From RINO to Redux

Can he do it? I don’t think so. His appointments thus far, while still few in number, indicate that the Jerry Brown we’re getting is the Jerry Brown we feared we’d get — Moonbeam Redux. He will use the Democrat’s complete control of Sacramento and the money and influence of his union benefactors to do everything he can to protect the status quo, because unlike where Sacramento was when he first came into office on the heels of Ronald Reagan, Sacramento today is exactly as he would like it to be — fat with government jobs and programs, committed to environmental over-regulation, and firmly in the hands of the unions he knows and loves.

Jerry Brown’s real challenge arises from the fact that the status quo will be impossible to protect unless the state’s businesses shake off the national recession and the state’s obsession with business-flogging and somehow begin to generate more jobs and more tax payments. Short of that unlikely salvation, it’s anyone’s guess how Brown will succeed in keeping his benefactors happy while dodging California’s looming fiscal black hole.

Laer Pearce, a veteran of three decades of California public affairs, is currently working on a book that shows how everything wrong with America comes from California.