The first rule of holes: When you find yourself stuck in one, stop digging. It’s an axiom that’s obvious to most folks who aren’t professional politicians.
Governor Brown, however, seems determined to keep working the shovel by pushing for an extension of “temporary” tax hikes to fill the substantial hole that remains in the state’s balance sheet. Accordingly, Brown vetoed the budget passed by his own party last week.
To the governor’s credit, he correctly observed that the proposed budget “continues big deficits for years to come” and “contains legally questionable maneuvers, costly borrowing and unrealistic savings.”
Those sleazy practices have been part and parcel of what got California into its longstanding fiscal hole, but so have high taxes, excessive spending, stifling regulations, jaw-dropping public pension plans and failure to tap abundant natural resources. As Senate GOP Leader Bob Dutton observed, Californians need a budget with “meaningful pension reform, a spending limit and business-regulation relief for job creation.”
It was amusing to see a supposedly balanced budget passed in Sacramento just at the June 15 deadline. Without such a bill, according to recently passed Proposition 25, legislators would no longer receive pay for their ditch-digging accomplishments.
The governor’s veto, however, put the onus on State Controller John Chiang to decide whether or not the legislators had met their constitutional obligation. After first suggesting that he had no “authority to judge the honesty, legitimacy or viability of a budget,” Chiang eventually concluded that “the numbers” in the vetoed budget “simply did not add up.” Consequently, the man who cuts the checks ruled that representatives would be going without pay until a budget without “miscalculations” is passed.
Meanwhile, unemployment in California stands at 11.7 percent—34.5% higher than the other 49 states. A net loss of 29,000 jobs last month suggests that the slight dip in the not-so-Golden State’s unemployment rate in May was due to folks dropping out of the labor market and wasn’t a sign of recovery.
Academics and lawyers without a clue will doubtless look to schemes like abolishing death penalty trials, cutting down the prison population, or legalizing marijuana as no-pain, no-brain methods for balancing the state’s books. .
New Jersey’s Republican Governor Chris Christie takes a more sensible approach. That much-vilified chief executive recently got a budget that changed the state’s pension and benefits system for public workers passed through a Democrat-controlled Senate. If Christie manages to get that same bill through the Assembly, he will have gone a long way toward getting his state out of its fiscal hole.
On the other coast, California’s legislators just keep digging.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Friday, June 10, 2011
WHO'S THAT GRADUATION SPEAKER?
It’s commencement season. That means graduates throughout the Southland are often being treated to the predictable pop-cultural prattle of various commencement speakers.
After perusing lists of graduation presenters throughout the nation, it seems one could do a lot worse than the mostly profession-based speakers at UCSD ceremonies. One name, however, stuck out as indicative of a trend away from serious scholarship in our institutions of higher learning—David Alan Grier.
For those unfamiliar with today’s pop-cultural icons, Grier (or DAG) is a fairly articulate actor, comedian, and graduate of Yale Drama School who will be addressing some 1000 students of Thurgood Marshall College this Saturday.
Grier’s professional credits range from serious drama (David Mamet’s “Race”) to crude humor that inhabits the cultural wasteland between R-rated and NC-17. The comic’s “Phat man” character can be counted on to push the envelope of bad taste, doubtless under the brain-dead assumption that humorous skits highlighting social dysfunction (especially in the black community) have no negative effects.
Grier’s “No Child Left Behind” video is a prime example of the sophisticated corruption pioneered by Calvin Klein that combines images of children with adult sexual content that could arguably be called soft porn.
Grier is best known to the general public for his expletive-filled rant against two “Dancing With the Stars” judges after he was eliminated from the competition. An obscene comment about Sarah Palin also tarnishes DAG’s resume, as well as the following depraved remark about McCain’s handling of Palin as his running-mate: “John McCain, your pimp hand has gone soft.”
After perusing Grier’s Internet reflections, a few serious, I have little doubt that his diploma-day ruminations (and especially his selection as speaker) will do more to destroy than to improve the lives of African-Americans.
Grier’s role as commencement day speaker is unfortunately consistent with the half-century decline in academic standards recently asserted by UC Santa Barbara Professor Philip Babcock and UC Riverside Professor Mindy Marks. The principal evidence for this regression is evidence of a huge decline in study time for full-time students “from twenty-four hours per week in 1961 to fourteen hours per week in 2003.” .
The researchers considered various explanations for this data (like shifting school demographics and better technology) but found an erosion in academic standards the most compelling explanation. The tapping of David Alan Grier for commencement duties is at least corroborative anecdotal evidence for their hypothesis.
By contrast, State Senator Bill Emmerson encouraged graduates of Mt. San Jacinto College to work hard and set challenging goals within a difficult and competitive environment—all in about 635 words. No harm there.
After perusing lists of graduation presenters throughout the nation, it seems one could do a lot worse than the mostly profession-based speakers at UCSD ceremonies. One name, however, stuck out as indicative of a trend away from serious scholarship in our institutions of higher learning—David Alan Grier.
For those unfamiliar with today’s pop-cultural icons, Grier (or DAG) is a fairly articulate actor, comedian, and graduate of Yale Drama School who will be addressing some 1000 students of Thurgood Marshall College this Saturday.
Grier’s professional credits range from serious drama (David Mamet’s “Race”) to crude humor that inhabits the cultural wasteland between R-rated and NC-17. The comic’s “Phat man” character can be counted on to push the envelope of bad taste, doubtless under the brain-dead assumption that humorous skits highlighting social dysfunction (especially in the black community) have no negative effects.
Grier’s “No Child Left Behind” video is a prime example of the sophisticated corruption pioneered by Calvin Klein that combines images of children with adult sexual content that could arguably be called soft porn.
Grier is best known to the general public for his expletive-filled rant against two “Dancing With the Stars” judges after he was eliminated from the competition. An obscene comment about Sarah Palin also tarnishes DAG’s resume, as well as the following depraved remark about McCain’s handling of Palin as his running-mate: “John McCain, your pimp hand has gone soft.”
After perusing Grier’s Internet reflections, a few serious, I have little doubt that his diploma-day ruminations (and especially his selection as speaker) will do more to destroy than to improve the lives of African-Americans.
Grier’s role as commencement day speaker is unfortunately consistent with the half-century decline in academic standards recently asserted by UC Santa Barbara Professor Philip Babcock and UC Riverside Professor Mindy Marks. The principal evidence for this regression is evidence of a huge decline in study time for full-time students “from twenty-four hours per week in 1961 to fourteen hours per week in 2003.” .
The researchers considered various explanations for this data (like shifting school demographics and better technology) but found an erosion in academic standards the most compelling explanation. The tapping of David Alan Grier for commencement duties is at least corroborative anecdotal evidence for their hypothesis.
By contrast, State Senator Bill Emmerson encouraged graduates of Mt. San Jacinto College to work hard and set challenging goals within a difficult and competitive environment—all in about 635 words. No harm there.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
WALMART, GOVMART, AND MEASURE C
In 2006, journalist Robert Samuelson noted that Democratic politicians had adopted a new corporate bete noire, Walmart. Sam Walton’s retail giant was displacing Exxon Mobil and Microsoft as the villain du jour for business-loathing do-gooders.
As a thought experiment, Samuelson suggested that critics should simply nationalize the company and double wages that then averaged about 50% above the national minimum wage.
Walmart, of course, would no longer exist as a profit-making, tax-paying enterprise. Instead, it would become another money-losing conduit through which political patronage would be dispensed and tax dollars redistributed.
Politicians would “find unending opportunities for grandstanding and meddling. Does Wal-Mart import too much from China? Order it to cut back… Are its stores ugly? Appoint architectural advisers.”
Govmart, in other words, would deliver countless payoffs to favored constituencies and few, if any, low prices and products to consumers in general. Samuelson might also have noted that this new monstrosity would be a retail version of California’s government—providing sweetheart deals for its public employees and to unions with political clout.
As currently organized, Walmart not only offers low prices, it also exerts price pressure on other businesses. One consulting firm calculated that the company’s influence lowered consumer prices by a total of 3.1 percent between 1985 and 2004. Today Walmart, with 1.4 million employees in the U.S., is the nation’s largest private job-provider.
Critics contend that the company’s success is actually government-subsidized because a significant percentage of Walmart employees receive public benefits like foodstamps. A more reasonable economic analysis would ask how many more Americans would be unemployed or more dependent on welfare were it not for the jobs Walmart creates and for the money saved by consumers who can then purchase additional items.
On June 7, voters in Menifee will have an opportunity to say “yes” or “no” to Walmart and several other businesses that hope to occupy a shopping center at the northwest corner of I-215 and Scott Rd.
The most compelling arguments against expansion (and Measure C) are the lack of adequate roadways in the area and the absence of a clear plan for generating the revenue that’s needed for construction.
Supporters of Measure C argue that infrastructure funds largely depend on the additional tax revenues that new businesses (especially Walmart) can generate.
This municipal decision should, I think, be based primarily on these issues: infrastructure, jobs, tax revenues, and the desirability (or not) of new businesses in Menifee. The decision should not be based on the corporate hatred fostered by politicians and their union allies who see Walmart’s employee pool as a potential boon to themselves and their very political coffers.
As a thought experiment, Samuelson suggested that critics should simply nationalize the company and double wages that then averaged about 50% above the national minimum wage.
Walmart, of course, would no longer exist as a profit-making, tax-paying enterprise. Instead, it would become another money-losing conduit through which political patronage would be dispensed and tax dollars redistributed.
Politicians would “find unending opportunities for grandstanding and meddling. Does Wal-Mart import too much from China? Order it to cut back… Are its stores ugly? Appoint architectural advisers.”
Govmart, in other words, would deliver countless payoffs to favored constituencies and few, if any, low prices and products to consumers in general. Samuelson might also have noted that this new monstrosity would be a retail version of California’s government—providing sweetheart deals for its public employees and to unions with political clout.
As currently organized, Walmart not only offers low prices, it also exerts price pressure on other businesses. One consulting firm calculated that the company’s influence lowered consumer prices by a total of 3.1 percent between 1985 and 2004. Today Walmart, with 1.4 million employees in the U.S., is the nation’s largest private job-provider.
Critics contend that the company’s success is actually government-subsidized because a significant percentage of Walmart employees receive public benefits like foodstamps. A more reasonable economic analysis would ask how many more Americans would be unemployed or more dependent on welfare were it not for the jobs Walmart creates and for the money saved by consumers who can then purchase additional items.
On June 7, voters in Menifee will have an opportunity to say “yes” or “no” to Walmart and several other businesses that hope to occupy a shopping center at the northwest corner of I-215 and Scott Rd.
The most compelling arguments against expansion (and Measure C) are the lack of adequate roadways in the area and the absence of a clear plan for generating the revenue that’s needed for construction.
Supporters of Measure C argue that infrastructure funds largely depend on the additional tax revenues that new businesses (especially Walmart) can generate.
This municipal decision should, I think, be based primarily on these issues: infrastructure, jobs, tax revenues, and the desirability (or not) of new businesses in Menifee. The decision should not be based on the corporate hatred fostered by politicians and their union allies who see Walmart’s employee pool as a potential boon to themselves and their very political coffers.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
ATLASES SHRUG OFF CALIFORNIA
The Edwards Cinema complex in San Marcos shrugged off “Atlas…” last week. Before its run was finished, however, I caught a Tuesday matinee performance. After three weeks the flick attracted an audience of perhaps a dozen souls.
Overall, the film version of Ayn Rand’s classic novel has grossed a bit more than four million dollars—not too bad for a movie that opened in only 299 theaters.
Dramatically speaking, one could quibble with various aspects of the production, as P.J. O’Rourke does, somewhat reluctantly, in his Wall Street Journal blog review. What is not open to serious debate is that the film’s philosophical premise represents a voice in the intellectual wilderness of Hollywood and California. After all, when was the last time powerful California politicians or a major studio script portrayed corporate leaders as heroic?
“Atlas Shrugged” has two such protagonists, one a shapely railroad magnate and another a steel manufacturer forced by cynical politicians to divest his holdings in other industries. In addition, the film’s take on the way sheer envy and the lust for political power utilize concepts like “fairness” to accomplish their sordid ends hits very close to the truth—a fact that explains the avalanche of negative reviews (most dressed in dramatic garb) that have been issued by mainstream media elites.
Currently California, which sports a 12% unemployment rate, provides a real time illustration of Rand’s novel by vilifying “greedy” businesses and driving various “Atlases” to flee the state or begin operations elsewhere. All this has been done in the name of “fairness” or for the sake of a dogmatic green ideology.
The recent decision by Obama’s National Labor Relations Board to file a complaint against Boeing Corporation for planning to open a facility in right-to-work South Carolina must have been music to the ears of Senator Barbara Boxer and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—politicians whose Sacramento allies continue to pass laws that have transformed the Golden State into one of the most business-hostile environments in the nation.
The logic behind this perverse sentiment is that government-heavy states will benefit if corporate property rights are limited for “the greater good”—thus minimizing competition between states. In short, if all states are run as irresponsibly as California (with huge public employee pensions, absurdly restrictive environmental regulations, and generous welfare benefits for residents and illegals) Californians will benefit.
The more likely result is that the entire country will start to resemble California and that enterprise and tax revenues nationwide will dwindle.
As of this writing “Atlas Shrugged” was still showing at Horton Plaza in San Diego and in Riverside’s Mission Grove Theaters.
Overall, the film version of Ayn Rand’s classic novel has grossed a bit more than four million dollars—not too bad for a movie that opened in only 299 theaters.
Dramatically speaking, one could quibble with various aspects of the production, as P.J. O’Rourke does, somewhat reluctantly, in his Wall Street Journal blog review. What is not open to serious debate is that the film’s philosophical premise represents a voice in the intellectual wilderness of Hollywood and California. After all, when was the last time powerful California politicians or a major studio script portrayed corporate leaders as heroic?
“Atlas Shrugged” has two such protagonists, one a shapely railroad magnate and another a steel manufacturer forced by cynical politicians to divest his holdings in other industries. In addition, the film’s take on the way sheer envy and the lust for political power utilize concepts like “fairness” to accomplish their sordid ends hits very close to the truth—a fact that explains the avalanche of negative reviews (most dressed in dramatic garb) that have been issued by mainstream media elites.
Currently California, which sports a 12% unemployment rate, provides a real time illustration of Rand’s novel by vilifying “greedy” businesses and driving various “Atlases” to flee the state or begin operations elsewhere. All this has been done in the name of “fairness” or for the sake of a dogmatic green ideology.
The recent decision by Obama’s National Labor Relations Board to file a complaint against Boeing Corporation for planning to open a facility in right-to-work South Carolina must have been music to the ears of Senator Barbara Boxer and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—politicians whose Sacramento allies continue to pass laws that have transformed the Golden State into one of the most business-hostile environments in the nation.
The logic behind this perverse sentiment is that government-heavy states will benefit if corporate property rights are limited for “the greater good”—thus minimizing competition between states. In short, if all states are run as irresponsibly as California (with huge public employee pensions, absurdly restrictive environmental regulations, and generous welfare benefits for residents and illegals) Californians will benefit.
