Correlating California's Economically "Stressed" Counties and Water Politics

A May 3rd news story listed the 20 most "stressed" counties in the United States. Twelve of the 20 counties (60%) are in one state, California. According to the the analysis, "stress" is measured by adding the unemployment rate plus the foreclosure rate plus the bankruptcy rate. Looking at the interactive map, the California counties suffer primarily from very high unemployment.

1. Imperial County, Calif., 31.27


2. Merced County, Calif., 28.29


3. Lyon County, Nev., 27.96


4. San Benito County, Calif., 27.26


5. Sutter County, Calif., 26.41


6. Yuba County, Calif., 25.8


7. Stanislaus County, Calif., 25.46


8. Iosco County, Mich., 24.89


9. San Joaquin County, Calif., 24.78


10. Nye County, Nevada., 24.19


11. Lapeer County, Mich., 24.03


12. Cheboygan County, Mich., 23.89


13. Luna County, N.M., 23.82


14. Lake County, Calif., 23.78


15. Kern County, Calif., 23.62


16. Tulare County, Calif., 23.17


17. Madera County, Calif., 23.04


18. Fresno County, Calif., 22.72


19. Clark County, Nevada, 22.65


20. Boone County, Ill., 22.59

Mapping the stressed California counties reveals a pattern recognizable by most farmers living in the California's San Joaquin Valley. While I'm no farmer, I did grow up on a citrus orchard in Tulare County.

Many of the affected counties are part of California's Central Valley Project (CVP), the critical lifeline delivering water to California's Central Valley (San Joaquin Valley) farmers. Here are these same counties plotted on top of a map of the CVP.

Click image to enlarge in separate window.

The CVP's canals are often in the news due to a controversial decision to reduce water deliveries in order to protect an endangered fish called the delta smelt.

Wall Street Journal: "California's Man-Made Drought"
online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204731804574384731898375624.html

Newsweek: "Dying on the Vine: Water Shortage Wilts California's San Joaquin Valley"
www.newsweek.com/id/211381

Driving through the Central Valley last Summer, it was the driest that I had seen. Some farmers claim that this is all a crisis created by the government, as shown by this now-famous sign reading "Congress Created Dust Bowl."


No doubt, government policies have complicated deliveries. However, as described in a response by the Department of the Interior, the delta smelt isn't the only reason for the lack of water deliveries. California has suffered through three years of drought and there are long-neglected improvements required to the CVP. Some of these fixes require careful coordination between California state politicians and the federal government.

While I don't have conclusive evidence showing a direct correlation between the lack of water and unemployment, the link appears relatively obvious. Agriculture depends on water and employment in the affected counties relies heavily on agribusiness. It is also obvious that people in the affected counties are indeed stressed.

More Information ...

Dead and Dying: California's Central Valley Dust Bowl
beetlebabee.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/dead-and-dying-californias-central-valley-dust-bowl

Central Valley Project
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_Project

L.A. Times: "U.S. speeds up water deliveries to San Joaquin Valley farmers"
articles.latimes.com/2010/jan/27/local/la-me-water-drought27-2010jan27

California Law, Arizona Law, and Immigration Enforcement

As graphically emphasized in a YouTube video by Arizona's Governor, you can learn a lot just by reading.

With all the national and international controversy over Arizona's new immigration law (SB 1070), one might wonder about California's existing immigration law. Read on and be amazed.

QUESTIONS:

• Are California's sanctuary cities in clear violation of federal law and of California Penal Code, Section 834b? If so, why isn't 834b being enforced?
  
• Are arrests of illegal aliens being reported by California's sanctuary cities? If not, is this not also a violation of California law?
  
• How is California's law materially different than Arizona's controversial immigration law?

California Penal Code, Section 834b:
www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=pen&group=00001-01000&file=833-851.90

834b. (a) Every law enforcement agency in California shall fully cooperate with the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service regarding any person who is ARRESTED if he or she is suspected of being present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws.

