Monday, April 27, 2009
California Special Election May 19
The geniuses in Sacramento have mandated a special election for May 19, 2009 to vote on a package of propositions that supposedly will help the state government balance its budget in the near term and place restrictions on spending and create a "rainy day fund" in the out years, as well as juggle money between accounts for education, children's services and mental health services. The final proposition, 1F, prevents pay raises for legislators and statewide government officers in years when the state is running a deficit.
After careful consideration, I'm going to vote NO on everything except 1F.
This may create more havoc in Sacramento, or it may not, (IMHO things can't get much worse). I don't care. I don't trust the state government, especially the legislature, where something like 80 percent of the seats are "safe" due to gerrymandering. Every time in the past the voters have approved a trade off of higher taxes for supposed caps or restrictions on spending, the true genius of the politicians has surfaced and the taxes go up, but strangely enough the caps and restrictions turn out to be ineffectual for one reason or another. Moreover, when the increased taxes are sold as temporary, they turn out to be permanent. The one effort to rein in the tax-and-spenders that was successful was Prop. 13 back in 1978. I am not going to vote for any measure that raises taxes in any form unless and until the state government first bites the bullet and both cuts spending in a meaningful way and removes many mandates on local governments and school districts as to how money must be spent.
By "cut spending" I don't mean the typical politician's definition of a "cut" being not raising spending as much as originally proposed; I mean "cut" defined as "spending less in absolute dollars than you're spending now."
We will not see any progress in Sacramento unless and until the gerrymandering of legislative districts is done away with and most, if not all, of the districts become competitive between the parties.
If it takes a state constitutional convention to achieve this, so be it. But I'm not holding my breath.
It seems that our society is speeding like a freight train toward something that looks like the society described in Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged", which was written in 1957 and seems to be enjoying a revival (#38 on Amazon's Best Seller list at this writing). If that's where we're headed, God help us, because I don't see any brave industrialists who are "going John Galt." What I do see is Tim Geithner as the real-life Wesley Mouch.
(0) comments
After careful consideration, I'm going to vote NO on everything except 1F.
This may create more havoc in Sacramento, or it may not, (IMHO things can't get much worse). I don't care. I don't trust the state government, especially the legislature, where something like 80 percent of the seats are "safe" due to gerrymandering. Every time in the past the voters have approved a trade off of higher taxes for supposed caps or restrictions on spending, the true genius of the politicians has surfaced and the taxes go up, but strangely enough the caps and restrictions turn out to be ineffectual for one reason or another. Moreover, when the increased taxes are sold as temporary, they turn out to be permanent. The one effort to rein in the tax-and-spenders that was successful was Prop. 13 back in 1978. I am not going to vote for any measure that raises taxes in any form unless and until the state government first bites the bullet and both cuts spending in a meaningful way and removes many mandates on local governments and school districts as to how money must be spent.
By "cut spending" I don't mean the typical politician's definition of a "cut" being not raising spending as much as originally proposed; I mean "cut" defined as "spending less in absolute dollars than you're spending now."
We will not see any progress in Sacramento unless and until the gerrymandering of legislative districts is done away with and most, if not all, of the districts become competitive between the parties.
If it takes a state constitutional convention to achieve this, so be it. But I'm not holding my breath.
It seems that our society is speeding like a freight train toward something that looks like the society described in Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged", which was written in 1957 and seems to be enjoying a revival (#38 on Amazon's Best Seller list at this writing). If that's where we're headed, God help us, because I don't see any brave industrialists who are "going John Galt." What I do see is Tim Geithner as the real-life Wesley Mouch.
Labels: California, California legislature, Election, Finance, politics, Tax policy, Taxes
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Perspective on Gaza From San Diego County
Just for kicks and grins, I got out an atlas and traced the borders of Israel and the Gaza strip, then overlaid the tracing on a map of Southern California in the same scale. To quote Arte Johnson, "Verrry interesting."
I aligned the coastline of Israel with the coastline of San Diego County, and the southern border of Gaza with Egypt with the US-Mexico border at San Ysidro/Tijuana. That pretty much overlays Gaza City onto downtown San Diego, with Tel Aviv falling around Oceanside/Camp Pendleton, and Haifa in the vicinity of Long Beach. Jerusalem coincides with a point approximately 10 miles north of Mt. Palomar.
Ashkelon is roughly equivalent to Solana Beach, and Sederot to Rancho Bernardo. Netivot is matched with El Cajon, and Kiryat Gat with Escondido, more or less.
You can see a rocket range map here, to get an idea of how vulnerable the outlying towns would be if we had a bunch of terrorist rocket launchers in, say, Balboa Park.
