"California’s Green Jihad"

Joel Kotkin explains who benefits from the ongoing destruction of California's economy: crony capitalists. And lawyers. Always the lawyers.

So who really benefits from the green jihad? To date,  the primary winners have been crony capitalists, like President Obama’s newly proposed commerce secretary, John Bryson, who built a fantastically lucrative  career (he was once named Forbes’  “worst valued chief executive”) while  running the regulated utility Edison International. A lawyer by training, Bryson helped found the green powerhouse National Resources Defense Council. He’s been keen to promote strict  renewable energy  standards  that also happen to benefit solar power and electric car companies in which he holds large financial stakes. . . . 

Finally, there are the lawyers — lots of them. A hyper-regulatory state requires legal services just like a theocracy needs mobs of mullahs and bare knuckled religious enforcers. No surprise the number of lawyers in California increased by almost a quarter last decade, notes Sara Randazzo of the Daily Journal. That’s two and a half times the rate of population growth.

The legal boom has been most exuberant along the affluent coast.  Over the past decade, the epicenter of the green jihad, San Francisco, the number of practicing attorneys increased by 17%, five times the rate of the city’s population increase. In the Silicon Valley, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties boosted their number of lawyers at a similar rate. In contrast, lawyer growth rate in interior counties has generally been far slower, often a small fraction of their overall population growth.