Even Profitable Firms Fleeing California

Something I've written about on numerous occasions.

At O.C. Register, "California businesses can expect little sympathy from leadership in Sacramento":

Democratic reaction to the news that Waste Connections, a $3.6-billion company and major Sacramento-area employer, is headed to Houston to seek a friendlier business climate tells other businesses all they need to know about the attitudes of those who run California's government.

State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, gave these clueless and snarky remarks in response to the news: "In this instance you have a company that is, in fact, profitable, making significant revenue gains in 2011 and 2010. That doesn't speak to a bad business climate here in California when a good company is able to thrive in that way. So whatever Mr. Middelstaedt's (company CEO) reasons are to leave the great state of California, I know I'm pushing back."

Steinberg claims to have worked on improving the state's business climate, but from what we see in Sacramento, Steinberg and the party he helps lead have been pushing hard mainly for additional regulations and much higher taxes. The California Democratic Party's attitude long has been that businesses are basically trying to rip off the public, and the source of all wealth and advancement can be found in the public sector, When businesses leave. Steinberg and Co. show little sympathy.

That's because Democrats suck.

Continue reading at the link.

Surfing or Suicide? Nathan Fletcher Survives 'Broken Skulls' in Tahiti

A great piece.

And especially interesting is how the editors embedded the video at the website. This story was on the front page in traditional dead-tree format, but online the newspaper basically blogged it.

At Los Angeles Times, "A surfer's defining moment in a wall of water":

The view from inside a wave, a big one, can be hazy.

Surrounded by spray and a pounding drone, surfers get tunnel vision, all senses devoted to reaching the far end of the barrel. As Clark said: "You're so focused on harnessing and managing that power so you can deal with it, ride it, survive it."

When Fletcher was towed into his second ride at Teahupoo — by a faster Jet ski this time — it was clear he had landed in the jaws of a behemoth.

The wave reached an estimated 37 feet, but it wasn't so much the height as the thickness and ferocious power, a churning locomotive. After a bottom turn, he spotted a narrow slot, a path to safety, but his board kept twisting sideways.

"I was battling the whole time," he said. "Just thinking that I had to make it because I was scared."

The sheer volume of water running up the face of the wave threatened to suck him up and over. Yet, until the last moment, Fletcher thought he had a chance to emerge unscathed.

"Then I realized I wasn't going to make it."

The lip overhead — nearly as heavy as the wave itself, a frightening trademark of Teahupoo — collapsed with merciless force, sending his board flying, wrenching his body underwater. "This is it," he thought. "I've had some good waves, a good life." Then, just as quickly, he popped to the surface.

"I grabbed my head," he recalled. "I was like, is that thing still on there?"

Back on shore, the crowd was buzzing about his epic ride and wipeout, but the whole thing felt so surreal that he didn't pay much attention. Wasn't everyone catching big ones that day?

California Unemployment Rate Falls to 11.3 Percent! Break Out the Champagne!

I'm being facetious.

But I can't help it. Look at this ridiculously enthusiastic headline at the Los Angeles Times: "California's Jobless Rate Falls for Fourth Month in a Row! The State Unemployment Rate Declines to 11.3% in November, a Sign That the Labor Market is Slowly Recovering!"

That's the real headline. All I've added is the exclamation point! But seriously. You'd think it's HAPPY DAYS AGAIN! by the looks of the newspaper, and remember I still get the rag in hard copy!

And it only takes a quick glance at Google to see that the state's still mired in depression-like conditions in many parts for state, the California Central Valley, for example. See the Turlock Journal, "Good news, bad news in local unemployment rates":

The latest figures from the Economic Development Department reflect some good news for Stanislaus County and some not so heartening news.

Stanislaus County posted an unemployment rate of 15.5 percent in November, just slightly up from the revised October rate of 15.3 percent. This marked the third month in a row that the county has had an unemployment rate below 16 percent, something that has been a rarity during these troubled economic times.

A small uptick in November's unemployment rate hasn't been seen since November 2007, and bucks the trend of the past few years, said EDD labor market analyst Nati Martinez.

