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California Crackup

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Is California beyond repair? A sizable number of Golden State citizens have concluded that it is. Incessant budget crises plus a government paralyzed by partisan gridlock have led to demands for re...
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  • 04 August 2010
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Is California beyond repair? A sizable number of Golden State citizens have concluded that it is. Incessant budget crises plus a government paralyzed by partisan gridlock have led to demands for reform, even a constitutional convention. But what, exactly, is wrong and how can we fix it? In California Crackup, Joe Mathews and Mark Paul provide clear and informed answers. Their fast-paced and often humorous narrative deftly exposes the constitutional origins of our current political and economic problems and furnishes a uniquely California fix: innovative solutions that allow Californians to debate their choices, settle on the best ones, hold elected officials accountable for results, and choose anew if something doesn’t work.
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Price: $29.95
Pages: 240
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Publication Date: 04 August 2010
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780520266568
Format: Paperback
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“Neither [then gubernatorial candidates] Mr. Brown or Ms. Whitman, as they attempt to blaze a trail to the governor's mansion, have suggested anything as sweeping as the proposals in California Crackup. Their own fixes, at best, will be technocratic—increasing government efficiency, for instance, instead of simply piling on more public funds. Still, both candidates may want to read the book's diagnosis of the potentially terminal problems that one of them is certain to inherit.”
Joe Mathews is Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation as well as a fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion, Arizona State University. He is the author of The People’s Machine: Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rise of Blockbuster Democracy, a columnist for The Daily Beast, a freelance journalist, and associate editor of Zócalo Public Square Mark Paul is senior scholar and deputy director of the California program at the New America Foundation. He was formerly deputy treasurer of California and deputy editorial page editor of the Sacramento Bee. Mathews and Paul are authors of the article "How to Fix a Broken State" in the March 2011 issue of Boom: A Journal of California.
List of Figures
Prologue. Out of Luck

Part I
Building and Breaking California
1. Crisis without Exit
2. History and the Constitution
3. Empowering and Shackling Sacramento
4. From Teachers to Janitors:
Direct Democracy Demotes the Legislature

Part II
The California Fix
5. Budgeting without Shackles
6. The Architecture of Political Frustration
7. Remaking Elections and the Legislature
8. Government from the Bottom Up
9. A More Direct Democracy

Epilogue. Good Rules to Match Its Mountains

Notes
Acknowledgments
Index