By Jim Selman | Bio
I spent the weekend in California, hanging out with my children and visiting old friends. I was in both Los Angeles and San Francisco and picked up on the current mood from both ends of the State—at least based on my small sample of conversations. The consensus is that California is a great place to live, but a fiscal and political mess.The deficit is staggering (over 25 billion and rising). The governor has been terminated politically speaking and can’t get the politicians or the public to go along with his well-intended proposals to fix the problems. Most of the money that is around is tied up and pre-allocated by a system of arcane initiatives that make the democratic process look and feel like a straightjacket. I am told that the famously inept and unworkable politics of Sacramento look more like “politics