Alas. This item is not on the website, so for historical purposes, we’ll post it.

The Post also solicits input:

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Continued thoughts….(8:45 a.m.):

Don’t worry. We’ll always have Steven Pearlstein. His column today, “California’s Wipeout Economy,” addresses a favorite topic around here, which we cast as California’s hostility to business as evidenced by high taxes, ever-increasing regulations, rampacious unions, environmental utopians and the apotheosis of these all, Jerry Brown.

Following  a trip to California, Pearlstein identifies the macroeconomic trends that have laid the state low:

It is hard to overstate how reliant the Southern California economy has always been on population growth to drive its economic growth — in oversimplified terms, building houses for the next wave of home builders. In the beginning, the early developers could be pretty confident that if they built it, they would come — from the Northeast and Midwest, and then from all corners of the globe. But in recent years, this perpetual growth machine has pretty much run out of steam as residents old and new confronted the realities of two-hour commutes, bad air, a shortage of water and a backlash against illegal immigration.

Moreover, without the steady growth in tax revenue that came with population growth, the Ponzi scheme that passes for public finance in California was suddenly and painfully revealed. Much of the blame lies with public employee unions and a handful of other special-interest groups that have essentially hijacked political control of state and local governments. Now, despite decades of high taxes and rapid growth, state and local governments find that they not only don’t have the revenue to provide even basic services, but are saddled with hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded pension liabilities and infrastructure needs.

It’s “the backlash against illegal immigration” that people are reacting to? The backlash? What a strange comment.

Investor’s Business Daily also examines California’s woes today in its editorial, “California’s Hefty Union Dues“: “Organized Labor: The state that led the way in giving labor push-button power to organize against private-sector taxpayers now stands — if you can call it standing — as a cautionary tale.”

Ah…to end on at least one positive note about California, here’s John Doe singing “Golden State” from last year’s South by Southwest festival.

Funny observation in Jay Nordlinger’s “Impromptus” column today:

More on language: A friend wrote (not in text), “Have you noticed the fashion of calling attorneys general by their adjective? I was reminded just now when Geraldo called Jerry Brown ‘General Brown.’”

We don’t cite Nordlinger around here much except when he’s at Davos; he writes mostly about culture with a dose of foreign policy. But his column yesterday at National Review Online, “My Kingdom for a Safe Zone,” was a joy to read, albeit a depressing joy, and it warrants a plug. Nordlinger chronicled the incessant inclusion of left-wing political commentary and snobbery in what should be apolitical cultural events like symphonies. We see the same phenomenon in rock ‘n roll acts, of course: OK, Elvis, we get it, you’re against the war. Now shut up and sing.

Anyway, outstanding column.

From Legal Newsline, “Nestle cancels bottling contract in seek of ‘clean slate’“:

McCLOUD, Calif. (Legal Newsline)-The largest distributor of bottled water has cancelled its contract with the McCloud Community Services District to build a manufacturing plant on the banks of the pristine McCloud River.

In a letter sent via overnight courier to the city on Friday, Nestle’s Executive Vice President and General Counsel Mark Evans wrote that recent changes in the scope and size of the project has led to the decision in the hopes that both sides can “start with a clean slate and build an agreement that reflects the current circumstances.

“We believe that is best that we step out of the existing contract and start a new,” Evans wrote.

The news follows a threat by Attorney General Jerry Brown to sue the bottled water company because of its potential environmental impact on the McCloud River, the amount of fossil fuels required to produce and ship plastic bottles, and the amount of water the existing contract allowed the company to remove from the river each year.

An environmental scold with unlimited ambition and unfettered powers. Jerry Brown knows better than you.

Or anything else that offends the globally attuned sensitivities of California’s attorney general. Get in Jerry Brown’s way, you will be sued!

State Attorney General Jerry Brown today warned Siskiyou County officials that they’ll face legal challenges if Nestle doesn’t address global warming in its plans to build a bottling plant in McCloud.

Citing environmental and global warming concerns in a letter to the Siskiyou County planning department, Brown said that Nestle Waters North America needs to revise its contract with the county to bottle water, even though the firm recently announced it would downsize its original plans.

“It takes massive quantities of oil to produce plastic water bottles and to ship them in diesel trucks across the United States,” Brown said in a statement. “Nestle will face swift legal challenge if it does not fully evaluate the environmental impact of diverting millions of gallons of spring water from the McCloud River into billions of plastic water bottles.”

So you can see where business might be leery of expanded authority for attorneys general in legislation, like, oh, the new CPSC bill.