The more likely result is that the entire country will start to resemble California and that enterprise and tax revenues nationwide will dwindle.
As of this writing “Atlas Shrugged” was still showing at Horton Plaza in San Diego and in Riverside’s Mission Grove Theaters.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
"THE OLD BALL GAME" NO MORE
“It is extremely unfortunate that this incident took place on what was otherwise a great day at Dodger Stadium…”
This obtuse statement by Dodger management after the brutal beating of Giants fan Bryan Stow in the stadium parking lot is reminiscent of the cruel joke about Lincoln’s assassination at Ford’s Theater: “Mrs. Lincoln, aside from the shooting, how was the play?”
Meanwhile, Stow remains in a coma, and his two children are uncertain if their father will ever be able to give them another hug.
Dodger damage control includes appointing former L.A. police chief Bill Bratton as a security consultant, reviewing policy on alcohol sizes and prices, and offering a $25,000 reward for information about the two thugs responsible for the beating—a figure currently increased to $150,000 by others..
A question seldom raised in the various articles about this incident is why hundreds of security officers should be needed at a baseball game—a question that suggests answers most folks would rather ignore.
Mayor Villaraigosa speaks nostalgically of the days when he watched the “Boys in Blue play at Chavez Ravine,” then laments obliquely that “our stadium environment has become something we can no longer be proud of”—as if the problem concerned shabby restroom facilities and not the number of individuals in cities like Los Angeles whose link to civilized behavior has become tenuous.
I can recall the days when fans often wore sportcoats and even ties to baseball games—a time when the use of crude expletives was viewed with all the disdain now reserved for smokers. It was an era prior to the cultural revolution that viewed obscene language as a badge of honor and chunked “meaningless” behavioral restrictions into a dustbin labeled “Don’t trust anyone [or anything] over thirty.”
The ultimate result of those sixties innovations is that residents in San Diego and Riverside County now have to ponder seriously the security implications of attending a major league baseball game—especially at Dodger Stadium.
A typical response to any criticism of modern American culture is that virulent discrimination existed in the past. This rationalization forges a link between the decadence of a Charlie Sheen and the just treatment of all individuals—as if progress in civil rights would have been impossible absent the abolition of traditional standards of dress, speech and deportment.
Apparently the beating of a few innocent fathers at baseball games is the price we pay for a more just society—or so the “logic” goes.
Only profound decadence, however, could seriously believe that social justice and barbaric behavior belong on the same team.
This obtuse statement by Dodger management after the brutal beating of Giants fan Bryan Stow in the stadium parking lot is reminiscent of the cruel joke about Lincoln’s assassination at Ford’s Theater: “Mrs. Lincoln, aside from the shooting, how was the play?”
Meanwhile, Stow remains in a coma, and his two children are uncertain if their father will ever be able to give them another hug.
Dodger damage control includes appointing former L.A. police chief Bill Bratton as a security consultant, reviewing policy on alcohol sizes and prices, and offering a $25,000 reward for information about the two thugs responsible for the beating—a figure currently increased to $150,000 by others..
A question seldom raised in the various articles about this incident is why hundreds of security officers should be needed at a baseball game—a question that suggests answers most folks would rather ignore.
Mayor Villaraigosa speaks nostalgically of the days when he watched the “Boys in Blue play at Chavez Ravine,” then laments obliquely that “our stadium environment has become something we can no longer be proud of”—as if the problem concerned shabby restroom facilities and not the number of individuals in cities like Los Angeles whose link to civilized behavior has become tenuous.
I can recall the days when fans often wore sportcoats and even ties to baseball games—a time when the use of crude expletives was viewed with all the disdain now reserved for smokers. It was an era prior to the cultural revolution that viewed obscene language as a badge of honor and chunked “meaningless” behavioral restrictions into a dustbin labeled “Don’t trust anyone [or anything] over thirty.”
The ultimate result of those sixties innovations is that residents in San Diego and Riverside County now have to ponder seriously the security implications of attending a major league baseball game—especially at Dodger Stadium.
A typical response to any criticism of modern American culture is that virulent discrimination existed in the past. This rationalization forges a link between the decadence of a Charlie Sheen and the just treatment of all individuals—as if progress in civil rights would have been impossible absent the abolition of traditional standards of dress, speech and deportment.
Apparently the beating of a few innocent fathers at baseball games is the price we pay for a more just society—or so the “logic” goes.
Only profound decadence, however, could seriously believe that social justice and barbaric behavior belong on the same team.
Friday, April 01, 2011
TEXAS, TAXES, AND GOVERNOR BROWN
In the Texas of my youth there was an ongoing verbal jousting match between the Lone Star State and California. One native joke had a West Coast visitor disparaging a puny Texas watermelon—only to be informed that he was eyeing a Texas-size grape. Californians responded with similar estimates of the Golden State.
In February an outsider to this interstate rivalry, journalist Mark Hemingway, composed a series of articles for the Washington Examiner that again compared Texas and California. “The result,” said Hemingway, was that “the only thing that isn’t bigger in Texas is the government.”
He also might have added that Texas’ unemployment isn’t nearly as large as California’s. Despite similarly-sized Hispanic populations (about a third) and borders with Mexico, unemployment in the Lone Star State last month was a seasonally adjusted 8.2 percent. California’s rate, by contrast, was 12.2 percent—a figure exceeded only by Nevada’s 13.6 percent.
The other side of those statistics, of course, is that employment has been growing more in Texas than in any other state. Hemingway observes that in 2008 “70% of all the jobs in the country were created in Texas” and that in the first half of 2010 the state “added 178,000 jobs—twice as many as any other state.” Meanwhile, California “lost more than 113,000 jobs from August 2009 to August 2010.”
The primary reason for this radical economic disparity, according to Hemingway, is Texas’ business-friendly climate, a state whose low-tax, right-to-work, low-regulation environment contrasts sharply with California’s environmental- and union-driven regulatory regime.
California’s Board of Barbering and Cosmetology provided Hemingway with a poster-girl example of regulators-gone-wild by “requiring African hair-braiding businesses to undergo 1600 hours of training and (to) pay $5,000 in licensing fees”—mandates so onerous that a San Diego federal judge in 1999 sided with “locktician” and SDSU Professor, JoAnne Cornwell, and struck down the requirements.
The cosmetology kerfuffle of ’99 is nothing compared to the new state cap-and-trade regulations that were recently put on hold by a state judge—not for economic reasons, mind you, but because they might cause disproportionate pollution in poor neighborhoods.
Hemingway also notes that California’s per capita state and local government spending is over 46% more than in Texas and that much of that money goes to extravagant public pensions (now underfunded by $535 billion) and to government jobs that average $90,000 a year—a third above the national average.
No wonder that California, from 2000 to 2009, “had a domestic outflow of 1.5 million people,” while 850,000 moved to Texas from other states.
And Jerry Brown’s solution to California’s chronic budget deficit? Raise taxes.
In February an outsider to this interstate rivalry, journalist Mark Hemingway, composed a series of articles for the Washington Examiner that again compared Texas and California. “The result,” said Hemingway, was that “the only thing that isn’t bigger in Texas is the government.”
He also might have added that Texas’ unemployment isn’t nearly as large as California’s. Despite similarly-sized Hispanic populations (about a third) and borders with Mexico, unemployment in the Lone Star State last month was a seasonally adjusted 8.2 percent. California’s rate, by contrast, was 12.2 percent—a figure exceeded only by Nevada’s 13.6 percent.
The other side of those statistics, of course, is that employment has been growing more in Texas than in any other state. Hemingway observes that in 2008 “70% of all the jobs in the country were created in Texas” and that in the first half of 2010 the state “added 178,000 jobs—twice as many as any other state.” Meanwhile, California “lost more than 113,000 jobs from August 2009 to August 2010.”
The primary reason for this radical economic disparity, according to Hemingway, is Texas’ business-friendly climate, a state whose low-tax, right-to-work, low-regulation environment contrasts sharply with California’s environmental- and union-driven regulatory regime.
California’s Board of Barbering and Cosmetology provided Hemingway with a poster-girl example of regulators-gone-wild by “requiring African hair-braiding businesses to undergo 1600 hours of training and (to) pay $5,000 in licensing fees”—mandates so onerous that a San Diego federal judge in 1999 sided with “locktician” and SDSU Professor, JoAnne Cornwell, and struck down the requirements.
The cosmetology kerfuffle of ’99 is nothing compared to the new state cap-and-trade regulations that were recently put on hold by a state judge—not for economic reasons, mind you, but because they might cause disproportionate pollution in poor neighborhoods.
Hemingway also notes that California’s per capita state and local government spending is over 46% more than in Texas and that much of that money goes to extravagant public pensions (now underfunded by $535 billion) and to government jobs that average $90,000 a year—a third above the national average.
No wonder that California, from 2000 to 2009, “had a domestic outflow of 1.5 million people,” while 850,000 moved to Texas from other states.
And Jerry Brown’s solution to California’s chronic budget deficit? Raise taxes.
Friday, March 18, 2011
A PLEDGE DRIVE FOR UNCLE SAM
I wasn’t exactly “shocked, shocked” when I heard fundraisers on a local public television station imploring viewers to urge Congress to support federal funding for PBS. I was, however, a bit surprised, since using public money to lobby for more government support seemed to me a clear no-no.
Apparently the “smarter-than-thou” haughtiness that oozes from NPR microphones has now infected folks charged with convincing people that a cultural Armageddon awaits if the Corporation for Public Broadcasting doesn’t get its annual federal fix of 432 million bucks.
Unfortunately for PBS aficionados, it was President Obama’s own bipartisan budget commission that last year recommended eliminating funding for CPB in view of the country’s massive 1.5 trillion dollar annual and 14 trillion dollar total debt.
Mr. Obama, however, promptly ignored the Simpson-Bowles report and continued to fund the organization headed, until her recent resignation, by former Senior New York Times Vice-President, Vivian Schiller.
Amid this budget battle, the firing of analyst Juan Williams didn’t help PBS’s insistence that it’s an impartial source for news. Williams only said out loud what almost all the flying public thinks when an individual with distinctive Muslim garb boards a flight. Under Schiller’s publicly funded regime, such honesty was a firing offense.
Recently a “news-sting” operation provided more evidence of what any politically sentient observer knows—that CPB’s culture is overwhelmingly leftist. This undercover operation involved two men posing as members of the Muslim Brotherhood and discussing a possible five-million dollar donation to NPR.
During their conversation with now-fired NPR executive Ron Schiller (no relation to Vivian), the former Schiller accused the Tea Party and the GOP of being “fanatically involved in people’s personal lives and very fundamental Christian.” Schiller also called the Tea Party “a weird evangelical kind of move(ment)” and “xenophobic”—a group filled with “white, middle-America, gun-toting” and “seriously racist, racist people.”
After gratuitously taking off his NPR hat and expressing his own “personal” views, Schiller added that Republicans have an “anti-intellectual” bent and that “liberals today might be more educated, fair and balanced than conservatives.”
These “fair and balanced” thoughts probably strike most “gun-toting” Tea Partiers in North County and Riverside County as more than a bit obtuse. Schiller’s comments certainly won’t generate many donations from that quarter during the regular appeals made by those perky PBS hostesses.
In many respects CPB is a news and education version of the corrupt relationship that now exists between public-sector unions and governments at all levels—a relationship in which, as George Will put it, “Government sits on both sides of the table.” Except in this case government sponsors a pledge drive directed at itself.
Apparently the “smarter-than-thou” haughtiness that oozes from NPR microphones has now infected folks charged with convincing people that a cultural Armageddon awaits if the Corporation for Public Broadcasting doesn’t get its annual federal fix of 432 million bucks.
Unfortunately for PBS aficionados, it was President Obama’s own bipartisan budget commission that last year recommended eliminating funding for CPB in view of the country’s massive 1.5 trillion dollar annual and 14 trillion dollar total debt.
Mr. Obama, however, promptly ignored the Simpson-Bowles report and continued to fund the organization headed, until her recent resignation, by former Senior New York Times Vice-President, Vivian Schiller.
Amid this budget battle, the firing of analyst Juan Williams didn’t help PBS’s insistence that it’s an impartial source for news. Williams only said out loud what almost all the flying public thinks when an individual with distinctive Muslim garb boards a flight. Under Schiller’s publicly funded regime, such honesty was a firing offense.
Recently a “news-sting” operation provided more evidence of what any politically sentient observer knows—that CPB’s culture is overwhelmingly leftist. This undercover operation involved two men posing as members of the Muslim Brotherhood and discussing a possible five-million dollar donation to NPR.
During their conversation with now-fired NPR executive Ron Schiller (no relation to Vivian), the former Schiller accused the Tea Party and the GOP of being “fanatically involved in people’s personal lives and very fundamental Christian.” Schiller also called the Tea Party “a weird evangelical kind of move(ment)” and “xenophobic”—a group filled with “white, middle-America, gun-toting” and “seriously racist, racist people.”
After gratuitously taking off his NPR hat and expressing his own “personal” views, Schiller added that Republicans have an “anti-intellectual” bent and that “liberals today might be more educated, fair and balanced than conservatives.”
These “fair and balanced” thoughts probably strike most “gun-toting” Tea Partiers in North County and Riverside County as more than a bit obtuse. Schiller’s comments certainly won’t generate many donations from that quarter during the regular appeals made by those perky PBS hostesses.
In many respects CPB is a news and education version of the corrupt relationship that now exists between public-sector unions and governments at all levels—a relationship in which, as George Will put it, “Government sits on both sides of the table.” Except in this case government sponsors a pledge drive directed at itself.
Friday, March 04, 2011
THE HIGH-SPEED MARKETING MACHINE
Florida governor Rick Scott recently said “No thanks” to 2.4 billion federal dollars for a high-speed rail line between Tampa and Orlando. The governor, based on empirically-grounded estimates in a Reason Foundation study, foresaw significant cost overruns and doubted the optimistic annual ridership estimate of three million.
In prior weeks governors in Wisconsin and Ohio also declined a small mountain of Federal Reserve Notes dedicated to high-speed rail in their states.
Then there’s New Jersey’s gutsy governor, Chris Christie, who last year pulled the plug on the nation’s most expensive public works project—an 8.7 billion dollar rail tunnel between New Jersey and Manhattan.
For Democrats in Sacramento and bureaucrats at the California High Speed Rail Authority, these acts of fiscal sanity only mean more “free money” for California’s massive high-speed boondoggle.
Recently, Orange County’s PBS station (in between using federal funds to urge its viewers to support more federal funding) interviewed CHSRA’s Vice-Chairman, Tom Umberg--a long-time Democrat politician who got his position at the Rail Authority thanks to former California State Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez.
Though the government-funded interviewer did have a Reason Foundation representative present for balance, Umberg was never pressed on critical points like how much the project will cost Californians, how much the drowning-in-debt feds will be chipping in, what tickets will cost, what eminent domain issues exist, and whether Umberg can point to any history of success for federal rail projects in the U.S.
Umberg doubtless enjoyed the futuristic visuals of the system as he grinned broadly, stressed his free money scenario, and said the Spanish high-speed rail system from Madrid to Barcelona was a great prototype. (Viewers of government-sponsored journalism wouldn’t know that those tickets currently cost $330, round trip. Nor would they have information about the total cost of the project or its ongoing expense in a country that currently boasts a 20% unemployment rate.)
