By that definition, California is one of the nation’s most liberal states. Annually, its governors and legislators enact hundreds of measures that purport to generate more prosperity and equity for its nearly 39 million residents.

Whether those efforts have had an overall positive effect – which is debatable – they unquestionably have a darker side. Each tax, each appropriation and each regulatory action has a financial impact, thus motivating those affected to seek favorable treatment.

A classic example is the California Coastal Commission, created by voters more than a half-century ago with the stated goal of maintaining public access to beaches and other coastal property by regulating development. The commission holds immense authority within a 1.6 million-acre “coastal zone” that runs from Oregon to Mexico, superseding the land use powers of local governments.

From the onset, the commission has been besieged by lobbyists for and against specific projects, and its actions have often been tinged by scandal. Three decades ago commission member Mark Nathanson, a Beverly Hills real estate broker, pleaded guilty to soliciting almost $1 million from Hollywood entertainment barons seeking building permits.

During the early years of its existence, meanwhile, the Legislature saw numerous attempts to revise the coastal zone’s dimensions because land outside its borders became more valuable. One state senator even carried a bill removing his own family’s business from the zone.

Another hoary example is California’s “tied house law” that supposedly battles monopolies in the liquor business by making it illegal for someone in the production, distribution or retail levels to engage in more than one.

The law has long outlived whatever rationale it once had and should have been repealed, but it remains on the books and thus generates a brisk trade in legislation to carve out exemptions for particular businesses.

Still another: If a Californian buys some off-the-shelf computer software – such as the TurboTax, for example – sales tax is added. But three-plus decades ago, the Legislature bowed to pressure from Silicon Valley and exempted custom software, which can cost millions of dollars, from taxation.

One more: Every year, the state allocates millions of dollars to the Southern California film industry for production inside the state. Why should California taxpayers subsidize them and not other businesses? Film executives, actors and their unions bedazzle politicians.

The California Environmental Quality Act is blatantly misused to block much-needed housing development and cries out for reform. The Legislature has taken some baby steps but routinely helps big projects such as sports arenas minimize CEQA’s effect.

A few years ago, the Legislature passed Assembly Bill 5, which requires millions of Californians who do contract work to be converted into payroll employees, but only after exempting certain categories chosen by legislative leaders.

Something of that nature happened again this week when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 610, which exempts certain restaurant employees from the state’s new $20 minimum wage for fast food workers. They include workers in hotels, theme parks, concessions on public property and gambling casinos.

Earlier, there had been a flap over an exemption for workers in restaurants that bake and sell bread. It appeared to benefit Panera Bread, one of whose franchise holders had been a major political contributor to Newsom. The controversy died down when Panera agreed to abide by the law.

AB 610 arbitrarily improves the bottom line for some restaurants while others will soon see their labor costs escalate. Politicians once again choose winners and losers.

Dan Walters can be reached at dan@calmatters.org.

The food is magnificent, as authentic as anything I tasted when I lived in Paris — cue the accordion music. But even perfection has its tics.

Normally, service at this restaurant is sublime. But this night, I had a problem. After having a wonderful meal and then calculating a respectable tip of 20% on a pretty expensive bill, since the service was OK but not exceptional, I gave the waiter the money.

He disappeared.

Later on, while I was finishing my coffee, I noticed him glaring at me as he was flitting around the tables nearby.

Normally, I leave a tip between 30-40% because I used to work in a fast food joint and know that it isn’t exactly easy work.

However, I am also aware that nobody is owed a tip, and that it’s not my fault if the employer isn’t paying a decent salary. Just because I want to enjoy a nice salad doesn’t mean I am required to adopt the guy who brings it to my table.

So the glaring, and then the lack of a “thank you” for the tip was a little unnerving.

Then I did what I normally do whenever I have an experience that can fit into into a couple of short sentences: I hopped on Twitter.

Surprisingly, my complaint got a lot of “likes,” which goes to show you I’m not the only one who has had to deal with an ungrateful little whippersnapper. Of course, there were a bunch of current or former waitstaff who weighed in, calling me entitled, saying 20% was a pittance.

