Jerry Brown closing 70 state parks in Ca.

[flacaltenn]

For the record, the Pork Chops were a hit (someone had suggested adding finely ground coffee to the rub. I took a risk and did so and it produced a great crust when I seared the chops on the grill). Some dipped the chops in a little BBQ sauce served on the side, I tried the sauce with several bites and it really worked.

Anyway, back to the fray. My understanding of the economic troubles facing California cannot be blamed on one political party or one ideology. Democrats generally favor an activitst government providing an array services to the citizens. Such an ideology is costly yet creates jobs in both the private and public sectors.

Republicans too engaged in similar job building. Rather than provide services, for example, they pushed legislation limiting a judges sentencing discretion and sending more offenders - both juvenile and adult - to prison.

(Don't misunderstand, I'm retire LE and know first hand that some offenders need to be caged for long long times. But most offenders don't, and the three strikes laws, determinent sentencing, and prison sentences for alcohol and other drug crimes has created overcrowding leading to an out of control gang problem and huge costs)

California's problems are systemic and exacerbated by ideology on both sides of the aisle; doing the same thing for decades was insane and we can see the results today.

During my career we saw more famine than feast on the local level. Preventative services were replaced by more and more punitive 'solutions' which clearly have not worked. Jails are overcrowded and soon will begin to recieve more state prison inmates as the state cuts its budget; CA sheriffs and Chief Probation Officers as well as city & town police agency's are faced with receiving an influx of persons released from the prisons, including sex offenders and violent offenders as well as Alcohol and Drug offenders entering local institutions and hitting the streets with few resources and very little hope of securing employment in today's economy.

Pointing fingers ain't productive, it's time for emotion and ideology to be put aside.

Hey -- congrats on actually CARING about "a rub" or "a sauce".. I'm impressed..

But truely -- you expect me to believe the problem is on "both sides of aisle" when the "aisle" has been DEEP BLUE for nearly 40 years? The entire state leg. with the exemption of about 4 or 5 yrs in the senate side has been DOMINATED by the nation's most progressive left.

The way around Republican Govs. has been thru the Inititive process. So anything that the "mean ole guarddog" just might veto or criticize has been sent directly to the public ballot where the PEOPLE of Cal goofed up repeatedly on bond issues, on matters of policy, ect, ect.

I tried to pull Figure 1 from:::

http://reason.org/files/a2ec7caccc5d660e870c4a21526ef5f8.pdf

It shows total spending (NOT COUNTING Fed money) almost Tripling since 1990. The per capita spending has almost Doubled in the same period. And the pension funds are a WMD size threat to the budget.

Farewell, My Lovely - Reason Magazine

In 1999 Davis signed a law that retroactively increased pension benefits for all government employees by 25 percent to 50 percent—including all workers employed at the time and all new hires. Senate Bill 400 (S.B. 400) was, in the words of David Crane, Schwarzenegger’s special adviser for jobs and economic growth, “the largest issuance of debt in California history, and it was issued without voter approval or voter knowledge.”

SNIP<<<

A Long Road to Small Reform

It quickly became apparent that there were serious errors in those estimates. But it wasn’t until 2008, when CalPERS lost somewhere between a quarter and half of its portfolio, that the vast taxpayer liability became too clear to ignore. Wall Street’s subsequent series of fools’ rallies has done little to restore CalPERS’s solvency, and investments now cover only 63 percent of CalPERS’ ongoing commitments, far short of the federal government’s minimum threshold of 80 percent for basic pension plan health. Taxpayers are on the hook for the remainder.

The Golden State’s 2010 budget shortfall included an additional $3.9 billion in unexpected charges for pension payouts. Legislative sources expect that gap to increase more than threefold, to nearly $14 billion, in 2011. The gap is increasing, at an accelerating rate, year by year; and there is no realistic scenario in which market performance can begin to close it. CalPERS, whose accounting house of mirrors is still built on projections of 7-to-8-percent annual returns indefinitely, claims to be untroubled. But it also continues to ask for more help from the state’s general fund, citing market losses as well as longer retiree life spans.

“Highway patrol officers and firefighters care very deeply what the public thinks,” Bob Wolf, president of the California Department of Forestry firefighters union, told me during the budget battle in October. “We believe our neighbors down the street, whom we protect, believe that we deserve fair retirement and fair wages and decent working conditions. That’s all we’re asking for. We’re not asking for pie in the sky.”

Along with the California Association of Highway Patrolmen and four other unions, Wolf’s group agreed last summer to roll back some of the past decade’s gains in public employee compensation—specifically, they supported a return to pre-1999 pension formulas for new hires and an increase in employee contributions. Through his scorched-earth campaign on operational spending and a threat to leave office without a 2010 budget signed, Schwarzenegger eventually won the war of wills with Democratic legislators as well.

Even the UNIONS realized those projections are apocalyptic. You guys are not only sitting on too many faultlines. You're playing Dr StangeLove riding the bomb into the ground..

