessful as a gubernatorial recall tool until a California state senator, who shall remain nameless, but who shall certainly go down in history as one of the iconic political cuckolds, came forth with a program going something like “Here take my $3,000,000 to underwrite the recall of Governor Davis so I can then get elected governor” followed promptly by “Schwarzenegger-who?”  It’s enough to make you cry.  Publicly.

And so here we sit, between the devil (take your pick of any of the 135 gubernatorial candidates) and the deep blue sea.  There are not a lot of Davis fans and lord knows, he has all the political charisma and leadership skills of a damp washrag.  However, it’s also true that he was elected fair and square by the voters of California and while the recall effort is within the letter of the constitution, one questions whether it is within the spirit. 

It is also true that no one operates in a vacuum, least of all in California politics.  While the energy crisis and budget shortfall speak to the governor’s lack of foresight and leadership, there are any number of other fingerprints all over these issues, not the least of which are those of the former governor, the current legislature, and a lot of us voters. 

And it is doubtful that any of the current candidates for governor, starting with Cruz Bustamante and ending with whichever porn star is among the remaining candidates, could have done a better job. 

Fortunately, an increasing number of California citizens appear ready to vote not to recall Governor Davis.  Hopefully, as October 7^th approaches, there will be enough of these voters who actually vote.

For in this election as in no other in recent memory, it is critical to vote.  Bad leaders are elected by good people who don’t vote. 

And if you don’t vote, you don’t count.

Keyser is a Napa businessman

City of Los Angeles - Made in Mexico

by Skip Keyser
(Originally published by The Napa Valley Register, October 21, 2006)

My wife and I grew up in the San Fernando Valley and recently returned for a short stay.  The occasion was the wedding of our niece, one of three Korean girls adopted by my sister.

My other sister, who is going on her 27^th year teaching math at the same valley high school, has as her significant other for about the same length of time, a Chinese man.

And my grandson, having just turned four, has a name that epitomizes the multicultural nature of California: Reilly (a name of no particular ethnic derivation that I can discern) Lannin (my mother’s Irish-Scottish maiden name) Ramirez.  He is, to parse his heritage as closely as I can determine, a Latino some three generations removed from Michoacan, Mexico with Lithuanian-Serbian (his maternal grandmother) Italian-Dutch-Irish-Scottish (his maternal grandfather) blood.  He is, in short, the face of California, and - in more ways than one – the face of the future.

I was reflecting on this during a walk my wife and I took one morning during our stay in the Porter Ranch section of Northridge.  I had just read a short review of “Orange County Housecleaners” (Franck Cancian, University of New Mexico Press) in the Book Review of that Sunday’s Los Angeles Times when my wife and I decided to take advantage of the cool overcast morning and get what – at our age – passes for a workout.

As we walked along admiring the manicured lawns and common-area landscaping (this was – of course – a gated community, that bane of modern life in metropolitan California, neatly segregating “them” from “us,” whomever them and us are) when I noticed a series of manhole covers punctuating the sidewalk.  Each manhole cover had “City of Los Angeles – Made in Mexico” cast unto its upper surface.

Now this might have been an aberration, perhaps some small contract for such items let to a Maquiladora firm operating along the U.S.-Mexico border.  I did not, given our schedule, have either the opportunity or - to be honest – the inclination to do a manhole-cover-point-of-origination survey for greater metropolitan Los Angeles.  And I suspect, given the vagaries of the Pacific Rim economy, there are other isolated patches of “City of Los Angeles – Made in Taiwan” or “Made in China” or “Made in Indonesia.”  But the extant manhole covers sufficed as both an idiom and a mirror of California – “Made in Mexico.”

Now I do not, by this statement, intend to demean or minimize the impact of Russian, New England, Southern, Midwestern, dust bowl, Texan (sacre bleu!), Asian or other non-Mexican influences on the development of the world’s fifth-largest economy and the state that is currently home to 1 of every 7 residents in the United States.  But the fact is, the predominant cultural, economic and social influence in this state is arguably Mexican.  To believe otherwise, it seems to me, is to ignore reality.

Which brings us to the next significant cultural, economic and political issue facing this state in particular and the nation as a whole: The continued and significant migration of Hispanic people from Mexico and Central and South America.

And the current myopic, knee-jerk, counter productive response to a seminal event that has been ongoing for several decades, if not a century or more.

In this regard I refer to the “just build a wall, we’ll stop them at the border,” gun–nut-infiltrated vigilante groups (not to be confused with both houses of Congress) who seem to believe that the “solution” to this issue is one of traffic control and not economic development.

And while it galls me to say this, I believe President Bush, with his insistence on a guest worker program, has the more logical and workable, not to mention humanistic and moral, approach than do the various we’ll-just-seal-up-the-border-and-throw-them-in-jail proposals now percolating and fermenting in the halls of Congress.

Not to mention pragmatic.  For as long as Mexico’s caste system (it’s hard to characterize it as anything else given the social, economic, educational and political disparity between those principally of European ancestry and those of indigenous extraction) continues to stifle economic development and agrarian and land reform in Mexico, and so long as similar issues - exacerbated by political unrest - exist in Central and South America, those with ambition and frustrated economic future in their native land will continue to flow north.

And no fence, vigilante posse or Border patrol – with or without National Guard or - (heaven help us) – so-called Minuteman Project augmentation, will stop them, so long as there is a reasonable opportunity for employment north of the Rio Grande and particularly so long as their labor is needed in California and the Nation.

Ergo “City of Los Angeles – Made in Mexico.”  More than just a manhole cover.

Keyser writes from Napa