PETER ROBINSON: The Problem With California.

The state of California employs some two-and-a-quarter million people, includes almost 400 state agencies, oversees 29 different legal codes, administers a tax code that runs to more than 60,000 clauses or sections and spends more than $100 billion a year.

You’ll hear it said these days that all this complexity makes California ungovernable, and I suppose that even when the economy is booming, not gasping, California will always prove more of a trick to run than the tiniest state, Rhode Island, or the least populous, Wyoming.

Yet the central problem in the Golden State–the disorder that affects every aspect of state government–can be described very simply: The political class in Sacramento believes the people of California exist for the state government, not the other way around.

Read the whole thing.