California, here I come.

CALIFORNIA, HERE I COME 

PERHAPS THE best-known clicheabout California is that nationwide trends appear here first. As a visitor to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, about thirty miles south of San Francisco, I have accordingly been keeping ears and eyes open, ready to spot a trend on the wing. But to date I have come up with little, beyond noting that the supermarkets hereabouts stay open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and at the local Safeway they come around with free doughnuts at 11:30 P.M. Whether this is a marketing strategy that is destined to sweep the country I cannot say. But in my nocturnal grocery expeditions I have noticed that food prices are about 10 per cent higher here than on the East Coast. Odd, because I'm sure most of the food is grown right here. Gasoline, on the other hand, I have seen as low as 59 cents for a gallon of self-service regular.

Despite its unconventional shoppinghours, California strikes me as more middle-class than outre. I think it's the vacation-style weather and the Mediterranean flora that give the state its reputation for the exotic. Palm, eucalyptus, and olive trees, endless sunshine, and purpled hills in the distance do wonders for what would otherwise be humdrum suburbs.

California undoubtedly acquired itsreputation as the harbinger of change at a time when it enjoyed greater economic freedom than most other parts of the country. Innovation is one of the most distinctive contributions that free markets make to society. By the same token, a free market, with its foundation in a general equality before the law, will tend to promote one larger, rather homogeneous class--a middle class-rather than a hierarchy of classes. There is nothing paradoxical in the idea of middle-class creativity.

But I doubt that California is anylonger on the cutting edge, either of the free market or of social change. In the last 15 years or so, growth has in various ways been deliberately stalled, and although the current governor, George Deukmejian, would not doubt like to reverse all that, he is unlikely to be able to do much. The legislature is controlled by Democrats, who in California tend to have strongly statist, not to say leftist, tendencies. (California's Democratic congressional delegation includes some of the most left-wing representatives in the country.) Texas has probably already replaced California as a key center of innovation--not to mention Tokyo and points farther East.

The students at Standord Universitylook about ten years younger than I remember undergraduates looking in the Sixties. Mostly they dress in loose-fitting, unisex garments--sweaters coming down to mid calf and so on. I gather they all work very hard. A remarkable number seem to be Asian. I went to a talk that Dr. Edward Teller gave to undergraduates on the topic of "Reykjavik and the Strategic Defense Initiative." Teller is at Hoover, and of course he was involved in the development of the hydrogen bomb at Los Alamos. He arrived, Moses-like (or do I mean Margaret Mead?), carrying a big staff, with which he poles himself along. I wondered if there would be protests, "Star Wars" being a term of abuse in academic circles these days. I couldn't have been more wrong. The students sat and listened in immensely respectful silence, and at the end they asked sensible questions.

On the other hand, I have been disappointedby one or two editorials in the Stanford Daily, which read as though they had been dictated by New York Times staffers. (Howard Beach--"Racism Persists"; federal budget--"Reagan's Fiscal Folly"; and so on.) This on a campus where they sell "Question Authority" T-shirts! Will someone tell me how a twenty-year-old can get upset about the federal budget ("unparalleled splurge of deficit spending . . . symptomatic of the live-for-today attitude . . ." etc.). It's fair to say that students at the moment are fairly docile--no bad thing, of course. The country's most-cited political scientist, Seymour Martin Lipset, also at Hoover, told me the other day that he anticipated sooner or later another wave of student radicalism. It's not in sight yet.

Reagan and UFOs

IN A RECENT poll, published in Californiamagazine, of 617 students at thirty-odd colleges across the state, 58 per cent labeled themselves Republicans, 42 per cent Democrats. Apart from relatives, the people they most admired were (in descending order): Jesus Christ, Ronald Reagan, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Gandhi, and John Wayne. Seventy-four per cent support the death penalty, 10 per cent the legalization of cocaine. The three favorite books or authors listed were: the Bible, The Catcher in the Rye, Sidney Sheldon. Three favorite movies: The Sound of Music, Gone with the Wind, Star Wars. Only 10 per cent read Time or Newsweek "regularly." Eighty-eight per cent believe in God, 61 per cent favor abortion on demand, 42 per cent believe the earth has been visited by life from another planet 65 per cent have never been to New York. Asked which event mad them most proud of their country last year, 36 per cent said the bombing of Libya; 23 per cent said it was the event that made them the most ashamed. (It was the top vote-getter in both categories.) Asked which university in the state they would prefer to attend, most (76 per cent) said Stanford.

