We are in the midst
of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. I got fired from the coffee shop because my boss
couldn't afford to pay us anymore. In a crisis like this one,
you have this new population of people who are unemployed. It's generally just people
that aren't used to being homeless. The immediate task before us
is to cut spending to the money that is available to us. They cut a program that is saving lives. I don't understand how you want these men
to come out of prison with a better life. This last time, they took huge cuts that they had never had to take before. The worst is that students
don't go to school. If the number one public institution
in the country has students such as me, what can someone that's ten years old
right now hope for the future? An autumn day in Los Angeles,
and superheroes are parading their powers along the star-studded sidewalks
of Hollywood Boulevard. Every year,
more than 26 million starstruck pilgrims visit the Mecca of movies,
the symbol of California's success. In the time it takes
to snap a souvenir photo, they can touch the American dream
or fantasize about their 15 minutes of fame. Behind the glittering facade
lies another image of the Golden State, a far cry from the hype
of the dream factories. In Los Angeles,
cinema is written in capital letters. Behind every film, every major production, 100,000 people work in the wings,
unsung and unnamed. Harvey Schwartz founded his company
20th Century Props in 1969. In 40 years,
this veritable Alibaba's cavern has made itself
indispensable to the Hollywood studios. This is a big warehouse for the movie and television industry,
commercial industry. They come in and they pick things that they need for the next movie
or the next TV show and we rent it to them,
they take it, they stress a set. I am very handy for the decorators,
for all the different movies, because I've got everything in stock
that they can walk in and rent it right now. This is my space section. I've got my bedroom section on one side and my space section on the other. Here I've got one of my prizes. This is one of the spaceships
from Space Above and Beyond. I don't know
if they played that in France, but it was a really popular show here,
Fox show. This is one of the spaceships
that the guy flies around. Just follow me, we're going to go look
at my wonderful drill machine from the movie Armageddon. This is one of those hero props. We've got the big drills
and the big lights, and they landed this on
I think asteroid or meteorite and had to drill into it to blow it up. It's a real fun piece. I love it, and this is for sale. I can't put it in my backyard
because it's too big, I have to sell it. The place is filled with a huge variety
of different objects, 93,000 and all carefully collected
over four decades. In a few months,
there will be nothing left. Harvey is shutting up shop. For him, the fall from grace began in 2008 with the screenwriters' strike
and the actors' threat to follow suit. Production was paralyzed, and thousands of men and women
behind the scenes were left without work. Month after month
business kept getting slower and slower because everybody was afraid
to start up a new production because they might strike
at any minute now and then. They'd have to shut down
and there'd be so hard to start up again. Most companies just stopped production. By the end of the year,
there was no production in California. Then the next echelon of tragedy hit the United States
by having the economic fallout and all this terrible thing
went on with finance. I lost so much money I could never recoup
and start up again. To help pay his debts, Harvey
has already sold half his stock. In these times of movie land crisis,
his main buyers are the TV networks. It looks like 24 inches. Melissa Franken is a set designer. Today, she's looking for chandeliers
for a new TV series. Three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Despite the show's success,
Melissa is working on a tight budget. She has to negotiate every single dollar. Okay, let's see. Already showing them again. Flash forward. Oh, yes, all right. Are you looking at all this stuff,
or are you looking to compare? All of them. Here they are. The first chandelier,
there are nine of them. You're talking about 50 bucks a piece? -I couldn't do that.
