Laer Pearce

Laer Pearce was lucky enough to be born in California, at a naval hospital in Oakland. It was torn down to make room for a real estate development that went bankrupt. He was almost born on the Oakland Bay Bridge, which was damaged in an earthquake. It took California some 20 years to repair it - with plenty of incompetence and scandal in the mix.

Maybe that's what drove him to write "Crazifornia: Tales from the Tarnished State." More likely, though, it's the 30 years he's spent hacking away at California's regulatory jungle for the businesses and municipal governments his public affairs firm represents.

One of his three daughters has already fled California for saner climes. He and his wife sometimes think about leaving, only to realize he's unemployable in any state that functions well enough to be worth moving to. And anyway, the weather's fabulous.