Assemblywoman Diane Harkey did pose these hard questions in the relative privacy of a subcommittee hearing a few weeks earlier.
Harkey said that what we now have is a “high-speed marketing machine…with absolutely no accountability.” When she asked Rail Authority reps, “At what point do you determine that…a segment of this line is too expensive to build?” She says she was told, “Never.”
Harkey noted that the plan “shifts and moves continually” and that one can’t get a handle on the dollars. Current estimates range from 60 to 80 billion dollars, plus operating expenses. Harkey also observed that some money, both for capital expenses and connecting facilities, are expected to come from impacted counties.
To those questions Umberg and Sacramento Democrats reply, “All aboard.”
-------------------
Additional note from a Reader: Here's a clip from a Simpson's episode about a con man pushing residents to build a monorail in their town:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF_yLodI1CQ&feature=player_embedded
In prior weeks governors in Wisconsin and Ohio also declined a small mountain of Federal Reserve Notes dedicated to high-speed rail in their states.
Then there’s New Jersey’s gutsy governor, Chris Christie, who last year pulled the plug on the nation’s most expensive public works project—an 8.7 billion dollar rail tunnel between New Jersey and Manhattan.
For Democrats in Sacramento and bureaucrats at the California High Speed Rail Authority, these acts of fiscal sanity only mean more “free money” for California’s massive high-speed boondoggle.
Recently, Orange County’s PBS station (in between using federal funds to urge its viewers to support more federal funding) interviewed CHSRA’s Vice-Chairman, Tom Umberg--a long-time Democrat politician who got his position at the Rail Authority thanks to former California State Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez.
Though the government-funded interviewer did have a Reason Foundation representative present for balance, Umberg was never pressed on critical points like how much the project will cost Californians, how much the drowning-in-debt feds will be chipping in, what tickets will cost, what eminent domain issues exist, and whether Umberg can point to any history of success for federal rail projects in the U.S.
Umberg doubtless enjoyed the futuristic visuals of the system as he grinned broadly, stressed his free money scenario, and said the Spanish high-speed rail system from Madrid to Barcelona was a great prototype. (Viewers of government-sponsored journalism wouldn’t know that those tickets currently cost $330, round trip. Nor would they have information about the total cost of the project or its ongoing expense in a country that currently boasts a 20% unemployment rate.)
Assemblywoman Diane Harkey did pose these hard questions in the relative privacy of a subcommittee hearing a few weeks earlier.
Harkey said that what we now have is a “high-speed marketing machine…with absolutely no accountability.” When she asked Rail Authority reps, “At what point do you determine that…a segment of this line is too expensive to build?” She says she was told, “Never.”
Harkey noted that the plan “shifts and moves continually” and that one can’t get a handle on the dollars. Current estimates range from 60 to 80 billion dollars, plus operating expenses. Harkey also observed that some money, both for capital expenses and connecting facilities, are expected to come from impacted counties.
To those questions Umberg and Sacramento Democrats reply, “All aboard.”
-------------------
Additional note from a Reader: Here's a clip from a Simpson's episode about a con man pushing residents to build a monorail in their town:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF_yLodI1CQ&feature=player_embedded
Thursday, February 17, 2011
GREEN JOBS AND HOT AIR
President Obama’s recent State of the Union Address reprised the “green jobs” theme that he constantly touted in his 2008 campaign as the key to America’s economic future. Those stump speeches were regularly punctuated with references to the great job Spain was doing in this arena.
At least candidate Obama’s misguided economic assessment occurred before the release of a 2009 study by a research team from Madrid’s King Juan Carlos University that concluded Spain’s green energy programs destroyed twice as many private sector jobs as they created. A subsequent Danish study (“Wind Energy: The Case of Denmark”) reached similarly damning conclusions.
Candidate Jerry Brown could not plausibly claim ignorance of these studies when last year he employed the President’s eco-mantra in his successful gubernatorial race--promising 500,000 jobs based on various green incentives and subsidies.
Brown could, however, as Obamaphiles in the media have done, ignore or disparage the European studies. Indeed, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (the “renewables” branch of Obama's Energy Department) issued its own dismissive review of the Spanish study.
Not surprisingly, the czars, czarinas and “czardines” in the Energy Department don’t like the idea that they aren't indispensable to the welfare of the nation—and are quite likely economic liabilities.
Thus, the NREL analysis found fault with the Spanish study’s comparison of the how much it cost to create a government-subsidized green job with costs per worker in the private sector. It also saw nothing amiss with the fact that each government green job cost over $700,000.
As an Institute for Energy Research analysis sarcastically notes, NREL’s more “sophisticated” analysis assumes that money grows on trees rather than coming from private sector taxpayers.
NREL also envisions significant job growth in Spain based on their ability to export energy technologies to the rest of the world—an assumption that’s constantly applied by green politicians to California’s renewable future. Spain, in other words, will gain jobs, by becoming the “white elephant” supplier of inefficient energy technologies to gullible countries throughout the world.
One is free to pick among dueling studies, but the real proof is in the economic pudding. Spain, as of January of this year, had an unemployment rate of over 20% and rising—this after a decade of sponsoring the kind of programs about which Obama and Brown speak effusively. California, which has followed similar green policies for years, has an unemployment rate over 12%--well over the national average.
With all the green hot air blowing out of Sacramento, the Golden State may soon be replicating Spain’s even more abysmal economic performance.
At least candidate Obama’s misguided economic assessment occurred before the release of a 2009 study by a research team from Madrid’s King Juan Carlos University that concluded Spain’s green energy programs destroyed twice as many private sector jobs as they created. A subsequent Danish study (“Wind Energy: The Case of Denmark”) reached similarly damning conclusions.
Candidate Jerry Brown could not plausibly claim ignorance of these studies when last year he employed the President’s eco-mantra in his successful gubernatorial race--promising 500,000 jobs based on various green incentives and subsidies.
Brown could, however, as Obamaphiles in the media have done, ignore or disparage the European studies. Indeed, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (the “renewables” branch of Obama's Energy Department) issued its own dismissive review of the Spanish study.
Not surprisingly, the czars, czarinas and “czardines” in the Energy Department don’t like the idea that they aren't indispensable to the welfare of the nation—and are quite likely economic liabilities.
Thus, the NREL analysis found fault with the Spanish study’s comparison of the how much it cost to create a government-subsidized green job with costs per worker in the private sector. It also saw nothing amiss with the fact that each government green job cost over $700,000.
As an Institute for Energy Research analysis sarcastically notes, NREL’s more “sophisticated” analysis assumes that money grows on trees rather than coming from private sector taxpayers.
NREL also envisions significant job growth in Spain based on their ability to export energy technologies to the rest of the world—an assumption that’s constantly applied by green politicians to California’s renewable future. Spain, in other words, will gain jobs, by becoming the “white elephant” supplier of inefficient energy technologies to gullible countries throughout the world.
One is free to pick among dueling studies, but the real proof is in the economic pudding. Spain, as of January of this year, had an unemployment rate of over 20% and rising—this after a decade of sponsoring the kind of programs about which Obama and Brown speak effusively. California, which has followed similar green policies for years, has an unemployment rate over 12%--well over the national average.
With all the green hot air blowing out of Sacramento, the Golden State may soon be replicating Spain’s even more abysmal economic performance.
Thursday, February 03, 2011
MONEY DOWN A RAIL HOLE
After the President’s State of the Union address, we now know how the U.S. will deal with an annual budget deficit of 1.5 trillion dollars. (That’s $1,500,000,000,000.) The answer is “green jobs” and high-speed rail.
California, with an unemployment rate of 12.5 % and a huge, chronic budget deficit, knows all about the benefits of green jobs and high-speed rail.
A bit more than two years ago, well-funded greenies and their government cohorts convinced gullible California voters to begin the process of building a high-speed rail system that’s ultimately supposed to travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles to San Diego (via the Inland Empire).
The price tag for the general obligation bonds approved in November of 2008 was 9.95 billion dollars—a figure doubtless chosen to keep the total discreetly under double-digits and to imply that government estimates on such projects can be calculated with precision.
It is instructive, however, to recall that when Medicare cost a mere three billion dollars in 1966, an inflation-adjusted estimate for the program in 1990 was twelve billion. The actual cost in that year was 107 billion. Multiplying official estimates by 8 or 9 is often a good way to approximate a program’s actual cost.
Case in point: North County’s cute Sprinter rail system from Escondido to Oceanside was estimated in 1990 to cost about $60 million. It ended up at 477 million. Following suite, the Rail Authority estimate for the state high-speed rail system increased from 33.6 to 42.6 billion in 2009 alone. If ditzy Californians insist on throwing more money down a rail hole, the final cost, according to economic journalist Robert Samuelson, “could easily approach 200 billion.”
The benefits of such projects, by contrast, regularly run well below estimates. Sprinter daily ridership, for example, was projected at 11,000 per day—increasing to 20,000 by 2020. In fact, ridership has yet to crack a 9,000 average, even for the best months.
Similarly, fare projections for a one-way high-speed rail trip from LA to the Bay Area have already increased from $55 during the Prop 1A campaign to $105. Topping all these disappointments, Samuelson has argued that the project’s crucial environmental benefits will be minimal to nonexistent.
In the meantime, the California High-Speed Rail Authority provides on its website a glowing image of 600,000 construction-related jobs that will eventually produce a cluster of gleaming trains traveling at speeds up to 220 mph past a bevy of active wind-turbines.
The highly optimistic Rail Authority completion date for the LA-to-the-Bay backbone of the system is 2020—yet another “shovel-ready” project. And voters should know exactly what those taxpayer-funded scoopers will be shoveling.
California, with an unemployment rate of 12.5 % and a huge, chronic budget deficit, knows all about the benefits of green jobs and high-speed rail.
A bit more than two years ago, well-funded greenies and their government cohorts convinced gullible California voters to begin the process of building a high-speed rail system that’s ultimately supposed to travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles to San Diego (via the Inland Empire).
The price tag for the general obligation bonds approved in November of 2008 was 9.95 billion dollars—a figure doubtless chosen to keep the total discreetly under double-digits and to imply that government estimates on such projects can be calculated with precision.
It is instructive, however, to recall that when Medicare cost a mere three billion dollars in 1966, an inflation-adjusted estimate for the program in 1990 was twelve billion. The actual cost in that year was 107 billion. Multiplying official estimates by 8 or 9 is often a good way to approximate a program’s actual cost.
Case in point: North County’s cute Sprinter rail system from Escondido to Oceanside was estimated in 1990 to cost about $60 million. It ended up at 477 million. Following suite, the Rail Authority estimate for the state high-speed rail system increased from 33.6 to 42.6 billion in 2009 alone. If ditzy Californians insist on throwing more money down a rail hole, the final cost, according to economic journalist Robert Samuelson, “could easily approach 200 billion.”
The benefits of such projects, by contrast, regularly run well below estimates. Sprinter daily ridership, for example, was projected at 11,000 per day—increasing to 20,000 by 2020. In fact, ridership has yet to crack a 9,000 average, even for the best months.
Similarly, fare projections for a one-way high-speed rail trip from LA to the Bay Area have already increased from $55 during the Prop 1A campaign to $105. Topping all these disappointments, Samuelson has argued that the project’s crucial environmental benefits will be minimal to nonexistent.
In the meantime, the California High-Speed Rail Authority provides on its website a glowing image of 600,000 construction-related jobs that will eventually produce a cluster of gleaming trains traveling at speeds up to 220 mph past a bevy of active wind-turbines.
The highly optimistic Rail Authority completion date for the LA-to-the-Bay backbone of the system is 2020—yet another “shovel-ready” project. And voters should know exactly what those taxpayer-funded scoopers will be shoveling.
Monday, January 17, 2011
CROSSES IN JUDICIAL CROSS HAIRS
It used to be that death and taxes were the only sure things in life. To that list must now be added litigation over the Mt. Soledad cross, litigation entering its twenty-second year.
Death has claimed the original plaintiff, an atheist-veteran named Philip Paulson. Unfortunately the American Civil Liberties Union continues to devote its substantial resources toward the ultimate goal of removing all religious references and symbols from the public life of a republic founded by patriots who saw life and liberty as the gift of a Creator whose justice is praised at length on the Jefferson Memorial, a structure dedicated in 1943.
Ironically, it was Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists of Connecticut that’s been manipulated by cultural elites who’ve constructed a society more reflective of their secular, government-saturated ideals—folks who fervently wish (as a comedian recently said) that the middle of the country would disappear.
Jefferson’s letter, not the first amendment to the Constitution, mentions a “wall of separation between church and state.” It wasn’t until 1947 that those words entered American jurisprudence via an ill-reasoned opinion by Justice Hugo Black who quoted the phrase only to conclude that New Jersey’s subsidy of transportation to parochial schools didn’t violate this non-constitutional yardstick.
It wasn’t long until justices began to employ this same standard to remove all manner of religious actions and objects (from prayer to postings of the ten commandments) from government-related property and activities.
Significantly, two days after Jefferson wrote his now-famous letter, the heterodox President attended a Christian religious service (as he regularly did) that was held in the Capitol building itself—services that took place continuously till after the Civil War.
The Ninth Circuit Court recently ruled (as they did previously concerning a small Mohave Desert cross) that the cross atop Mt. Soledad is an unconstitutional infringement of the establishment clause—a section any honest analyst would acknowledge originally proscribed only the establishment of an official national church along the lines of the Church of England. States, by contrast, were free to promote their own established churches, some of which continued to exist long after the passage of the national constitution.
Today that U.S. Constitution has become, as Jefferson ominously predicted, “a thing of wax” in the hands of an arrogant judiciary. What guides these modern demigods is their own political wishes. As with abortion rights and gay marriage, these jurists regularly exhibit contempt for a Constitution designed to limit the powers of government.
With their connivance government has grown to a gargantuan size that’s inimical to the interests of that liberty our Founding Fathers wished fervently to preserve.
[Jefferson’s Danbury Letter, his attendance of church services in the Capitol building, his view (and others' views) of the first amendment establishment clause, and the use of Jefferson’s letter by Justice Hugo Black in the 1947 Everson case is discussed at length in Stephen Mansfield’s book, Ten Tortured Words.]
Death has claimed the original plaintiff, an atheist-veteran named Philip Paulson. Unfortunately the American Civil Liberties Union continues to devote its substantial resources toward the ultimate goal of removing all religious references and symbols from the public life of a republic founded by patriots who saw life and liberty as the gift of a Creator whose justice is praised at length on the Jefferson Memorial, a structure dedicated in 1943.
Ironically, it was Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists of Connecticut that’s been manipulated by cultural elites who’ve constructed a society more reflective of their secular, government-saturated ideals—folks who fervently wish (as a comedian recently said) that the middle of the country would disappear.
Jefferson’s letter, not the first amendment to the Constitution, mentions a “wall of separation between church and state.” It wasn’t until 1947 that those words entered American jurisprudence via an ill-reasoned opinion by Justice Hugo Black who quoted the phrase only to conclude that New Jersey’s subsidy of transportation to parochial schools didn’t violate this non-constitutional yardstick.