-What can you do on that? There are 1800 bucks right there
on the nine of them, 200 each. I don't have that money. Your budget is way too low for us. I mean, you're doing a big production. Whereas he's been more of a collector
rather than a prop house owner or manager. It's hard for him to let go
of these things, which I can understand because as somebody in set decoration,
I also like to collect stuff myself. That's why it's going to take him a while
to empty out this warehouse. Yes, I'm a little attached to it
because it took me 40 years to gather it. I know what I've got,
and I don't like giving it away too far. Harvey has already laid off half
of his employees. The prospect of having
to start a new life is devastating. You want to go on there? I have collected treasures
like these guys. This is the freezing cryogenic chamber
from Austin Powers. This is a real wonderful treasure. I built the company to last forever,
I thought it would. I'm just destroyed with all of this. I didn't think I would have
to go look for a job after 40 years of building one of the biggest prop houses
under one roof in the world. I'm very sad and torn up. Yes, it's been very hard to sell it
and very hard to walk away. The city of Los Angeles and its studios
may have been regarded as the heart of the world's film business
for more than half a century. Today, that heart is beating more slowly. In less than a decade,
film production here has been cut in half. In this month of October 2009,
of the six sound stages at Los Angeles Center Studios,
only one is occupied. A television crew
is recording a sitcom episode. Todd Lindgren
is the vice president of FilmLA responsible for movie permits
and film shoot organization in the City of Angels. California has lost
the feature film industry. Most of the production that takes place
out on our local streets is television or commercials, and there's been less
and less of that as well. Feature films peaked
in the Los Angeles region in 1996, and they've been
on a steady decline ever since. They've been down ten out
of the last 12 years. Those types of productions,
the big studio films, have gone to other countries or states like Louisiana and New Mexico
and New York, which have incentives, a tax credit to lure productions there. Those have proven to be very successful in taking productions
away from California. California, up until this year,
has not had an incentive and has not been able to compete. Though the incentive program in our state began in July, we have yet
to see the fruits of those efforts. In the LA region, there are 130,000 people
who are directly employed in film production. For every one of those direct jobs,
there are 2.7 indirect jobs that are wholly supported by the industry. It has an overall impact on the LA region
of about $57 billion a year. Had tax incentive legislation
been passed a decade ago. Who's to say, perhaps the state would be in a little better
financial standpoint now? Yet, the economy here could well do
with the movie industry money. As the decline of the seventh art
and its revenues is only the tip of the iceberg
that the good ship California has struck. The economic crisis is hitting hard,
and California's 38 million inhabitants watch powerless as their empire falls. With budget deficits
and the subprime avalanche, the Golden State may soon
have to change its tarnished name. Even the starship enterprises
of Silicon Valley are shaken. Microsoft, Yahoo, and even Google
have had to reduce their workforces. Unemployment in California has soared,
passing a record 12%. Hundreds of thousands of homes
were repossessed in the past, forcing many citizens into the streets. Hector Tobar was born in a working-class
neighborhood in LA in the '60s. He's a writer and journalist
living in the Hills, writing for the Los Angeles Times, the West Coast's most popular newspaper. This is the Mount Washington sector
of Los Angeles. A few years ago,
we had a big construction boom. People were moving
and betting on the real estate's price because it was going up
so quickly in value. Someone purchased this empty property
here next to my house and started building a home. The people who took out the original loans
to build the construction anticipated they would sell the house
at a certain price, let's say 800,000 or one million dollars. Now the house is probably worth
half a million dollars if it was complete,
so they can't afford to repay the loan. Now, it belongs to a bank. This is now one more relic,
one more ruin of the California mortgage and crisis here in front of my house. There's always a constant
homeless population. However, in a crisis like this one,
you see more and more families have lost their home. You have this new population
of people who are unemployed, people who have lost their businesses,
who are living in their cars. More often than not,
a lot of people live in their cars. That is a product
of American individualism. It's also a product
of this economic crisis where many people
have lost their sustenance. Some of those kicked out of their homes
and cast out of the Californian dream, have decided to join forces
to confront their plight together. Camps of the homeless
have sprung up in the entire state. In Visalia, in the center of the state, dozens of people have settled
along the Saint John's River. The small community, regarded as squatters
by the local sheriff, unite around the same fire
and the same faith. We're supposed to stay
in the Word of God every day. This is just
a daily scripture for the day. This is what we meditate on all-day
just word from God. It's not by what we do,
it's by your relationship with God. It's important
to support a few other people. It's how you believe. This one camp is a Christian camp. It means to live Christ-like
sharing love for others, fellow man. I'm going to just shoot a little shot
of cold water in it or sink the grounds
because this is cowboy coffee right there. -Adam.
