Gee it's tough being a Petaluma City Councilperson, so many activists to placate, constituents to coddle and issues to straddle. And of course, in this climate of diminished revenues (let's not trouble ourselves as to why revenues are diminished), all city departments have to share the pain equally. No favorites. [...]
Sonoma County is considered by those who classify such things as a "rural county," so no one should be surprised that the roads are rough. Considering that most of our roads are paved - some regularly - we should count our blessings. I, for one, would gladly drive bad roads [...]
Judging from Jerry Brown's public utterances about building California's infrastructure, he must be spending extra time praying at his dad's shrine. As many of you will no doubt remember, Governor Pat Brown's tenure is viewed through the rosy lens of nostalgia as the Golden State's Golden Age, back when California [...]
We've reached another year marked by the sense that we're stuck in a rut. We can blame politicians, people with different political or religious beliefs, or Wall Street, but in truth we must heed the words of that timeless sage, Pogo, who famously said, "I have met the enemy and [...]
Well folks, as the President begins his campaign for a second term, he knows that he'll need all the true believers, fellow-travelers, and Kool Aid drinkers he can round up to offset all of the independents he's pissed off once they realized that his "campaign for change" really meant a plan to socialize medical treatment, promote union interests, and transfer what wealth was left in the economy to unions and welfare recipients. Unfortunately, he has the typical "liberal" grasp of economics, such that he seems to have worked full-time to kill the engine that drives the US economy, whose taxes provide for all the social welfare treats beloved by his constituency.
Judging from his initial efforts to trim California's historically bloated budget, the California employee union's have a useful new tool in the governor the helped elect. It's a fair bet that he'll huff and puff and try to cut everything but the one, major thing that's breaking the Golden State's bank - public employee union pensions and entitlements. After all, last time he was governor he approved their efforts to organize with the consequence that public employees no longer serve the citizens of our fair state. Today, it's the other way around.
What's to say? The partisan dimwits in Sacramento won't mend their profligate ways even after they've milked the state of every possible source of funds. Why should they? It's the wave of the future. Take Greece. They acted in much the same way and when the couscous hit the fan, they went crawling to the Germans, who are now leading the bailout. Think California is "too big to fail?"