As I said before, I often tip up to 50% of the meal if the person serving it to me shows that they really appreciated my presence, albeit temporary, in their lives.

If they made me feel as if it wasn’t a burden to serve me and their name was not Job, it’s my default position to show gratitude with extra cash.

But the suggestion that a tip is owed, not earned, and the refusal to extend a simple “thank you” is a troubling commentary on something that has more to do with character than carbohydrates.

I’m tired of people assuming they have rights and privileges regardless of their own conduct. It’s not like I want a stranger to write me into her will if I hold the door open or let him go ahead of me in line.

Those are the normal reflexes of people who live in a civilized society.

I’m talking about the idea that if you extend yourself beyond what is expected in a particular social situation, that should be rewarded by the most valuable and least expensive of things: a smile and acknowledgment.

Waiters and waitresses have a hard job, but so do police officers, doctors, construction workers and even immigration lawyers. The last time I checked, no one was leaving money in a tip jar for me.

The assumption that even the most mediocre service deserves some kind of financial premium is wrong.

Sorry, but all of those kids who were raised by mommy and daddy to believe that they were special have morphed into presumptuous ingrates. That bread basket you just put on my table is not going to cure cancer.

That being said, I am still going to tip in a grandiose and generous manner when the person who is on the other side of the money acknowledges my humanity. There are a lot of young people who make my lattes, mix my Aperol spritzes and slice my pizza into exactly the correct size of slice who deserve not only a tip, but my genuine gratitude
for their genuine kindness.

As for those who think I owe them, this Karen — or Mademoiselle Carine, as the case may be — has better use for her hard-earned dough.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at cflowers1961@gmail.com.

That’s the surprising conclusion of a study by the RentCafe website, which tracks income vs. expenses for renters everywhere in America.

The survey’s surprising conclusion: If you’re a renter, chances are you can live better in Sunnyvale, just north of San Jose, than anywhere else in California.

Even with prices for necessities like utilities, food, health care and transportation consistently higher than just about all other California locations, the typical Sunnyvale renter, ensconced in the heart of Silicon Valley, spends a smaller fraction of income on the basics than counterparts everywhere else in California.

Yes, rents are sky high in Sunnyvale, once considered a very ordinary San Francisco Peninsula suburb. The typical monthly cost of an apartment or house there is $3,013, RentCafe reports. But the average renter’s household income tops $145,000 a year, about $35,000 more than in San Francisco, where rents are higher, at $3,297 – or $39,200 per year. Utilities in Sunnyvale, taken as a fairly typical Silicon Valley ‘burb, are also lower, by about $1.000 per year than in San Francisco. But health care costs a bit more, at an average of $516 per month in Sunnyvale, compared with $489 in San Francisco.

Los Angeles renters could be excused for eating their hearts out at hearing those salary and expense figures and the disposable incomes that go with them. In fact, if the Bay Area numbers were completely typical, it’s safe to guess there would have been no California exodus over the last few years, as it would have been just as comfortable to stay put.

But the typical Los Angeles renter draws annual pay about $87,000 less than their Sunnyvale counterpart, in part because of the disparity between high tech pay levels and those in other jobs.

So where rent eats only about 25 percent of the average Sunnyvale renter’s income, the typical Los Angeles rent of $2,745, or almost $33,000 per year, takes 56 percent of the average income. Even with utilities averaging a couple thousand dollars a year less and healthcare and transportation costs far lower than in the Silicon Valley, the Los Angeles renter winds up with much less disposable income than counterparts on the Peninsula.

Meanwhile, tenants in Central Valley locales like Fresno, Modesto and Bakersfield stand out for having far lower average rent, food, transportation and healthcare costs than their coastal counterparts, but their average salaries, all in the mid-to-high 40 thousands, are so much lower that the reduced costs don’t help much.

Overall, Stockton has the lowest utility costs among major California cities, but among the lower salary levels. Fresno has the lowest food and transportation costs, while Los Angeles and San Diego are at or near the top in food and transportation expenses and near the middle in salaries.

