Two months before Californians go to the polls to choose a governor, the state’s top elections official tearfully acknowledged Friday that she has been consumed by a “debilitating” depression that has often kept her away from the office.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who oversees statewide voting, told The Times that she has a history of depression and has moved out of the two-story country home she owns with her husband. She now resides in a trailer park on the outskirts of Sacramento. …

The secretary said she is receiving professional help, is comforted by support from friends and has not been hospitalized. She described her new living accommodations as a refuge, characterizing the mobile home park as one containing “extended-stay cottages.” …

Her trailer at Arden Acres has cracked windowsills, and some windows have cardboard behind the glass to block the sun. Behind it is a storage yard with a giant, rusting shipping container pressed against the other side of the fence. On Thursday, her state-issued Buick was parked outside, the back seats and front passenger seat full of cardboard boxes brimming with clothing and household goods.

Problems festered, never got solved

This may fully or partly explain her utter diffidence as secretary of state over the past seven and a half years. As the LAT story noted …

She has been criticized periodically for being distracted on the job, most recently during her 2010 reelection campaign. Republican challenger Damon Dunn noted then that the time it took her office to process business filings had more than tripled. (Bowen said a backlog was due to budget cuts.)

In addition, a project that now allows online voter registration was four years behind schedule. Bowen had said it takes time to find the right contractor.

Open-government advocates bashed her for failing to upgrade California’s online campaign finance reporting system, which is antiquated and unwieldy.

‘Embarrassing shortcomings and backlogs’

Her years of disinterest in trying to minimize business paperwork delays produced a harsh rebuke from the Sac Bee edit page in March 2013:

If Texas can process an application to form a limited liability company in five days, even less if the registration application is filed online, why does it take California six weeks? In California, home to Silicon Valley, the most sophisticated collection of high-tech companies in the world, why can’t the state process business filings online?

Why does a business owner in Los Angeles have to deliver papers to the secretary of state’s office in Sacramento to get expedited over-the-counter service? Why doesn’t the secretary of state have counter service in Los Angeles or Fresno or San Francisco?

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen blames state budget cuts for the many embarrassing shortcomings and backlogs in her office. Lack of money should not have been a problem. After all, the business portal side of Bowen’s office – the place where entrepreneurs seeking to form corporations or limited liability companies or partnerships file their paperwork – is entirely fee-based. It’s supposed to be self-supporting. The businesses pay for the cost of the operation.

In fact, California charges among the highest fees of any state in the nation for what appears to be perhaps the worst service, as a limited survey by The Bee’s Jon Ortiz suggests.

I sure didn’t see this coming. In 2006, I voted for Bowen over appointed Republican Secretary of State Bruce McPherson after being put off by McPherson’s hauteur and arrogance in an interview.

Mature, persistent leadership during energy crisis

It wasn’t just McPherson’s manner. I also was impressed by Bowen’s persistence, patience and maturity during the state’s bizarre 2000-01 energy crisis, the fiasco that so damaged then-Gov. Gray Davis that it paved the way for his 2003 recall. Bowen, a Redondo Beach Democrat, was chair of the state Senate’s Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee. In early 2000, after hearings by her committee, she warned that California’s faux energy dergulation bill of 1996 was going haywire.

But Davis was more interested in posturing and blaming utilities and power suppliers than acting decisively to address both soaring energy costs and supply limits that produced regional blackouts. He was such a dithering dolt that in December 2000, 75-year-old former Secretary of State Warren Christopher — an Edison board member — harangued him at a private meeting about needing to figure out the basics of public leadership.

Bowen played an important role in the cleanup, especially when she resisted attempts to rush through a flawed fix. As she noted, it was the rush to pass the faux deregulation bill in 1996 that created the mess.

I wasn’t just observing from afar. I was then a government and politics reporter for The Orange County Register, which sent me to Sacramento in late January and early Februrary 2001 to bolster our coverage as the crisis crested. In a Capitol dominated by a dilettante (Davis) and a wack job (Senate President John Burton), Bowen stood out.

Based on her performance in the Legislature, I never expected her to disappear after she got a promotion. But that’s pretty much what happened.