-Yes. Do you guys like some coffee? It's good stuff, this is cowboy coffee. Life at the camp is well organized. Everyone does their share
of the daily duties. Ashley Hughes is 22,
she arrived here a month ago. She gives us a brief guided tour. We have a very interesting camp life. It's kickback. We just relax. We have camp chores,
like dishes and stuff. This is our kitchen. This is our bathroom sink
where we brush our teeth, brush our hair, and stuff like that. Our restroom is there. A lot of us bathe in the river because it's just simple. We also do have a shower over this way. There's a lot of flies
because it's still hot. Those water jugs on the floor,
we fill those with water that we heat up. We pour them over ourselves
and we get two jugs per person The first jug is to get yourself wet. Then we lather and then we rinse. That's pretty much the easy way to do it. My little area is a mess right now because I haven't cleaned,
but I live back here. This is where we sleep every night,
and it gets cold at night time because we don't
have a heater or anything. We have lots of blankets
and sleeping bags to warm us up, but we still get cold. Before finding herself on the riverbank, Ashley and her partner Seth
both had a home and a job. I worked in a coffee shop as a barista,
and I got fired from the coffee shop because my boss
couldn't afford to pay us anymore. Both of us had lost our jobs,
so we've been looking for work. We can't find any jobs because the small businesses
can't afford to hire anyone. The large businesses are hiring the people
that are extremely overqualified. I'm trying to start
a house cleaning business, but we'll see where that goes. It's hard to get started
doing anything in this time. Morning everybody. Plow it, cowboy. We were sleeping in our vehicle
for approximately two months. Every night, the police would come
and they would wake us up. They would tell us to leave, get out,
we don't want you in city limits. Go to the county. What they meant by go to the county was,
go to the river. They didn't want us in city limits. For food,
the newly impoverished camp inhabitants are obliged to rely
on the generosity of various associations and religious communities
who regularly deliver meals. An ex-soldier, Donnie Walker worked
as a construction site foreman before being laid off. He lost his apartment, too,
and found refuge here. He has since found work
as a security guard but doesn't want
to abandon his companions. Yes, I see you're doing the work that I do
in the private sector of security and it's difficult to be homeless. I go to the city and I have one job. Then when I come back
here, I'm homeless again. The general group of the people
that live in this camp are mostly couples, people who maybe don't have degrees
in any schooling. They didn't have a chance
and the only work that there is out there is like the minimum wage work,
which isn't enough to live in society. In general, this camp
is all new to the people. Maybe once before they've been homeless
once or twice, but in this immediate camp,
it's generally just people that aren't used to being homeless. It's all new to them because the economy
in California has gone down so bad that there's just no work. I'm taking this down
because this is our cross right here. This is our home and
every day we take them down. In the morning, the sheriff's department
comes and put new ones here. It's disrespectful because it's our cross
and this is our home. This isn't even a legal notice,
it's not even a legal document. They put it here to scare us, to make us insecure and uncomfortable. Every day we do the same thing,
we burn it. I bought the generator and the equipment for my house down there is where I got it. I leave it up here mostly
for the community. What movie have we decided to watch? We have 1408, two in the tent. -Let's watch 1408 babe.
-What is that? It's about a haunted hotel room. Who wants to watch 1408? Where's everybody else at? -No one is here, everybody else is gone.
