Pondering the state’s cash crunch, Bee columnist Dan Walters writes: “In fact, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's current budget is based on a wishful assumption that the feds will give the state an extra $7 billion – highly unlikely since the federal budget is in even worse shape than California's” http://www.sacbee.com/2010/05/02/v-print/2720568/dan-walters-state-fiscal-plan.html The last part of this sentence is doubly wrong. The federal budget deficit was higher as a percent of gross domestic product in 1946 than it was in 2009. And the federal government can legally run budget deficits. The constitution of California requires a balanced budget. Mr. Walters is entitled to his own opinion,

“California added 4,200 jobs in March,” reported a front-page article in The Sacramento Bee today: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/04/17/2685238/california-jobless-rate-rises.html What does that job figure mean without a context? That is the total number of non-farm jobs in California, 13,842,000 in March, and unstated in The Bee article: http://www.edd.ca.gov/About_EDD/pdf/urate201004.pdf? You be the judge.  

A front-page story in The Sacramento Bee today provides impressive data on the economics and politics involving California’s system of local government pensions, focusing on payments and liabilities: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/04/11/2670020/pension-promises-threaten-california.html. However, the reporters’ analyses of the data failed to include a driving force of rising pension costs. I mean, of course, our broken health-care system in the U.S. How broke is it? “Despite spending more than twice as much as the rest of the industrialized nations ($8,160 per capita), the United States performs poorly in comparison on major health indicators such as life expectancy, infant mortality and immuni

A story in The Sacramento Bee on job creation in the U.S. and in California sidestepped the main cause of the recession and unemployment: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/04/03/2652552/stronger-us-job-numbers-dont-carry.html That is the $8 trillion national housing bubble. In California, this bubble inflated higher than it did in most other states. Thus the loss of housing wealth in California’s economy has led to a sharp drop-off in residents’ wealth. This means that these consumers have less money in their pockets to buy goods and services. That, in turn, has dampened the bottom lines of businesses, big and small. This loss of consumption has also slashed tax revenue flowing to the state and l

Efforts to form labor unions in Sacramento shed light on what public- and private-sector workers face in organizing across the United States. The Sacramento County Management Association is made up of more than one-third of all nonunion managers in the county. To gauge their interest in forming a union, the board of SCMA has given 1,172 managers the option to vote on forming a union by signing cards indicating their choice. The process began Sept. 26. Approximately 300 cards must be collected by mid-December to hold a vote to choose a union in early 2010. Unrepresented Sacramento County managers oversee employees who deliver services in airports, courts, health, parks and public works, a