It’s the public unions, stupid. That’s certainly the big problem in California, and I think that there’s rebellion brewing here as well.

…the CEO of a manufacturing company in suburban Los Angeles told a Times reporter that his business suffered less from California’s high taxes than from its ineffectual services. As a result, the company pays “a fortune” to educate its employees, many of whom graduated from California public schools, “on basic things like writing and math skills.” According to a report issued earlier this year by McKinsey & Company, Texas students “are, on average, one to two years of learning ahead of California students of the same age,” though expenditures per public school student are 12 percent higher in California.

State and local government expenditures as a whole were 46.8 percent higher in California than in Texas in 2005–06—$10,070 per person compared with $6,858. And Texas not only spends its citizens’ dollars more effectively; it emphasizes priorities that are more broadly beneficial. In 2005–06, per-capita spending on transportation was 5.9 percent lower in California than in Texas, and highway expenditures in particular were 9.5 percent lower, a discovery both plausible and infuriating to any Los Angeles commuter losing the will to live while sitting in yet another freeway traffic jam. With tax revenues scarce and voters strongly opposed to surrendering more of their income, Texas officials devote a large share of their expenditures to basic services that benefit the most people. In California, by contrast, more and more spending consists of either transfer payments to government dependents (as in welfare, health, housing, and community development programs) or generous payments to government employees and contractors (reflected in administrative costs, pensions, and general expenditures). Both kinds of spending weaken California’s appeal to consumer-voters, the first because redistributive transfer payments are the least publicly beneficial type of public good, and the second because the dues paid to Club California purchase benefits that, increasingly, are enjoyed by the staff instead of the members.

Californians have the best possible reason to believe that the state’s public sector is not holding up its end of the bargain: clear evidence that it used to do a better job. Bill Watkins, executive director of the Economic Forecast Project at the University of California at Santa Barbara, has calculated that once you adjust for population growth and inflation, the state government spent 26 percent more in 2007–08 than in 1997–98. Back then, “California had teachers. Prisoners were in jail. Health care was provided for those with the least resources.” Today, Watkins asks, “Are the roads 26 percent better? Are schools 26 percent better? What is 26 percent better?”

What I’d love is California’s geography with Texas’ electorate.

…collapsing. This week just keeps getting better and better.

And as the commenters point out, it’s amazing how ignorant of the Constitution our “Constitutional scholar” in the White House is. Perhaps it wouldn’t be as amazing if we were to ever see his transcripts, though.

…for the First Amendment. SCOTUS has struck down much of the atrocious campaign-finance laws, including the worst parts of McCain-Feingold. It’s a little disturbing that the ruling was so close, though.

[Update a while later]

Bad news for Babs?

“It certainly changes the Boxer race,” Stern said. “It means corporations, without setting up a PAC, can spend as much as they want opposing Boxer.”

While unions would be able to help Boxer, Stern said “they were already able to do it through PACs. Corporations were having more trouble doing so.”

It will be an interesting fall, here in California and elsewhere.