California | John Mecklin, writer/editor

Category Archives: California

June 5, 2011 · 6:42 pm

How California hates on kids

I don’t know that I’d ever consciously thought it out, but I’ve long felt how difficult/expensive it is to raise kids in California. This University of Southern California analysis (“L.A. Is ‘Ground Zero’ for Shrinking Child Population”) documents the sorry situation. The bottom line:

Los Angeles County is now the epicenter of California’s shrinking population of young children as families are driven away by stressful economic conditions, according to a USC analysis of census data released today. Overall, California lost 220,041 children aged 5 to 9 in the last decade, a decline of 8.1 percent. Los Angeles County lost 21 percent of its children in that age range. “We are ground zero of the ‘missing children’ of California,” said co-author Dowell Myers, professor of urban planning and demography at the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development. The loss of children in the region reflects the difficult living conditions for families facing high housing costs followed by high unemployment during the Great Recession, Myers said.

The report is on the mark as far as it goes, but it seems to be missing the education factor. Major California urban areas sponsor a sort of educational apartheid; to put your kids in a public school that isn’t hideous, you need to pay up for housing in a wealthy area of town, or pay up for private school. Everybody who can’t pay up throws his/her kids into a maelstrom of lowest-common-denominator classrooms sprinkled liberally with gang-bangers who scare the hell out of teacher. I’ve seen this first-hand in San Francisco and now, yes, even in Santa Barbara, where my kids go to some of the best schools anywhere, but others living just a few miles away go to schools that are a splendid training ground for life-long failure. (NB: The wonky among you may want to go here to look at a series of analyses of population dynamics recently put out by USC.)

California corruption roundup

I grew up in Chicago, with its legendary history of colorful corruption that continues to this day, Rod Blagojevich’s hair having recently been acquired by the museum that holds the mummified remains of Capone, Ness, Daley I, and too many congress- and aldermen to count. I reported for a long time in Houston, which has had its own cast of larger-than-life sleazebags down through time, crossbred, of course, with the Texas Legislature, whose absurd venalities made Molly Ivins famous.

I suppose Chinatown should’ve tipped me off, but I really wasn’t ready for the scale of the take-anything-not-nailed-down culture when I came to California. More than a decade in the Bay Area and the Southland, however, have made me an avid watcher of the can-you-top-this performances of the actors involved in California’s greed and corruption industry. By now, you’ve no doubt heard of the city of Bell, where city officials paid themselves so much that they won the L.A. Times a Pulitzer Prize. But the corruption hits just kept coming this week, with the former administrator of the city of Vernon, who in his last year made $911,000 in salary, pleading guilty to misuse of city funds. Prosecutors had accused Bruce Malkenhorst of “illegally reimbursing himself for expenses such as golf outings, massages and meals — including paying off his personal Visa credit card — and getting the city to pay for his political donations.” With the guilty plea, he got two years’ probation and had to pay $95,000 in fines and restitution — but he gets to keep his $500,000 annual retirement package. This, as the current Vernon government twists and turns, trying to keep the state from disincorporating the town of less than 100 citizens, almost all of whom live in city-owned housing. Half a mil that can’t be touched, every year — Bruce Malkenhorst, take a bow!

But now, get off the stage, because the star has arrived. That would be Blue Shield of California CEO Bruce Bodaken, who made $4.6 million last year. The lowdown from the L.A. Times:

In its report to the state, Blue Shield said that its 10 highest-paid executives earned more than $14 million total last year. The insurer identified the executives only by number, saying each earned $749,643 to $4,601,226. The top earner was listed as “chief executive officer,” Bodaken’s title.

The Times story gradually descends into wonderful deadpan comedy as Blue Shield officials try this, that and the other line to defend Bodaken’s salary, which has turned Malkenhorst into a footnote and sparked a private convocation of Chicago aldermen who have developed a sudden interest in the health care industry. If you consider public greed and corruption to be the most engaging spectator sports in America — and I certainly do — you should read this piece right to the bitterly funny end.