The Tao of Jerry Brown
Peter Robinson ·
Apr 26, 2011 at 7:33am
From "The Tao of Jerry," William Voegeli's marvelous article in the current issue of the Claremont
Review of Books, an acute insight into the governor of California:
Public personas less alike than Pat and Jerry Brown's are difficult to imagine. Pat Brown [Jerry Brown's father and the governor of California from 1959 to 1967] was a politician like Hubert Humphrey and Bill Clinton, one who never saw a hand he didn't want to shake or a room
he didn't want to work. Jerry Brown came across like Adlai Stevenson and Eugene McCarthy, men who got into politics in order to demonstrate their superiority to it.
Yet another reason for the 35 million of us who live in the Golden State to start nosing around in the real estate postings for Texas.
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May '10
Re: The Tao of Jerry Brown
Heard Texas was having a fire sale. Time to make the jump?
Dec '10
Re: The Tao of Jerry Brown
Hugh Hewitt has been shopping Colorado for years. He just has to convince his wife. Michelle Malkin already made the move, I'm just not sure from where.
Texas has enough conservatives. Colorado has already absorbed more than its fair share of California liberals. When California conservatives start looking east, let me just say..."Hey -- over here!"
Edited on Apr 26, 2011 at 8:01amAug '10
Re: The Tao of Jerry Brown
Jerry Brown is like Obama, always "leading from behind" if he ever leads at all. He has perfected the fine art of never risking anything, and pretending to be a leader. I lived there during his tenure.
When Jerry was governor In the later '70's, and inflation was causing California home prices to soar, the state was getting a huge and undeserved windfall of property tax revenue. Elderly people and others on fixed incomes were being forced out of their homes. They couldn't pay the property taxes, which at the time were assessed at over 2% of valuation. Jerry Brown and the Dem leadership could have proposed reform, but they loved all the free money flowing into their coffers, and did nothing.
Thus was born Proposition 13 ballot initiative which reduced taxes to 1% of valuation, and re-calibrated real property assessments to pre-1975 levels, to protect the elderly and aging pensioners. Of course it created some havoc, and became news even in Spain where I lived later.
Did Jerry get any blame for his neglect? No. "Greedy people" did. Thus do Democrats in our era rule and prosper.
Mar '11
Re: The Tao of Jerry Brown
My commiserations - lovely state, CA - pity what has happened to it. In AZ we have a number of refugees from CA, but many of em seem to vote Democrat :-(
Edited on Apr 26, 2011 at 9:24amMar '11
Re: The Tao of Jerry Brown
I was born in California, and spent many of my formative years there (including years of military service as a young man).
The way the state is going, I can't imagine ever going back there.
Apr '11
Re: The Tao of Jerry Brown
David Williamson: My commiserations - lovely state, CA - pity what has happened to it. In AZ we have a number of refugees from CA, but many of em seem to vote Democrat :-( · Apr 26 at 9:22am
Edited on Apr 26 at 09:24 am
That's the only reason I don't like moving. Liberals can be like the invasive pests California has trouble controlling: they swarm into a state, ruin it, and move away for greener pastures. They have to be defeated, not merely avoided. They'll move, too, as they destroy a state, always assuming it was never their superior ideas that caused it, it was merely us inferior people that brought a great state to ruin.