The Orange County city of Anaheim stands near average in all these costs among California urban centers. With a typical monthly rent of $2,331, or nearly $28,000 per year, and income of about $66,000, the typical Anaheim renter should be able to handle expenses like utilities, food, healthcare and transportation and still have some disposable income left over.

But nothing like levels enjoyed in the Silicon Valley. Which makes it somewhat surprising that much of the population leaving California over the last five years, with a total of about 3 million emigrants, were from the Bay Area.

That trend is now slowing, and much of the population loss was made up for with births and legal immigration. But it’s still a lesson that in long-distance moves, money has not been the only factor pushing people out of California, even if it is the biggest part of the picture.

With much of the exodus coming during the peak pandemic years of 2000-2002, the bottom line is that most emigrants were folks who began to seek more space once it became clear they could work outside offices and not worry about having to make long commutes.

Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com.

I wish I could say the two are related, but such is life in the Golden State these days.

Look: By now, you’ve made up your mind on the fast-food wage issue, and I’m not going to try to change it. You have your reasons for favoring (or opposing) the law, and I’ve got mine.

I do, however, think my reasons might be a little different than yours.

The experience I gained at my first job — which paid $3.15 an hour — taught me so much about life, there’s no way I’d go back to exchange it for anything more lucrative. Sometimes a real-life education is the best long-term investment you could ever hope to make.

At least, it was for me.

I got my start in this business as a freelancer while I was still in high school. The pay was 25 cents per column inch. That meant if I wrote a 10-inch story, I got $2.50. I quickly figured out if I wrote a 40-inch story instead, I got 10 bucks. (Thus began a habit of overwriting that continues to this very day.)

I also learned if I was going to keep gas in the tank of my Dodge Charger, and make those daily drives up to Shasta College, I’d need a second source of income. So, at 18, I started working the late-night shift at Craig Brothers Shell in Corning.

If you were going to work in a gas station in those days, the Craigs were the guys you wanted as bosses. They not only paid higher than minimum wage ($2.65 in those days) — they were the most kind, ethical and considerate people you’d ever want to be around. Plus, we’d work six days on, then two days off — ensuring that every week, we’d get eight hours of overtime pay on our check. And overtime was more than four dollars an hour!

The gas tank of my Charger had never been happier.

In those days, there were actual full-service gas stations, and that’s what we did. Every time a car pulled up, we’d go out and pump the gas. We’d also check the oil, wash the windshield and do anything else the customer requested, including checking the air pressure in the tires. It didn’t matter if it was a 115-degree summer day (perfect for dealing with overheated radiators) or a cold winter night with rain and 40-mile-per-hour winds; when a customer pulled up, you went outside and did your job.

Life lesson number one: If you’ve got a job with a roof over your head, be thankful.

My first day on the job, the price of regular gas was 66 cents a gallon. Exactly one year later, with talk of an “oil shortage” (remember that?) dominating the media, the price had skyrocketed to $1.66. Like anyone who did this job in those days, I got called every name in the book by sticker-shocked customers. The kindest, I think was “communist.” The worst? Use your imagination, and I can pretty much promise you’d be right.

I remember one especially angry guy grabbing a fistful of pennies from his pocket and firing them at me from five feet away, screaming, “Here! This is for you and your buddies in Washington!” (Yes, pennies can hurt.)

Life lesson number two: There’s nothing harder to deal with than people, and no matter what you do, or how well you do it, some people aren’t going to be happy. Learn to deal with it. Grow some thicker skin, because life isn’t easy.

Through it all, though, I learned to appreciate the overwhelming majority of customers who were kind. I learned to value the importance of co-workers who had your back and the invaluable gift of having employers who cared about you as people. I’ve had a lot of great bosses, but I’ve never had any better than Bill or Angus Craig. Their kindness was something I never forgot and something I do my best to emulate with employees even today.

Call those life lessons three, four and five.

Of course, at the time, nobody had yet invented the term “living wage.” It was just understood we were starting at the bottom of the economic food chain and if we wanted to climb up, well, the way to do that was by working hard and learning.