(b) With respect to any such person who is ARRESTED, and suspected of being present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws, every law enforcement agency shall do the following:

(1) Attempt to verify the legal status of such person as a citizen of the United States, an alien lawfully admitted as a permanent resident, an alien lawfully admitted for a temporary period of time or as an alien who is present in the United States in violation of immigration laws. The verification process may include, but shall not be limited to, questioning the person regarding his or her date and place of birth, and entry into the United States, and demanding documentation to indicate his or her legal status.

(2) Notify the person of his or her apparent status as an alien who is present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws and inform him or her that, apart from any criminal justice proceedings, he or she must either obtain legal status or leave the United States.

(3) Notify the Attorney General of California and the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service of the apparent illegal status and provide any additional information that may be requested by any other public entity.

(c) Any legislative, administrative, or other action by a city, county, or other legally authorized local governmental entity with jurisdictional boundaries, or by a law enforcement agency, to prevent or limit the cooperation required by subdivision (a) is expressly prohibited.

Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan and Her College Thesis

As I write this, Elena Kagan is President Obama's nominee for a life-long appointment to the United States Supreme Court, the ultimate legal authority in the nation. She has no prior judicial experience but is apparently known to President Obama through Harvard University. Consequently, I was interested when politcal web site RedState.com provided an electronic download of her college thesis titled, "To the Final Conflic: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933." I downloaded the thesis from RedState.com before Princeton University demand that it be removed for copyright reasons.

Ms. Kagan's this is an interesting read although a bit long. It provides an interest history of the American socialist movement and its association with labor unions and industrial organizations.

Her thesis makes me wonder whether Ms. Kagan actually believed or currently believes any of this stuff or was merely fulfilling a requirement for a degree. Some of her words can clearly be interpreted as pro socialist. Some of her words go beyond mere reporting and analysis to advocacy. If she were a nominee for a life-long appointment lacking any judicial experience by any other president, this thesis would likely be ignored. However, seeing the direct connection between the Obama White House and the powerful Service Employees International Union (SEIU) labor union--among others--this thesis may be telling.

Why do I mention SEIU? Because it spun directly out of the American Federation of Labor (now the AFL-CIO), which is mentioned in her thesis. Both the SEIU and member organizations of the AFL-CIO, such as AFSCME, are major contributors to Washington politicians with over 90% of the funds going to a single political party.

Here is a snippet from the Conclusion of her thesis, starting on page 127, which I believe is being quoted within the fair use limits of U.S. copyright law. My comments are highlighted.

In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States (true when she wrote the thesis in 1981 during the Cold War but perhaps no longer true since the election of President Obama with help from various labor organizations). Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism's glories than of socialism's greatness (and examples of socialism's greatness would include ...?). Conformity overrides dissent; the desire to conserve has overwhelmed the urge to alter. Such a state of affairs cries out for explanation. Why, in a society by no means perfect, has a radical party never attained the status of a major political force? Why, in particular, did the socialist movement never become an alternative to the nation's established parties? (could it be because there is scant evidence of any of the socialist's policies and methods ever producing a successful and sustainable state?)

After lamenting the demise of various socialists groups, Ms. Kagan's thesis ends with the following section from page 130.

... The story is a sad but also a chastening one for those who, more than half a century after socialism's decline, still wish to change America. Radicals have often succumbed to the devastating bane of sectarianism; it is easier, after all, to fight one's fellows than it is to battle an entrenched and powerful foe (are the majority of Americans today's "entrenched foe"?). Yet if the history of Local New York shows anything, it is that American radicals cannot afford to become their own worst enemies. In unity lies their only hope.

By their own words, be they known? I certainly support the right of anyone to hold whatever political views they want. However, if someone is potentially appointed for a lifetime to the Supreme Court, I would like the views of the nominee to be clarified.

More Elena Kagan Information:

• Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) Report,
  http://www.scotusreport.com/resources
  

Other views:

• Politico, "White House to release Kagan theses"


• Ken Blackwell, "Elena Kagan: Estranged From America"


• Newsweek, "Clues from Princeton"

Why Acronyms Aren't Always a Good Idea in Politics

Acronyms are a common fixture in politics. For example, many people have likely heard the term RINO for Republican In Name Only. However, acronyms can easily backfire on a campaign, especially when the opponent's campaign is filled with clever wisecrackers.

