California Spirals Into Depression

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Friday July 17, 2009 · 11:57 AM PDT

2009/07/17 · 11:57

As unemployment jumps another 10% to 11.6%, California takes another inexorable step into Depression.

What is a depression? Most experts define it as a long, severe economic downturn, using yardsticks like 10% contraction in economic activity, and unemployment above 20%. Two years and counting in downturn. Check. State revenues down year over year since Q4 2006,with a 12% drop in sales tax collection this year reflecting a double digit slump in the economy. Check. One out of five Californians unemployed or underemployed. Check. Spiraling downward progressively. Check.

Agriculture is suffering tremendously, as a third dry year restricted water usage dramatically, and federal judges cut pumping from the Delta after over-pumping threatened to devastate a rich ecosystem. Overpumping groundwater threatens the California Aqueduct.

Construction is at a standstill, as new home construction has dropped by 86%. Commercial, industrial, and retail property are all in oversupply. Failure of commercial real estate threatens regional banks.

Aeolus

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Wednesday July 01, 2009 · 7:41 AM PDT

2009/07/01 · 07:41

Before modern psychiatry attempted to categorize sociopaths or psychopaths, the term "moral insanity" was used to describe narcissists without empathy, guilt, or the ability to accept responsibility for their actions.

Refusing once again to claim any responsibility for his actions, Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed plans approved by the legislature to avert a meltdown of the state budget.
From Arnold's twitter feed;

As I promised, I just vetoed a partial budget fix.

There were some technical problems which needed to be resolved by midnight last night to make last-minute adjustments to the fiscal year budget that ended June 31st.

Failure to make these cuts will lock in formulas which require higher levels of spending in the fiscal year that begins today, based on requirements in various education funding formulae and requirements in the stimulus plan for maintenance of effort.

This adds 3.3 billion more to the 2009-10 deficit, and the inept Governor has admitted that he has no ideas about how to fill this additional gap.

Aeolus

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Friday June 26, 2009 · 10:21 AM PDT

2009/06/26 · 10:21

In 1992, I was working in Los Angeles, with a very diverse group of people. There was widespread belief that LA would explode if the cops who beat Rodney King weren't convicted.

Still, I was amazed to look down from Dodger Stadium at night and see the City of Angels burning.

As California's budget mess continues to worsen, and we seem headed inexorably towards depression levels of unemployment, poverty, homelessness, and hunger, I've been recalling the summer of 1992 when Los Angeles erupted into a multi-racial redistribution of wealth.

Have the Republicans really thought through the potential results of eliminating the minimal payments to 127,000 low income parents and children in San Bernardino County when the unemployment rate is already above 13%?

Or the anger among the friends and families of the 420,000 low income parents and children in Los Angeles County who receive minimal payments, education, and assistance with child care?

On a hot night in September, with the Santa Ana winds blowing, and a simmering pool of rage, it will only take a spark.

Aeolus

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Thursday June 25, 2009 · 9:38 AM PDT

2009/06/25 · 09:38

Is the California Dream as dated as the go-go boots in this black and white Hullaballoo video?

California's unemployment rate is at 11.5%, construction has ground to a halt, and hundreds of thousands of further job cuts will ripple through the economy as over $20 billion is cut from state spending. The cumulative effects of the drop in government spending will push official unemployment numbers up to 13.5%, and that's not counting the effects of further downward cuts in almost every other sector.

The Golden State has become ungovernable, with a government paralyzed by decades of structural problems, starting with Howard Jarvis' Proposition 13 in 1978.

Aeolus

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Wednesday June 24, 2009 · 4:36 PM PDT

2009/06/24 · 16:36

This will be a short diary.

Our bonus son joined the USAF, and had pretty apparent scoliosis when he enlisted.

Five years later, he is semi-crippled with significant back pain, almost certainly enhanced by his training and military experience.

The Air Force is now offering him a settlement of approximately $20,000 with an immediate discharge, or he can appeal the decision while he stays in the Air Force for another year.

My question is about what resources are available for troops in this situation.

Yo, Obama! Estate (Death) Taxes? California's Failing

Aeolus

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Monday June 22, 2009 · 11:21 AM PDT

2009/06/22 · 11:21

Why is it that we never see diaries about the absolute rape of the American taxpayers that Bush and his kleptocrats pushed through to roll back estate taxes.

Before this part of the Billionaire agenda was passed, the state of California had an estate tax that was fully deductible against federal estate taxes.

California's constitution, amended with the massive expenditure by plutocrats multiple times, prevented us from re-instituting any tax on the richest Californians, even though this would keep money in the state.

If we rolled back this bizarre Republican artifact, California would have another 1.2 billion a year, enough to prevent parts of several draconian cuts to vocational education and drug treatment in prisons, drugs for AIDS patients, minimum subsidies for children of teenage mothers, or care that keeps aged disabled invalids in their homes.

Why don't we hear anything about this?

We need to hear every single Democrat at the national and state level advocating for a rollback of the estate tax, and an ability for every state to share in this.

Aeolus

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Wednesday June 17, 2009 · 9:38 AM PDT

2009/06/17 · 09:38

For any complex problem, there's a simple solution, and it's always wrong!.