But now? We have politicians enacting laws that could only be conceived by people who have never had to operate a business, much less meet a payroll. And how they’ve determined that fast-food workers should be paid $4 an hour more than millions of other people doing often-critical jobs is beyond me.

And how have businesses reacted to California’s new wage law? By slashing thousands of jobs. Gee. Didn’t see that one coming.

I understand there are plenty of billionaires on this planet who could stand to be a little more generous with their money, especially in terms of wages. I also wonder how many of these people first got ahead in life because of lessons — including a strong work ethic — that they gained after some employer was kind enough to offer them a job.

Feels to me like something pretty big is being lost here. You really can’t put a price on that.

Mike Wolcott is the editor of the Enterprise-Record. He’ll be on vacation next week, and his column will return April 14.

The bartender, looking upon this pathetic pair of lagomorphs, asks, “Rough day, gentlemen?”

“What? I can’t hear you,” replies one bunny.

“Yeah, my butt hurts,” says the other.

OK, go ahead, roll your eyes. My family does every year when I tell this silly joke.

Speaking of chocolate bunnies with missing parts, every Easter there is an alarming surge of rabbit auricular amputations. Sounds horrifyingly deranged but in the common vernacular all it means is biting off the ears of the 90 million chocolate bunnies manufactured every year which is what 78% of Americans do after unwrapping the holiday treat. It’s feet-first for 16% of the imbibing population with  6% bringing up the rear, so to speak, eating the tail end first. That leaves 2% who don’t seem to care which part of the anatomy they start with so long as the chocolate gets into their mouth. I’m a 6 percenter.

An unquestionable majority of Americans, 86% in fact, prefer having a chocolatey delicious coney instead of a live one. Well duuuuuuuh these are the true believers in the goodness to be found nestled in the plastic grass of Easter baskets. I have to question the judgement and tastebuds of the remaining 14%. I mean seriously who can live without chocolate? Is life even worth living without chocolate? I think not.

Perhaps these folks prefer Peeps. Heaven only knows why but someone must as 700 million of these dyed egg white and sugar crimes against the tongue are stuffed into Easter baskets every year. How they gained popularity is a mystery to me. But despite their grossness factor people seem to love them.

My grandmother bought them by the basket load every year when they went on sale for half-price the Monday after Easter. I would accompany her to the various grocery stores to stock up and when we got home it was my job, which I gleefully undertook, to punch holes into their plastic wrapping. Once my task was complete, grandma would stack the boxes on top of the refrigerator so they could properly “cure” until the perfect state of staleness for eating was reached.

My darling daughter, who has refused to eat Peeps since she took her first, last and only bite of one when she was 3 years old, thoroughly enjoys “super sizing” them by putting them into the microwave and watching them swell and balloon up to enormous proportions into what she calls “Godzilla Peeps.” The delight, the sheer glee she gets out of this hasn’t diminished in the 25 years we’ve been doing it and, I must admit, it has become one of my favorite holiday traditions, second only to eating bunny tails.

The number of Peeps that come hopping down the bunny trail every year pales in comparison to the 16 billion jelly beans that roll off the assembly line to take their place in baskets. Although jelly beans may be a more holiday appropriate treat than chocolate bunnies or marshmallow chicks since it’s believed their center is a variation (an abberation?) of the Middle Eastern confection known as Turkish delight which dates back to biblical times, I don’t like them, never have never will, especially the licorice ones which my mother used to put by the pound full in my basket. Took me years to realize she put them in there because she knew I didn’t like them and would give them all to her. Sneaky, very sneaky.

While Americans commemorate the holiday with various confections held in baskets hidden by giant, mutant rabbits, in Bermuda, the holiday is marked with kite flying; in Corfu, Easter is a smashing holiday as resident celebrate by throwing ceramic objects — plates, jugs, casserole dishes, etc. — out their windows; and, in Norway it’s all about Påskekrimmen, the tradition of reading, watching and listening to crime stories and detective thrillers.