-I guess we win. They are unaware
that this will be one of the last evenings the community spends together. On November 16th, 2009,
the sheriff put his threat into practice and closed down the camp
on the Saint Jones River. For more than a year now, the Golden State
has been in serious decline. The economic crisis
not only tips the most fragile over the poverty line,
but affects the lives of every single Californian. Every day, men and women
have to fight for their jobs, their salaries or welfare benefits. The recession is here and public finance
is suffering accordingly. In Sacramento,
the state's political capital, the coffers are empty. Members and guests, the governor
has arrived at the Assembly chamber. Join me in welcoming Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger. On June 2nd, 2009, the Governor
of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, called a unique meeting
of the state legislature. California's day of reckoning is here. We are in one
of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. For that reason,
and because of California's outdated and volatile tax system,
our revenues have dropped 27% from last year. Our wallet is empty, our bank is closed,
and our credit is dried up. As a consequence, California
faces a colossal $42 billion debt for a total budget of 60 million. A lot of the tax revenue
comes from property. People were buying
and selling lots of property. The property tax revenue
was funding state government. When the real estate market goes down, the funding from the property tax
goes down. Also, a lot of it comes from sales tax. When people aren't buying and selling,
the sales tax goes down. All of those things have contributed
to their being a deficit. It's very much linked to the economy,
and that's what's affected the budget. Nothing is going right for Schwarzenegger. To add to the critical economic crisis,
the Republican governor has to deal with an Assembly and Senate
with Democrat majorities. Decision-making has become
tougher process than usual. The entire nation will be watching
how we react and respond to this crisis. Last week, Paul Krugman
from The New York Times wrote that California is in a state of paralysis and that our political system
has failed to rise to the occasion. People are writing California off. They're talking
about the California dream ending. They don't believe
that we in this room have the courage and the determination
to do what needs to be done, or that the state is even manageable. In California, to approve any new tax
or change anything in the tax law, you need a vote of two thirds
of the state legislature. California has a Democratic majority,
but it's only 60%. The other 40% of the legislature
can freeze anything. You have a few radicals in Sacramento who don't want to pay
any new taxes at all, or who want to cut government spending
for the homeless and the elderly people. They want to cut it and cut it. Those radicals can decide
because they have control over that 30%
that needs to get for a law to get passed. I think Arnold Schwarzenegger
was a centrist. That was his whole reason
for being elected. Unfortunately,
he's a centrist in the Republican Party that doesn't want centrists anymore. Politically paralyzed and incapable
of voting major reforms or finding new solutions,
the state has no choice. It has to make drastic savings. The budget has been slashed,
cut by $20 billion. The immediate task before us
is to cut spending to the money that is available to us. I see the children
whose teachers will be laid off. I see Alzheimer's patients losing some
of their in-home support services. I see the firefighters
and the police officers who will lose their jobs. I see the pain in their eyes
and I hear the fear in their voice. I hear the demonstrations
outside of our capital. It's an awful feeling,
but we have no choice. His voice may have trembled,
but the former movie stars' actions were still pretty dramatic. No secretary of the administration
was spared from the terminator's cuts. Some national parks
are closed during the week. Beaches have no surveillance, leaving visitors at risk,
and health centers see longer and longer lines
forming as they tighten their belts. The main victim
of the massive cuts is education. In the United States,
states are responsible for their education system. Schwarzenegger
devoted almost half his budget to the sector, €33 billion. In 2009, this was reduced to 12. Discontent was clear
in public universities. In September,
students and teachers took to the street to protest against job losses
and increased fees, penalizing students from less privileged
backgrounds, but in vain. At the University of San Francisco,
the students and professors are bitter. Enrollment fees have risen by a third. To keep their jobs, staff members
have had to accept sacrifices. At the age of 53, Bridgette Davila
has been teaching law since 1994. At the start of the 2009 academic year, she was obliged
to reduce her teaching hours. We have something called furlough days,
and they were instituted in August. It's better than the alternative,
which is cutting people. A furlough is a day that you have off. I have a ten percent pay decrease
and I'm working ten percent. Also, it's very hard in this class where there are a lot of freshmen
and sophomores in a government class. What do I leave out? Do I leave out civil rights? Do I leave out civil liberties? What part of it do I leave out because I can't cover everything
