Subtitle: Why California Leads the Nation in Deficit, Debt and Out-Migration
I was born in California. I visit family there every couple of years and I always have a great time. I can recount tales of Fremont, Steinbeck and Bukowski. Between Hollywood and the general world culture leading type of things that emerge from that space on the planet, you'd think that starting a chapter about California would give an author a myriad of devices, anecdotes or launch points that would be equally attuned to a modern hip political culture potentially emerging. Instead we get a contorted play on an old Mamas and Papas song (California Dreaming, not Dream btw) and a lame anti-communist dig to start things out. I'm beginning to think I'm the anti-root. After all I'm a former Californian turned successful New Yorker. Root's a former New Yorker turned away from California. 
The best insight that we get from Root in this chapter is the claim that his failed business pumped sixty million into the overall economy despite failing sometime this year. While I understand this as a fellow businessman and appreciate the candid manner in which Root portrays this, the rest of the chapter isn't even good Californication. If anything, it gives the term nightmare a bad name because it doesn't evoke any real horror or imagery that we don't already know about or can somehow be morbidly attracted to. looking at any deeper level of the crisis out there does not happen in this chapter. Rather we are brought a long a litany of spending and budget boondoggles that feels like we're suddenly in the Hotel California.
Note to readers: the photo is for those with a subtle irony . . .
If I ever get a chance to really jaw with Wayne I'm going to hammer him about the concept of an illegal immigrant. Putting aside the whole xenophobic non-libertarian essence of the whole term, there's absolutely no indication that Root even 'gets' this and it isn't a vital part to the chapter anyway.
He provides one simplistic solution to the whole California problem. Stop spending. Yup, that's it, just stop spending. Read no more, go nowhere, just stop spending. That's it. No look at real political conditions or economic surmising that got the state there. No indication that the world's fifth largest economy has any degree of complexity or inter relationship with anything else. Even a token gesture to suggest that mechanisms like initiative or recall are somehow tools that his pitchfork revolution can use. In the end it's all about how Ronald Reagan is rolling in his grave. I would have thought he would have given his hero better space here. He does nothing in this chapter. Get out as quickly as you can. We are just prisoners of this poor device.
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