In addition to symbolizing the whole spring fertility re-birth stuff; Easter eggs dyed and inscribed with a person’s name and birthdate were honored as birth certificates in 19th Century German courts of law. They switched to paper certificates after several judges stamped the evidence with such vigor that it was smashed to smithereens and made the courtrooms stink of sulfur. Pee-you, or in this case, no more you.

In Czechoslovakia during Easter week it’s supposedly good luck to beat your wife or your girlfriend with a “pomlázka,” a braided whip. This tradition originated with Orthodox Christians’ spring blessing of the house observed by using a whip or a single branch to lightly hit livestock or family members. While the morphed Czech tradition may sound either abusive or kinky, depending on your perspective, apparently, it’s not. In fact pomlázka, means “make young” and the idea behind the tradition is that anyone hit with the whip will be healthy and happy during the upcoming year. Sure they will, right after they’ve healed from their Easter whooping.

While I enjoy learning about and participating in others’ customs, when it comes to Easter, I’m a traditionalist, perfectly happy to stick to chocolate bunny butts and exploding Peeps, thank you very much

California’s average price for regular grade gas has again topped $5 a gallon, according to the most recent American Automobile Association report. It’s more than $6 in some areas. The average is up about 20 cents from a year ago and is about $1.50 higher than the national figure.

I can attest to the differential, having spent part of March driving some 3,000 miles through four western states, mostly to visit national parks, and buying about 200 gallons of fuel along the way. All of my fill-ups were under $3.50 a gallon, with the lowest price being $2.99 in Wyoming.

The difference between California prices and those in other states raises, for the umpteenth time, is the question of why it exists.

A couple of years ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom spent months vilifying oil companies as price-gouging enemies of the people and demanded that the Legislature punish them with taxes on excess profits. He couldn’t win approval the tax proposal, switched to seeking civil penalties, and ultimately had to settle for relatively toothless legislation directing the state Energy Commission to gather data, establish a reasonable profit level and assess penalties for exceeding it.

“Finally, we’re in a position to look our constituents in the eye and say we now have a better understanding of why you’re being taken advantage of,” Newsom said a year ago as he signed the bill. “There’s a new sheriff in town in California, where we brought Big Oil to their knees. And I’m proud of this state.”

We have heard virtually nothing from officialdom about gas prices since, and Newsom apparently didn’t bring Big Oil to its knees.

The vast majority of the differential in gas prices between California and other states can be attributed to differing policies.

Severin Borenstein, a UC Berkeley economist regarded as the state’s leading expert on the issue, parsed the differential in a 2023 paper, pointing out that California’s direct and indirect taxes on fuel amount to nearly $1 per gallon – 70 cents higher than the national average in such taxes – and the state’s unique fuel blend to battle smog adds another dime.

That left what he calls the “mystery gasoline surcharge,” or MGS, of about 43 cents a gallon that cannot be directly attributed to oil prices or California’s taxes and other official factors. It may be a mystery, but at least some of it can be logically attributed to the relatively high costs of doing any kind of business in California – rents, electricity and other utilities, wages and regulatory overhead, for example.

Even if the MGS could be eliminated from the equation, California’s gas prices would still be at least $1 higher than those in other states.

This month’s sojourn through other western states underscored another aspect of the gas-price conundrum. Despite paying direct and indirect taxes on fuel that are three times the national average, California’s motorists are driving on highways that are subpar vis-à-vis those in other states.

Driving back into California from other states can be a jarring experience, and data from the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics back up that observation. As of 2020, California had the fourth-worst roadway conditions of any state with just 67% of its 26,406 miles of pavement in “acceptable” condition.

The national average was 81%, and all four states I visited had much higher scores than California: Wyoming 94.3%, Nevada 85.7%, Utah 80% and Colorado 78.1%.

We are paying the most in gas taxes and getting almost the least in roadway quality.

You can reach Dan Walters at dan@calmatters.org.

Grass grows tall on the railroad tracks

I’m tired of hearing those stories ’bout way back when…

— “Tumbleweed” by Gwil Owen

When I hear or read about Austin, the capital of Texas and site of a lot of newsmaking, two thoughts immediately pop into mind.

