About us
Joe Mathews and Mark Paul are co-authors of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It (University of California Press). To learn more about them and the book, go to book’s website.
The California Fix
In California Crackup, Joe Mathews and Mark Paul provide clear and informed answers.
Their fast-paced and often humorous narrative deftly exposes the origins of our current political and fiscal problems—from the ugly 1879 constitutional convention to Hiram Johnson’s Progressive reforms to the Prop 13 tax revolt and its legacy of supermajority requirements and voter initiatives.
Mathews and Paul then furnish an uniquely California fix: innovative solutions that allow Californians to debate their choices, settle on the best ones, hold elected officials accountable for results, and choose anew if something doesn’t work.
Concise, lively, and provocative, California Crackup offers something new: a genuinely democratic operating system for the state.