It wasn’t long until justices began to employ this same standard to remove all manner of religious actions and objects (from prayer to postings of the ten commandments) from government-related property and activities.
Significantly, two days after Jefferson wrote his now-famous letter, the heterodox President attended a Christian religious service (as he regularly did) that was held in the Capitol building itself—services that took place continuously till after the Civil War.
The Ninth Circuit Court recently ruled (as they did previously concerning a small Mohave Desert cross) that the cross atop Mt. Soledad is an unconstitutional infringement of the establishment clause—a section any honest analyst would acknowledge originally proscribed only the establishment of an official national church along the lines of the Church of England. States, by contrast, were free to promote their own established churches, some of which continued to exist long after the passage of the national constitution.
Today that U.S. Constitution has become, as Jefferson ominously predicted, “a thing of wax” in the hands of an arrogant judiciary. What guides these modern demigods is their own political wishes. As with abortion rights and gay marriage, these jurists regularly exhibit contempt for a Constitution designed to limit the powers of government.
With their connivance government has grown to a gargantuan size that’s inimical to the interests of that liberty our Founding Fathers wished fervently to preserve.
[Jefferson’s Danbury Letter, his attendance of church services in the Capitol building, his view (and others' views) of the first amendment establishment clause, and the use of Jefferson’s letter by Justice Hugo Black in the 1947 Everson case is discussed at length in Stephen Mansfield’s book, Ten Tortured Words.]
Thursday, January 06, 2011
"BONG-US" BUDGET SOLUTIONS
How to balance the state’s budget? That is the question.
The political class ensconced in Sacramento has made clear its preference—higher taxes. Unfortunately for these self-infatuated mandarins, California voters have defeated numerous revenue-enhancing propositions in recent years—most of them quite handily.
On the other hand, voters also soundly rejected the four ballot measures put forward by the original incarnation of Governor Schwarzenegger in 2005—propositions that aimed to restrain spending and curb the power of public employee unions.
In last November’s election, Californians reiterated their support for far-reaching environmental restrictions (Prop. 23) whose ultimate cost, in terms of jobs, lost revenues, and increased prices, will likely dwarf the benefits derived from allowing businesses to keep recently enacted tax breaks (Prop. 24).
Judging from this voting pattern, the mindset of Californians seems to match perfectly, and in spades, this cynical political aphorism: “What voters want from their government is more services and lower taxes.”
In the Golden State those services increasingly come in the form of regulations designed to improve “quality of life”—usually at the expense of economic development.
The most defensible examples of this quality-of-life objective are municipally-based decisions that concern zoning and construction of large retail stores in areas where traffic infrastructure is lacking and the secondary impact of mega-businesses on the surrounding area is uncertain. These are the primary concerns expressed by opponents of a Walmart superstore in Menifee.
The least defensible examples involve federal environmental regulations that put the welfare of critters like the delta smelt above that of thousands of Californians in the Central Valley who depend on its agricultural productivity for their livelihood.
Other laws in the same dubious quality-of-life category are state-based measures that may dramatically increase energy costs for the sake of global warming theories. Remarkably, these laws don’t make the slightest dent in hypothetical climate projections since China and India are (understandably) unwilling to forego the much more tangible, immediate, and certain quality of life improvements linked to economic growth.
Thus the principal benefit of these climate-based energy policies is psychological—to which benefit one may add the largely illusory promise of “green jobs.”
Given these delusional priorities, Californians may eventually embrace the city of Oakland’s solution for its financial woes, marijuana production and taxation—a “silver-bong” that’s been put on hold since the defeat of Proposition 19.
Given a choice between taxing reefer or reworking state pensions, developing oil reserves, improving the business climate and cutting state expenditures, the fraternal twin of the bogus “casino solution” looks pretty good—especially when you’re inhaling deeply.
The political class ensconced in Sacramento has made clear its preference—higher taxes. Unfortunately for these self-infatuated mandarins, California voters have defeated numerous revenue-enhancing propositions in recent years—most of them quite handily.
On the other hand, voters also soundly rejected the four ballot measures put forward by the original incarnation of Governor Schwarzenegger in 2005—propositions that aimed to restrain spending and curb the power of public employee unions.
In last November’s election, Californians reiterated their support for far-reaching environmental restrictions (Prop. 23) whose ultimate cost, in terms of jobs, lost revenues, and increased prices, will likely dwarf the benefits derived from allowing businesses to keep recently enacted tax breaks (Prop. 24).
Judging from this voting pattern, the mindset of Californians seems to match perfectly, and in spades, this cynical political aphorism: “What voters want from their government is more services and lower taxes.”
In the Golden State those services increasingly come in the form of regulations designed to improve “quality of life”—usually at the expense of economic development.
The most defensible examples of this quality-of-life objective are municipally-based decisions that concern zoning and construction of large retail stores in areas where traffic infrastructure is lacking and the secondary impact of mega-businesses on the surrounding area is uncertain. These are the primary concerns expressed by opponents of a Walmart superstore in Menifee.
The least defensible examples involve federal environmental regulations that put the welfare of critters like the delta smelt above that of thousands of Californians in the Central Valley who depend on its agricultural productivity for their livelihood.
Other laws in the same dubious quality-of-life category are state-based measures that may dramatically increase energy costs for the sake of global warming theories. Remarkably, these laws don’t make the slightest dent in hypothetical climate projections since China and India are (understandably) unwilling to forego the much more tangible, immediate, and certain quality of life improvements linked to economic growth.
Thus the principal benefit of these climate-based energy policies is psychological—to which benefit one may add the largely illusory promise of “green jobs.”
Given these delusional priorities, Californians may eventually embrace the city of Oakland’s solution for its financial woes, marijuana production and taxation—a “silver-bong” that’s been put on hold since the defeat of Proposition 19.
Given a choice between taxing reefer or reworking state pensions, developing oil reserves, improving the business climate and cutting state expenditures, the fraternal twin of the bogus “casino solution” looks pretty good—especially when you’re inhaling deeply.
Monday, December 20, 2010
MAYOR VILLARAIGOSA SEES THE LIGHT ON TEACHER UNIONS?
An unexpected Christmas present for California’s school children came two weeks early when Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in an address to state leaders declared the union leadership of United Teachers of Los Angeles an “unwavering roadblock to reform.”
The mayor acknowledged that his own career included stints as a legislative advocate for the California Teachers Association and as a union organizer for UTLA. Yet facing schools that have become, in the mayor’s words, “drop-out factories” comprised mostly of Latino and African-American students, Villaraigosa grew a spine that probably signals his belief that more political mileage can be derived from shifting his allegiance away from teachers unions and toward students and their disenchanted parents.
While the mayor mentioned the predictable liberal litany of things that harm California’s public education system—inadequate funding and the under-representation of Latinos and African-Americans in the University of California system—his fire was directed primarily at UTLA as “the most powerful defenders of the status quo.”
The mayor noted that UTLA had fought against the city’s “Public School Choice program that is now allowing non-profits, charters, teacher groups—anyone with a proven track record of success—to compete to run new or failing schools.”
The fact that only 50 “choice” schools are anticipated for 2012 in the huge Los Angeles district shows the general success of UTLA in maintaining a stranglehold on the area’s K-12 system. And no wonder. Comparisons with charter schools are deadly for their bureaucratic, union-based counterparts—as Stanford’s Caroline Hoxby and Harvard’s Tom Kane have shown in their analyses of charter students in New York City and Boston.
Villaraigosa went on to note the passage of legislation in Sacramento that allows communities to shut down or take over failing schools based on petitions signed by a majority of parents. According to his honor, “At every step of the way...UTLA was there to fight against the change and slow the pace of reform.
What is true of UTLA is also true of the California Teachers Association and its local affiliates. As Michael Piscal of the Inner City Education Foundation noted in the summer of 2007, “I’m a Democrat, but, overall, I’m appalled by the power of the CTA and how it wants to stop charters.”
Whether Villaraigosa and other Democrats are willing to take this reformist rhetoric about the tenure-driven “dance of the lemons” to the next level is uncertain. A key indicator will be whether the mayor puts merit pay, parental empowerment, and placing quality teachers in every classroom above the union-driven insistence on more pay and smaller classrooms—“reforms” that not coincidentally increase union membership, dues, and power.
The mayor acknowledged that his own career included stints as a legislative advocate for the California Teachers Association and as a union organizer for UTLA. Yet facing schools that have become, in the mayor’s words, “drop-out factories” comprised mostly of Latino and African-American students, Villaraigosa grew a spine that probably signals his belief that more political mileage can be derived from shifting his allegiance away from teachers unions and toward students and their disenchanted parents.
While the mayor mentioned the predictable liberal litany of things that harm California’s public education system—inadequate funding and the under-representation of Latinos and African-Americans in the University of California system—his fire was directed primarily at UTLA as “the most powerful defenders of the status quo.”
The mayor noted that UTLA had fought against the city’s “Public School Choice program that is now allowing non-profits, charters, teacher groups—anyone with a proven track record of success—to compete to run new or failing schools.”
The fact that only 50 “choice” schools are anticipated for 2012 in the huge Los Angeles district shows the general success of UTLA in maintaining a stranglehold on the area’s K-12 system. And no wonder. Comparisons with charter schools are deadly for their bureaucratic, union-based counterparts—as Stanford’s Caroline Hoxby and Harvard’s Tom Kane have shown in their analyses of charter students in New York City and Boston.
Villaraigosa went on to note the passage of legislation in Sacramento that allows communities to shut down or take over failing schools based on petitions signed by a majority of parents. According to his honor, “At every step of the way...UTLA was there to fight against the change and slow the pace of reform.
What is true of UTLA is also true of the California Teachers Association and its local affiliates. As Michael Piscal of the Inner City Education Foundation noted in the summer of 2007, “I’m a Democrat, but, overall, I’m appalled by the power of the CTA and how it wants to stop charters.”
Whether Villaraigosa and other Democrats are willing to take this reformist rhetoric about the tenure-driven “dance of the lemons” to the next level is uncertain. A key indicator will be whether the mayor puts merit pay, parental empowerment, and placing quality teachers in every classroom above the union-driven insistence on more pay and smaller classrooms—“reforms” that not coincidentally increase union membership, dues, and power.
Thursday, December 09, 2010
BLUE STATE DEMOGRAPIC DREAMS
Near the end of a recent column about the November election I noted that the power of public employee unions and a seismic demographic shift have made California the bluest of blue states. That demographic trembler merits closer attention.
According to data gathered by the Public Policy Institute of California, in 1970 almost 80% of the state’s population was classified as white. A bit over 10% was Hispanic, and most of the rest of the Golden State’s residents were African-American or Asian.
Fast-forward to 1990 (after the immigration amnesty of 1986) and the Census Bureau identified a full quarter of the state’s population as Hispanic—over seven and half million of the state’s 30 million total.
The bureau’s 2009 estimate puts the Hispanic percentage near 37 and the white, non-Hispanic figure at 41 per cent--numbers that prompted the PPIC to label California a “Minority Majority” state.
Nothing but a continuation of this numerical trend is anticipated for the future--based on immigration data, birth rates, and figures fingering the folks moving elsewhere.
The political result of this population shift is that a state that voted nine times for Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon just re-elected Barbara Boxer to her fourth Senate term by an overwhelming majority—despite an unemployment rate that stands above 12%.
California voters also returned Jerry Brown to the Governor’s Mansion where he is likely to sign the “Dream Act” bill that Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed twice.
That bill allows financial aid for higher education to go to “undocumented students” who have completed three years of high school in the state and possess a high school diploma or GED. The proposal, however, is only a minor immigration magnet compared to the Dream Act that Sen. Harry Reid is pushing in Washington D.C.
As currently configured, this legislation not only provides an educational or military pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants up to the age of sixteen, it also offers a green-card reward for family members who brought them here illegally—a bonanza that eventually extends even to relatives of the adult lawbreakers.
In short, what is portrayed as a bill specifically targeting educational opportunities for youngsters dragged illegally into this country as small children is, in fact, an attempt by open-borders politicians to cram as many Democrat-leaning voters into the country as possible.
A more narrowly tailored bill tied to strict border enforcement would deserve serious consideration. But legislation that excuses fraudulent applications and rewards even the relatives of adult scofflaws is primarily designed to turn every state into California.
But who then would pay for California’s public union pensions?
According to data gathered by the Public Policy Institute of California, in 1970 almost 80% of the state’s population was classified as white. A bit over 10% was Hispanic, and most of the rest of the Golden State’s residents were African-American or Asian.
Fast-forward to 1990 (after the immigration amnesty of 1986) and the Census Bureau identified a full quarter of the state’s population as Hispanic—over seven and half million of the state’s 30 million total.
The bureau’s 2009 estimate puts the Hispanic percentage near 37 and the white, non-Hispanic figure at 41 per cent--numbers that prompted the PPIC to label California a “Minority Majority” state.
Nothing but a continuation of this numerical trend is anticipated for the future--based on immigration data, birth rates, and figures fingering the folks moving elsewhere.
The political result of this population shift is that a state that voted nine times for Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon just re-elected Barbara Boxer to her fourth Senate term by an overwhelming majority—despite an unemployment rate that stands above 12%.
California voters also returned Jerry Brown to the Governor’s Mansion where he is likely to sign the “Dream Act” bill that Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed twice.
That bill allows financial aid for higher education to go to “undocumented students” who have completed three years of high school in the state and possess a high school diploma or GED. The proposal, however, is only a minor immigration magnet compared to the Dream Act that Sen. Harry Reid is pushing in Washington D.C.
As currently configured, this legislation not only provides an educational or military pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants up to the age of sixteen, it also offers a green-card reward for family members who brought them here illegally—a bonanza that eventually extends even to relatives of the adult lawbreakers.
In short, what is portrayed as a bill specifically targeting educational opportunities for youngsters dragged illegally into this country as small children is, in fact, an attempt by open-borders politicians to cram as many Democrat-leaning voters into the country as possible.
A more narrowly tailored bill tied to strict border enforcement would deserve serious consideration. But legislation that excuses fraudulent applications and rewards even the relatives of adult scofflaws is primarily designed to turn every state into California.
But who then would pay for California’s public union pensions?
Friday, November 26, 2010
ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE FLYERS
Turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce and butter rolls weren’t the only things associated with Thanksgiving this year. For thousands of air travelers random pat-downs and revealing body scans were put on the menu beside the partial disrobing that is standard fare for the Transportation Security Administration.
A couple of weeks prior to the holiday rush at San Diego’s Lindbergh Field an Oceanside resident named John Tyner caused significant TSA consternation when he refused the newly enhanced security measure that puts thinly-gloved hands in close proximity to what used to be called “the family jewels.” Tyner used a less exalted euphemism—“my junk.”
Tyner recorded this encounter on his cell-phone—an essentially audio reproduction that captures most of the exchanges between him and airport security personnel.
On the one hand you have Tyner—an opinionated fellow who previously checked TSA Internet information to determine (mistakenly, as it turned out) that San Diego International Airport didn’t yet have the vivid-image x-ray machines about which he had health and privacy concerns.
