Dan Walters, been around the block.

Fresno Bee  reprints Dan Walters:

California’s state and local governments face billions of dollars in debt – the official term is “unfunded liabilities” – for employee pensions not now covered by pension fund assets. But how many billions? It could be about $300 billion, according to new calculations by Stanford University researchers, but that assumes that projections of future investment earnings used by pension trust funds, around 7.5 percent a year, are accurate. Or the debt could be three-plus times as much, close to $1 trillion, if the earnings assumptions track federal treasury notes, according to Pension Tracker, a research project headed by former Democratic Assemblyman Joe Nation. 

Here is the thing. Dan and Jerry are the only California wiseheads that have actual memories of good government.  We no longer have the capacity for self repair.

But it is worse.  The life of a politician in Sacramento consists of covering up your last blunder.  That is a fundamental source of literal insanity.  Forensic detection works grate out here.    When a politician sticks his head up, the web bots immediately publish his last blunder.  Most of them are cowering behind their deswks in Sacramento, in psychotic shock.