Los Angeles & Southern California - Andrea Schulte-Peevers [16]
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THE FUTURE IS NOW
No place in America was more affected by the year-2000 demise of the dot-coms and subsequent plunge of world markets than California, the nation’s wealthiest state and the world’s fifth-largest economy. To add insult to injury, the same year brought rolling blackouts to California’s recently deregulated electricity market, forcing the state to buy its energy on the spot market, day by day, at ridiculously inflated prices. Consumers’ bills doubled overnight. Governor Gray Davis, a Democrat, was forced into a corner and negotiated expensive long-term contracts that locked in very high rates for electricity but at least stabilized the market. After the contracts had been signed, allegations emerged that power generators, among them failed energy giant Enron, had created an artificial energy crisis by pulling electricity off the state’s grid in a conspiracy to drive up prices. The companies went bust and the money vanished.
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Coyotes – a Journey Through the Secret World of America’s Illegal Aliens (1987), Ted Conover’s riveting account of his year posing as an illegal immigrant, reveals the hopes, fears and dangers of those hoping for a better life in the US.
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In November 2002 Governor Davis won a second four-year term, but Republican malcontents forced an October 2003 recall election on the grounds of ‘malfeasance,’ blaming the governor for the $40 billion budget deficit. Citizens were angry at Davis’ habit of favoring big-money ‘special interests,’ and Republicans called for his ouster. The charisma-free Gray Davis was replaced with former bodybuilder, action hero and husband of Maria Shriver, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who ran as a moderate Republican.
Despite some early fumbles, the ‘Governator’ surprised just about everyone by distancing himself from the Bush administration and putting environmental issues, stem cell research and universal health insurance at the top of his agenda. In 2006 he was handily reelected and now enjoys enormous popularity.
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In the book Coast of Dreams (2004) Kevin Starr, the former state librarian, collates in journalistic style California’s recent history (1990 to 2003), during which unprecedented social upheaval forever changed the state’s cultural direction.
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Ballistic population growth, pollution, traffic and soaring real estate prices are among the problems that continue to cloud SoCal’s sunny skies in the first decade of the new millennium. Meanwhile, the all-important high-tech sector struggles to regain its momentum, the need for public education reform builds, and the conundrum of immigration from Mexico which, though illegal, fills a critical cheap labor shortage for agriculture, continue to bedevil the state. But, with a strong economy, low unemployment and decreasing crime rate, overall morale remains high. And the sun still shines 300 days of the year.
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TIMELINE
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Around 13,000 BC The first humans start crossing into North America via a land bridge. The bones of a woman found on Santa Rosa Island, one of the Channel Islands, date back 11,000 years.
1542 The Spanish king dispatches an expedition to today’s California after reading Garci Ordonez de Montalvo’s novel The Adventures of Esplandian, which describes a mythical island filled with gold and ruled by Queen Calafia.
1602 Sebastián Vizcaíno first sets foot on California soil on the feast day of San Diego de Alcalá. In honor of the saint, he names the spot San Diego.
1769 Gaspar de Portolá, at the behest of the Spanish king, leads the first European land expedition north from