On the other you have TSA officials who go strictly by the book and can’t fathom a person’s unwillingness to comply with a “groin check” of his “inner thigh”—“two times in the front and two times in the back.” Tyner’s comment to his pat-down professional (“If you touch my junk, I’m gonna have you arrested.”) was greeted as akin to a remark about exploding loafers.
The stand-off between TSA and an American citizen unwilling to acquiesce to the latest indignity airline passengers are obliged to endure resulted in Tyner first being told to leave the airport and later advised that he faced a $10,000 fine for leaving without submitting to security procedures.
Apparently the unpromulgated law of the skies is that once a traveler enters the security area, the process must be completed to the satisfaction of TSA—or else. Thus, it would be wise to post large signs at security entrances that apprise folks of this crucial point of no return--something like “Abandon all rights ye who enter here.”
A recent CBS poll provides a countervailing perspective. This random sample of 1,137 adults found that 80% of Americans favor the use of full-body scanners at airports. The poll didn’t ask about “groin checks” or say how many respondents were frequent fliers.
More to the point, over 50% opposed any form of ethnic profiling for security purposes. Apparently these PC clones of “The View” favor the bizarre theatrical performance whereby screaming three-year-olds and immobile grandmothers are subjected to needless and increasingly invasive indignities under the absurd assumption that all terrorists are created equal.
A couple of weeks prior to the holiday rush at San Diego’s Lindbergh Field an Oceanside resident named John Tyner caused significant TSA consternation when he refused the newly enhanced security measure that puts thinly-gloved hands in close proximity to what used to be called “the family jewels.” Tyner used a less exalted euphemism—“my junk.”
Tyner recorded this encounter on his cell-phone—an essentially audio reproduction that captures most of the exchanges between him and airport security personnel.
On the one hand you have Tyner—an opinionated fellow who previously checked TSA Internet information to determine (mistakenly, as it turned out) that San Diego International Airport didn’t yet have the vivid-image x-ray machines about which he had health and privacy concerns.
On the other you have TSA officials who go strictly by the book and can’t fathom a person’s unwillingness to comply with a “groin check” of his “inner thigh”—“two times in the front and two times in the back.” Tyner’s comment to his pat-down professional (“If you touch my junk, I’m gonna have you arrested.”) was greeted as akin to a remark about exploding loafers.
The stand-off between TSA and an American citizen unwilling to acquiesce to the latest indignity airline passengers are obliged to endure resulted in Tyner first being told to leave the airport and later advised that he faced a $10,000 fine for leaving without submitting to security procedures.
Apparently the unpromulgated law of the skies is that once a traveler enters the security area, the process must be completed to the satisfaction of TSA—or else. Thus, it would be wise to post large signs at security entrances that apprise folks of this crucial point of no return--something like “Abandon all rights ye who enter here.”
A recent CBS poll provides a countervailing perspective. This random sample of 1,137 adults found that 80% of Americans favor the use of full-body scanners at airports. The poll didn’t ask about “groin checks” or say how many respondents were frequent fliers.
More to the point, over 50% opposed any form of ethnic profiling for security purposes. Apparently these PC clones of “The View” favor the bizarre theatrical performance whereby screaming three-year-olds and immobile grandmothers are subjected to needless and increasingly invasive indignities under the absurd assumption that all terrorists are created equal.
Friday, November 19, 2010
WHAT ARE CAL-VOTERS SMOKIN?
Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch famously quipped that the people had voted him out of office “and now the people must be punished.”
One might say the same of California voters who—apparently enjoying double-digit unemployment, massive state debt, environmental extremism, and unsustainable public pensions—sent Barbara Boxer back to Washington. Indeed, Democrats strengthened their stranglehold on Sacramento and returned almost their entire Congressional delegation to D.C.—by wide margins.
To top it all, the left-coast electorate put 70s retread Jerry Brown back in the Governor’s Mansion. This is the same fellow who opposed Prop. 13 and helped unionize the state’s public employees—a group whose exorbitant retirement benefits have been draining the state dry.
What’s so pathetic about the election results is that voters exhibited a general distaste for higher taxes by voting down Proposition 24—an attempt to reinstate recently lowered taxes on business—and by approving Proposition 26, a measure that requires a two-thirds vote on “fees” previously subject to only a majority vote.
On the other hand, voters were conned by a massive publicity campaign against “two Texas-based oil companies” to overwhelmingly defeat Proposition 23—the attempt to delay implementation of the greenhouse emission law, AB 32. The latter piece of “Cap and Tax” legislation is set to become the largest tax increase in state history—costing an average Californian, by an estimate in the pro-23 voter guide, up to $3,800 dollars a year.
Even voters in Riverside County went along, narrowly, with the massive media war against Prop. 23—a campaign largely financed by industries set to profit handsomely off the economy-killing “greenhouse” measure. So much hot air about hot air.
Riverside County voters also narrowly approved Measure L, a bit of political chicanery designed to protect unsustainable pension benefits for public safety employees. In this case the red herring of local politicians’ salaries and benefits (as in the city of Bell) were used as a head-fake to snooker voters about the real intent of the legislation.
The bottom line of the 2010 election is that the power of public employee unions, combined with a seismic demographic shift over the last five decades (fueled by illegal immigration) has made California the bluest of blue states—a state apparently immune to political change even given massive unemployment and government debt.
The one irony of the election was that despite the string of “progressive” victories, the proposition to legalize marijuana flopped. Given the direction of the state and the tax-happy proclivities of Sacramento legislators, cannabis may be required to sustain the Disneyesque vision of reality cherished by Cal-voters and their representatives.
One might say the same of California voters who—apparently enjoying double-digit unemployment, massive state debt, environmental extremism, and unsustainable public pensions—sent Barbara Boxer back to Washington. Indeed, Democrats strengthened their stranglehold on Sacramento and returned almost their entire Congressional delegation to D.C.—by wide margins.
To top it all, the left-coast electorate put 70s retread Jerry Brown back in the Governor’s Mansion. This is the same fellow who opposed Prop. 13 and helped unionize the state’s public employees—a group whose exorbitant retirement benefits have been draining the state dry.
What’s so pathetic about the election results is that voters exhibited a general distaste for higher taxes by voting down Proposition 24—an attempt to reinstate recently lowered taxes on business—and by approving Proposition 26, a measure that requires a two-thirds vote on “fees” previously subject to only a majority vote.
On the other hand, voters were conned by a massive publicity campaign against “two Texas-based oil companies” to overwhelmingly defeat Proposition 23—the attempt to delay implementation of the greenhouse emission law, AB 32. The latter piece of “Cap and Tax” legislation is set to become the largest tax increase in state history—costing an average Californian, by an estimate in the pro-23 voter guide, up to $3,800 dollars a year.
Even voters in Riverside County went along, narrowly, with the massive media war against Prop. 23—a campaign largely financed by industries set to profit handsomely off the economy-killing “greenhouse” measure. So much hot air about hot air.
Riverside County voters also narrowly approved Measure L, a bit of political chicanery designed to protect unsustainable pension benefits for public safety employees. In this case the red herring of local politicians’ salaries and benefits (as in the city of Bell) were used as a head-fake to snooker voters about the real intent of the legislation.
The bottom line of the 2010 election is that the power of public employee unions, combined with a seismic demographic shift over the last five decades (fueled by illegal immigration) has made California the bluest of blue states—a state apparently immune to political change even given massive unemployment and government debt.
The one irony of the election was that despite the string of “progressive” victories, the proposition to legalize marijuana flopped. Given the direction of the state and the tax-happy proclivities of Sacramento legislators, cannabis may be required to sustain the Disneyesque vision of reality cherished by Cal-voters and their representatives.
BEWARE DECEPTIVE MAILERS
After going carefully through the various propositions in the state voter guide, I spied a mailer on my table that sported this partisan label: “Continuing the Republican Revolution.”
A bald eagle was prominently displayed beside an extended quotation that lauded Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday and his “ideals of limited government, lower taxes, and personal freedom.” At the left top was a cute red, white and blue elephant with a couple of stars dotting the pachyderm.
On the inside were listed CRR’s presumably conservative recommendations. Again, diminutive flag-colored elephants stood at the top left and top right of the page.
A small, unadorned column with miniature pics and names of seven Republican candidates running for statewide office stood in the far left section of the page.
The real message of this shameless deception focused on the statewide propositions that occupied the lion’s share of the mailer’s space. These recommendations were repeated twice—once in the inside page and again, quite prominently, on the back page (which could double as the mailer’s front page).
Moreover, each proposition contained a brief “argument” in its favor. The “No on Prop 20” case was stated as follows: “20 is an elitist attempt to force a new, costly bureaucracy down our throats. The California State Firefighters Association says, NO ON PROP 20.”
One would never guess, based on this “explanation,” that Prop. 20 is about redistricting and proposes a commission of 5 democrats, 5 republicans, and 4 independents to draw district lines without the political gerrymandering that’s made so many races uncompetitive.
The biggest shock was that the presumably “conservative” recommendations on the various propositions (20-27) turned out to be 100% contrary to what one would expect from a “conservative” group.
I checked CRR’s mailer against Jon Coupal’s “Howard Jarvis” voter guide—a group that’s unquestionably fiscally conservative. The “Save Prop 13” recommendations were perfectly in line with conservative positions—and the precise opposite of CRR’s.
A small asterisk next to each proposition ad in CRR’s mailer directs voters to a disclaimer that’s placed (inconspicuously in black and white) next to the mailing address. That disclaimer says CRR doesn’t really represent an official political party and that items with an asterisk have been paid for. Put bluntly and honestly, CRR isn’t what it represents itself to be in the mailer.
Personally, I wonder what brand of cynicism CRR embraces. Is it for money or is it out of ideology that Hart and Associates of Newport Beach chooses to deceive voters?
A bald eagle was prominently displayed beside an extended quotation that lauded Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday and his “ideals of limited government, lower taxes, and personal freedom.” At the left top was a cute red, white and blue elephant with a couple of stars dotting the pachyderm.
On the inside were listed CRR’s presumably conservative recommendations. Again, diminutive flag-colored elephants stood at the top left and top right of the page.
A small, unadorned column with miniature pics and names of seven Republican candidates running for statewide office stood in the far left section of the page.
The real message of this shameless deception focused on the statewide propositions that occupied the lion’s share of the mailer’s space. These recommendations were repeated twice—once in the inside page and again, quite prominently, on the back page (which could double as the mailer’s front page).
Moreover, each proposition contained a brief “argument” in its favor. The “No on Prop 20” case was stated as follows: “20 is an elitist attempt to force a new, costly bureaucracy down our throats. The California State Firefighters Association says, NO ON PROP 20.”
One would never guess, based on this “explanation,” that Prop. 20 is about redistricting and proposes a commission of 5 democrats, 5 republicans, and 4 independents to draw district lines without the political gerrymandering that’s made so many races uncompetitive.
The biggest shock was that the presumably “conservative” recommendations on the various propositions (20-27) turned out to be 100% contrary to what one would expect from a “conservative” group.
I checked CRR’s mailer against Jon Coupal’s “Howard Jarvis” voter guide—a group that’s unquestionably fiscally conservative. The “Save Prop 13” recommendations were perfectly in line with conservative positions—and the precise opposite of CRR’s.
A small asterisk next to each proposition ad in CRR’s mailer directs voters to a disclaimer that’s placed (inconspicuously in black and white) next to the mailing address. That disclaimer says CRR doesn’t really represent an official political party and that items with an asterisk have been paid for. Put bluntly and honestly, CRR isn’t what it represents itself to be in the mailer.
Personally, I wonder what brand of cynicism CRR embraces. Is it for money or is it out of ideology that Hart and Associates of Newport Beach chooses to deceive voters?
Friday, October 15, 2010
MEASURE L: THE DEFENSE OF EXISTING PENSION CRITERIA FOR PUBLIC SAFETY EMPLOYEES ACT
On the same day last week I received two slick mailers about Riverside County’s Measure L—one pro and one con. A voter would hardly guess (based on the information in the two glossy boards) that they were talking about the same proposal.
Measure L is designed to lock in the current generous retirement benefit formula for public safety employees in Riverside County--unless there is a majority vote of the electorate to the contrary.
An argument in favor of L in the voter information booklet implies, disingenuously, that the law is designed, “like Proposition 13,” to prevent the County Board of Supervisors from negotiating “higher pensions with the unions for public safety employees.”
Indeed, the list of pro-L arguments even includes this admission against interest for voters who read carefully: “In the past the Riverside County Board of Supervisors gave larger pensions to the unions that represent Riverside County’s public safety employees without a vote of the people.”
Put otherwise, Prop L would take the ability to cut pensions out of the hands of the same political body that previously negotiated the large benefits that the unions now want to protect. One’s head spins at the duplicity involved in this argument.
The pro-L mailer headlines the City of Bell and an individual supervisor’s pay increase and pension benefits to suggest that the proposal directly concerns limiting outrageous salaries and benefits like those in Bell. Just the opposite is the case.
The list of largely retired authors of the pro-L arguments in the voter guide clearly indicates that the measure was designed by and for the public safety unions.
On the other side of the L-issue you have a broad coalition of interests that include, among others, the Howard Jarvis group, the president of Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce, and a couple of retired judges.
Their arguments resonate with dozens of columns by Dan Walters over the last few years about the gigantic financial burden imposed on the state, counties, and municipalities by gold-plated public employee pensions.
According to the No-on-L mailer, “Riverside taxpayers are liable for $1.82 billion in pension benefits for public safety employees”—benefits that in only six years “will consume one-third of the county’s entire public safety personnel budget.”
The overstatement here is that L makes reforming pensions “nearly impossible.” It is certainly correct to assert, however, that the measure makes the process for reducing very generous pension benefits much more difficult than the process by which they were instituted.
If proposed laws were labeled honestly, Measure L would be named the Defense of Existing Pension Criteria for Public Safety Employees Act.
Measure L is designed to lock in the current generous retirement benefit formula for public safety employees in Riverside County--unless there is a majority vote of the electorate to the contrary.
An argument in favor of L in the voter information booklet implies, disingenuously, that the law is designed, “like Proposition 13,” to prevent the County Board of Supervisors from negotiating “higher pensions with the unions for public safety employees.”
Indeed, the list of pro-L arguments even includes this admission against interest for voters who read carefully: “In the past the Riverside County Board of Supervisors gave larger pensions to the unions that represent Riverside County’s public safety employees without a vote of the people.”
Put otherwise, Prop L would take the ability to cut pensions out of the hands of the same political body that previously negotiated the large benefits that the unions now want to protect. One’s head spins at the duplicity involved in this argument.
The pro-L mailer headlines the City of Bell and an individual supervisor’s pay increase and pension benefits to suggest that the proposal directly concerns limiting outrageous salaries and benefits like those in Bell. Just the opposite is the case.
The list of largely retired authors of the pro-L arguments in the voter guide clearly indicates that the measure was designed by and for the public safety unions.
On the other side of the L-issue you have a broad coalition of interests that include, among others, the Howard Jarvis group, the president of Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce, and a couple of retired judges.