Carly Fiorina's Sentate campaign attempted to brand her opponent Tom Campbell, who is a well-established, fiscal conservative, as a FCINO via her campaign's bizarre Demon Sheep advertisement. What does FCINO mean? According to the Fiorina campaign, it means Fiscal Conservative In Name Only. The Campbell campaign cleverly shot back with Fact Checking Is Not Optional.

Likewise, President Obama's Organizing for America is selling T-shirts proudly proclaiming that "Health Reform is a BFD." What does BFD mean in this context? Exactly what you think. It's a polite version of Vice-President Biden's candid and quiet comment to President Obama, caught on an open microphone. I saw an alternate version of the shirt, slightly modified, that proclaimed instead that "Health Reform is a BFD, Big Financial Disaster." Question: Does anybody know who sells these?

A Hidden Gem: Even Authors Get It!

With Tax Day rapidly approaching, I thought I would share a little gem discovered while reading Steve Martini's political thriller, Shadow of Power, embedded on pages 126 and 127.

As dreaded April 15th engulfs me, I have just finished another frustratingly-confusing 80-plus-page love letter to my favorite uncle, Uncle Sam, who seems in constant need of ever more money. My accountant assures me that all is correct, but how am I to know for sure?

I thought about highlighting the particularly good or entertaining sections of this gem but then realized that I would end up highlighting most of it anyway.

"Only the insane of the eighteenth century could foresee that a bleak two lines added to the Constitution a century after its creation, authorizing the collection of a federal income tax, could result in a seventy-year rampage by government to mentally rape its own citizens with millions of pages of totally unintelligible tax laws, rules, regulations, and forms.

"Today we have special federal tax courts because the law is so convoluted that ordinary federal judges are presumed too ignorant and unschooled to understand the complexi­ties of laws and forms that every citizen down to the village janitor is required to understand, to obey, and to sign under penalty of perjury and threat of imprisonment.

"Nor could it be possible in the Age of Reason to foresee a Social Security system that if run by a private business would result in their arrest, prosecution, and conviction for operating a Ponzi scheme. In the real world, taking invested funds in the form of Social Security taxes, paying current claims, and skimming the rest for other purposes is called embezzlement. When government does it, it is simply called politics. In either case the arithmetic is always the same. When the scheme goes belly-up, its operators, if they're smart, will be in Brazil, or, in the case of Congress, retired, which is the political equivalent of being in Brazil.

"With all of this, the people in what is touted as the great­est democracy on the planet have no effective recourse. They cannot act directly to fix any of the obvious open sores or seeping wounds in their own government, because the founders didn't trust them with the only effective medicine, the power to amend their own Constitution. That is reserved the power to a serpent its creators never saw. 

"Short of revolution, something Jefferson urged take place at least every twenty years, the average citizen is left to pound sand by casting a largely empty vote to replace the devil-in-office with the devil-in-waiting and hope that the caustic nature of power to corrupt can somehow be neutralized.

"Praying for the devil to grow a halo, we all plod on, one foot in front of the other, trusting that somehow we will not follow the Soviet Union over the national cliff."

The Problem with California Education Spending--It's Not Education

On March 4, 2010, students and educators around California protested against draconian cuts in education within the California state government budget. However, there are larger issues involved, namely the actual root cause of California's budget mess.

The following chart shows California's expenditures on education relative to the state's total expenditures. The education expenditures include funding for Kindergarten through 12th grade (K-12) plus funding for higher education. Note that the state's total expenditures have increased far faster than education funding.

The chart below shows the same data but this time adjusted for inflation. The expenditures are normalized to 1976 dollars (although not adjusted for California's increased population). In this chart, spending that tracks inflation appears as a flat line. Funding for higher education has essentially tracked inflation while K-12 and total education expenditures increased slightly faster than inflation.