In November 2007, the unemployment rate went from 8.2 percent to 8.8 percent. In 2008, it rose from 11.2 percent to 12.1 percent in November. In November 2009, the rate grew from 15.9 percent to 16.7 percent and last year it jumped from 16.1 percent to 17.2 percent in the same time frame, according to the EDD.

Stanislaus County's November unemployment rate for this year was well below the year-ago estimate of 17.2 percent.

However, the gains reflected in the EDD's report are tempered by the fact that less people are reporting that they are looking for work. Stanislaus County's labor force, which stood at an estimated 237,300 in October, fell to 233,200.

I added the italics, since for all the "great" news about declining unemployment --- nationwide and in California --- the fact is huge numbers of people are discouraged and remain so unhappy about their prospects that they've simply given up looking for a job. When that happens, they drop off the statistics for the "active" labor force, and in fact the unemployment rate improves. As always, official unemployment statistics systematically undercount the unemployed.

More on all of this later. When the national unemployment rate falls to 6 percent I'll pop a bottle of champagne. And 8 percent in California would be worth a little celebration.

RELATED: At New York Times, "As Wars End, Young Veterans Return to Scant Jobs."

Glenn Reynolds Interviews Joel Kotkin: 'Myths and Realities of the American Cities and Suburbs'

Kotkin sounds very optimistic about things, which is somewhat surprising given some of his other writings I've read. See his piece about the decline of California, for example, "The Golden State is Crumbling."

Racial Disparities in Autism Services

On any issue like this you'll always get the inequality arguments. From the continuing series on autism at Los Angeles Times, "Warrior parents fare best in securing autism services":

Public spending on autistic children in California varies significantly by racial or ethnic group and socioeconomic status, according to data analyzed by the Los Angeles Times.

For autistic children 3 to 6 — a critical period for treating the disorder — the state Department of Developmental Services last year spent an average of $11,723 per child on whites, compared with $11,063 on Asians, $7,634 on Latinos and $6,593 on blacks.

Data from public schools, though limited, shows that whites are more likely to receive basic services such as occupational therapy to help with coordination and motor skills.

The divide is even starker when it comes to the most coveted service — a behavioral aide from a private company to accompany a child throughout each school day, at a cost that often reaches $60,000 a year.

In the state's largest school district, Los Angeles Unified, white elementary school students on the city's affluent Westside have such aides at more than 10 times the rate of Latinos on the Eastside.

It might be tempting to blame such disparities on prejudice, but the explanation is more complicated.

“Part of what you're seeing here is the more educated and sophisticated you are, the louder you scream and the more you ask for,” said Soryl Markowitz, an autism specialist at the Westside Regional Center, which arranges state-funded services in West Los Angeles for people with developmental disabilities.

In both the developmental system and the schools, the process for determining what services a disabled child receives is in essence a negotiation with the parents.

RTWT.

The photos themselves are intense. And some of the family vignettes are sad. But then, that's exactly what this series is about: building an agenda for more state funding for those who're underserved --- and the program's already an entitlement, spending billions annually. The problem is those with less economic resources lack the skills and time to navigate the system and secure the lion's share of support.

And while autism is pretty undefined --- and yeah, it's probably over-diagnosed, ---I know from my own's son's experiences that there are real health issues at stake for families. And again, look at those pictures.

Previously: "Unraveling Autism."

California Indian Tribes Eject Thousands of Members

This is fascinating.

It's a common story line --- there have been lots of reports of tribal members being cut loose for lack of lineal documentation. But this report at New York Times is particularly interesting. The Chukchansi Indian Casino is up near Fresno. My wife likes to go out there when we're in town.

See, "In California, Indian Tribes With Casino Money Cast Off Members":

COARSEGOLD, Calif. — The six-page, single-spaced letter that Nancy Dondero and about 50 of her relatives received last month was generously salted with legal citations and footnotes. But its meaning was brutally simple. “It is the decision by a majority of the Tribal Council,” the letter said, “that you are hereby disenrolled.”

