Good morning.

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David Crane, a lecturer at Stanford and a former adviser to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, is the bringer of bad news. For more than a decade, Mr. Crane, a San Francisco Democrat and former investment banker, has been forecasting a disaster in California’s pension system. He was removed from the board of directors that oversees benefits paid to California’s teachers after repeatedly warning that the fund’s investment assumptions were too rosy, and since then has continued to scream about a coming financial reckoning.

Today, in addition to teaching at Stanford, Mr. Crane is the president of Govern for California, a network of political donors whose members include the former mayor of Los Angeles, Richard Riordan, and the Oakland A’s owner John Fisher, and supports candidates from both parties – so long as they are willing to tackle important but politically unpopular issues like pension and education reform.

Below is a condensed interview with Mr. Crane:

Who/what is Govern for California?

It’s a network of about 300 donors and growing, and they are Democrats, Republicans and Independents. The legislature is a coequal branch of government and governors can’t do anything without them. Generally speaking, the only people who know the names of California state legislators are people who feed at the trough or benefit from new legislation. The people who get screwed are everyone else in California.