I wish some enterprising person at one of the news networks would do this with flashy graphics so the average American could get an idea of the the scale of the conflict.
(0) comments
I aligned the coastline of Israel with the coastline of San Diego County, and the southern border of Gaza with Egypt with the US-Mexico border at San Ysidro/Tijuana. That pretty much overlays Gaza City onto downtown San Diego, with Tel Aviv falling around Oceanside/Camp Pendleton, and Haifa in the vicinity of Long Beach. Jerusalem coincides with a point approximately 10 miles north of Mt. Palomar.
Ashkelon is roughly equivalent to Solana Beach, and Sederot to Rancho Bernardo. Netivot is matched with El Cajon, and Kiryat Gat with Escondido, more or less.
You can see a rocket range map here, to get an idea of how vulnerable the outlying towns would be if we had a bunch of terrorist rocket launchers in, say, Balboa Park.
I wish some enterprising person at one of the news networks would do this with flashy graphics so the average American could get an idea of the the scale of the conflict.
Labels: California, Gaza, Israel, Rockets, San Diego, Terrorisim
Saturday, January 03, 2009
California Will Be Bankrupt Before General Motors
The following was posted as a comment to Ronnie Schreiber's piece at Pajamas Media.
I like Fighterdoc's analysis. As one who lives in California but who has old onnections with, if not roots in Michigan, I agree that both states (to follow Fighterdoc's analogy) should be in the ICU, but Michigan just might follow doctor's orders, while California is still in denial.
There are actually a lot of similarities between the two states, chiefly the dichotomy of the urban industrial and the rural agricultural, with the latter actually producing more value. I have long said that Los Angeles is Detroit with palm trees, and I believe that California is headed for a "payless payday" as happened in Michigan in 1959, and which led directly to the revised state Constitution in 1963 that Ronnie refers to.
The real problem in California is due to gerrymandered safe seats in the legislature, which has allowed the development of a political class that is anything but answerable to the voters, and instead is beholden to special interests such as the teachers' union and the prison guards' union. California has been an eager participant in the Nation's credit binge which led to the economic collapse of last fall, but unlike most of us, the state of California continues to live beyond its means. Even now, with the fiscal crisis in the state coming rapidly to a head, the legislature will not consider reducing spending or laying off a single state employee. Term limits didn't help, because each legislator leaving office due to term limits is replaced by a clone who is owned by the same special interests and holds the same political philosophy.
I believe that raising taxes in an already high-tax state is not the answer, because in response companies and people will relocate to more economically friendly states like next-door Nevada and Arizona, and even Texas and Idaho. Cutting spending and removing restrictions on how existing funds are spent is the only answer, and the people of California will have to get by with fewer State services. Unfortunately, the politicians' mindset is to extort higher taxes from the populace by first cutting things like police and fire protection rather than paring back unnecessary pet projects and easing stifling regulation.
Just watch folks -- in a couple years California will no longer be known as the Golden State, but rather as the New Jersey of the West. Or maybe the Mexico of the North. (Cross posted to my blog.)
(0) comments
I like Fighterdoc's analysis. As one who lives in California but who has old onnections with, if not roots in Michigan, I agree that both states (to follow Fighterdoc's analogy) should be in the ICU, but Michigan just might follow doctor's orders, while California is still in denial.
There are actually a lot of similarities between the two states, chiefly the dichotomy of the urban industrial and the rural agricultural, with the latter actually producing more value. I have long said that Los Angeles is Detroit with palm trees, and I believe that California is headed for a "payless payday" as happened in Michigan in 1959, and which led directly to the revised state Constitution in 1963 that Ronnie refers to.
The real problem in California is due to gerrymandered safe seats in the legislature, which has allowed the development of a political class that is anything but answerable to the voters, and instead is beholden to special interests such as the teachers' union and the prison guards' union. California has been an eager participant in the Nation's credit binge which led to the economic collapse of last fall, but unlike most of us, the state of California continues to live beyond its means. Even now, with the fiscal crisis in the state coming rapidly to a head, the legislature will not consider reducing spending or laying off a single state employee. Term limits didn't help, because each legislator leaving office due to term limits is replaced by a clone who is owned by the same special interests and holds the same political philosophy.
I believe that raising taxes in an already high-tax state is not the answer, because in response companies and people will relocate to more economically friendly states like next-door Nevada and Arizona, and even Texas and Idaho. Cutting spending and removing restrictions on how existing funds are spent is the only answer, and the people of California will have to get by with fewer State services. Unfortunately, the politicians' mindset is to extort higher taxes from the populace by first cutting things like police and fire protection rather than paring back unnecessary pet projects and easing stifling regulation.