However, notice that total state expenditures grew far faster than the inflation rate. This is the root cause of California's budget mess. While this chart is not normalized for both inflation AND population growth, spending did grow much faster than population. California's population increased by 24% from 1990 to 2009, or 29.76 million to 36.96 million. Meanwhile, inflation-adjusted spending rose 85% from 1990 to 2009 or three and half times faster than population growth!

California's budget problems do not necessarily reside within the education budget, although there is always room for improvement. Because of increased budget demands elsewhere, money is siphoned away from education. Fix the runaway state spending in other areas and the educational budget will fix itself. State spending must be reduced!

Similarly, California's overly-progressive Personal Income Tax mechanism relies too heavily on too few taxpayers and is therefore highly volatile, leading to massive swings in state revenues, depending on real estate returns and the stock market. California's tax structure must be revised to make revenues more consistent, dampening the year-to-year swings.

What is California's Legislature doing to fix these issues? Not much! Instead of focussing on balancing the budget or reforming California's out-of-control public-employee pension system, Legislators pass useless resolutions such as the Cuss-Free Week.

What can you do? Contact your California State and Assembly representatives and let them know that you want them to focus on sanely balancing the budget, cutting spending in areas besides education, and reforming the state pension system.

Find Your California Senate and Assembly Representative
http://192.234.213.69/lmapsearch/framepage.asp

Learn more on what other current and former state leaders have to say.

Former California State Assembly Leader, Willie Brown
soquelbythecreek.blogspot.com/2010/03/even-liberal-democrat-willie-brown-sees.html

California State Treasurer, Bill Lockyer
soquelbythecreek.blogspot.com/2010/02/california-treasurer-lockyer-scolds.html

See also ...

"Why The Student Protestors Are Wrong"
www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/03/why_the_student_protestors_are.html

Sources:

California Program Expenditures
www.dof.ca.gov/budgeting/budget_faqs/documents/CHART-C1.pdf

Inflation Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (CUUR0000AA0)
data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?cu

Even Liberal Democrat Willie Brown Sees the Problem!

They say that the first road to recovery is to admit that you have a problem. Well, perhaps there is hope for California yet!

Willie Brown, a life-long liberal Democrat, served in the California Assembly for 30 years, was Speaker of the California Assembly for 15 years, and was San Francisco's first African-American mayor. So imagine my surprise to find the following in his "Willie's World" column in the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper, dated 3-JAN-2010.

Willie's World (3-JAN-2010)
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/03/BA2V1BBGHH.DTL

"If we as a state want to make a New Year's resolution, I suggest taking a good look at the California we have created. From our out-of-sync tax system to our out-of-control civil service, it's time for politicians to begin an honest dialogue about what we've become.

"Take the civil service.

"The system was set up so politicians like me couldn't come in and fire the people (relatives) hired by the guy they beat and replace them with their own friends and relatives.

"Over the years, however, the civil service system has changed from one that protects jobs to one that runs the show.

"The deal used to be that civil servants were paid less than private sector workers in exchange for an understanding that they had job security for life.

"But we politicians, pushed by our friends in labor, gradually expanded pay and benefits to private-sector levels while keeping the job protections and layering on incredibly generous retirement packages that pay ex-workers almost as much as current workers.

"Talking about this is politically unpopular and potentially even career suicide for most officeholders. But at some point, someone is going to have to get honest about the fact that 80 percent of the state, county and city budget deficits are due to employee costs.

"Either we do something about it at the ballot box, or a judge will do something about in Bankruptcy Court. And if you think I'm kidding, just look at Vallejo."

One question, Mr. Brown: Why all this honesty now? Why not a decade or two ago so that we could have avoided all this turmoil? I guess better late than never.

See also ...

California Treasurer Lockyer Scolds Fellow Democrats on Unsustainable Pensions and Their Inability to Fix the Problem
http://soquelbythecreek.blogspot.com/2010/02/california-treasurer-lockyer-scolds.html

Jerry Brown won't challenge teachers union
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/02/27/BATQ1HU1VQ.DTL