State Legislative Session Ends, No One Happy

Amid a crumbling economy and a canyon of government debt, state lawmakers seemed to spin their wheels through much of the year -- and the final days were little different.They bickered over how to end the state's multigeneration water war. They balked at tough changes to relieve prison overcrowding. They grimaced over a sex scandal that last week brought the resignation of Assemblyman Mike Duvall (R-Yorba Linda)..... Looming like a storm front was the prospect that lawmakers might soon face a public revolt. Business leaders are pushing a constitutional convention while a conservative group is mounting an effort to make the Legislature part-time....

...according to a poll released last week by the Public Policy Institute of California...overwhelmingly, Californians believe their state government is servicing the few -- say, those represented by lobbyists -- over the needs of the many.Only 20% of Californians, and only 15% of regular voters, felt the government elected by the people and for the people had any interest in the people, broadly speaking. And the poll was taken before the scandal involving Republican Mike Duvall broke. The only good news in the poll, if there was any, was its demonstration that we have finally become the unified, "post-partisan" state that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been advertising: Everyone distrusts government, or at least huge majorities of all political groups do.