Public Pension Crisis

Why the heck did I go to college? I could have joined a public union early on as a roadside sign inspector or something and been better paid than most people in the private sector. Additionally, the pension benefits are SWEEEET!

Where are the jobs?

Some California counties posting Depression era unemployment numbers. Where are the "green" jobs, Mr. Obama?

The Green Utopia

From The San Francisco Chronicle:

It's an environmental catch-22. California needs to meet its aggressive goals for renewable-energy production, but solar and wind farms require lots of space. The farms' land gobbling can conflict with one of Californians' most cherished values: the preservation of pristine wilderness and animal habitat. As the state gets serious about increasing its renewable-energy portfolio, there's going to be tension.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein is learning that the hard way. As the author of the 1994 California Desert Protection Act (which established the wildly popular Joshua Tree National Park), she was the natural author for the California Desert Protection Act of 2010. The bill would place nearly 1 million acres of the Mojave Desert off limits for development.

It would also fund a new renewable-energy permitting office and seek to expedite permitting for renewable-energy projects on lands deemed more suitable for development, but those changes seem like small potatoes when compared to the vast amount of land that will suddenly be off limits. The Bureau of Land Management is currently evaluating about 120 solar and wind projects in the region, and a handful of those would have to be tossed out under Feinstein's bill. The developers are crying foul.

VH: The "green" utopia is going to be a lot more elusive and expensive than what environmentalist's have sold to the gullible California public. The state of California is already one of the most expensive places to live and to do business. What do you think is going to happen when more land is set aside from being developed and there are less and less corridors to carry power from one point to the next? Cha-ching.

Californians will foot the bill

I am not a big fan of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger but his latest statement on national health care reform accentuates what I and other fiscal conservatives have been saying for months now. Gov. Schwarzenegger, who had endorsed national reform, now says the following:

"You've heard of the bridge to nowhere? This is health care to nowhere...the current structure and the proposed expansion of Medicaid under health care reform are unsustainable for California."

Many Liberals in California thought that national health care "reform" was going to be free! If you just tax the rich guys and the insurance companies, we'll be just like France. Little did they know that they were footing the bill for everyone else...including the hated RED states. You see, because wages and earnings tend to be higher in California than the rest of the country, the "rich guy" is them. I guess unicorns don't exist after all.

This is why California is a mess...

Yes, now you know what my neighbors are like.

Gasoline dips below $4 in California

Link

Will this drop stop the drive to drill for more domestic supplies? Will cheaper gas make the SUV popular again? Will “alternative” energy investment fall off?

Welcome to the Nanny State

From Reason TV.

HT: Liberty Pen

The water shortage myth

We have been told for months that there is a water shortage in California. However, I have always contended that the price of water is too cheap in California; the price is set by municipal water districts. Because water is so inexpensive, any calls by state officials to conserve go unheeded. Residents simply do not have the incentives to really conserve. And like I always say--incentives always matter. A recent article at Forbes summed up the situation and a solution rather nicely:

California is perpetually portrayed as suffering from a shortage of water. Case in point: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently declared a statewide drought, telling citizens to prepare for rationing. But the state's problems are not a result of too little water.

The real problem is that the price of water in California, as in most of America, has virtually nothing to do with supply and demand. Although water is distributed by public and private monopolies that could easily charge high prices, municipalities and regulators set prices that are as low as possible. Underpriced water sends the wrong signal to the people using it: It tells them not to worry about how much they use.

Who owns the Oil companies?

If you have a 401K plan at work, you just may have benefited from the run-up in oil prices. Pension plans like California's public employees' pension fund have also benefited from the bull market in oil. Why don’t we hear more of this from the presidential candidates or the large media outlets?

Californians will love toilet water.

There are plans to recycle sewer water into drinking water in California. I'm not kidding. See this article at About.com