And with that, Ms. Dondero’s official membership in the Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians, the cultural identity card she had carried all her life, summarily ended.

“That’s it,” Ms. Dondero, 58, said. “We’re tribeless.”

Ms. Dondero and her clan have joined thousands of Indians in California who have been kicked out of their tribes in recent years for the crime of not being of the proper bloodline.

For centuries, American Indian tribes have banished people as punishment for serious offenses. But only in recent years, experts say, have they begun routinely disenrolling Indians deemed inauthentic members of a group. And California, with dozens of tiny tribes that were decimated, scattered and then reconstituted, often out of ethnically mixed Indians, is the national hotbed of the trend.

Clan rivalries and political squabbles are often triggers for disenrollment, but critics say one factor above all has driven the trend: casino gambling. The state has more than 60 Indian casinos that took in nearly $7 billion last year, the most of any state, according to the Indian Gaming Commission.

For Indians who lose membership in a tribe, the financial impact can be huge. Some small tribes with casinos pay members monthly checks of $15,000 or more out of gambling profits. Many provide housing allowances and college scholarships. Children who are disenrolled can lose access to tribal schools.

Continue reading.

Some in Congress want to give the federal courts or the Bureau of Indian Affairs the authority to rule on what in many cases are tribal expulsions based on blatant greed.

I have a lot less sympathy for the plight of Native Americans after hearing stories like these.

VIDEO: West Coast Port Shutdown

More Occupy freaks to enliven your day.

Oakland at the video:

And a nice roundup from Long Beach at LAist, "Police Declared Occupy The Ports Unlawful Assembly, 2 Arrests Made." And at Los Angeles Times, "Occupy protests shut down 2 Portland terminals, spread to Seattle." And more for the Los Angeles Times here.

And ICYMI, Michelle has an epic post, "Your guide to D12: Occupiers return to ports for West Coast shutdown; Updated."

VDH on Immigration, Multiculturalism and Amnesty

Victor Davis Hanson is the very best commentator on the illegal immigration crisis in California.

Hanson's don't-miss book is Mexifornia: A State of Becoming.

Medical Marijuana Target of U.S. Prosecutors

At New York Times, "Medical Marijuana Industry Is Unnerved by U.S. Crackdown."

UKIAH, Calif. — An intensifying federal crackdown on growers and sellers of state-authorized medical marijuana has badly shaken the billion-dollar industry, which has sprung up in California since voters approved medical use of the drug in 1996, and has highlighted the stark contradiction between federal and state policies.

Federal law classifies the possession and sale of marijuana as a serious crime and does not grant exceptions for medical use, so the programs adopted here, in 15 other states and in the District of Columbia exist in an odd legal limbo. While federal agencies have long targeted Californians who blatantly reap illegal profits in the name of medicine, or who smuggle marijuana across state lines, the Justice Department said in 2009 that it would not normally pursue groups providing marijuana to sick patients, in accordance with state laws.

But in the last several weeks, federal prosecutors have raided or threatened to seize the property of scores of growers and dispensaries in California that, in some cases, are regarded by local officials as law-abiding models. At the same time, the Internal Revenue Service has levied large, disputed tax charges against the state’s largest dispensary, threatening its ability to continue.

In a hint of the simmering federal-state tensions, Kamala D. Harris, the attorney general of California, described in pointed terms the Oct. 7 announcement by four United States attorneys of their tough new campaign against many dispensaries, which they called commercial operations that violate the intent of California law as well as federal statutes.

“It was a unilateral federal action, and it has only increased uncertainty about how Californians can legitimately comply with state law,” Ms. Harris said in an interview. Since federal authorities do not recognize that marijuana can serve medical ends, she said, “they are ill equipped to be the decision makers as to which providers are violating the law.”

Kamala Harris is a blithering idiot. The Feds know exactly what's going on, which is that medical marijuana's a scam. Some patients may benefit, but otherwise the whole agenda is about stealth legalization.