 

[FactFinder]

I'm lost in how this all figures into the environment. But i guess some cop's or fire fighter's pension trumps that, heh?

 

[uscitizen]

I recall the elation of Ahnuld winning in CA and how the right just knew he would straighten CA out and then become president after the repubs got the constitution changed.
Remember the Ahnuld bill that Orrin Hatch submitted?

Wha happened?

Ahh hopey changey turned to sour grapes?

 

[whitehall]

If Jerry was serious he would sell the state park acreage to developers rather than see the parks deteriorate with hypodermic needles, condoms, bums, dumped bodies and wild eyed marijuana growers.

 

[FactFinder]

CA is way too narcissitic.

 

[MeBelle]

Pointing fingers ain't productive, it's time for emotion and ideology to be put aside.

Replace 'pointing fingers' with 'examining past mistakes and using solutions in order to not repeat them...' would be much more appropriate, IMHO.
But that may take a small army of consultants to accomplish...and we all know who consultants bow to.

 

[FactFinder]

Pointing fingers ain't productive, it's time for emotion and ideology to be put aside.

Replace 'pointing fingers' with 'examining past mistakes and using solutions in order to not repeat them...' would be much more appropriate, IMHO.
But that may take a small army of consultants to accomplish...and we all know who consultants bow to.

Coulod be too much reliance on consultants and not enough on common sense.. maybe, heh?

 

[MeBelle]

Pointing fingers ain't productive, it's time for emotion and ideology to be put aside.

Replace 'pointing fingers' with 'examining past mistakes and using solutions in order to not repeat them...' would be much more appropriate, IMHO.
But that may take a small army of consultants to accomplish...and we all know who consultants bow to.

Coulod be too much reliance on consultants and not enough on common sense.. maybe, heh?

10-4!!

Buy a consultant to 'prove' you (not meaning you literally) are proceeding in the right direction.

 

[MeBelle]

I recall the elation of Ahnuld winning in CA and how the right just knew he would straighten CA out and then become president after the repubs got the constitution changed.
Remember the Ahnuld bill that Orrin Hatch submitted?

Wha happened?

Ahh hopey changey turned to sour grapes?

Ahhhnold aka GASbag (get it right! ) couldn't do squat with Dem's in charge of both houses of Congress.

 

[flacaltenn]

I'm lost in how this all figures into the environment. But i guess some cop's or fire fighter's pension trumps that, heh?

Well there's that Hydrogen Hiway that you couldn't afford. All those electric car mandates you couldn't afford. That Stem Cell Research INstitute that you couldn't afford. The generous Solar Subsidies that you couldn't afford. All those Cal EPA mandates and regs that you couldn't afford.. I think the environment OUTSIDE the parks are gonna take a massive hit.

Which brings up the point that even the eco-left is now acknowledging the importance of govt fiscal responsibility. Because you cant' pretend you're an advanced green machine when your checkbook is running on empty.

 

[FactFinder]

Replace 'pointing fingers' with 'examining past mistakes and using solutions in order to not repeat them...' would be much more appropriate, IMHO.
But that may take a small army of consultants to accomplish...and we all know who consultants bow to.

Coulod be too much reliance on consultants and not enough on common sense.. maybe, heh?

10-4!!

Buy a consultant to 'prove' you (not meaning you literally) are proceeding in the right direction.

What I want to know is who is going to consult the consultatnt? Maybe we need an even bigger budget that noone can pay.

 

[whitehall]

The point is that abandoning 70 state parks is a bad idea. We can see it. Why can't Jerry Brown's bloated administration see it? Ca. has to evaluate it's severe "green" regulations to see if they are accomplishing anything. The next thing Ca has to do is trim it's redundant government agencies. The next thing they have to do is to take charge of illegal immigration. Feed them if you want to but for God's sake don't give them a college education.

 

[westwall]

I recall the elation of Ahnuld winning in CA and how the right just knew he would straighten CA out and then become president after the repubs got the constitution changed.
Remember the Ahnuld bill that Orrin Hatch submitted?

Wha happened?

Ahh hopey changey turned to sour grapes?

Chalk it up to a Democratic DOMINATED State House. He couldn't get anything done unless he was willing to nuke the the whole shebang. CA is screwed. There is no saving it and when it goes it's going to drag the rest of the country with it. You will start to see the collapse starting fairly soon. Figure 2013 or 2014.

 

[Charles_Main]

http://media.scpr.org/documents/2011/05/13/2011ParkClosures_attachments20110513.pdf


This is what you get when you hate government so much you would rather the wealthy get tax cuts than pay your bills

Wait what?

ROFLMAO

 

[Political Junky]

I recall the elation of Ahnuld winning in CA and how the right just knew he would straighten CA out and then become president after the repubs got the constitution changed.
Remember the Ahnuld bill that Orrin Hatch submitted?

Wha happened?

Ahh hopey changey turned to sour grapes?

I remember that too. Also Issa, who backed Davis' removal, thought Californians would want him as their governor. Remember how he cried when they didn't?