Just watch folks -- in a couple years California will no longer be known as the Golden State, but rather as the New Jersey of the West. Or maybe the Mexico of the North. (Cross posted to my blog.)
Labels: California, California legislature, Economy, government, Mexico, Michigan, Regulation, Tax policy
Friday, October 03, 2008
Environmentalists Oppose Solar Power
Back in June I posted on this issue.
Now Instapundit points to another story ( via Futurepundit) about conservationists trying to block solar energy projects in the Mojave Desert.
Yet another example of how the only energy technologies acceptable to the environmentalists are the ones that aren't being used.
(0) comments
Now Instapundit points to another story ( via Futurepundit) about conservationists trying to block solar energy projects in the Mojave Desert.
Yet another example of how the only energy technologies acceptable to the environmentalists are the ones that aren't being used.
Labels: California, Energy, Environmentalism, Solar
Friday, September 19, 2008
Harvey Milk Day!!!
Since today is International Talk Like A Pirate Day, (which I'm sure the kids would enjoy a lot more than Harvey Milk day) all I can say is, "Arrrrgh! Avast, ye lubbers!"
A friend of mine sent me a link to this snopes.com post about a California Assembly bill to commemorate the birthday of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk with "exercises" in the public schools. Milk was purportedly the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the US, and was murdered a year later by Dan White, who had resigned his seat on the SF Board of Supervisors.
I replied as follows:
Obviously, in the midst of our state's annual budget crisis, Assemblyman Leno (I have no idea whether he's related to a certain late-night talk show host) and his colleagues have zeroed in on the much more important task of honoring the murdered SF Supervisor Harvey Milk with a plan to "commemorate" Mr. Milk with "exercises" in the schools to mark his birthday. I can only imagine what those "exercises" might be, but given his support for the infamous Illinois sex-ed bill, I'm sure Mr. Obama would approve, not to mention Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid.
Perhaps I wouldn't mind so much if Supervisor Milk had done anything particularly noteworthy, but basically his qualifications for commemoration are (1) he was gay and (2) he was murdered by a disgruntled predecessor. Yes, he was the first openly gay person elected to office but hey, he was from San Francisco! It was always a matter of "not if, but when," which is why I don't regard his election as noteworthy.
30% of California students don't graduate from high school, and to be quite frank, this kind of thing is one reason why. Too much social engineering and too little real education. The school day is only so long--time spent conducting "exercises" to commemorate Mr. Milk is time not spent teaching English, mathematics and history--it's a zero-sum game. No wonder people here are opting for home-schooling in droves.
I've been trying to vote clowns like Mr. Leno out of office for decades, but since he's not from my district, I have no voice here, and unfortunately there are enough voters in his district to elect Mr. Leno.
To quote Thomas Paine, "These are times that try men's souls."
(0) comments
A friend of mine sent me a link to this snopes.com post about a California Assembly bill to commemorate the birthday of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk with "exercises" in the public schools. Milk was purportedly the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the US, and was murdered a year later by Dan White, who had resigned his seat on the SF Board of Supervisors.
I replied as follows:
Obviously, in the midst of our state's annual budget crisis, Assemblyman Leno (I have no idea whether he's related to a certain late-night talk show host) and his colleagues have zeroed in on the much more important task of honoring the murdered SF Supervisor Harvey Milk with a plan to "commemorate" Mr. Milk with "exercises" in the schools to mark his birthday. I can only imagine what those "exercises" might be, but given his support for the infamous Illinois sex-ed bill, I'm sure Mr. Obama would approve, not to mention Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid.
Perhaps I wouldn't mind so much if Supervisor Milk had done anything particularly noteworthy, but basically his qualifications for commemoration are (1) he was gay and (2) he was murdered by a disgruntled predecessor. Yes, he was the first openly gay person elected to office but hey, he was from San Francisco! It was always a matter of "not if, but when," which is why I don't regard his election as noteworthy.
30% of California students don't graduate from high school, and to be quite frank, this kind of thing is one reason why. Too much social engineering and too little real education. The school day is only so long--time spent conducting "exercises" to commemorate Mr. Milk is time not spent teaching English, mathematics and history--it's a zero-sum game. No wonder people here are opting for home-schooling in droves.
I've been trying to vote clowns like Mr. Leno out of office for decades, but since he's not from my district, I have no voice here, and unfortunately there are enough voters in his district to elect Mr. Leno.
To quote Thomas Paine, "These are times that try men's souls."
Labels: California, California legislature, gays and lesbians, Political correctness, politics, schools, sex education, sexual orientation