Their arguments resonate with dozens of columns by Dan Walters over the last few years about the gigantic financial burden imposed on the state, counties, and municipalities by gold-plated public employee pensions.
According to the No-on-L mailer, “Riverside taxpayers are liable for $1.82 billion in pension benefits for public safety employees”—benefits that in only six years “will consume one-third of the county’s entire public safety personnel budget.”
The overstatement here is that L makes reforming pensions “nearly impossible.” It is certainly correct to assert, however, that the measure makes the process for reducing very generous pension benefits much more difficult than the process by which they were instituted.
If proposed laws were labeled honestly, Measure L would be named the Defense of Existing Pension Criteria for Public Safety Employees Act.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
UNION-COZY CONTRACTS IN COURT
Last Tuesday attorneys for the Vista Unified School District filed a complaint in State Superior Court against the Vista Teachers Association, the California Teachers Association, and the National Education Association.
That’s big news for a board composed mostly of folks who sit where they do thanks to VTA support. (Jim Gibson is the glaring exception.) Perhaps it was the threat of personal liability that prompted this uncharacteristic action. Or perhaps it was the district’s dire financial straits.
Here’s the specific point at issue: Since 1995 the district has paid VTA Presidents about $500,000 more than VTA has reimbursed the district. This cozy arrangement whereby the district compensated union presidents based on their personal seniority while the district was reimbursed based on a lower pay scale (C-4) was actually written into four contract agreements over a period of fifteen years.
Unfortunately for both parties this union-friendly transfer of public monies to a private organization appears to be illegal. Tuesday’s filing repeatedly emphasizes that California Education Code (section 44987) requires that school districts “shall be reimbursed by the employee organization of which the employee is an elected officer for all compensation paid the employee on account of that leave.” Indeed, reimbursement of “all compensation” is required of the organization within ten days of receiving certification of payment of the organization’s officer by the school district.
The plaintiff in this case (VUSD) is making the argument that “all compensation” means “all compensation” and that the uncompensated five-hundred grand accruing to VTA since 1995 represents an illegal transfer of public funds to a private group.
VTA, on the other hand, would now like to “negotiate” the matter. Last November the union’s non-response to a district request for reimbursement indicated that they thought the issue should be ignored—a position that reflected the initial stance of most board members
Indeed, at one point an argument was made among the board that since a private employer need not recoup overpayments to an employee, the same approach should be taken here. Forgotten in this analogy was that government overpayments are regularly recovered, that the alleged overpayments went to a private organization, and that the relevant contracts were probably illegal. But what matters a few hundred thousand public dollars among political friends?
From the perspective of VUSD $500,000 could be used to restore programs like Middle School sports that were cut in this year’s budget. Alternatively, depriving VTA and its affiliates of a half-million bucks could mean fewer ads touting union-approved causes (like Prop. 25) in the next five weeks.
It might also mean that school districts statewide will begin to reexamine their own union-cozy contracts.
That’s big news for a board composed mostly of folks who sit where they do thanks to VTA support. (Jim Gibson is the glaring exception.) Perhaps it was the threat of personal liability that prompted this uncharacteristic action. Or perhaps it was the district’s dire financial straits.
Here’s the specific point at issue: Since 1995 the district has paid VTA Presidents about $500,000 more than VTA has reimbursed the district. This cozy arrangement whereby the district compensated union presidents based on their personal seniority while the district was reimbursed based on a lower pay scale (C-4) was actually written into four contract agreements over a period of fifteen years.
Unfortunately for both parties this union-friendly transfer of public monies to a private organization appears to be illegal. Tuesday’s filing repeatedly emphasizes that California Education Code (section 44987) requires that school districts “shall be reimbursed by the employee organization of which the employee is an elected officer for all compensation paid the employee on account of that leave.” Indeed, reimbursement of “all compensation” is required of the organization within ten days of receiving certification of payment of the organization’s officer by the school district.
The plaintiff in this case (VUSD) is making the argument that “all compensation” means “all compensation” and that the uncompensated five-hundred grand accruing to VTA since 1995 represents an illegal transfer of public funds to a private group.
VTA, on the other hand, would now like to “negotiate” the matter. Last November the union’s non-response to a district request for reimbursement indicated that they thought the issue should be ignored—a position that reflected the initial stance of most board members
Indeed, at one point an argument was made among the board that since a private employer need not recoup overpayments to an employee, the same approach should be taken here. Forgotten in this analogy was that government overpayments are regularly recovered, that the alleged overpayments went to a private organization, and that the relevant contracts were probably illegal. But what matters a few hundred thousand public dollars among political friends?
From the perspective of VUSD $500,000 could be used to restore programs like Middle School sports that were cut in this year’s budget. Alternatively, depriving VTA and its affiliates of a half-million bucks could mean fewer ads touting union-approved causes (like Prop. 25) in the next five weeks.
It might also mean that school districts statewide will begin to reexamine their own union-cozy contracts.
Monday, August 16, 2010
PROPOSITION 8 JUDGE WALKER: TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE IS IRRATIONAL
The 417,000 Riverside County citizens and 655,000 San Diego County citizens who voted for Proposition 8 are irrational—plus all major civilizations that ever existed. That’s the essential message in Federal Judge Vaughan Walker’s 136-page tome that dismissed the decision of over 7 million Californians in November of 2008.
According to this black-robed demigod, Proposition 8 "fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples."
The gay judge proceeds to list what he deems the assured findings of psychology and sociology about the beneficial effects of gay marriage—ignoring the fact that these studies are often conducted by persons with a vested interest in their outcome, are generally done on a very small scale, and are necessarily devoid of large-scale longitudinal studies about the effects of gay marriage on children and society.
Were the judge the wise philosopher-king he thinks he is, he might have heeded the warning of Peter Berger, a prominent sociologist who declared that his academic specialty is “an intrinsically debunking discipline that should be congenial to nihilists, cynics, and other fit subjects for police surveillance.”
Put otherwise, it isn’t hard to come up with answers you insist upon finding. All you need to do is construct an investigative tool that leads to answers that comport with standards the researcher already embraces.
Using this procedure researchers “discover” that children raised in homosexual homes are “more tolerant” (of homosexuality) than kids raised in traditional homes. Other studies once conveniently found that a gay household had no effect on a child’s sexuality. Now some say it does, but that doesn’t matter.
In the process one ignores, as Judge Vaughan does, all evidence to the contrary, including probable deleterious effects of the social innovation proposed.
The opposing evidence is so obvious that only a sustained, decades-long process of social brainwashing by the media and academia could blind one to its relevance: Marriage is intrinsically related to natural procreation, fidelity, and the raising of families. Children benefit from a stable family with a father and a mother. Both fathers and mothers bring irreplaceable qualities to the raising of a child. There’s lots more.
George Orwell observed that some ideas are so absurd only an intellectual could believe them. Given time and repetition, however, almost half the population of a once-moral nation now embraces the ridiculous notion that making legal distinctions between male and female when it comes to marriage is “irrational.”
According to this black-robed demigod, Proposition 8 "fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples."
The gay judge proceeds to list what he deems the assured findings of psychology and sociology about the beneficial effects of gay marriage—ignoring the fact that these studies are often conducted by persons with a vested interest in their outcome, are generally done on a very small scale, and are necessarily devoid of large-scale longitudinal studies about the effects of gay marriage on children and society.
Were the judge the wise philosopher-king he thinks he is, he might have heeded the warning of Peter Berger, a prominent sociologist who declared that his academic specialty is “an intrinsically debunking discipline that should be congenial to nihilists, cynics, and other fit subjects for police surveillance.”
Put otherwise, it isn’t hard to come up with answers you insist upon finding. All you need to do is construct an investigative tool that leads to answers that comport with standards the researcher already embraces.
Using this procedure researchers “discover” that children raised in homosexual homes are “more tolerant” (of homosexuality) than kids raised in traditional homes. Other studies once conveniently found that a gay household had no effect on a child’s sexuality. Now some say it does, but that doesn’t matter.
In the process one ignores, as Judge Vaughan does, all evidence to the contrary, including probable deleterious effects of the social innovation proposed.
The opposing evidence is so obvious that only a sustained, decades-long process of social brainwashing by the media and academia could blind one to its relevance: Marriage is intrinsically related to natural procreation, fidelity, and the raising of families. Children benefit from a stable family with a father and a mother. Both fathers and mothers bring irreplaceable qualities to the raising of a child. There’s lots more.
George Orwell observed that some ideas are so absurd only an intellectual could believe them. Given time and repetition, however, almost half the population of a once-moral nation now embraces the ridiculous notion that making legal distinctions between male and female when it comes to marriage is “irrational.”
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
E-VERIFY: A BORDER HEAD FAKE
Now that federal Judge Susan Bolton has put on hold the most controversial provisions of Arizona’s new immigration law, cities that have taken their own measures to discourage illegal immigration may be having second thoughts.
Temecula, Menifee, and other city councils have recently passed ordinances that will require businesses to verify their workers are in the country legally. The method prescribed for checking immigration status is the federal government’s own E-Verify program—“an Internet-based system that compares information from an employee’s Form I-9 … to data from U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration records to confirm employment eligibility.”
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website proudly declares that this mostly voluntary system is currently being used by “more than 200,000 employers.” It adds that “most employers in Arizona and Mississippi are required to use E-Verify” as well as some (but not all) employers with federal contracts.
Put in context, 200,000 is fewer than the number of businesses in Los Angeles County. So the boast that 1,000 new businesses are signing up each week means that in another year the system will cover the hiring equivalent of the nation’s largest county. At that rate the country’s estimated six million firms with employees will all be E-Verified in about a century.
There’s the rub. Cities that passed ordinances requiring E-Verify assumed that the existence of a federal verification system meant the feds wouldn’t object to mandatory implementation of that system. Yet if that were the case the Obama administration wouldn’t be aiming its legal guns at Arizona, whose SB 1070 largely mirrors federal law. Instead, they would be targeting sanctuary cities.
The real problem the White House has with Arizona is that the state takes federal immigration laws seriously. Similarly, states and cities that mandate E-Verify may eventually find themselves on the wrong side of legal suits directed by Obama’s Justice Department or its private legal arm, the ACLU, if such mandates become widespread and effective.
After all, if Arizona’s law requiring police to inquire about immigration status in the course of other enforcement actions is deemed an unacceptable burden on “lawfully present aliens because their liberty will be restricted while their status is checked,” a similar argument could be made on behalf of individuals whose employment is affected by E-Verify issues.
That an opponent of E-Verify at a Temecula rally openly declared her husband was in the country illegally shows how unserious the feds really are about “unauthorized employment.” I’ll wager the lady’s husband will be deported when E-Verify is mandatory throughout the country—i.e. not soon, if ever.
Temecula, Menifee, and other city councils have recently passed ordinances that will require businesses to verify their workers are in the country legally. The method prescribed for checking immigration status is the federal government’s own E-Verify program—“an Internet-based system that compares information from an employee’s Form I-9 … to data from U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration records to confirm employment eligibility.”
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website proudly declares that this mostly voluntary system is currently being used by “more than 200,000 employers.” It adds that “most employers in Arizona and Mississippi are required to use E-Verify” as well as some (but not all) employers with federal contracts.
Put in context, 200,000 is fewer than the number of businesses in Los Angeles County. So the boast that 1,000 new businesses are signing up each week means that in another year the system will cover the hiring equivalent of the nation’s largest county. At that rate the country’s estimated six million firms with employees will all be E-Verified in about a century.
There’s the rub. Cities that passed ordinances requiring E-Verify assumed that the existence of a federal verification system meant the feds wouldn’t object to mandatory implementation of that system. Yet if that were the case the Obama administration wouldn’t be aiming its legal guns at Arizona, whose SB 1070 largely mirrors federal law. Instead, they would be targeting sanctuary cities.
The real problem the White House has with Arizona is that the state takes federal immigration laws seriously. Similarly, states and cities that mandate E-Verify may eventually find themselves on the wrong side of legal suits directed by Obama’s Justice Department or its private legal arm, the ACLU, if such mandates become widespread and effective.
After all, if Arizona’s law requiring police to inquire about immigration status in the course of other enforcement actions is deemed an unacceptable burden on “lawfully present aliens because their liberty will be restricted while their status is checked,” a similar argument could be made on behalf of individuals whose employment is affected by E-Verify issues.
That an opponent of E-Verify at a Temecula rally openly declared her husband was in the country illegally shows how unserious the feds really are about “unauthorized employment.” I’ll wager the lady’s husband will be deported when E-Verify is mandatory throughout the country—i.e. not soon, if ever.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
MILKING THE WATER "CRISIS"
“Despite recent rains, California’s Water Crisis Continues.” That was the headline of an article in a 12-page brochure distributed in Riverside County by the Eastern Municipal Water District.
That pessimistic pronouncement reminded me of a column I wrote back in 1996 that parodied the media mantra discounting the beneficial effect of the heavy rains Southern California had been experiencing. My ironic conclusion was that if the drought got any worse, we were all going to drown.
History has a way of repeating itself--especially among bureaucrats for whom a crisis is a terrible thing to be without.
The aforementioned article in the 11x12 inch mailer focused attention first of all on “years of low rainfall.” Perhaps EMWD had as hard a time as I did securing annual rainfall totals—absent a paid subscription service. But the data I eventually found for Temecula showed above average rainfall for two of the last three seasons--and near average for the other. (Average seasonal rainfall is around 13 inches.)
Indeed, the last season of severe drought was in 2006/2007 (3.75 inches). Two years earlier the area was drenched with over 30 inches of wet stuff. The rainfall pattern for Fallbrook, relative to its 16-inch average, isn’t much different over the last six years.
In a rare doff of the hat to truthfulness, the EMWD booklet did mention the primary reason a “water crisis” exists in Southern California—namely, that “regulatory restrictions have required massive reductions in California’s water supply to protect certain fish species.”
The glorified minnow whose presumed endangered status triggered the “massive reductions” of water supplies to Southern California is the delta smelt—a species or sub-species that some folks argue is indistinguishable from a critter that flourishes back East.
Fortunately for most folks in the Southland the primary consequences of this bureaucratically mandated drought are higher water prices and regularly reiterated warnings about rationing. Unfortunately for residents of the San Joaquin Valley, the absence of water has contributed to an unemployment rate of around 16 percent in San Joaquin County.
The fact that our “water crisis” is largely government-manufactured puts a different face on the 11-billion dollar Water Bond that the taxpayer-funded EMWD information packet also urges readers to swallow. Measures to combat natural disasters and accommodate population growth are quite different from spending designed to combat the effects of misguided government programs.
Senate candidate Carly Fiorina recently weighed in on the delta smelt issue by denouncing “extreme environmentalists” and Senator Boxer’s “theology” that believes “fish are more important than families.”
Put otherwise, our biggest problem is with the crisis-makers themselves.
That pessimistic pronouncement reminded me of a column I wrote back in 1996 that parodied the media mantra discounting the beneficial effect of the heavy rains Southern California had been experiencing. My ironic conclusion was that if the drought got any worse, we were all going to drown.
History has a way of repeating itself--especially among bureaucrats for whom a crisis is a terrible thing to be without.