The latest story on the Stanfordcampus is the growing opposition to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, which is supposed to be built in what are always referred to as Stanford's "rolling foothills." The university president, Donald Kennedy, and the Stanford Board of Trustees have voted unanimously to approve the site (on land owned by the university). The opposition comes from . . . well, let's say the grass roots: 3,500 petition-signers, variously described as joggers, open-space advocates, low-density proponents, nature lovers, and so on. The "tranquillity" of those rolling foothills will be disturbed; hundreds of members of the Stanford community" use the RFs for their "spiritual health," traffic flow wil "hazardously increase," the library will be "too visible" (revealing, that).

You may be wondering: Is this inreality political? A less-than-candid instance of the professoriate's well-known dislike of the President? "The protest is nonpolitical," say Sam Brain, a senior radiology research associate at Stanford Medical Center and one of the protest organizers. One would feel more confident that this were indeed so if some of the names involved in an earlier and explicitly political protest against a proposed Hoover-controlled research center were not cropping up once again the Reagan Library dispute.

Will the library be built as proposed? "Theenvironmental review of the project has yet to be done," Sam Brain ominously notes. "We intend to use all legal means at our disposal." I should say the chances of their coming up with an endangered species or two are pretty good. In the end all will depend on whether the Santa Clara County officials are willing to roll over and do the Stanford trustees' bidding (as one or two I have spoken to at Hoover expect), or heed the low-density-loving, I-don't-have-anything-against-Reagan, spiritual-health joggers.

If the latter sentiments do prevail, itwould not be for the first time in this part of the world. There's a marvelous book called The Environmental Protection Hustle (1979), by an MIT professor named Bernard J. Frieden, Describing the use of environmental pretexts in California to keep out undesirables, stop new housing construction, and so on. In a chapter on Palo Alto, the town Adjacent to Stanford, Frieden reports that a 1970 technical study commissioned by the city "found that the least expensive form of development from the point of view of city taxpayers was no development at all, even if the city had to buy a large amount of land at market prices in order to block homebuilding. Local growth opponents were delighted with these results. They meant that a no-growth policy was not only meritorious as an expression of ethical values but that it also made sense in cold cash."

Years later the U.S. District courtstruck down a related attempt by the city to (in effect) repudiate the property rights of a local developer who had bought a 570-acre tract in the rolling foothills, upon which he planned to build some 1,770 housing units (withingly setting aside two hundred as low-cost units). Much of the judge's scathing analysis of the city's tactics, Frieden noted, was equally applicable to "the devious growth-control policies of other California communities." Frieden cites a case in which an invironmental study, having failed to find rare or endangered species, warned that construction of the planned development "would essentially preclude the discovery of any rare or endangered species" on the site.

I got Mine

AS FAR AS Palo Alto is concerned,the upshot is that those who arrived here first have valuable properties and nice views unspoiled, as a rule, by newer houses. It is a very expensive place to live. I won't even tell ou how much I am paying for a rather small apartment in Palo Alto, but it is considerably more than one would pay for a comparable place in a good neighborhood in northwest Washington, two miles from the White House.

Silicon Vally, they say, stretchesfrom Stanford to San Jose, and Palo Alto is a part of it. By repute, it's the hot center of high tech. But the word is that things haven't been going so well in the valley of late. to California's Employment Development Department, Santa Clara County lost 8,500 electronics manufacturing jobs in the last year, and 21,500 since the peak in September 1984. Most people seem to imagine it's the fault of the Japanese, with whom we have a "trade imbalance" in microchips.

The other day the San Jose MercuryNews, which keeps a close eye on Silicon Valley, reported the depressing news that "Chip Firms Seek Federal Role" in the industry, to make them "more competitive" with the Japanese. Some of our vaunted entrepreneurs are turning to Washington for a handout, in other words. "There has to be some government participation," National Semiconductor Corporation president Charles E. Sporck was quoted as saying. "We don't believe industry alone, given the current position, can fund this entirely to the level that is required."

