What is wrong with California?

[Uncle Ted]

Lol. It wasn't a California newspaper that did the fact checking. Rather, a California newspaper simply printed a very one-sided screed written by the vice president of policy for the Texas Public Policy Foundation. BTW, I'm not suggesting the piece is therefore inaccurate (who isn't aware California has loads of issues?), but your misleading statement, your myriad anti-California posts, and your dopey governor who is spending the week here in California begging businesses to move to Texas, all seem a bit needy.

You forgot to mention that he served in the California Assembly from 2004 to 2010 but I agree maybe it should be that more correctly titled:

A California newspaper published fact check concerning claims about Texas.

And apparently Texas isn't the only state poaching jobs from California...

Indeed, in the last five years Texas has gained 400,000 new jobs while California has lost 640,000. The Lone Star State’s rate of job growth was 33 percent higher than California’s last year, even as the Golden State finally pulled out of the recession.

Joseph Vranich, a California business-relocation expert, agrees that California has a systemic job-creation problem and says it needs to worry about more than just Texas. He says that 15 states are sending delegations to California and seeking to convince firms to relocate or, if they stay in California, to expand their operations out of state. Wealthy individuals such as golfer Phil Mickelson are openly talking about following Tiger Woods and moving to low-tax states such as Florida. EBay, Facebook, and Visa, among others, have recently made major expansions in Texas. “That kind of talk will only intensify now that top earners in California face a 13.3 percent income-tax hit on earnings over $1 million,” says Jon Fleischman, editor of the political blog FlashReport.com. “That’s not only the highest rate in the U.S. It’s the highest rate any state has had since World War II.”

California must be easy picking. So easy that even a dope can do it.

[byu71]

We have just gone through the process of selecting a new Course Superintendent (greens keeper). It was amazing the number of highly qualified applicants.

I was suspicious as to why the person we finally hired wanted the job. He was the Super at one of the top courses in California. One of the top courses in California and he opts for a job at a course in Utah?

Turns out he is in his mid 30's and his wife and he decided family was very important and they liked the future in Utah more than California. No he isn't mormon, but they have family in Wyoming and Idaho.

[Uncle Ted]

California needs more tax hikes for "education"... to pay for more pensions.

The Calstrs Tax
There goes the money from California's November tax increase.

Democrats in California sold their gigantic tax hike to voters last fall as a "school funding" measure. As it turns out, "school" was a metonymy for teacher pensions.


As part of last year's pension reforms, the legislature required the California State Teachers' Retirement System (Calstrs) to submit a report on its "long-term funding needs." The report conveniently wasn't due until Feb. 15—three months after voters approved the tax initiative to avert $5 billion in education cuts. Which now may occur anyway.

According to the report, the reforms, which raised the full retirement age to 65, didn't make a dent in the pension fund's $64 billion unfunded liability because they apply only to new employees. Current teachers can still retire at 63 with an annuity equal to 84% of their highest year's salary. Thus, Calstrs projects it will run dry by 2047 without a major cash infusion.

[...]

In other news, Democratic legislators have introduced an oil severance tax—to fund education.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...185982210.html

[Uncle Ted]

It's legal to use your paper map but illegal to use your electronic map feature on your cell phone while driving...

Steven Spriggs was stopped in a traffic jam near downtown Fresno and thought nothing of whipping out his iPhone 4 and clicking on the map feature to see if there was an alternate route around the construction mess.


He was startled when he looked up and saw a California Highway Patrol motorcycle officer ordering him to pull over. He showed the officer that he was looking at a map and not texting or talking.


"'Pull over,'" Spriggs recalled the officer as saying. "'It's in your hand.'"


A little more than a year later, Spriggs is at the heart of a novel court case that has technology blogs and social media sites buzzing about the $160 ticket plus court costs he was ordered to pay for "distracted driving."


A court commissioner and then a three-judge appellate panel of the Superior Court found Spriggs guilty of violating a California law that bans motorists from texting or conducting phone conversations with hand-held devices.


[...]

Spriggs, who graduated from law school but is not a practicing attorney, represented himself before the commissioner and then the appeals panel. He initially brought a paper map to court to argue that it was legal to hold it while driving. Not persuaded, the traffic court commissioner found him guilty.

Next, he appealed to the three-judge panel of Fresno Superior Court, arguing in a legal brief that the iPhone has a flashlight feature and other functions that can be useful to a driver and aren't as dangerous as texting or talking. That hearing last all of 30 seconds because no one from the CHP or district attorney's office appeared to oppose the appeal by Spriggs.

He still lost.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2013...ell-phone-law/

So it seems the good people of the progressive state of California (or at least Fresno County) are stuck in the dark ages of using paper maps for their navigation needs.

[il Padrino Ute]

California bill would require treatment for infertility - the exception being in vitro fertilization - for all couples who are unable to conceive after one year of sexual relations. This includes gay and lesbian couples.

http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/fa...201320140AB460

For you doctors, who obviously understand the biology of the human body more than the rest of us, how would a gay or lesbian person be treated for infertility if they don't engage in sexual relations with the opposite sex? There must obviously be something that can be done, otherwise those geniuses in California would not propose this bill.