The aforementioned article in the 11x12 inch mailer focused attention first of all on “years of low rainfall.” Perhaps EMWD had as hard a time as I did securing annual rainfall totals—absent a paid subscription service. But the data I eventually found for Temecula showed above average rainfall for two of the last three seasons--and near average for the other. (Average seasonal rainfall is around 13 inches.)
Indeed, the last season of severe drought was in 2006/2007 (3.75 inches). Two years earlier the area was drenched with over 30 inches of wet stuff. The rainfall pattern for Fallbrook, relative to its 16-inch average, isn’t much different over the last six years.
In a rare doff of the hat to truthfulness, the EMWD booklet did mention the primary reason a “water crisis” exists in Southern California—namely, that “regulatory restrictions have required massive reductions in California’s water supply to protect certain fish species.”
The glorified minnow whose presumed endangered status triggered the “massive reductions” of water supplies to Southern California is the delta smelt—a species or sub-species that some folks argue is indistinguishable from a critter that flourishes back East.
Fortunately for most folks in the Southland the primary consequences of this bureaucratically mandated drought are higher water prices and regularly reiterated warnings about rationing. Unfortunately for residents of the San Joaquin Valley, the absence of water has contributed to an unemployment rate of around 16 percent in San Joaquin County.
The fact that our “water crisis” is largely government-manufactured puts a different face on the 11-billion dollar Water Bond that the taxpayer-funded EMWD information packet also urges readers to swallow. Measures to combat natural disasters and accommodate population growth are quite different from spending designed to combat the effects of misguided government programs.
Senate candidate Carly Fiorina recently weighed in on the delta smelt issue by denouncing “extreme environmentalists” and Senator Boxer’s “theology” that believes “fish are more important than families.”
Put otherwise, our biggest problem is with the crisis-makers themselves.
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
FEEDING HUNGRY CASINOS
At least one SoCal radio station has been promoting a charity that’s soliciting funds by asserting that many children in the area are going hungry this summer because they’re no longer getting the free meals that were provided at school.
This sales pitch raised a question in my mind because over thirty years ago I worked in a government food stamp office in Atlanta, Georgia. I knew first-hand that these benefits, even in the late 70s, were rather generous. And I knew they were available in short order for folks without assets and income.
So I decided to check on the monthly food stamp allotment in California for a family of three without assets. You can do your own figuring at foodstampguide.org.
I recall from sheer repetition that the late 70s figure in Georgia was $120. Today the amount available in California to a three-person household without significant assets and any income is $526.
Note that $526 isn’t the total amount of welfare benefits for which this household qualifies. There are other sources of income like the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program that annually dispenses 6.6 billion dollars in aid throughout the Golden State (3.7 billion of which comes from the feds).
The benefits from the latter program, however, are distributed in the form of cash grants that can be accessed via Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) debit cards and ATM machines. As was recently disclosed, these EBT cards even work at ATMs in 32 of 58 tribal casinos and 47 of 90 state-licensed poker rooms.
The fact that the state has been oblivious to this absurd juxtapositioning of welfare cash and casino ATMs makes it a good bet that a lot of money dedicated to food stamps is also directed (by other means) toward less-than-nutritional objectives.
In short, most households have to be extraordinarily irresponsible with the money available to them for their kids to actually “go hungry”—school or no school. A different set of disclosure circumstances faces households where adults aren’t in the country legally. But the “hungry children” promo said nothing about that issue—for obvious PR reasons.
Bottom line: Folks should be wary of solicitations that employ the malleable “hunger” category—a term that describes almost everyone during certain hours of the day. What truly deserve support are efforts to prevent “malnutrition” and “starvation”—both of which are abundant in abysmally poor countries.
In the Southland, donations to character-focused programs like those of Father Joe Carroll’s Toussaint Youth Village are far more likely to do lasting good than bucks to assuage summertime gastric growls.
This sales pitch raised a question in my mind because over thirty years ago I worked in a government food stamp office in Atlanta, Georgia. I knew first-hand that these benefits, even in the late 70s, were rather generous. And I knew they were available in short order for folks without assets and income.
So I decided to check on the monthly food stamp allotment in California for a family of three without assets. You can do your own figuring at foodstampguide.org.
I recall from sheer repetition that the late 70s figure in Georgia was $120. Today the amount available in California to a three-person household without significant assets and any income is $526.
Note that $526 isn’t the total amount of welfare benefits for which this household qualifies. There are other sources of income like the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program that annually dispenses 6.6 billion dollars in aid throughout the Golden State (3.7 billion of which comes from the feds).
The benefits from the latter program, however, are distributed in the form of cash grants that can be accessed via Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) debit cards and ATM machines. As was recently disclosed, these EBT cards even work at ATMs in 32 of 58 tribal casinos and 47 of 90 state-licensed poker rooms.
The fact that the state has been oblivious to this absurd juxtapositioning of welfare cash and casino ATMs makes it a good bet that a lot of money dedicated to food stamps is also directed (by other means) toward less-than-nutritional objectives.
In short, most households have to be extraordinarily irresponsible with the money available to them for their kids to actually “go hungry”—school or no school. A different set of disclosure circumstances faces households where adults aren’t in the country legally. But the “hungry children” promo said nothing about that issue—for obvious PR reasons.
Bottom line: Folks should be wary of solicitations that employ the malleable “hunger” category—a term that describes almost everyone during certain hours of the day. What truly deserve support are efforts to prevent “malnutrition” and “starvation”—both of which are abundant in abysmally poor countries.
In the Southland, donations to character-focused programs like those of Father Joe Carroll’s Toussaint Youth Village are far more likely to do lasting good than bucks to assuage summertime gastric growls.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
PROPOSITION 14 TO THE RESCUE?
There were at least two reasons to vote for Proposition 14—the constitutional amendment that promised to save Californians from themselves by making primary elections non-partisan.
First, given the state’s fiscal fiasco, it’s hard to think that voters could do worse under an open primary system than they’ve done under the current set-up. Second, the fact that Nancy Pelosi was against the proposition pretty much guaranteed that the idea had merit.
Despite the fact that a broken clock is right twice a day, it’s unlikely that Speaker Pelosi wouldn’t know where her partisan interests lay when it came to this electoral reform. Pelosi was joined in opposition by the California Teachers Association and other public employees unions that currently own Sacramento.
Now that Prop. 14 has been approved by a 54-46 per cent margin, it will be a while before Californians can judge whether the political means are (as Gandhi suggested) “the ends in the making.”
Unfortunately, anyone who peruses a pre-election report released by the Center for Governmental Studies will probably conclude that the primary rearrangement act is unlikely to significantly change the ideological complexion of our legislators in Sacramento.
The study shows that, based on registration, about one-third of all legislative districts are “supermajority” districts where one party has 25% more registered voters than the other. Not surprisingly, all of those supermajority districts are Democratic—most in the Bay area or Los Angeles county. (No wonder Pelosi and her union buddies weren’t wild about this proposition.)
But before anyone starts popping champagne corks, the study also shows that in 8 of the 19 state Senate and Assembly elections since 2006 where voters in the general election would have chosen between two candidates of the same party, the more moderate of the two primary candidates was already the party nominee—and in only 4 of the 19 races was the vote close enough that participation by independents or crossovers would likely have made a difference.
Given the fact that none of the San Diego and Riverside county districts are supermajority Republican, it seems the only local ramification of Prop. 14 will be to force the 6 to 9 per cent of Libertarian voters in Assembly Districts 74, 75, and 77 to cast their November ballots for a Democrat or a Republican—or to abstain from voting.
Perhaps over time open primaries might have a salutary effect, but they’ve not yet worked any magic in Washington state—nor in Louisiana where something like an open primary law was instituted in 1975 precisely to protect Democrat incumbents.
California’s next deus ex machina will be 2012’s non-partisan redistricting.
First, given the state’s fiscal fiasco, it’s hard to think that voters could do worse under an open primary system than they’ve done under the current set-up. Second, the fact that Nancy Pelosi was against the proposition pretty much guaranteed that the idea had merit.
Despite the fact that a broken clock is right twice a day, it’s unlikely that Speaker Pelosi wouldn’t know where her partisan interests lay when it came to this electoral reform. Pelosi was joined in opposition by the California Teachers Association and other public employees unions that currently own Sacramento.
Now that Prop. 14 has been approved by a 54-46 per cent margin, it will be a while before Californians can judge whether the political means are (as Gandhi suggested) “the ends in the making.”
Unfortunately, anyone who peruses a pre-election report released by the Center for Governmental Studies will probably conclude that the primary rearrangement act is unlikely to significantly change the ideological complexion of our legislators in Sacramento.
The study shows that, based on registration, about one-third of all legislative districts are “supermajority” districts where one party has 25% more registered voters than the other. Not surprisingly, all of those supermajority districts are Democratic—most in the Bay area or Los Angeles county. (No wonder Pelosi and her union buddies weren’t wild about this proposition.)
But before anyone starts popping champagne corks, the study also shows that in 8 of the 19 state Senate and Assembly elections since 2006 where voters in the general election would have chosen between two candidates of the same party, the more moderate of the two primary candidates was already the party nominee—and in only 4 of the 19 races was the vote close enough that participation by independents or crossovers would likely have made a difference.
Given the fact that none of the San Diego and Riverside county districts are supermajority Republican, it seems the only local ramification of Prop. 14 will be to force the 6 to 9 per cent of Libertarian voters in Assembly Districts 74, 75, and 77 to cast their November ballots for a Democrat or a Republican—or to abstain from voting.
Perhaps over time open primaries might have a salutary effect, but they’ve not yet worked any magic in Washington state—nor in Louisiana where something like an open primary law was instituted in 1975 precisely to protect Democrat incumbents.
California’s next deus ex machina will be 2012’s non-partisan redistricting.
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
FEEDING THE UNION BEAST
Recently State Senator Dennis Hollingsworth joined with Gov. Schwarzenegger in penning an article that calls for significant reform of California’s public employee pension system. That system, according to a group of Stanford University researchers, puts the state’s unfunded pension liabilities at a staggering 500 billion dollars.
Hollingsworth’s SB 919 is the specific legislation designed to transform journalistic rhetoric into government policy. The bill's provisions only apply to new hires. Among other features, it puts the retirement eligibility age for non-public safety employees at 65 and changes the system for calculating benefits for all employees from the highest single year’s pay to an average of the highest three years.
Other measures reduce the state’s contribution to retiree health care costs and add five years to the length of service one needs to be fully vested for health care benefits.
Today it isn’t unusual for public employees to retire at age 50 with annual pensions that amount to 90 percent of their annual pay. In some cases, by taking advantage of provisions that allow employees to “spike” their salary, yearly pensions that exceed an employee’s largest salary are possible.
A fire chief in Contra Costa County provided the poster-boy example of the “spiking” that’s common at both the state and local level. In this case sick leave, almost two years of administrative leave, an auto allowance, standby pay and additional management pay were all part of the formula that placed the 51-year-old retiree’s annual benefit at $284,000--$63,000 more than his final year’s salary.
Assuming the ex-chief lives another 30 years, his total pension payout will amount to over 8.5 million dollars—not counting adjustments for inflation.
Predictably, public employee unions that have a stranglehold on the large Democrat majority in Sacramento oppose Hollingsworth’s proposed pension cutbacks. One political observer noted that there’s no chance the legislature will embrace even this modest new-hire bill.
Representatives of the supposedly neutral California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) testified against SB 919 and put a happy face on debt obligations that currently cost the state over 3 billion dollars a year.
On the other hand, Schwarzenegger’s chief pension advisor, David Crane, reminded the committee of the CalPERS plan in 1999 that retroactively increased pensions and put California taxpayers on the hook to pay vast sums if the Dow stock average didn’t hit 25,000 by 2009 and 28 million by 2099!
Today’s elections will mean little if nothing is done to break the vicious circle whereby public employee unions buy politicians who then feed the beast that created them.
Hollingsworth’s SB 919 is the specific legislation designed to transform journalistic rhetoric into government policy. The bill's provisions only apply to new hires. Among other features, it puts the retirement eligibility age for non-public safety employees at 65 and changes the system for calculating benefits for all employees from the highest single year’s pay to an average of the highest three years.
Other measures reduce the state’s contribution to retiree health care costs and add five years to the length of service one needs to be fully vested for health care benefits.
Today it isn’t unusual for public employees to retire at age 50 with annual pensions that amount to 90 percent of their annual pay. In some cases, by taking advantage of provisions that allow employees to “spike” their salary, yearly pensions that exceed an employee’s largest salary are possible.
A fire chief in Contra Costa County provided the poster-boy example of the “spiking” that’s common at both the state and local level. In this case sick leave, almost two years of administrative leave, an auto allowance, standby pay and additional management pay were all part of the formula that placed the 51-year-old retiree’s annual benefit at $284,000--$63,000 more than his final year’s salary.
Assuming the ex-chief lives another 30 years, his total pension payout will amount to over 8.5 million dollars—not counting adjustments for inflation.
Predictably, public employee unions that have a stranglehold on the large Democrat majority in Sacramento oppose Hollingsworth’s proposed pension cutbacks. One political observer noted that there’s no chance the legislature will embrace even this modest new-hire bill.
Representatives of the supposedly neutral California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) testified against SB 919 and put a happy face on debt obligations that currently cost the state over 3 billion dollars a year.
On the other hand, Schwarzenegger’s chief pension advisor, David Crane, reminded the committee of the CalPERS plan in 1999 that retroactively increased pensions and put California taxpayers on the hook to pay vast sums if the Dow stock average didn’t hit 25,000 by 2009 and 28 million by 2099!
Today’s elections will mean little if nothing is done to break the vicious circle whereby public employee unions buy politicians who then feed the beast that created them.
Friday, May 28, 2010
SNEERS AT ARIZONA'S "NAZISM" ARE BOGUS
Only in the alternate universe of leftist thought could a law that basically requires state and local officials to enforce existing federal immigration law be compared to Nazism. That’s the “big lie” being drummed into the public mind in unintended tribute to that master of Nazi propaganda—Joseph Goebbels.
It’s no surprise that the supreme political panderer, Jesse Jackson, distorts the recently signed Arizona law by asserting that people can be interrogated simply for looking Mexican. It’s a bit more surprising that city councils in San Diego and Los Angeles (and places north) have joined in denouncing the Grand Canyon state—some going so far as to support a boycott of Arizona.
Speculative horror stories about the new law (like President Obama’s ice cream store fantasy) may have contributed to the (now-reversed) decision to cancel the December trip of Temecula’s Great Oak High School marching band to a Fiesta Bowl competition.
Even Miss USA pageant officials have gotten into the act—this year substituting a bogus rendering of Arizona’s law for the politically charged “gay marriage” query placed before Vista’s Carrie Prejean last year. Like Prejean, Miss Oklahoma’s un-PC response no doubt cemented her runner-up status.
Despite the river of lies disseminated by Jackson and the mainstream media, the general public still has the good sense to see that Arizona’s law represents little more than the state taking federal immigration laws more seriously than the federal government.
In a recent Pew poll Americans overwhelmingly support (by a 59 to 32 per cent margin) the Arizona law. Favorable numbers in a Rasmussen poll go even higher (69 per cent) when specific elements of the law are discussed—like police officers being required to check the immigration status of anyone stopped for a traffic (or other) violation if they suspect the person might be illegal.
