Sunday, January 16, 2011

The Third Brown Era in California

I've been hanging onto this New Geography article for awhile, trying to think of how I should write about it. Instead of doing a full-blown piece, though, I'll just quote two paragraphs:

Pat Brown was a committed progressive who actually believed in both social and economic progress. He did not focus on re-distributing wealth or expanding bureaucratic controls; his priority was to use government to help generate greater opportunities for Californians...

Jerry Brown turned out to be of a very different political hue than his father. Sometimes he sounded more anti-government even than Reagan. He disdained his father’s traditional focus on infrastructure spending and instead preached about amore environmentally friendly “era of limits.” Brown cut the percentage of spending on such capital improvements from roughly 10% of state spending under Reagan to barely 5%, where it remains mired today.

Jerry's changed his mind on topics so many times that it's hard to predict where he'll go as governor this time. The article closes on a hopeful note.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Here in Bakersfield we have a freeway, state highway 58, which dead-ends into a shopping center because Brown cut the funds to continue it on out to I-5. Genius.