Democrats: Pay Attention to What’s Happening in California

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California is a land of contrasts. The state is home to staggering wealth, world-remaking tech companies, and some of the world’s boldest climate policy. It also has immense income inequality, arguably the worst housing crisis in the country, and the highest poverty rate (www.census.gov/content/dam/Ce...) in the nation when you factor in housing costs.
The dysfunction of our national politics is often attributed to division and gridlock. But in California, Democrats are at the wheel. No Republican has held statewide office in over a decade. And in many major cities - Los Angeles and San Francisco, for example - Republicans have little or no political power. For that reason, the tensions and difficulties facing the Golden State are often a signal of what is to come for the Democratic Party nationally.
If California has long been a bellwether for national liberal politics, Senator Scott Wiener has been something of a bellwether for California politics. Senator Wiener has represented San Francisco in the California Senate since 2016 and, before that, served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He was introducing bill after bill to address the state’s housing affordability crisis long before the term “YIMBY” was a widespread political label. And in recent years, he’s introduced legislation that would decriminalize certain psychedelics, provide access to therapy to all incarcerated Californians, and pilot supervised injection sites.
So I wanted to talk to Senator Wiener about the political workings of his weird city and state - a place where traditional labels break down, where abundant resources meet equally abundant problems and where change is actually happening.
This episode contains strong language.
Mentioned:
“Yes in Our Backyards (www.motherjones.com/environme...) ” by Bill McKibben
Book Recommendations:
And the Band Played On (us.macmillan.com/books/978031...) by Randy Shilts
The House on Mango Street (www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...) by Sandra Cisneros
Last Call (www.simonandschuster.com/book...) by Daniel Okrent
Wheel of Time (us.macmillan.com/series/wheel...) series
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast (www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-k...) , and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-... (www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-...) .
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Jeff Geld. The show’s production team is Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Erik Mebust, Misha Chellam, Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski.

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5 июл 2024

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Комментарии : 16

@WilliamSalazar Год назад

California in one word: unaffordable

@nancybartley4610 Год назад

There are many problems about living in the state. I live in the foothills. In the past few years wildfires have dominated our lives from roughly May through October. It is demoralizing to know billions are spent on a "bullet train" while the lives of humans and animals are destroyed. So much could be done to clear underbrush, build more fire departments, hire more fire personnel, educate the public on how to prevent fires and enforce existing laws about property maintenance. For the wildfire months the air quality is awful. You cannot go outside. The smoke reaches the big cities, too. Our insurance companies have dropped us, and we are forced onto a state run program called the Fair Plan. What a ironic name! Nothing about it is fair. Our insurance has quadrupled. However, work goes on on the bullet train. It is still far from being completed. This only one serious problem we live with. Add: water is a huge issue. Again, instead of addressing the water shortage, we are building a bullet train. Add crime, homelessness (not just in the big cities), taxes, the price of gasoline (also related to taxes), awful schools, catering to the needs of illegal immigrants while tax paying citizens pay through the teeth for everything. Would love to leave. But who will buy a home in the foothills and pay the price for fire insurance, etc.? Many of us are stuck hoping we will not burn to death, see our land become a desert, be taxed to death.

@BLK-LA 10 месяцев назад

A bullet train will help lessen personal transportation which will lessen the impact on the environment which will lessen the wildfires we have. So this is part of the solution to your problems (including EVERYONE) not an addition.

@nancybartley4610 10 месяцев назад

@@BLK-LA The decrease in personal transportation will be insignificant. Fares will be so prohibitable, it will be impractical. If you think a bullet train will not have a carbon imprint, you are confused. Look at BART's parking lots. Did those riders take a bus to get to BART? Did BART solve pollution? In the meantime, money continues to be pored into the bullet train while every summer California burns.

@nancybartley4610 10 месяцев назад

@@BLK-LA According to my pollution control engineer husband, a life-cycle analysis of the bullet train will show you the fallacy in your thinking.

@amosbatto3051 5 месяцев назад

The massive increase in wild fires is caused by climate change, which is why California is pushing for renewable energy and zero-carbon vehicles. While the bullet train has become a hugely expensive, and I think California could have built it for much cheaper, it does reduce CO2 emissions. The important thing is that California is setting the standards for the rest of the nation, so the rest of the states follow its example. California is such a big state, that the auto industry can't afford to ignore it, so the standards that California sets tend to become the standards for the rest of the country. Kenetech->Enron Wind->GE Renewable Energy, Sunrun, SunPower->Maxeon, Telsa/Solar City, Nikola, Aptera got off the ground in part because California gave it the market and investors to fund these companies. I think that Aptera is going to set off the solar car revolution, just like Tesla kicked off the electric car revolution, and part of the reason why Aptera is able to attract investment is because it is getting a $20 million grant from California. I might feel differently if I were paying taxes in California, but I have to say how grateful I am that California is making a lot of the new green tech become reality.

@patrickdover7229 Год назад

Such a great channel, thank you.

@tristan7216 9 месяцев назад

All for tearing down ridiculous planning barriers and building more housing, but I fear that building it's like adding more lanes to a commuter highway - it's never enough, because building just generates more demand. More people will move to SF if housing costs start to come down, and then the price will pop right back up. The only solution I can see to this is policy that intentionally spreads growth around geographically, so you don't have everyone forced to be in one city or metro area to get a decent job. I'm not even sure that would do anything though.

@samw4758 10 месяцев назад

The projects he talks about wont be in big money Democratic donor's neighborhoods.

@naughtiusmaximus7103 Год назад

The "hypocrisy" of homelessness is in reality coping with the utter callousness Reaganism (cut taxes and spending) does to the poor. Where in California the poorest largely contribute to the homelessness rate, in redder states, particularly with no blue islands carrying the area, the poorest rapidly contribute towards the death rate. California has some of the lowest per capita death rates in the US. Meanwhile redder states are hundreds per 100,000 worse at providing for its population. To provide a scale of the systemic murder, sorry, negligence, of the populace, murders per 100,000 sit at the single digits, 20 or so at the *highest.* Yet murders are constantly on the news, while Republicans fervently practicing larger scale Reaganism, aka murder.....sorry, negligence, are given a pass because nobody likes to think about death. Then right wing news outlets have the gall to point at California's homelessness problem, one where California's efforts have separated it from the death rate, as if the red areas are doing better. Edit: worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/death-rate-by-state

@gridley Год назад

Exactly. California has been greatly hurt because it's way too conservative, way too rightwing. Grrr.

@naughtiusmaximus7103 Год назад

@@gridley Hurt by Republicans? Sure, at the federal level perhaps. They're still in the mantra of cutting taxes and services. If you mean state level hurt, you mean places like Texas, which sit above the federal average on death rates. Without their large blue cores resisting right wing policies, namely tax and spending cuts, they'd be even worse as places like nearby Mississippi or Louisiana would attest to. Naturally can't have any poor or homeless when they're already dead. It's the Republican MO, just murder, sorry, I mean neglect, their poorest and homeless to their literal death.