The first is a women’s basketball trip during spring break of my junior year at college, when I covered my alma mater’s first (of many since) appearance in the NCAA Tournament. I got to travel with the team, stay in the team hotel overlooking the capitol building, attend the banquet in a place along the Colorado River and, on my own, stroll down Sixth Street.

The second is the song above, performed by Austin legend Toni Price. The whole piece is a masterpiece.

Both resurfaced last weekend when I flew into Austin–Bergstrom International Airport to spend a few days with a friend dealing with some weighty issues. I hadn’t been there since 1988; I wondered how it’s changed, given that change is the only constant in life.

A lot like Chico, it’s grown. Unlike Chico, it’s a lot more crowded. I know people here complain about traffic, when not harping on homelessness and parking — the latter two also issues in Austin. But even during peak rush hour, I’ve never had a 20-minute commute turn into an hour and a half of highway idling.

Downtown Austin still has a lot of its old charm. The aforementioned capitol still cuts a nice silhouette in the skyline, even with taller towers in the vicinity. Historic buildings remain. So do iconic pieces of public art, including one that wasn’t there in ’88, the “I love you so much” mural on the side of Jo’s Coffee.

Jo’s is on South Congress Avenue. That street has history, too. It’s a lot like downtown Chico, were Main and Broadway contiguous instead of parallel. Shops, galleries, restaurants and attractions seamlessly coexist within walking distance (albeit a longer walk) from the university.

Browsing South Congress, I felt like I was viewing a Pintrest board for Meriam Park. The newer places have the mix of metal, wood, glass and color that unifies yet also distinguishes the district. Aspirational for our downtown, multiuse structures are commonplace — storefronts downstairs, residences upstairs.

South Congress has diagonal back-in parking like Chico City Plaza. Downtown, front-in diagonal spaces sit between bulb-outs. Both spots have a Chico-like system of codes and kiosks instead of meters, though we missed the sign and didn’t see a kiosk where we parked on South Congress and my friend got a ticket ($20 if paid before the hearing date, $30 otherwise).

Guess what else I saw? Actually — who? Unhoused people. California doesn’t have a monopoly on misfortune, even if sometimes it seems like we do.

A man on Sixth Street politely asked for a dollar as he walked past. Another stood with a sign. Were I there longer, I’d have had time to learn how Texans approach homelessness, but my focus was my friend.

A highlight: The Texas Toy Museum and Arcade. We spend a couple hours weaving through the vintage arcade games and collectables on a scavenger hunt that brought back memories of both our childhood decades. We found the Holy Grail by locating Waldo of the “Where’s Waldo” books. (Hint: He’s not in the Sears catalog I checked page by page … )

Like I said, Austin has grown. Folks around those parts remember when the population was a tenth the size of 2.2 million; my other visit, it was 525,000. Change is inevitable when growth is inevitable.

I never lived there, just as I didn’t live in Chico when it was a rural burg of 35,000. What I’ve experienced is the climb from 85,000 to 110,000 — significant, but more like the final push to the summit of Mount Everest than the journey to base camp.

Nowhere is perfect. We have problems to solve, greater than lamenting coin-operated parking meters. Waxing nostalgic has its place. Even so … “I’m tired of hearing stories ’bout way back when.” Spring forward.

Reach weekend editor Evan Tuchinsky at etuchinsky@chicoer.com

Two men were rescued, and two bodies have been recovered. The others are missing and presumed dead, according to officials. They were men who worked hard to provide for their families here in the United States and to send money back home to relatives still in their native lands, according to family members and friends.

One victim was Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, a father of two who immigrated from Honduras 18 years ago. In addition to his work for Brawner, he had started a small package delivery company. Another was Miguel Luna, a father of three who immigrated from El Salvador 19 years ago.

They were not plundering and pillaging, murdering or creating mayhem, despite the image of such immigrants that has been made popular on the right. Not only were they supporting their families, but they were also making a vital contribution to our economy. You won’t hear nearly as much about these men as you have heard about Jose Antonio Ibarra, the man charged in the murder of Laken Riley, killed on a jogging trail at the University of Georgia.

