When things slow down in B'game as they appear to be doing (but don't forget Music in the Park and the Farmers' Market), Dan Walters of the SacBee is usually good for something interesting.  Here's part of his current column that sums things up nicely

Three California cities have moved toward bankruptcy this year. A half-dozen others, at least, are on the brink, and the state budget is billions of dollars out of balance.

It's no wonder that polls, including a new survey released Thursday by the California Business Roundtable and Pepperdine University, find that by huge margins, voters believe the state is on the wrong track.  Not surprisingly, too, those voters overwhelmingly dislike the performance of the Legislature, and are lukewarm at best on Brown's second gubernatorial incarnation.

Given that disdain, given that Brown and Democratic legislators are hoping that disaffected voters will approve new sales and income taxes, and given that their tax measure barely breaks 50 percent in the polls, one would think that they'd bend over backward to improve their public standing.

So what did they do this week to earn the public's trust?

Brown staged splashy ceremonies in Los Angeles and San Francisco to sign legislation for a bullet-train system that most Californians don't want. But he didn't set foot in the San Joaquin Valley, where the initial segment is to be built and opposition is particularly strong, and he curtly dismissed polls indicating that the bullet train hurts his tax measure's chances.

Those nasty polls, those NIMBY "declinists" who don't like his little train, that nasty competing tax measure that "isn't worded right"–all to be ignored.  Click through to read about the slick salary maneuver they pulled as well.