Things have calmed down since. But that self-serving self-justification, like so much radioactive waste, will outlast us all, continuing to corrupt everything it touches, which is everything. So, for instance, the state—conservatively estimated to be at least $617 billion in debt—congratulates itself on spending $68 billion it doesn’t have to build a train that no one will ride. That is but one of California’s problems, but it’s emblematic of a rot that Wolfe saw coming and that might have been avoided, had his analysis been heeded and understood.
via Tom Wolfe’s California by Michael Anton, City Journal Autumn 2012.