And since I'm on this, I've been meaning to post Melanie Phillips' killer essay, "Drug legalisation? We need it like a hole in the head.

Melanie Phillips provides the essential conservative argument on the legalization debate (and she devastates the case of Portugal, which is widely cited by legalization enthusiasts as the "successful model" of decriminalization). But compare to David Swindle, "Our Deceitful Marxist President’s Cruel War on Sick Medicinal Marijuana Patients." It's a winding piece, but I'm still not convinced pot smoking's not counter-cultural. Or, let's just say that the tea party folks --- who I've been protesting with for over two years --- aren't down with it. But the Occupy folks are: "Zuccotti Utopia: Portraits of The New Revolutionaries." (Also, federalization of drug policy by itself doesn't make a conservative argument on marijuana legalization, and the federal government does indeed have authority to regulate "which of the plants God set growing on this earth" --- it's called the Commerce Clause, which kicks in when drugs and drug-related inputs are bought and sold across state lines. Besides, as I always say, drugs are for losers.)

RELATED: At Los Angeles Times, "L.A. council to debate whether to outlaw medical pot stores."

Expel the UC Davis Occupiers

From David Horowitz, "Don’t Pepper Spray Them: Expel Them":

A bunch of students who think they’re revolutionaries formed a mob at UC Davis the other day, blocked a public walkway and refused to move when campus police requested them to do so. As participants in the Occupy Wall Streets on American neighborhoods and now campuses, these are people who support violence against a democratically elected government at home and terrorism abroad. They are friends and comrades of Jew-haters both domestic and foreign. You will notice the Keffiyehs in the video — but the record of the Occupiers is quite clear — on the matter of Jews, on the matter of violence and on the matter of hatred for their own country.

To be a “revolutionary” in a democratic country is to be a self-conceived and self-declared outlaw. That’s who these students are. Of course the may not realize who they are since the adults around them have conspired not to hold them accountable for their actions. But that’s who they are. I have long been of the opinion that the Sixties might have been avoided if administrators had responded to the illegal occupations of college campuses by expelling the culprits responsible. I see the same mistake being made now by the administrators at UC Davis who in the midst of what is — for them — a public relations nightmare, are groveling before these enemies of civility, decency, public order and the fundamental principles which sustain our Republic.

These demonstrators, these haters of our civic order, have forfeited the right to be subsidized by California taxpayers and to occupy privileged spots at our public universities. They need to be taught a lesson as much as our society needs to learn a lesson.Treating adults as children is bad policy; treating the enemies of American democracy as children and “idealists” can be suicidal. If we don’t defend ourselves, there is no one else who will.

Image Credit: Serr8d's Cutting Edge.

UC Davis Students Protest Pepper Spray Incident

This picture gives you an idea of the large size of the protest: "I've never seen so many people on the #ucdavis quad."

Protest video here: "UC Davis Students Protest Pepper Spraying."

And at Los Angeles Times, "Hundreds of UC Davis students protest pepper-spraying by police." And at San Francisco Chronicle, "5,000 gather on Davis quad, call on chancellor to resign."

Expect updates.

36 Hours in Santa Barbara?

I just wrote about Santa Barbara yesterday, so what the heck?

Here's a travel review from the New York Times:

RECOMMENDATIONS about what to do in Santa Barbara invariably include references to the celebrities who have settled along this beautiful stretch of California’s central coast. Want to take an afternoon hike? Head into the hills near Oprah’s house. Looking for a place to eat? Try the taqueria that Julia Child adored. Just 100 miles north of Los Angeles, this quiet beach community has long been a hideaway for celebrity heavyweights. But over the past few years, the city has also made room for a new downtown scene humming with cool shops and laid-back wine bars, mobile food trucks and casual restaurants. It’s Santa Barbara for every budget — whether you debarked from a private jet at the city’s new $63 million airport terminal or cruised into town off Highway 101.

Forget the celebrities. If you stay in Santa Barbara long enough you'll run into a few. Get out and enjoy the beaches and the town. It's truly paradise.

The Times' recommendations are at the link.