[Lost Student]

How Jerry Brown Scared California Straight

This year, California will have an $850 million budget surplus in the coming fiscal year. Unemployment, which peaked at 12.4 percent just before Brown took office, is 9.4 percent. S&P has upgraded its outlook on the state. Confidence remains fragile, according to a survey of 1,142 large and small business leaders conducted by the California Business Roundtable: More than six out of 10 say it’s still harder to do business in California than in other states. But 24 percent of businesses say they plan to add jobs this year, compared with 16 percent that intend to cut them.

What do you CA residents think about this article? Seems like rosy news compared to all the California doom-and-gloom I've seen lately.

[il Padrino Ute]

http://www.news10.net/news/article/2...rom-CPS-police

[YOhio]

http://www.news10.net/news/article/2...rom-CPS-police

That is outrageous.

[Eddie]

http://www.news10.net/news/article/2...rom-CPS-police

Wow. That's pretty crazy - I imagine the crap is going to hit the fan fairly quickly on this one. Doctors competing against each other as to what treatment is needed? Parents uncomfortable with the care they are receiving when their child (allegedly) received medication he didn't need so they go to another hospital? Police knocking the father to the ground and entering the home without asking permission (Seriously - don't they need a no knock warrant or reason to believe that serious harm is occurring at the time?) The hospital HAD to know that the family was going directly to the other hospital - how else would the police have known to show up there?

And then the second set of police show up and take the baby - did they take into account what the other medical professionals said? What exactly was the decision based on?

While they were on TV, I would've LOVED to see the parents sign for a release of information. Then everyone knows that confidentiality is just a BS response and that the reporters actually have the permission for the information. I assume that at that point they would say that nothing can be released until the case is closed and they are still investigating. But it would be interesting.

Finally - does the hospital have any idea of how this can hurt them financially? Obviously they seem to be at risk of being sued. On top of that, do they really want the story out there that when they were giving a child the wrong medication and had a set of parents go for a second opinion, they sent CPS to take away the kid? Seems like a pretty good way to lose business.

[Uncle Ted]

How Jerry Brown Scared California Straight



What do you CA residents think about this article? Seems like rosy news compared to all the California doom-and-gloom I've seen lately.

As a non-CA resident that works for a lot of CA companies I think it could happen. California's economy is huge and could generate a lot of revenue for the government if that baby decides to take off. I am hoping it will so some of these CA transplants will move back home.

[Pelado]

A growing number of key California cities are a lot worse off than previously thought, thanks to new changes coming in the way state and local governments must account for their pension costs.

The pension changes from Moody’s, and separately the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, scheduled for this month, could result in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Azusa and Inglewood joining fiscally troubled Stockton and San Bernardino, among others, as severe credit risks. It's all largely due to soaring employee retirement costs, according to new analysis based on the methodology by Bob Williams and his team at State Budget Solution (SBS), a non-partisan organization that studies state budget crises.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/governmen...#ixzz2W8Tj0Oyf

[BigPiney]

http://www.foxbusiness.com/governmen...#ixzz2W8Tj0Oyf

It is Mammoth Lakes, not Falls, you idiots.

[myboynoah]

It is Mammoth Lakes, not Falls, you idiots.

Looks like it fell.

[Soccermom]

BART strike and now this bit of news. http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013...d-prisons?lite

[Pelado]

Yet why was California ever in a fiscal crisis at all?

World food prices are soaring. California has the best soils, weather and farmers in the world. Silicon Valley hosts Apple, Google, Intel and Facebook. The state hosts some of the nation's largest corporations like Wells Fargo, Chevron, Hewlett-Packard and Safeway.

The movie industry in Hollywood, tourism from Disneyland to Yosemite, the Napa wine industry, and vast deposits of gas and oil should make California more prosperous than Switzerland. Its top five universities -- Caltech, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA and USC -- usually rate among the top 20 worldwide.

Yet despite what God and man in the past have given the state, California has often squandered its inheritance. For all its costly investments in wind and solar power, California electricity rates are the steepest in the nation.

The tab falls most heavily not on the green elites of the affluent coastal communities, but on the poor and middle classes concentrated in the hotter and colder interior. For many in Fresno or Bakersfield, keeping on the air conditioning when August temperatures hit 100 is a fantasy from a bygone age.

Californians pay among the highest gas prices in the country. Again, those astronomical costs seem surreal, given that the state sits atop huge untapped deposits of gas and oil.

The California paradox of having among the highest taxes and among the worst services is also echoed in state-by-state rankings of public school test scores. California continues to place near the bottom.

Do those sky-high California gas taxes translate into superb roads? Not yet at least. Reason Foundation's 20th annual highway report ranked California roads 47th in the nation.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...#ixzz2ej439OVQ