The Los Angeles-based Economic Roundtable has written a report called "Ebbing Tides in the Golden State" which can be downloaded from economicrt.org. The underwriter of the report was the California Endowment, and the authors are Daniel Flaming (president of the Roundtable), Patrick Burns, and Michael Matsunaga.

The report is completely intellectually dishonest, failing to note the role that massive immigration - especially of the illegal variety - has played in California's problems. But, that's not all: the report is also anti-American. That's certainly a strong term, but when they trumpet illegal aliens taking jobs from U.S. citizens, it's justified. More on both below.

From their summary:

Unemployment, which counts only unemployed workers who are actively seeking jobs, is projected to peak at 12.2 percent in Los Angeles County and 11.7 percent in California. Under-employment, which is a truer measure of job loss because it includes not only unemployed workers but also discouraged workers, conditionally interested workers and workers who have been involuntarily reduced to part-time employment, is projected to peak at 18 percent in LA and just over 17 percent in California.

What they want is discussed in their press release (link), which has this Flaming quote:

"Short-sighted arbitrary budget reductions are likely to create a wide swath of social damage that will cause far more lasting harm to the economy and the human capital of California than intelligently designed tax increases."

Believe it or not, in the entire 120 page report, this is the only instance of "immigration" or related terms:

During the decade of the 1990s, Los Angeles had net out-migration of 1,100,000 residents who moved to other regions of the U.S. A steady flow of hopeful, energized immigrants saved LA from the fate of having a shrinking population and economy. However, a lesser set of problems accompanied these new arrivals, including a less skilled labor force and a growing informal economy.

Obviously, the last is their euphemistic rendering of the truth: they're mostly or almost all illegal aliens. In fact, even Flaming has admitted as much. And, they have their cause and effect confused: to some extent, the reason many Americans moved out was because too many "hopeful, energized immigrants" were moving in. The easy, "liberal" answer to that would be to blame racism. While that might have been true in some cases, it's also rather difficult to find too many white "liberals" living in unsafe areas. And, in Los Angeles, areas full of "hopeful, energized immigrants" are almost all high-crime.

Compare their single mention of immigration to the Public Policy Institute of California report available at ppic.org/content/pubs/cacounts/CC_506DRCC.pdf:

Although California is home to many high-income immigrants, the bulk of immigrants tend to have relatively low incomes and, thus, immigration increases the number of low-income Californians.

Returing to the Roundtable report, here's the anti-American part:

Unemployment rates for African Americans and Latinos are 57 percent and 14 percent higher, respectively, than overall unemployment rates in both Los Angeles County and California. This means that at the trough of the recession there will be 19 percent unemployment and 24 percent under-employment among African Americans in Los Angeles County, with corresponding rates of 18 and 24 percent in California. And there will be 14 percent unemployment and 18 percent under-employment among Latinos in LA, with corresponding rates of 13 percent and 18 percent in California... Decreasing disparities in unemployment rates between Latinos and whites indicate some degree of progress, but the quality and sustainability of these jobs are in question, particularly since the unemployment rate for Latinos shot up to above 12 percent in both the County and State in December 2008. This sudden increase in joblessness may well reflect the tenuous labor market connections of many Latino workers, specifically workers holding the informal and contingent jobs that have flourished since the 1990s.

In other words, the last set of workers they mention are mostly or almost all illegal aliens. And, since almost all blacks and the great majority of whites in California are citizens while a good number of Latinos are illegal aliens, their idea of "progress" equates to illegal aliens taking jobs that Americans could be doing.