Susan Shelley, a columnist at the Orange County Register, recently reminded her readers — and the whole state — that California has a corruption problem.
She focused mainly on a string of corruption cases involving Southern California politicians, particularly members of the Los Angeles City Council.
However, she touched on others outside of Southland, including a recent scandal involving Gov. Gavin Newsom’s former chief of staff accused in an alleged scheme to raid political campaign funds for personal gain and the indictment of Oakland’s mayor for bribery.
California was notoriously corrupt after it became a state in 1850. The freewheeling Gold Rush era’s rampant lawlessness morphed into an equally unseemly political ethos. The Southern Pacific Railroad notoriously controlled the state Legislature, using its clout to gain control of vast tracts of land and squeeze farmers…