in the same amount of time. I think I'll probably be here
another two, maybe three semesters. Then I have options
because I have a law degree so I can go back to practicing law
unlike my other colleagues with PhDs who are pretty much stuck teaching
history or English or whatever. On the other side of the campus,
students have decided to express their concern
by literally burying their public education. They celebrate La Dia de Los Muertos,
The Day of the Dead. A popular Mexican festivity. What these grays represent
is the death of our education because we have
wrestling boxes all around. These are the classes that have been cut,
and we're trying to get people aware that a lot of these classes are being cut
and it's getting away with our education. That's what we're trying to do. Brigitte de Villa
takes part in the ceremony too. One way of demonstrating
her disapproval of the budget cuts. This one is from the College
of Ethnic Studies, and it's the class on criminal justice. It's been cut because the legislature decided not to fund us
at our regular level. We've been cut back so often
that we don't even have a budget that you can run a college on. The students now
are getting very shortchanged coming now
and it takes longer to graduate. They can't get the classes
Until they're offered. They have to wait sometimes six years
so they can finally graduate. It's very sad. I went to school in the '70s. At that time we had just gotten
out of the civil rights movements, including the Chicano Movimiento,
and it was alive with possibilities. I'm the first one in my family
to ever go to college and it's because of the UC
and the CSU system. The tuition was free,
the fees were minimal and it was possible for anyone
to get an education. Now my students don't have the same thing. They're paying so much
and they have to get loans. They mortgage their future with the loans. The public universities
funeral enters into the night in the streets of San Francisco. Students and professors join
the locals in a festive homage to the dead Education, not incarceration. Education, not incarceration. Education, not incarceration. Education, not incarceration. Education, not incarceration. It means that education
should be accessible to everybody the opposite of California's vision. It was a place
where you always got taller. My father told me this in Guatemala,
he said I came here to California, and you will be taller than me
and when your children grow up, they will be taller than you
because California, the United States, makes you taller. I don't think California
is making its sons taller anymore. Californians have lost confidence
in the university system. Once lauded as a model
of social integration and betterment the proof can be seen
by crossing the bay for Berkeley regarded as the jewel
in America's public education crown. 21 Nobel Prize winners have studied here. A mark of excellence,
there is no protection from budget cuts. In 2008, Ramon Quintero decided to go back to his geography studies. For this young 30-something divorcee,
the increase in fees was a disaster. In just one year,
they rose from €4,400 to €6,400. Back in August, I was going
over my financial aid package and I noticed
that I was already in debt,$15,000. I used to live at the university built,
and since they increase the rent because of budget cuts,
and they increased tuition because of budget cuts
and the cost of living just went up but the financial aid
that I get from the state of California and the federal government
did not increase, but decreased. I did have a job, and I was working
for the transfer reentry program here, but because of the budget cuts,
I was laid off. When I came back in the fall,
I found myself unemployed. On top of everything
else that I had already mentioned. I'm applying for a job right now,
and I've been looking for a job, but it's so hard. There are 30,000 students on this campus
and they're all looking for a waiter job. With no money,
Ramon had to give up his room on campus. He's since lived
in a camping car some distance away. This is my home here in Berkeley. This is what I come every night to. The only thing that this place provides me
is a space where I can sleep for seven hours
and go back to school. If you look at this is a leak. This water is from today's rain
and it comes through here. For $1,500, this is what you get. This is supposed to be a refrigerator,
but it doesn't have any electricity, so I use it as a storage
for some food and just close. This stove right here does not work,
so I can't cook here. I use the stove to put my underwear because there's no storage room. If the number one public institution
in the country and in the flagship of the University of California system has students such as me
and under these conditions, what can someone that's ten years old
right now hope for the future? The University of California is a gem
of the United States, and the world. It's California's
one of its most precious resources. Nobel Prizes, just an amazing resource
for the state. There's a struggle taking place now
over the future of the university. Will it continue to be affordable and available to working people
in the state of California? I'm a graduate of the University
of California at Santa Cruz. Also, I have my master's degree
from the University of California, Irvine. That was the vehicle by which
anyone could enter the middle class. It's another one of those institutions