One of mine to eat is Brophy Brothers. Or the Enterprise Fish Company. Or up State Street a bit is Harry's Cafe. I'm sure there are nicer, more prestigious restaurants. But these are the ones we visited time and again.

The End of Occupy Wall Street

From Jacob Laksin, at FrontPage Magazine:

NEW YORK – It turns out that Occupy Wall Street is not too big to fail.

The left-wing protest campaign that started with such a media-assisted bang two months ago ended with a whimper yesterday morning, as New York police shut down the protestors’ latest attempt to make a scene and generally to be a nuisance in lower Manhattan. Evicted from its base of operations in Zuccotti Park earlier in the week, Occupied Wall Street, or what remained of it, tried to improve on its former stunt by attempting to invade the New York Stock Exchange to shut it down. Instead the protestors’ so-called “Day of Action” came to little of consequence when police easily repelled them. It was just the latest setback for a self-styled movement that has fizzled out in recent weeks as public and official patience with it has worn thin.

While yesterday’s events highlight how ineffectual the campaign has become, Occupy Wall Street long ago became a parody of political cluelessness. The protestors’ grievances, while hailed by a sympathetic mainstream media, ranged from the confused to the contradictory. They raged about tax breaks to the rich “1 percent,” even as that one percent shoulders the largest share of the country’s tax burden. They denounced government bailouts for big banks, even as they demanded government bailouts for student loans and demanded that Americans “resist austerity.” They charged that “banks steal homes,” apparently oblivious to the role that the country’s biggest banks had in subsidizing countless risky mortgages that extended “equality” before ultimately collapsing the housing market. Occupy Wall Street did not so much bemoan America’s political and economic realities as invent them, with the result even the more reasonable aspects of their agenda – ending government bailouts for banks for instance – became impossible to take seriously.

Much of what Occupy Wall Street stood for would be meaningless, if it weren’t often menacing. In recent weeks especially there has been a surge in militancy among the protestors. Pollsters found that over one third of the protestors support violence to advance their agenda, a fact confirmed by the mounting violence originating in Occupy Wall Street encampments. In Oakland, protestors vandalized local businesses, set fires, hurled objects at police and shut down the local port. In New York they clashed with police and threatened to “burn New York City to the f—ing ground.” In Washington D.C., protestors laid siege to a conference by the conservative group Americans for Prosperity, knocking a 78-year-old woman down some stairs in the process. Given the protestors’ penchant for violence, it is perhaps not entirely surprising that the deranged gunman who fired an assault rifle into the White House this week was initially able to avoid police by blending in with the Occupy D.C. protestors. When there are so many violent radicals in the crowd, it can be difficult to tell them apart.

Continue reading.

Then compare Laksin to James B. Stewart, at New York Times, "An Uprising With Plenty of Potential":

In the wake of this week’s eviction of protesters from Zuccotti Park in New York and other urban campgrounds around the country, it’s tempting to dismiss the Occupy Wall Street movement as little more than a short-lived media phenomenon. The issues that spawned the movement — income inequality, money in politics and Wall Street’s influence — were being drowned out by debates over personal hygiene, noise and crime.

By Wednesday morning, when I dropped by the park, about 20 people, including some who looked disheveled and homeless, shared food and barely listened to a speaker with a graying ponytail who denounced New York as an “illegitimate police state.” Thursday’s “Day of Action” led to some more arrests, but it didn’t spawn the mass demonstrations some local politicians had predicted, let alone attract the throngs that the Tea Party mustered for a march on Washington in 2009.

But critics and supporters alike suggest that the influence of the movement could last decades, and that it might even evolve into a more potent force. “A lot of people brush off Occupy Wall Street as incoherent and inconsequential,” Michael Prell told me. “I disagree.”

Mr. Prell is a strategist for the Tea Party Patriots, a grass-roots organization that advocates Tea Party goals of fiscal responsibility, free markets and constitutionally limited government. He’s the author of “Underdogma,” a critique of left-wing anti-Americanism, which includes a chapter on the Berkeley Free Speech movement of the 1960s, which may be the closest historical parallel to the Occupy movement.