But as the newspaper's reporter,Christopher Schmitt, noted: "Even if this happens, it's not clear that Silicon Valley would realize many new jobs. The area's living costs and high cost of land make it unattractive for high-volume manufacturing." Why are living and land costs so high? Read The Environmental Protection Hustle to find out.

Sagging Silicon

ON THE TOPIC of subsidies for SiliconValley, Stanford economics professor Roger Noll was quoted as saying: "There's this iron rule of thumb: The costs of the firm will adjust to absorb whatever is available. Once the subsidies start to flow, the pressure comes off for being efficient. It's always easier to go for the subsidy." In other words, subsidies are the one thing that really could wreck the industry. George Gilder, who is writing a book about the microchip industry, said that the electronics trade gap with Japan is in any event a chimera. "The reason we don't sell U.S.-made computers in Japan is that they're made in Japan" (for example, by IBM-Japan), he said. "Economists who focus on the trade gap don't know anything."

A Mercury News survey of localcomputer companies further suggested that the problem is not so much in the industry as in the locality. Several companies, including Apple, have in the past year increased sales, profits, and number of employees worldwide. But they have reduced their workforce in Santa Clara County. (Hewlett-Packard is an exception to this trend.) In other words, the industry seems to be in the process of moving slowly outward to lower-cost areas. And that means outside California. These are the kinds of things that make me doubt California will much longer be the place for nationwide trend-spotters to visit.

Somehow of a piece with all this,the November issue of California had a cover story entitled "Reclaiming the California Desert." That is, from human use and habitation, not (as "reclamation" used to imply) for it. Senator Alan Cranston has introduced something called the California Desert Protection Act of 1987. This would "legislate the view, so to speak," writes Page Stegner, a journalist who seems to be California's unofficial yuppie mouthpiece. Stegner sides with the kangaroo rat, the coyote, and the spring pocket mouse, and feels good about it. "To say the Cranston bill represents a giant step toward establishing in law the aesthetic and spiritual values long claimed by environmentalists for the Mojave is to absurdly understate its importance," he writes.

Spiritual values again. How comeenvironmentalists claim the right to "impose their views" while denying same to Jerry Falwell? "Legislate morality"--bad. "Legislate spirituality"--good. Falwell should have named his group the Spiritual Majority. Perhaps Pat Robertson should bill himself as the leader of the Rosicrucian Right.

While we are on the subject, twoL.A. Times reporters tracked down former Governor Jerry Brown in Kamakura, a city of Buddhist temples 25 miles south of Tokyo, and interviewed him in a tea shop. Brown, who now has a white-tinged beard, has been attending Zen Buddhist study sessions, practicing Catholicism, and completing several hundred pages of an unsold manuscript. His literary goal is "to better understand and articulate my philosophy . . . and to set out my vision of the future." The former governor "repeatedly asked how he had been discovered," but the reporters say only that they found him "after exhaustive inquiries with police and other authorities." At first he was reluctant to be photographed, but eventually he agreed to pose, looking rather Western in a London Fog Topcoat, jacket and tie.

The Front Page

UNEXPECTEDLY, THE interveningtwo thousand miles diminishes one's interest in the ongoing public-policy hullabaloo coming out of Washington. There's no particular logic to this, as we're within easy media-reach, of course. But somehow the message gets attenuated, and distance makes the mind wander. I've long since given up trying to keep abreast of all this Iran business, for example, as I'm sure most Californians have. We get the national edition of the New York Times, but somehow the local papers don't provide the necessary stimulus. Did you ever try to begin the day with the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times piled up in front of you? They're like a mashed-potato sandwich: filling but dull. I hate to admit it, but I rather miss the Washington Post. At least the Post editors understand that the line between news and gossip is a doubtful one, and that it's not worth trying to separate them.

In recent years the reputation of theSan Francisco newspapers has not been good, and for some reason the Chronicle persists in usig a layout that is curiously off-putting. But there has been a real attempt to do something with the Hearst-owned Examiner, which has been redesigned, and has some good columns. What caught my eye was a Sunday "Editor's Report" by William Randolph Hearst Jr. Sometimes it is actually datelined San Simeon. This of course is the location of the famous Hearst castle, now open to tourists. I can't imagine that the Hearsts still live in it. How wonderful if true.

