California: once the envy of the nation and now the state where "can't" is the operational word

Wonderful piece in today's New York Times on the state of California, where nobody can seem to agree on just about anything and the recession has left us with few options. Social services are being cut, state workers furloughed and laid off, tuition is being raised and Sacramento is a picture of a dysfunctional mess. Sometimes it takes an outsider to see things more clearly and this is as good a roundup as one can expect. Read the complete story here. A couple key excerpts:

"We are now the state that can’t,” said Stephen Levy, the director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy, a private research organization in Palo Alto. “It can’t agree on its water problem. It can’t balance its budget, it can’t decide what to do with prisoners, and it’s still fussing about its immigrants. And this is not the end of our economic problems. This is the beginning.”

"...In the end, we do not know for sure whether the California public really wants the California dream anymore,” said Bruce E. Cain, a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley. “The population is too diverse to have a common vision of what it wants to provide to everyone. Some people want the old dream, some want the gated privatized version, and some would like to secede and get away from it all.”