“They claim to stand up on behalf of the ‘little guy’ (the 99 percent), while raising a fist of protest against the big, rich, greedy and powerful 1 percent,” he said of the Occupy movement. “The parallels between Occupy Wall Street and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement are too clear to ignore — right down to the babbling incoherence of the participants. The lesson from Berkeley in the 1960s and the protest movement they spawned is: it doesn’t matter that they don’t make sense. What matters is they are tapping into a gut-level instinct that is alive, or lying dormant, in almost every human being. And, when they unleash the power of standing up for the powerless against the powerful — David vs. Goliath — the repercussions can ripple throughout our society for decades.”

That's definitely taking the long view, and the comments by Prell are interesting, given that he's a tea party organizer. I'd add only that the occupy movement is just the latest manifestation of the post-Cold War resurgence of radical left-wing politics, and hence whatever impact we're seeing today will reside as the country returns to a full-employment economy. That could be as soon as the 2016 presidential election cycle. What will remain is the hardline anti-Americanism and campus-based radicalism that's always looking for a crisis to foist its revolutionary agenda down the throats of everyday Americans.

Police Pepper Spray Protesters at Occupy Davis

I saw this earlier, from Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing, but here's The Lede, "Video of Police Pepper-Spraying U.C. Davis Students Provokes Outrage":

And from Professor Bob Ostertag, at Huffington Post, "Militarization of Campus Police."

There's lots more at Memeorandum, for example, "Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi."

'Down With Capitalist Education!' — California Faculty Association Strikes at Cal State Dominguez Hills

Okay, as promised, here's the follow up to my earlier entry, "Faculty Members Strike at Cal State Dominguez Hills." The protest at Dominguez Hills was pretty subdued, especially compared to the violence and indecency taking place across the country on Thursday. But the communists were out in full force, which is the way public education is headed in this country.

Here's one of the big protest signs as I walked over to the entrance of the university:

The organizers had set up at the intersection of East Victoria Street and Tamcliff.

Cal State Chancellor Charles Reed was the focus of protest. The guy holding the sign ducked his head whenever I raised my camera, as did a lot of the other protesters. Freakin' cowards. I guess folks weren't so proud about standing up in solidarity after all:

Buses were pulling up periodically to drop off protesters. The crowd was an amalgam of faculty members, some from other campuses, union organizers, and student protesters representing the fringe of radical left-wing extremism. Below you've got this Yasser Arafat wannabe with the keffiyeh and blank stare of indifference. What a loser. Also below is apparently a CFA member with his obligatory "racist" protest sign. Idiots, all of them:

Here's a kid just off the bus with his "Down With Capitalist Eduction!" poster. He was cruising around with activists from the International Communist Workers Party:

More activists:

Here's some union solidarity with the AFL-CIO:

These two had "99 Percent" headbands, freakin' hippie wannabes:

Class warfare:

"This is what democracy looks like!"

Protesters blocked the entrance to the university to oncoming traffic. This public bus waited to enter until after the traffic signal changed:

Protesters droned on about making the rich pay more in taxes:

I guess it's all about "righteous justice," or something. The woman here is enthralled with her copy of the ICWP's Red Flag. Bunch of commie bloodsuckers:

More coverage at KABC-TV Los Angeles, "California State University faculty members demand raises, stage 1-day strike."

California Budget Expected at $3.7 Billion Less Than Forecast

I didn't see this until I opened the newspaper moments before my first classes yesterday: "Deeper cuts to state budget expected." The news was on top of reports of violent student protests at the Cal State Board of Trustees meeting Tuesday in Long Beach: "Violent clash erupts outside Cal State trustees meeting." So, during classes I asked students to discuss how the state budget, tuition protests, and the larger occupy movement were related. A main theme is that things don't seem to be getting better. And couple students were surprised at the faculty strike at CSU Dominquez Hills, with one saying, "Don't they realize there's no money"? I guess not.