Hearst's sentiments are conservative,but too meek and mild. He sends New

Year's greetings and the like. ("I am going to emulate our President, whom I admire greatly, and take it easy here in California.") But with a name and dateline like that, a truly reactionary column (references to odd goings-on in the servants' wing, faithful retainers, hunting expeditions in search of desert environmentalists) would be riotous good fun. It might even be the talk of San Francisco. Alas, we live in a time when the rich are expected either to wear the protective camouflage of socialism or, failing that, to lay low. The one thing we do not expect is for them to enjoy themselves.

Here's a shocker of a headline (fromthe San Francisco Examiner): "Church Spurns Papal Visit. Trinity Pastor Warns of Anti-Pope Violence." This was not even on the front page! The story began: "Fifty members of Trinity Episcopal Church--including its pastor--have signed a statement urging Pope John Paul II to cancel his upcoming visit to San Francisco because it might 'cause harm to his person and cause greater divisions between the homosexual and heterosexual communities in the Bay Area.'" The Reverend Robert Cromey, an "outspoken gay-rights advocate," was quoted as saying that "the Pope's statements on homosexual persons are laced with archaic religious assumptions and astonishing arrogance. These are false teachings about human beings who happen to be homosexual."

That's the kind of thing that givesthe city a bad name. San Francisco is a lot nicer than that. In many ways it really does live up to its postcard image, at least on weekend visits. One day I walked through Chinatown, packed with people. How come the generic "Chinatown" of folklore is a dangerous place filled with sinister opium dens? I never feel more secure, or less likely to be bothered, than when surrounded by Chinese. Chinatown is not only thriving, it is also expanding outward, just as the Chinese population in the city is increasing. I suppose it is only a matter of time before they move into the Castro district, decimated by the AIDS epidemic.

The November defeat at the polls ofCalifornia Supreme Court Chief Justice Rose Bird and her two liberal associates on the Court, Joseph Grodin and Cruz Reynoso, is no longer news on the East Coast. Now they are finally gone, but not before (in what really did seem like a final nose-thumbing at the electorate) reversing five death-penalty cases, including that of a man who tortured to death his ten-year-old stepdaughter. Rose Bird, who was Governor Jerry Brown's chauffeur before he elevated her to the Court, never once voted to uphold the death penalty. In a last-minute move, the Court also ordered the "Onion Field Killer" freed, after more than twenty years in prison. (The case was described in a nonfiction book by Joseph Wambaugh.)

After Governor Deukmejian nameda short list of successors to the defeated justices (mostly fairly conservative, I gather, although hardly likely to be as ideological as their predecessors), Rose Bird made a classic comment: "I was disappointed to see when the governor made his announcement and sent names for replacements that he didn't have an Asian among the individuals. I thought that was rather sad. It's the last barrier, having an Asian . . ." Of course what she meant was not so much "Asian" as "disgruntled Asian--an Asian who believes that criminals are society's true victims."

Rose Bird left the Court seeminglyunder the impression that the voters had unwarrantedly intruded upon her "judicial independence," which she understood to require, constitutionally, a public deference to her every whim about the law. In one account she was reported to be contemplating a career in the media. She should receive a standing ovation in almost any newsroom. Statewide, the vote against Rose Bird was almost two to one. In Stanford precincts, however, the vote to reappoint her was 1,905 yes, 649 no.

Bureau-Boom

THE CALIFORNIA state budget, justannounced, was $39 billion. (And here I go, persisting in the delusion that people want to read about budgets.) The reaction to it here was very much parallel to the Washington reaction to the federal budget. "It's a disaster," said state school superintendent Bill Honig, who is transforming himself, some say with a view to higher office, into an all-purpose whiner for liberal causes. "This is the worst budget I've seen in seven years!"

"It's a very very, tough tough [sic,sic] document," said Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. "There are so few dollars."

Actually, 682 million more dollarsthan last year. A 1979 constitutional amendment, sponsored by Paul Gann, prevents state spending from growing any faster than the consumer price index, with an adjustment for population increases.

Now Honig wants to do away withthe spending limit. He says that California is 42nd nationwide in percapita spending on public education. But, says Ted Costa, a spokesman for Gann's group, People's Advocate: "From 1970 to 1982 we tripled the [education] budget while experiencing a 600,000 drop in students. The system's personnel grew by eighty thousand, and only twenty thousand of those were teachers." Administrator's Heaven, in other words.