Commentary “I’m just getting off work,” a guy told me at 8:00 pm in the hotel elevator after I asked him how he was doing. “I’m a crane operator—85 hours a week,” he replied when I asked about his job. There’s so much construction going on in the Valley of the Sun they are shipping in workers in skilled trades, putting them up hotels, feeding them, and paying them triple time. I didn’t ask his pay level, but it’s probably something like $200,000 a year. A trip this week to Phoenix reminded me of Southern California when I arrived there in 1987 to write editorials at the Orange County Register. In the 1980s, California grew by 6 million people, or 25 percent. It gained seven seats in the House of Representatives and seven more electoral votes in the presidential election of 1992. Now the Golden State’s luster has been tarnished. …