Listening to this interview, originally aired on July 31, 1975 and featuring Los Angeles newsmen Jess Marlowe, Warren Olney, Bob Abernathy and Steve Mallory with California Governor Jerry Brown, I'm reminded that, not only have the issues that plagued the state in 1975 come back, they've become worse over time. In 1975 Brown was left with a state in fiscal crisis from the Reagan Administration (yes, we got him first before the rest of the country did). And in 2011, some 36 years later, he's left with a state in a worse fiscal crisis from the Schwarzenegger Administration (two actors turned Governor . . is there a sign here?). In 1975 he was looking at hard and difficult choices:
Governor Brown: “The central reality of the seventies, unlike the sixties, is that the economic growth is so reduced that when we help Peter we’re robbing from Paul. And that’s a very painful, difficult economic reality that no leader has ever had to face before, at least not to the extent that we’re going through in the years ahead. And that’s why we talk highways we’ve got to talk education, rapid transit, they’re all competing for very limited tax dollars.”
In 36 years those choices have not only become harder, the fiscal crisis that's resulted has multiplied many times over. Then as now, there's the cry for a quick fix just as long as it doesn't involve them.
As the same chickens keep coming home to roost, you begin to wonder what they're being fed.