affected by this fiscal crisis that we're living through. In an attempt to balance his budget, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
has also hit the prison system. California has 33 penitentiaries,
all of them overcrowded. 167,000 are squeezed into accommodation
designed for just half that number. The overpopulation cost the state dearly. With a prison budget deficit
of one billion euros, the governor decided
to slash the rehabilitative programs. The funding was reduced
by more than a third. NGOs were the first to be affected,
such as the Amity Foundation, which organized
therapeutic community programs previously operating
in seven institutions, they were reduced to one. It's bias of rehabilitation
continues outside prisons. However, in Los Angeles
it runs a community called Amistad. One hundred and fifty seven men
and 30 women relearn how to live at liberty and attempt
to find their place in society. Discipline is strict no alcohol, no drugs. Twice a day, the students,
as they call themselves, get together to talk and listen. Good morning everybody. Good morning. If you guys may or may not know, there's been a big budget cut
in the state of California, and treatment programs in our prisons
were cut, eliminated. That equals less opportunity
for people to get their lives together. That bothers us. After morning's meeting,
the most energetic head for the basketball court
at the neighboring university. Among them is Dondi Freeman,
who joined Amistad ten months ago At the age of 49,
he has spent half his life behind bars for homicide and armed assault. We come every Saturday. It just breaks up the stress from the week because we have a lot of curriculum going. We got seminars and workshops. Every prison is the same,
I've been in solitary, I've been to Tracy and Lancaster. I've been to Donovan,
I've been to Pleasant Valley. All prisons are the same,
they're the same. They run the same way,
every prison is overcrowded today. Then Donovan,
they got beds in the day room. They got beds in the gym,
and the gym is full for recreation. It's not for people to sleep in. It's not equipped for that
and that's how a lot of people get sick. Then when you complain about it,
you get in trouble. For a long time, Dondi was a member of one of the numerous gangs
ruling over prison life. One day he decided to abandon violence
and seek redemption. They nicknamed me
and in the army, they called me Mr. Amin because I started believing
in the process. I started believing there was something
better out there in life. I just started pushing myself to God. Then when they started understanding
what the process was about, it's easy for us to get in trouble, but the hardest thing to do
is to change our lives. Changing mentality
is the first step to breaking the vicious circle of recidivism
and thus reducing prison overcrowding. This is the opinion of Doug Bond,
who watches over this haven of peace. There are studies done that say, if you go
and do the complete program inside of the prison and transition
into the community and do six months
in the residential treatment, then you have a 77% chance
of not returning to prison, whereas it's almost the exact opposite,
if the individuals do not get the in-prison treatment
along with the residential treatment. Most of our funding comes
from the California State and the Department of Corrections. We've been greatly affected
due to the cuts recently. I think it's a short-term fix
that they can cut them right now and save money with the long-term costs. The costs to society are much greater. If people aren't allowed
the opportunity to change their lives and learn how to live a new life,
that they're going to continue that cycle, going back to prison and their children,
their families and the larger community will be affected by this. Now the Roy Ashburn show. Economizing on the support
given to ex-cons is therefore counterproductive. A point of view not shared by Roy Ashburn. Every Saturday afternoon, he's presenting a highly conservative-minded talk show
on Bakersfield radio, KERN. It's interesting to me
that the same liberal politicians are completely opposed
to strong anti-crime measures when it comes to murderers and rapists. On security issues,
Roy has clear-cut views. He defends his opinions
on the political stage two. When not broadcasting on the radio, he heads to Sacramento
on Dante's state Senate costume. Rehabilitation
has not been that successful. People who have a lifetime of crime
normally don't change their ways. Some will, and we need to do
a much better job of identifying
those particular individuals who have the highest potential
for rehabilitation and to change their lifestyle
and their behavior. Again, California is so big,
we have so many people involved in the prisons
and the criminal justice system that it's extremely expensive
to try to provide education and job training and all of those services that would lead
to successful rehabilitation. To cut the program
of Amity and Donovan to save money. To save money, believe that? I'm a strong believer of
if something's working, why take it away? If it's saving lives, why take it away? I don't understand that. When I found out that they shut it down,
I cried. I cried because I know the hard work, sweat and tears that it took
to get that program up and running. I don't understand, how can you want
these men to come out of prison with a better life, and the exact thing
that's giving it to them you take away. Despite all these sacrifices, Californians have not yet reached
the end of their suffering. In 2010,