Presumably, the bridge crew comprised documented workers since private companies are legally obligated to check immigration status, but it’s not clear how they arrived. Two decades or so ago, it was not uncommon for men such as these to cross without papers and to later be absorbed into the workforce, acquiring documents along the way. They worked hard, revitalizing not only industries but also entire communities.

You won’t hear this from presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump or his acolytes on Fox News, but many economists believe that the U.S. economy has maintained a steady growth rate (unlike Great Britain) partly because of immigration. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the surge in immigration will bolster the U.S. economy by about $7 trillion over the next decade. Immigrants fill jobs left vacant by a surge of retiring baby boomers and help make up for a declining birth rate.

If you are worried about the soaring cost of housing, which is linked to a lack of supply, you ought to be happy to welcome immigrants, many of whom take jobs in the construction industry. According to government statistics, Latinos account for about one-third of construction workers. It is worth noting that construction is among the more hazardous occupations — becoming more so as climate change makes summers hotter.

As my hair grays and my joints creak, I think more about needing assistance as I age. There is a shortage of caregivers because such jobs don’t pay well. Who will assist me to get in and out of the shower or to prepare my meals in later years if I need that? If we cannot allow more immigrants, legal and otherwise, into the country, a lot of the elderly will be out of luck.

Still, the anti-immigration die-hards can’t seem to wrap their heads around that reality. They thrill, instead, to Trump’s racist tropes about immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country,” which echoes Adolf Hitler. They indulge in fabrications about immigrants who plot terrorism or spread disease. They support militias who flock to the Texas border, guns in hand, to “protect” the country from “invaders.”

Since the bridge collapse, some right-wingers have fallen further down their racist rabbit hole. Not only have they been unable to acknowledge the benefits of immigration, but they have also gone after native-born people of color, insisting that the Baltimore accident was somehow the fault of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) initiatives. There is one small benefit to this: They can’t plausibly deny that bigotry fuels their beliefs.

Cynthia Tucker won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2007. She can be reached at cynthia@cynthiatucker.com.

I’ve decided to dub Spring the “treasure season.” It’s a season of unlocking treasures — new growth, fresh perspective, rebirth, resurrection, and perhaps the dreaming of places one might journey to during the following season: summer. This time around Easter always sparkles as I remember the spring I was 20 while studying abroad as part of the London Semester at Chico State. Our group of mostly English majors traversed the Atlantic with two professors to study and become immersed in British culture for the first four and half months of the year. It was magical.

Our housing was in South Kensington, in what seemed like the center of the world. My street: Queen’s Gate Terrace. We were surrounded by embassies representing a myriad of countries—it felt like the best neighborhood in central London. Yet the city was resplendent with treasures in all its neighborhoods, and we students would unearth them over the weeks and months that spring.

After arriving in London, one of my goals was to discover a church where I could find community. Not that I didn’t enjoy and appreciate the other students from Chico, but many of them were into partying at pubs and bars and I wasn’t. I was 20 and had bigger fish to fry. Of course, that didn’t mean I would ever turn down a fish and chips lunch at the pub.

No one else seemed interested in finding a church so I set out on my own. Somehow, I stumbled upon a nice looking stone one—it turned out to be a Protestant church — in Notting Hill and I made it to a youth group meeting. A guitar player named Christian, originally from Trinidad, introduced himself to me that evening and he would eventually loan me multiple P.G. Wodehouse books. He and I were in the minority — I was delighted that the majority of church goers were people of color. It was an international church, drawing over 100 nationalities. It was my cup of tea.

I quickly met other regulars, and they soon convinced me to join a Gospel Choir. I resisted at first — I wasn’t a singer and why did they want an American in their Gospel Choir anyway? Well, they did, and I could barely believe it, but my voice actually sounded good with all of them and that choir was a brilliant communal experience.