Still, the political class continues to be up in arms against a law that also bans sanctuary cities and thus demands that the nation’s border and American citizenship be taken seriously. Attorney General Eric Holder didn’t even bother to read the short Arizona law to express his disapproval to a Congressional Committee.
The bill is readily available for reading on the Internet—along with Governor Brewer’s Executive Order that explicitly prohibits racial profiling. But inconvenient truths are of little interest to leftists who prosper politically by keeping the border porous and cramming as many illegals as possible into American voting booths.
That Phoenix has become the kidnapping capital of the U.S. thanks to this cynical policy is, to such politicians, a small price to pay for their own “success.”
It’s no surprise that the supreme political panderer, Jesse Jackson, distorts the recently signed Arizona law by asserting that people can be interrogated simply for looking Mexican. It’s a bit more surprising that city councils in San Diego and Los Angeles (and places north) have joined in denouncing the Grand Canyon state—some going so far as to support a boycott of Arizona.
Speculative horror stories about the new law (like President Obama’s ice cream store fantasy) may have contributed to the (now-reversed) decision to cancel the December trip of Temecula’s Great Oak High School marching band to a Fiesta Bowl competition.
Even Miss USA pageant officials have gotten into the act—this year substituting a bogus rendering of Arizona’s law for the politically charged “gay marriage” query placed before Vista’s Carrie Prejean last year. Like Prejean, Miss Oklahoma’s un-PC response no doubt cemented her runner-up status.
Despite the river of lies disseminated by Jackson and the mainstream media, the general public still has the good sense to see that Arizona’s law represents little more than the state taking federal immigration laws more seriously than the federal government.
In a recent Pew poll Americans overwhelmingly support (by a 59 to 32 per cent margin) the Arizona law. Favorable numbers in a Rasmussen poll go even higher (69 per cent) when specific elements of the law are discussed—like police officers being required to check the immigration status of anyone stopped for a traffic (or other) violation if they suspect the person might be illegal.
Still, the political class continues to be up in arms against a law that also bans sanctuary cities and thus demands that the nation’s border and American citizenship be taken seriously. Attorney General Eric Holder didn’t even bother to read the short Arizona law to express his disapproval to a Congressional Committee.
The bill is readily available for reading on the Internet—along with Governor Brewer’s Executive Order that explicitly prohibits racial profiling. But inconvenient truths are of little interest to leftists who prosper politically by keeping the border porous and cramming as many illegals as possible into American voting booths.
That Phoenix has become the kidnapping capital of the U.S. thanks to this cynical policy is, to such politicians, a small price to pay for their own “success.”
GOVERNMENT SERVING ITSELF
Recently a reader of this newspaper [the North County Times] sent me a detailed message that argued for a simple but important proposition: Apply the same conflict of interest laws and standards to elected officials that are repeatedly hammered into civil service employees.
One might think the same standard already applies to both groups. But judging by the ethics panel report that examined the sweetheart deals given to Senators Kent Conrad and Christopher Dodd, the “appearance of impropriety” civil service benchmark is apparently irrelevant when it comes to very tangible loans that go far beyond appearances.
According to the Senate ethics committee report these two Senators "were often offered quicker, more efficient loan processing and some discounts" by California’s Countrywide Financial. Yet those circumstances were not found to breach the Senate’s ethics rules.
Then there was the string of financial improprieties connected with Rep. Charles Rangel that finally became so long the powerful New York Congressman was forced to step down from chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee. Rangel tried to fob off violations on his staff, arguing that he couldn’t be held responsible for illegal benefits to himself if his staff didn’t let him know about them.
Try using that excuse on the IRS, and see how far it gets you.
My letter writer noted that “reaffirming traditional conflict of interest definitions…would do much to improve government at all levels.” While I certainly agree that application of these strict standards to elected officials would be beneficial, the use of government itself for the benefit of specific interest groups (like public employee unions) is now a much greater problem facing the state of California and its municipalities—a problem that isn’t addressed by focusing attention on conflict of interest standards as applied to individuals.
The graft of the aforementioned senators is chicken feed compared to the 500 billion dollars in unfunded liabilities within California’s public employee pension systems. These compensation structures for state employees who collectively possess huge political clout constitute a 24/7 conflict of interest problem.
This self-serving system, by the way, was made possible by former Governor Jerry Brown’s 1978 signature on the “Dill Act,” a law that allowed state employees to unionize.
The fact that Brown is again a contender for governor suggests that the Tea Party message against ever-expanding government hasn’t penetrated the psyches of most California voters—much less the media-shaped mind of politicians like New York City Mayor Bloomberg who reflexively link opposition to big government with homicidal terrorism.
In truth, the greatest conflict of interest of our time is the use of government for the enrichment of groups that are increasingly part of the government itself.
One might think the same standard already applies to both groups. But judging by the ethics panel report that examined the sweetheart deals given to Senators Kent Conrad and Christopher Dodd, the “appearance of impropriety” civil service benchmark is apparently irrelevant when it comes to very tangible loans that go far beyond appearances.
According to the Senate ethics committee report these two Senators "were often offered quicker, more efficient loan processing and some discounts" by California’s Countrywide Financial. Yet those circumstances were not found to breach the Senate’s ethics rules.
Then there was the string of financial improprieties connected with Rep. Charles Rangel that finally became so long the powerful New York Congressman was forced to step down from chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee. Rangel tried to fob off violations on his staff, arguing that he couldn’t be held responsible for illegal benefits to himself if his staff didn’t let him know about them.
Try using that excuse on the IRS, and see how far it gets you.
My letter writer noted that “reaffirming traditional conflict of interest definitions…would do much to improve government at all levels.” While I certainly agree that application of these strict standards to elected officials would be beneficial, the use of government itself for the benefit of specific interest groups (like public employee unions) is now a much greater problem facing the state of California and its municipalities—a problem that isn’t addressed by focusing attention on conflict of interest standards as applied to individuals.
The graft of the aforementioned senators is chicken feed compared to the 500 billion dollars in unfunded liabilities within California’s public employee pension systems. These compensation structures for state employees who collectively possess huge political clout constitute a 24/7 conflict of interest problem.
This self-serving system, by the way, was made possible by former Governor Jerry Brown’s 1978 signature on the “Dill Act,” a law that allowed state employees to unionize.
The fact that Brown is again a contender for governor suggests that the Tea Party message against ever-expanding government hasn’t penetrated the psyches of most California voters—much less the media-shaped mind of politicians like New York City Mayor Bloomberg who reflexively link opposition to big government with homicidal terrorism.
In truth, the greatest conflict of interest of our time is the use of government for the enrichment of groups that are increasingly part of the government itself.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
PROTEST THE DAY OF SILENCE?
Friday has been designated a Day of Silence in most of the nation’s schools by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). On April 16, many high school (and some middle school) students won’t speak during the day in order to show solidarity with gay classmates.
This now-annual event raises a plethora of questions about student rights and the role public schools should play vis-Ã -vis controversial political and social agendas.
There would be little to object to if the Day of Silence were only dedicated to the proposition that students shouldn’t be subjected to slurs of any kind—racial, religious, ethnic, or sexual. In my twenty years in the classroom I enforced this no-slur policy across the board.
GLSEN and similar organizations, however, aren’t merely anti-defamation leagues. Rather, they have broader political agendas that concern fundamental social issues about which there is deep public disagreement—a fact illustrated in spades by the passionate debate on California’s Proposition 8.
The question that arises for school administrators is how to respond to these “silent” student demonstrations. Do they ignore them, discourage them, or facilitate and build upon them?
Given the fact that the California Teachers Association gave 1.3 million dollars to the “No on 8” campaign, it is safe to assume that most public schools will be inclined to take the “facilitation” route—with some teachers seizing upon this “teachable moment” to further indoctrinate students with their own Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgender vision of society.
This vision, more implicit than explicit, includes the conviction that sexual orientation is purely a genetic given and that male-female households are no more beneficial to children and society than households or relationships of any other sexual configuration.
The fairly obvious truth, however, is that children benefit from male-female domestic models and that human sexual expression is a matter of gradations—not a function of gay-straight absolutes. Gradations, however, aren’t congenial to folks who place sexual activity in the same black-white categories as race.
Accordingly, the label “bisexual” is regularly employed by youngsters posting at GLSEN’s blog to lend an aura of genetic inevitability to actions once termed promiscuous.
Most public schools, I’m confident, would give absolutely no support to a student-led “Day of Silence” that defended the “silent scream” rights of an unborn child. Indeed, many administrators would likely cooperate with the ACLU to prohibit—like student prayers at graduation—the overt expression of these “religious” beliefs.
Parents who object to having public schools promote a GLBT social agenda should think seriously about keeping their kids home from school on Friday—especially if administrators aren’t forthcoming about their “Day of Silence” plans.
This now-annual event raises a plethora of questions about student rights and the role public schools should play vis-Ã -vis controversial political and social agendas.
There would be little to object to if the Day of Silence were only dedicated to the proposition that students shouldn’t be subjected to slurs of any kind—racial, religious, ethnic, or sexual. In my twenty years in the classroom I enforced this no-slur policy across the board.
GLSEN and similar organizations, however, aren’t merely anti-defamation leagues. Rather, they have broader political agendas that concern fundamental social issues about which there is deep public disagreement—a fact illustrated in spades by the passionate debate on California’s Proposition 8.
The question that arises for school administrators is how to respond to these “silent” student demonstrations. Do they ignore them, discourage them, or facilitate and build upon them?
Given the fact that the California Teachers Association gave 1.3 million dollars to the “No on 8” campaign, it is safe to assume that most public schools will be inclined to take the “facilitation” route—with some teachers seizing upon this “teachable moment” to further indoctrinate students with their own Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgender vision of society.
This vision, more implicit than explicit, includes the conviction that sexual orientation is purely a genetic given and that male-female households are no more beneficial to children and society than households or relationships of any other sexual configuration.
The fairly obvious truth, however, is that children benefit from male-female domestic models and that human sexual expression is a matter of gradations—not a function of gay-straight absolutes. Gradations, however, aren’t congenial to folks who place sexual activity in the same black-white categories as race.
Accordingly, the label “bisexual” is regularly employed by youngsters posting at GLSEN’s blog to lend an aura of genetic inevitability to actions once termed promiscuous.
Most public schools, I’m confident, would give absolutely no support to a student-led “Day of Silence” that defended the “silent scream” rights of an unborn child. Indeed, many administrators would likely cooperate with the ACLU to prohibit—like student prayers at graduation—the overt expression of these “religious” beliefs.
Parents who object to having public schools promote a GLBT social agenda should think seriously about keeping their kids home from school on Friday—especially if administrators aren’t forthcoming about their “Day of Silence” plans.
Friday, April 02, 2010
GOLDEN STATE CHUMPS
Recently a Los Angeles TV station announced that California lottery sales were down and efforts were afoot to boost this flagging source of state revenue--last year netting about a billion dollars.
That’s just the thing, I thought. Let’s tempt folks who can’t afford it to fork over more cash on the 15-million-to-one chance that their tickets will catapult them (and lift California) out of a deep recession.
Never mind that Californians overwhelmingly rejected Proposition 1C last year—with over two-thirds of San Diego and Riverside County voters saying no to expanding and borrowing against state-sponsored gaming enterprises. Apparently the geniuses in Sacramento still wish to find a way to up the lottery ante and increase the number of Golden State chumps.
On the other side of Easy Street are those who tout marijuana legalization as a significant economic boon to our debt-ridden state. This proposition, if passed, will at least have the advantage of dulling the senses of those who imagine that the road to governmental solvency is a one-way avenue that only requires a bit of chemical stimulus and legal flexibility—no downside scenarios permitted.
Such “budget solutions” are typical of the “anything painless” mentality that’s gotten California into a mess that lawmakers seem incapable of addressing realistically. Other versions of this mindset involve proposals to increase taxes on unpopular industries under the delusional assumption that one can have a continuous stream of golden goose eggs while strangling the fowl for dinner.
It never occurs to these folks that making an unfavorable business climate even more unfavorable isn’t a recipe for job creation--except for jobs in the burgeoning public sector.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich recently hosted a “jobs summit” in Irvine at which he offered various policy proposals: a two-year cut in payroll taxes, allowing small businesses to expense 100% of new equipment purchases, cutting the capital gains tax rate.
One might criticize these Washington-focused suggestions for exhibiting (from the other side of the political fence) the same “no pain” mentality demonstrated by last year’s massive $787 billion stimulus program. All gain and no pain.
Assuming that Gingrich’s pro-business proposals would be more effective than the President’s “Porkulus” approach, tax reductions of this magnitude would still need to be combined with serious budget cuts to avoid a fiscal train wreck.
Fortunately, California doesn’t have the authority to borrow and spend the state into prosperity—or rather, into oblivion. A truly pro-business, pro-jobs policy can’t simply be put on a gargantuan IOU and debited to future generations. It can only be implemented in conjunction with honest fiscal discipline.
Don’t bet on it.
That’s just the thing, I thought. Let’s tempt folks who can’t afford it to fork over more cash on the 15-million-to-one chance that their tickets will catapult them (and lift California) out of a deep recession.
Never mind that Californians overwhelmingly rejected Proposition 1C last year—with over two-thirds of San Diego and Riverside County voters saying no to expanding and borrowing against state-sponsored gaming enterprises. Apparently the geniuses in Sacramento still wish to find a way to up the lottery ante and increase the number of Golden State chumps.
On the other side of Easy Street are those who tout marijuana legalization as a significant economic boon to our debt-ridden state. This proposition, if passed, will at least have the advantage of dulling the senses of those who imagine that the road to governmental solvency is a one-way avenue that only requires a bit of chemical stimulus and legal flexibility—no downside scenarios permitted.
Such “budget solutions” are typical of the “anything painless” mentality that’s gotten California into a mess that lawmakers seem incapable of addressing realistically. Other versions of this mindset involve proposals to increase taxes on unpopular industries under the delusional assumption that one can have a continuous stream of golden goose eggs while strangling the fowl for dinner.
It never occurs to these folks that making an unfavorable business climate even more unfavorable isn’t a recipe for job creation--except for jobs in the burgeoning public sector.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich recently hosted a “jobs summit” in Irvine at which he offered various policy proposals: a two-year cut in payroll taxes, allowing small businesses to expense 100% of new equipment purchases, cutting the capital gains tax rate.
One might criticize these Washington-focused suggestions for exhibiting (from the other side of the political fence) the same “no pain” mentality demonstrated by last year’s massive $787 billion stimulus program. All gain and no pain.
Assuming that Gingrich’s pro-business proposals would be more effective than the President’s “Porkulus” approach, tax reductions of this magnitude would still need to be combined with serious budget cuts to avoid a fiscal train wreck.
Fortunately, California doesn’t have the authority to borrow and spend the state into prosperity—or rather, into oblivion. A truly pro-business, pro-jobs policy can’t simply be put on a gargantuan IOU and debited to future generations. It can only be implemented in conjunction with honest fiscal discipline.
Don’t bet on it.
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