Jerry Brown, from How Jerry Brow Scared California Straight [Business Week]
It’s definitely akin to Camus’s theater of the absurd.
Here’s another gem from the same piece,
Even more compelling, Brown has a natural curiosity. When he quotes the Yeats poem Byzantium and I say it describes an opium dream, he tells me I was mistakenly thinking of Shelley’s Ozymandias, then quotes that, too. I tell him how academic that is. “It’s not academic! Yeats was not in the academy, as far as I know,” he says. Which is so academic.
And another,
He says his spiritual journeys have made him immune to the public’s love. “My soul is elsewhere,” he says. “I’m not beguiled by the fleshpots of Egypt here.”
And my favorite,
“I’m aware of the Roman Empire. It’s hard to have a rally after 80 BC because you can’t walk the streets. It’s bad news.” As he’s pulled away by his staff, he yells something positive about California—“The sun is still rising in the West”—and quotes Antonio Gramsci: “I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.” Brown is a politician long past being afraid of quoting a Marxist.
Today, Governor Brown signed the California High Speed Rail Bill. High speed rail is about more than building a rail line to connect Southern and Northern California - it’s about a vision of new transit options, improved safety along our rail corridors, a cleaner and greener environment, and most importantly: new jobs.
This project can create 20,000 jobs a year over the course of the initial construction, and an average of 66,000 jobs a year over the next 15 years.
![Did you notice the 24% difference under race/ethnicity? [source]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lw4oeyiSMI1qzs6yjo1_1280.png)
Did you notice the 24% difference under race/ethnicity? [source]
