Stating the obvious

National Review, May 25, 1992

FOR ALL the trumpets that greeted its unveiling last month, there actually was little new or surprising in the Council on California Competitiveness report on reviving the state's emphysemic economy. Still, there was value simply in restating the particulars--and giving them the imprimatur of a distinguished task force headed by former Olympics czar Peter Ueberroth.

At least now there's a thick white paper to wave in the face of the politicians who have been ignoring the obvious (it could also be used to smack a few of them over the head, but you didn't read that here). California is hemorrhaging jobs, the commission reminds us; nearly 350,000 evaporated in 1991, at a time when the state needs a quarter-million new jobs annually to keep up with population growth. Defense and aerospace cutbacks have played their part, but so has a politically generated climate of hostility to private enterprise. Businesses do battle against Godzilla-breathed regulators and a Paul Bunyon-sized tax burden. Schools turn out functional illiterates by the trainload; the civil courts have been turned into an income-transfer machine that does a great job of funding attorneys' Porsche payments; the workers' comp system has become a Gatling gun aimed at employers.

Alas, you can document all these woes, but you can't compel conversion of the groups with a stake in the status quo. No sooner had the report been released than a coalition of usual suspects--the California Trial Lawyers Association, the California Teachers Association, the Sierra Club, and others-- held a news conference at the Capitol to blast the findings.

As long as the legislature is dominated by people in thrall to those interests, look for business flight as usual.