Peter Schrag Interview

An interview with Peter Schrag the author of California: America's High-Stakes Experiment. Schrag takes on the big issues — immigration, globalization, and the impact of California's politics on its quality of life — in this dynamic account of the Golden State's struggle to recapture the American dream. In the past half-century, California has been both model and anti-model for the nation and often the world, first for its high level of government and public services — schools, universities, highways — and latterly for its dysfunctional government, deteriorating services, and sometimes regressive public policies. California explains how many current "solutions" exacerbate the very problems they're supposed to solve and analyzes a variety of possible state and federal policy alternatives to restore government accountability and a vital democracy to the nation's most populous state and the world's fifth-largest economy. Peter Schrag is a contributing editor and columnist at the Sacramento Bee. He is the author of many books, including Paradise Lost and Final Test. Recorded September 1, 2009