Reply #39: Jerry Brown has been a very good Attorney General

[MurrayDelph]

(and I have a friend who works for him who says so).

But this does not take away from the fact that he was a lousy governor.

His response to Prop 13 was like the bully parent saying "You want to cry? I'll give you something to cry about." To show that he could be "fiscally responsible," he unilaterally rescinded a raise that have been promised to state workers (including my future wife) who had gone without for several years to help him balance his budget.

And the roads of California have yet to recover from the deliberate neglect his administration put us through. His CalTrans director Adriana Gianturco took away existing lanes from the busiest freeways in Los Angeles for carpools, without thought to buffer zones or merging areas, so that the traffic immediately went from bad to terrible. Their response: "Californians are just going to have to give up their love of driving" and "If we make it as unpleasant as possible, they will be forced to give up their cars"

The problem was, they did not provide any alternatives. L.A. did not (and still does not) have a reasonable alternative. To get from my home in the valley, I would have to drive my car to "train station" (actually a bus on a private road) several miles away, take the bus to a train, change trains twice, and then walk a couple of blocks to my office (all of which would take about two hours), or I can drive my car the 26 miles to the office directly, and park in my blue zone spot (which takes about an hour).

I remember an article in the Times 15 years ago, when Gianturco gloated about the introduction of carpool lanes on the freeway as vindication for what she did, but she neglected to acknowledge that the new diamond lanes were created by widening the freeway, not by taking away existing space.

At this point, the only way I could see myself voting for Brown again would be if he was running against Villaraigosa. And, even then, I would be holding my nose.