Our performance transpired on Easter Sunday and as I ruffled through the pages of my journal from 20+ years ago, I found several mentions. First, a more serious one: “Today marked the last rehearsal for the Gospel Choir before we perform on Easter Sunday. It should be quite exciting but we will need the Lord to be with us.” (Isn’t that the truth now for so much of life?) But then the day after Easter: “The Gospel Choir sang beautifully yesterday, and it was wonderful.” It’s funny — going back and reading all those journal entries, I realized: I really like the person I was at 20! And here I am, 20+ years later, but still me.

Before that semester, if you had asked me would I join a gospel choir while abroad — I would have said no. But these new friends whom I grew to love asked me, and I decided to try something new. Something I wasn’t sure I’d be any good at. And yet, it’s important to try new things. At any age. How do I grow if I only do those things I know? Or if I never fail? I’m not that old, but I’ve learned enough to recognize the value in stepping into an arena I don’t feel totally adequate in yet. I’m doing this now as I try to figure out what it means to start a business.

Because of this surprise community I joined, my Easter Sunday that year was particularly significant—two decades later, I can still unearth the treasure of joy celebrating resurrection with my London family that glorious spring semester.

Katie Posey was a North State Voices columnist in 2023. You can reach Katie at teachingbeyondthebooks@gmail.com

As revenues flattened, particularly all-important personal income taxes, the gap between income and outgo could no longer be ignored. In January, Newsom pegged the deficit at $38 billion as he proposed a 2024-25 budget.

The Legislature’s budget analyst, Gabe Petek, calculated that the real deficit over the remainder of the current fiscal year and through 2024-25 is many billions of dollars higher, perhaps as much as $70 billion, and warned legislators that the state faces annual deficits in the $30 billion range for the remaining three years of Newsom’s governorship.

“The state faces significant operating deficits in the coming years, which are the result of lower revenue estimates, as well as increased cost pressures,” Petek said in his analysis of Newsom’s budget. “These deficits are somewhat compounded by the governor’s budget proposals to delay spending to future years and add billions in new discretionary proposals. State revenues in the out-years would need to exceed the administration’s forecast by roughly $50 billion per year in order to sustain the spending proposed by the governor’s budget.”

So far, Newsom and legislative leaders are ignoring Petek’s advice and are using wishful thinking, accounting gimmicks and borrowed money to fashion a budget they will portray as balanced, but would, as Petek says, make the state’s fiscal predicament even worse in future years.

The duplicity begins with assuming that the deficit is billions of dollars smaller than Petek’s estimate. It continues with an agreement to enact “budget solutions worth $12 to $18 billion to address the shortfall” this spring.

Those “solutions” are laid out in Newsom’s budget and a “Shrink the Shortfall” proposal from state Senate leaders. They consist largely of temporarily suspending some of the appropriations in the 2023-24 budget that was adopted last June, shifting some spending from the general fund into special funds, borrowing from various pots of money and tapping into reserves.

Newsom termed it “a balanced approach that will take a significant chunk out of the projected shortfall.”

They are the sort of things that California’s politicians have embraced during previous budget crises to avoid either concrete reductions of spending or new taxes, akin to financially stressed families running up their credit cards, stiffing some creditors and tapping relatives for loans.

Were California experiencing only as temporary gap due to recession, a case could be made for a jerry-rigged budget to minimize impacts on those who depend on money flowing from Sacramento. However, the state faces what budget mavens call a “structural deficit,” meaning there is a fundamental imbalance disconnected from the state’s overall economy.

The deficit is born of Newsom’s 2022 declaration that the state was enjoying a $97.5 billion surplus, thanks largely to a $54.8 billion projected uptick in revenues. “No other state in American history has ever experienced a surplus as large as this,” Newsom bragged.

The surplus never materialized. It was an illusion stemming from an overly enthusiastic response to tens of billions of one-time dollars pumped into the state’s economy by federal pandemic relief programs. The bubble quickly burst but politicians had already spent many of the phantom dollars.

The deficit is a gut-check for Newsom and legislators. They could summon the political courage to deal with it as a serious fiscal crisis, or they could – and probably will – pretend to close the gap on paper and kick the can down the road.

Dan Walters can be reached at dan@calmatters.org