Diaries about California fill up with savage comments that suggest that California should burn to the ground, plunge into depression, or go bankrupt because we deserve it. Our mortal sin varies, with the most common accusations centering on abuse of the initiative process, Prop 13, pampered unions, too many Mexicans, and electing a steroid-enhanced action hero to lead the golden state. Greedy Californians borrowing against over-priced homes caused the economic collapse. Oh and we gave you all Reagan, and we should be divided into multiple states to solve the problem.

Each one of these has a germ of truth, but it really is time to Move On.

Let's look at what's happening, and let's have America's progressives join California's progressives to find solutions.

Governator 5.0, the latest incarnation of a post-partisan action hero, is proposing barbaric cuts to social services in California. Not balancing the budget. Not reigning in expenses! Finally working to achieve Reagan's vision of completely eliminating welfare.

Aeolus

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Friday June 12, 2009 · 12:16 PM PDT

2009/06/12 · 12:16

OK, I'll confess that my friend Heather, aka Ellinorianne, dared me to post this diary as a snarky response to Please Thank the Women of Daily Kos.

When I went to YearlyKos in Vegas, now reinvented as Netroots Nation, I was amazed by how many folks there looked a lot like me and teacherken. Old. White. Men.

I took my son to Vegas, and also to Austin, doing my part to bring the average age down, but much of the world of kostopia (my apologies to skippy) is still a bunch of what Atrios calls Dirty Forking Hippies.(Or at least I think that's what DFH stands for). A bunch of old white guys, who were young in the sixties. We were Clean for Gene, and supported the national student strike after Kent State, when we had a little time between Dead concerts and acid trips. But I digress.

Which brings me to the real point of this diary, which is to shamelessly promote Ellinorianne's application for a DFA scholarship for Netroots Nation.

Aeolus

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Thursday June 11, 2009 · 11:09 AM PDT

2009/06/11 · 11:09

Although there is no formal definition, most economists agree a depression is a prolonged slump with a 10% or more decline in real GDP.

By that definition, California is entering a depression, a locomotive engine plunging off a missing bridge, pulling 49 hapless states behind it.

Our incompetent national media makes it sound like it's just another wacky California problem, more silliness from the land of fruits and nuts. We've got an Austrian action hero as Governator, a dysfunctional legislature with an absurd 2/3 requirement to pass a budget or a tax increase, and an electorate that keeps voting for stuff like bullet trains and stem cell research, while pushing through tax cuts. Sell California to the Scientoligists. Ha Ha.

What nobody is noticing is how much worse the downturn is in California than elsewhere, and how it's going to get far worse. The green shoots that you might see in Texas aren't happening in cities like Soledad or Gonalez where the unemployment rate is 21.5%, or for a neighborhood in San Bernardino, where home prices have dropped 84% from the peak.

Aeolus

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Thursday June 04, 2009 · 10:44 AM PDT

2009/06/04 · 10:44

Inconceivably, faced with a massive deficit, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Worst Governor Ever, pushed through massive corporate tax cuts for the state's largest Corporations. Two Billion dollars a year in corporate tax cuts that will go overwhelmingly to large multi-national corporations, including giants like Disney, Warner Brothers, Intel,and Apple.

This amounts to a 25% cut in corporate taxes, but it doesn't go to small businesses, just to the largest and the richest who will now be able to choose the most advantage formula for paying taxes.

The California Budget Project has now worked with the State Franchise Board to estimate the cost of the dead-of-night tax giveaways that Arnold and his Republican cronies forced into the budget negotiations earlier this year. There were no hearings on these bills, and they sure as hell didn't let the people vote on them.

Aeolus

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Sunday May 31, 2009 · 3:08 PM PDT

2009/05/31 · 15:08

If you don't live in California and follow Calitics, you may not appreciate how thoroughly our Last Action Hero governor has wrecked the state, and how barbaric his latest proposals are. We're getting his soundbites that not only involve massive cuts to education and public safety, removing health care coverage for a million children, and taking away home health care services for the disabled and elderly, but also killing AIDS patients by denying them their medicine. Down With Tyranny lays out the Collateral Damage.

But the savagery of his philosophy became apparent over the weekend when his round of cuts to the prison budget included saving 900 million a year scrapping substance abuse counseling, vocational training and other rehabilitation programs for inmates.

Aeolus

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Saturday May 09, 2009 · 11:44 AM PDT

2009/05/09 · 11:44

Ellinorianne is an amazing person I met on line here at DailyKos, when she wrote passionate diaries as her husband ran an unwinnable campaign for State Senate in a heavily Republican district in South Orange County.

She's gotten to be a great friend, and a co-blogger.

Now I'm asking Kossacks who are DFA members to support her scholarhip application.

I've been able to attend all three Yearly Kos/Netroots nation events, and there is nobody who belongs at Netroots Nation more than Ellinorianne.

She's a writer's writer, a blogger's blogger, and a wonderful person.

I could make this diary longer and cuter, add pooty and woozle pictures, or do something else, but instead, click the link and vote.

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OK. California Sucks! Now What? Yo! Obama!

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Support Ellinorianne's DFA Scholarship to Netroots Nation