The reason about $3 million may be spent on state legislative campaigns in Modesto -- Adam Gray, Kathleen Galgiani, Bill Berryhill -- is because the Democrats are two seats away from two-thirds majorities in both houses of the Legislature.

The plutocrats providing the cash want to either prevent that by funding some Republicans or to control it by funding candidates of the majority party. If one looks just at Adam Gray's contyributions (see "Mobley-Gray  by the numbers,"  Badlands Journal, Oct. 14, 2012) it can be seen that money is flowing in from all over the country to influence elections in the largest, nearly most imperilled state (bond rating 49th) in the nation.

Obviously, the redistricting proposition we all voted for didn't work. Curiously, Californians seem to take political culture into account in deciding where to live. There are places like Placer County, except for the inner precincts of Roseville, that are as toxic to liberals as Mendocino and Humboldt counies are to conservatives.

This normal predilection for choosing neighbors with values from the same side of the moon defeated the redistricting plan we hoped might do in the Legislature what we in fact do not do in our own lives -- live in "enemy camps." in other words, curiously, we seem to take our politics more seriously than most of us admit we do.