Missing-person report: SOS for the SoS

In May, when I met Pete Peterson, the brainy, impressive GOP reformer who hopes to succeed Bowen in November’s election, I told him how surprised I was that Bowen was such a fiasco in statewide office. I said someone should file a missing person report for the secretary of state.

Peterson laughed, and so did I. But I wouldn’t tell such a joke now. I hope Bowen gets the help she needs — and that California finally gets the great secretary of state that it needs and deserves.

Peterson could be that good. He’s already won a long list of endorsements from newspapers left and right. Don’t hold the LAT’s applause against him.

The recent phony budget deal that Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law anticipated $4 billion in extra revenues from a booming economy.

Oops.

All the indicators coming out show that the economy is declining again, meaning tax revenues also will be falling again, not rising:

* Inflation is roaring back. CNBC reported today:

stripping out food and energy, core CPI rose 0.3 percent after a similar gain in May and above economists’ expectations for a 0.2 percent increase.

“We are getting a very, very sharp rebound in core inflation and much more than the Fed had bargained for. We will be at price stability and possibly through it before the end of this year,” said Eric Green, chief economist at TD Securities in New York.

Inflation will be even worse when oil and gas prices start increasing again, as they will, after the brief respite we’ve lately enjoyed.

* Gold price up. The price of gold, which for several months settled in at around $1,500 an ounce, resumed its sharp rise of the last decade and now is approaching $1,600. That’s a clear sign of future inflation.

* Manufacturing is declining. The New York Federal Reserve’s report on New York state’s manufacturing usually is a harbinger of what’s happening in the rest of America, including California. Reuters reported today:

A gauge of manufacturing in New York State showed the sector unexpectedly contracted for the second month in a row as new orders worsened, the New York Federal Reserve said in a report on Friday.

The pace of decline did moderate somewhat in July from the month before, with the New York Fed’s “Empire State” general business conditions index rising to minus 3.76 from minus 7.79 in June. However, it was still weaker than expected, since economists polled by Reuters had expected a reading of 4.50.

The survey of manufacturing plants in the state is one of the earliest monthly guideposts to U.S. factory conditions. In June the regional index had tumbled sharply, contracting for the first time since November 2010, but the larger national report for the month showed a modest uptick in the pace of growth.

New orders fell to minus 5.45 from minus 3.61, while shipments improved to positive 2.22 from minus 8.02.

* Consumers are depressed. Reported CNBC today:

U.S. consumer sentiment deteriorated in early July to the lowest level since March 2009 on increasing pessimism over falling income and rising unemployment, a survey released Friday showed.

* America is a big Greece. As Pat Buchanan wrote in a column today, titled “We’re All Greeks Now“:

The halcyon days are over. Government payrolls, as is happening from California to New York to Washington, D.C., will have to be slashed. Pension and health care benefits, not only for seniors, will have to be reduced. Retirement ages will have to be raised. From food stamps to foreign aid, programs are going to be capped and cut. 

The left believes it can get the money from the wealthy. But the top 1 percent of Americans in income already carry 40 percent of the federal income tax load, while the bottom 50 percent of wage-earners ride free. This, too, will have to end. 

We are either going to man up and radically reduce government at all levels in the United States, or the bond markets are going to do it for us, as they are doing it today for Greece, Ireland and Portugal. 

We’re all Greeks now.

I Told You This Would Happen

Since I started writing for CalWatchDog.com almost two years ago, one theme has been that California needs to prepare for coming economic bad times. It needs to become more business-friendly by cutting taxes and regulations, especially the jobs-killing AB 32. I wrote here on Jan. 8, 2010:

AB 32 was passed at the peak of the housing bubble, during which it seemed double-digit increases in housing prices – with the state skimming off its portion in taxes – would go on forever. In California, many thought, everything was “fantastic,” and “anything is possible.” It was a Disneyland of the mind. We could afford anything, including turning the state into a green-friendly economic showcase. Unemployment statewide in 2006 was just 4.9 percent.

Since then the housing bubble has burst, with California among the states hit the hardest. The state, along with the rest of America, is suffering through the worst economic slump since the Great Depression.

