California far outpaces America’s 49 other states in wealth, economic output, and innovation spending (by some estimates, nearly one-third of the nation’s overall R&D spending).

Among the more curious comments of late by a California politician is the recent assessment of next year’s Democratic presidential primary in the Golden State, courtesy of Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti.

Last month, California governor Gavin Newsom announced that California’s ill-fated high-speed rail project would be scaled back enormously due to cost overruns and delays. The original project, which had an initial cost estimate of $33 billion, would have provided high-speed train service (speeds on some segments in excess of 200 miles per hour) beginning in San Diego, traveling through Los Angeles and the Central Valley up to the state capital of Sacramento, and would have also included the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley. With possible federal contributions, this idea sounded promising enough that nearly 53 percent of California taxpayers voted for a $9 billion bond in 2008 to help finance it.

While the big California news this past weekend was the 91st annual Academy Awards, a different kind of history occurred in the northern part of America’s nation-state.