Remember the old adage that beggars cannot be choosers?

It's worth recalling because of recent statements from Gov. Jerry Brown and other politicians, and the policies they are enacting that affect California's recession-wracked economy.

This has been the worst recession since the Great Depression, thanks largely to our central role in the unsustainable housing bubble, and it has erased well over a million jobs.

Although there are hints of an anemic recovery, our unemployment rate continues to hover around 12 percent, the second highest in the nation. We've borrowed nearly $10 billion from the federal government to keep unemployment insurance checks flowing, and state and local governments face yawning budget deficits.

The current state budget is "balanced" on the assumption that an extra $4 billion in revenue will materialize. So far it hasn't. We're spending twice the national average, proportionately, to service what Brown calls the "wall of debt" that the state foolishly amassed.

One would think that Brown, et al., would be devoting all of their time to attracting the private investment needed to put Californians back to work.

They would be overhauling our tax system and regulatory mechanisms to make the state more investment-friendly. They would be putting education reform and job-training on the front burner.

But Brown and other politicians are insisting that prosperity will emerge from the so-called green economy, claiming that our aggressive anti-global warming program will spur a new wave of job-creating technological innovation.

In the short run, at least, the new cap-and-trade regulation of carbon emissions is more likely to push our already high costs of doing business, such as utility rates, even higher and perhaps retard recovery.

And at the moment, the green economy exists mostly on paper and is highly dependent on subsidies from stone-broke state and federal governments.

Nevertheless, our leaders are betting our future on its becoming a reality. In effect, they are gambling with the lives of not only the current unemployed but the millions of kids who will be entering the job market.

Tellingly, the new law that empowers Brown to fast-track big projects through the environmental review process is limited to those deemed to be "clean and green."

Implicitly, an old-fashioned industrial operation that employs blue-collar workers – a steel mill, an oil refinery or a new aircraft factory, for instance – would have to go through the full-bore, years-long regulatory process for which California has become famous, or infamous, regardless of how many jobs it would create.

Maybe Californians could once be so choosy. But with millions of us still unemployed and recovery scant at best, can we beggars afford to be choosers?

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Call The Bee's Dan Walters, (916) 321-1195. Back columns, www.sacbee.com/walters

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