the state will still be in deficit and belts will have
to be tightened even further. Some people have alternative ideas
for saving the Californian economy. One miracle solution
is profiting from drug money. In 1996, California legalized cannabis
for therapeutic purposes for patients with cancer,
AIDS, and other diseases. Hundreds of cannabis shops
or dispensaries have sprung up on Californian shopping streets. Our first page is our hashes
and concentrates right here. Everything in this book
is going to be before tax. This is our recommendation here,
called the circle. They're all named how they are. These are going to be our prices
here after tax. Just so you know
these prices are before tax. The wall has the final price to pay. The smallest is a half-eighth,
then we have an eighth here. This is the size of an eighth, it's $44. To buy a treatment,
a cannabis patient ID card is required. About 400,000 patients
benefit from the magic passport. You can show your card at the door. It's a patient's cannabis card
of identification. I have a blind in my right eye,
I have second-degree cataracts, and it helps subside
all the pain in my eyes. It helps me to sleep. Cannabis is a beautiful thing and it just helps my whole body to relax,
what I need to relax. In reality, cannabis
is pretty much available to anyone. As for the price of a consultation,
certain doctors are disposed to prescribing it
even for a simple migraine. Marijuana for medical purposes
has today become big business. In Oakland,
the city has even imposed a sales tax and authorized the opening of a university
devoted to this miracle remedy. Over 13 weeks of evening classes
for the sum of €330, a student can learn about setting up
a lucrative cannabis business. On our mother, we're looking
at choice cuttings that will be good to propagate. You will want to start off with a top-cutting
that has good fan leaves. It leaves three to four inner nodes
that you can pick from. I take this cutting. What you want to do first is to relieve the plant
of some of the leaf mass. I grab it close to the bottom
and not bending the stem, as I'm trying to stick it into my cube. You would spray your cutting with water
and place that on top. I'm not sure of what I expected. I just came into it with open eyes to learn as much
as I can about the industry, because I see a potential for profit and a business opportunity in this. I see more opportunities currently
than there is in my field. Definitely with the recession,
construction is pretty much dried up. I want to open up a cannabis club. I'm coming up on a considerable amount
of money and that's the only thing I've wanted to do in my whole life. Even when I was a kid,
I've been smoking for a long time. It's similar to liquor licensing. You might see certain states, Texas
wet and dry. You can go to one county and buy it
and you go into another and you can't. The cannabis schools president
is Richard Lee, himself a consumer for medical reasons
and the owner of a dispensary. A few months ago, Richard
launched a referendum petition in 2010 aimed
at legalizing the sale of cannabis to everyone and not only patients. To this day,
he has gathered some 350,000 signatures. Like with tobacco and alcohol, the taxes raised could be used
to swell the state's coffers. We think taxing and regulating cannabis
could help the economy in two ways. One, from the tax revenue, and two,
from the savings on law enforcement. The California Board of Equalization
just did a report where they estimated
the state would bring in about 1.5 billion dollars from tax revenue
and also would save about one billion dollars
from law enforcement and prison costs that wouldn't be needed anymore. That's $2.5 billion right there. Then there would also be other
indirect taxes and benefits from jobs created
and other ancillary businesses from tourism,
from hotels and things like that. We're only saying it could bring in
a couple billion dollars, but every bit
is a big step in the right direction. Then more people are gainfully employed, as opposed to costing the state money. Who knows how much money
they're going to help the government and the state in the future. Legalizing marijuana to make money,
that's the latest version of an argument to legalize marijuana. The one before,
that was for medical purposes. The original one is why people
want to smoke weed because it's part of their lifestyle. It's not a serious argument. There's still a cultural battle
at work there, because a lot of people think of marijuana
as something that reduces productivity. That would be one more sign
of a culture and decadence. That would be California
into another level of decadence if we legalized this drug. Marijuana may ease some
of the Californians' woes, but it's not enough
to heal the Golden State. As experts claim
to see a certain national recovery, it's been announced that in Sacramento, the next budget
will be €13 billion in the red. It's estimated that the decline
of the Californian empire could continue until 2014. Arnold Schwarzenegger will leave office
at the end of 2010. Contrary to his promises,
he has not been able to reform the state. Even on the brink of economic disaster,
even paralyzed politically, California still retains
a part of the dream. It is a place where there is
that entrepreneurial spirit still, and also this cultural
and personal freedom and creativity. Those are things that continue
to make California a dynamic place and an important place
in the history of the world.