Unemployment has more than doubled to 12.5 percent in October – the worst since 12.6 percent in 1940, at the tail end of the Great Depression. If one includes those working part-time but wanting to work full-time and those who have stopped looking for work, the “underemployment” number is a staggering 22.5 percent.

Then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and AB 32 supporters in the Legislature and media guaranteed us that AB 32 would create so many “green jobs” that the economy would boom.

Well, here we are in 2011 and the economy is stuck in a hideous recession, worse in California than elsewhere. As the naysayers predicted, AB 32 made California’s business climate worse, not better.

I long have pointed out that both Brown and Schwarzenegger’s failed to prepare us for the return of the economic deluge, which now is upon us. Their hard-core, fanatical environmentalist extremist and tax-increase ideologies blinded them to reality.

Now most of us will be paying the price in lost income, lost jobs, broken families, damaged children, broken lives.

July 15, 2010

Newsweek listed the Top 10 cities in America that are dying. No. 1 is New Orleans, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

No. 2 is Vallejo, which has suffered more than any other city from the Schwarzenegger Decade of misgovernment. Vallejo has suffered more even than Detroit and several other Michigan cities devastated by the decline of the auto industry.

Vallejo’s government is so badly managed that in 2008 it filed for bankruptcy, a harbinger of what’s in store for scores of cities across America’s worst-managed state, and indeed for the state itself.

Newsweek:

Vallejo, like much of California, suffered an extreme housing crunch in the lead up to the recession, and even as recently as December, one in every 113 homes was foreclosed on, one of the highest rates in the country. This has made the city a less desirable place to live and unfortunately, not much may change in the near future. One recent study found that housing markets in many of the cities in the South and the Southwest that tanked may take decades to return to pre-recession levels.

Total Population (2009): 114,622
Proportion Under 18 (2009): 24.4%
Change in Total Population (2000-2009): -1.8%
Change in Residents Under 18 (2000-2009): -3.2 percentage points

Jan. 23, 2011

One of Bob’s blogs notes:

Inquiring minds are looking upon San Diego this morning where an article reports that a slight but constant 15 month rise in housing prices hit a wall:

San Diego County’s housing market, which led the country in price rises for 15 straight months, turned downward in August as the rest of the nation also seemed to stumble, a widely watched housing index reported Tuesday….

“I think the market is simply reacting to withdrawal symptoms from the opiate of stimulus,” said Russ Valone, president of MarketPointe Realty Advisors, a San Diego housing consulting firm.

Mr. Valone should be congratulated for the best quote on the subject of the ending of federal subsidizing of the failing, er…falling housing market.

Looks like another housing crash is on the way. Will you Survive California and move on to the next level? Or will you be eliminated?

Oct. 29, 2010

If you’ve been reading CalWatchDog.com, you’ve seen my pieces warning that the economy might not perform up to the expectations of Gov. Arnold and the leaders in the Legislature. Back on June 21, I warned that a recession well could be coming in 2011, making the budget mess much worse.

And on Aug. 12, I warned that California well could repudiate its debt.

On another site, Chronicles Magazine, I’ve written a new article, this one called, “The Panic of 2011.” Check it out.

Meanwhile, just as I predicted, the bad economic news just keeps rolling in. U.S. economic “growth” estimates were revised downward for the second quarter, to 1.6%. Just released minutes from the Federal Reserve’s Aug. 10 meeting reported, “Real GDP growth was noticeably weaker in the second quarter of 2010 than most” — but not yours truly — “had anticipated, and monthly data suggested that the pace of recovery remained sluggish going into the third quarter”

Home sales crashed by 12% last month.

Our venal governor and state legislators don’t care about any of this. They just want to get through the rest of the year and hand off the Depression to the next governor and legislature.

Next January, the new governor will announce the deficit really is $40 billion. And a new round of spending cuts and tax increases — even under Whitman (especially under Whitman) — will be imposed. The higher taxes will make things even worse.

This should be a time when taxes and government are slashed drastically, the rope around taxpayers’ necks loosened, so we can breathe again to invest and create new jobs and businesses. But California now is hopeless.