A Tale of Two Californias

As Dickens said "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" and the phrase could be applied to California here in April 2009.

The unemployment data released last week touts California at the top of the jobless lists at 11% - worst in the country - and yet it's not a reflection of reality in California because the sad truth is there are two Californias with very different challenges and for one the problem is a lot higher than 11%.

While Silicon Valley chugs along at 8.3% and decreasing unemployment, a slowly recovering housing market and companies still competing for engineers, we have sister counties with unemployment at depression levels and higher. In the Great Depression unemployment in the U.S. peaked at 24.9% in 1933. Imperial County today has an unemployment rate of 26.9% closely followed by counties like Merced and Yuba at 18% - you can see the sobering Central Valley stats here and a map of California's unemployment rate by county here.

It's too easy to forget how close the poorest communities are to the hubbub of the tech world where Facebook raises $200M and NEA raises over $2B for it's new fund. High end wine stores still do well, and you still can't get a table at the Woodside Village Pub without a reservation.

But with the California budget in crisis and the Governor proposing to drastically cut Welfare and California's Family PACT Program, the most vulnerable members of our community are more at risk now than they have been since the Depression. Planned Parenthood Mar Monte (the largest PP affiliate which is based in San Jose and covers many of the poorer counties in the Central Valley) has seen a 15% increase in the number of visits so far this year because so many people have no other health care options. PPMM provides broad health services (yes, only 3% of the services are abortion - a little understood fact) and families are coming in who have never needed the safety net of PPMM health care before but they have no choice and no access to medical care.

Now, more than ever, is the time to pay attention to your charitable donations and to give to the communities that support the most vulnerable in our society. And while California may seem like the land of milk and honey and Malibu Barbies on 90210 it's the land of tremendous struggle just 100 miles away. When you are approached by a friend to give to the non-profits trying to help please give.

Comments

[twofish]

Well, Arnold and the Rethugs won, now they're saying it will be all cuts and no raised or new taxes. Let's see if our useless legislature can do anything about this.

I think the cuts should start in Rethuglican districts. If they're going to send reps to Sacramento who tie the state in knots, they can take the heavy hits.

One of Arnold's first acts as governor was to drop the lawsuit against the feds for refusing to put a stop to the Enron madness by capping energy prices. He kissed off $8 billion with that move (we might have lost in court anyway, but he pulled it for his buddies Boosh and Cheney). Then he dropped the car tax again (recalled Gov. Gray Davis hadn't raised it, he let it return to its original 2% level, as was intended when it was lowered some years earlier, during the dot.com bubble). That was more billions lost to the state, which suddenly found it really needed them.

I looked up recallarnold.comm" to see if anyone had started a drive to get rid of this phony. The browser went to godaddy. The site is registered until 2013, and the owner is a secret.

[greyhound2]

When I left California in 1996, the town I grew up in was overrun by illegals from Mexico. At that time, California was spending about $2 billion on welfare for illegals. I see that is up to $9 billion now.

California voters had passed an initiative to cut off welfare payments to illegals by a large margin but was tied up in court as unconstitutional by special interest groups. Let's see, $9 billion minus the current deficit leaves a whole lot of money left over.

I am glad I bailed out of California and would never go back.

[NickfromCali]

I noticed that Merced County is up there in unemployment. In California we call those counties in the San Joaquin Valley "red counties"

[tuberider]

Hey Malibu. Hey Beverly Hillbillies. Hey Irvain and La Jolla, Palos Verdes and Santa Barbara: Pony up or piss off. Prop 13 was but a prop. Welcome to cinema verite`...­And do listen to TRex86 when he speaks.

[TRex86]

Thanks for your support. Now there are two of us...

[TRex86]

Assuming Prop 13 can't be repealed to re-establish tax equity, the first thing California needs is to empty the prisons of all non-violent drug offenders--along with: Selling the surplus prison facilities. Leasing the excess prison guards to other states. Legalizing pot and taxing it.
Secondly, they should initiate tolls on all the major freeways so that the users pay for the service.
Third, enact a pollution tax on gas guzzlers and businesses that dump their effluvia into the air.
Fourth, seize Camp Pendleton and sell it to developers.
Fifth, raise the state income tax. (Sorry. Ya gotta pay for stuff).
Sixth, go after Reliant Energy and the other crooks that conspired with Enron to destroy the state for the damage they incurred.
I'll get back to you after you do all this.

[Bladernr1001]

We do not have to pay for wasteful government and wealth redistribution and government employees that are payed way above the prevailing market.

Here is what we need to do:
- Eliminate defined benefit pension plans
- Eliminate about 1000 special commissions and overlapping government departments
- Lay off the excess workers.
- Cut the pay of the remaining workers to be more in line with market wages
- Fire all members of the PUC that enacted the so called "energy deregulation" scheme that was so easily gamed by the teh energy comapnies because the plan had absolutely no basis in basic ecnomics.

[TRex86]

My proposals are more fun.

[TRex86]

Despite being a committed left wing progressive and dedicated scientist in 2004 I campaigned against the state's stem cell initiative, which would give $3 billion of borrowed money to researchers at an eventual cost to the tax payers of $6 billion. I did not subscribe to the right wing critique, but contrary to the media's oversimplification a number of progressiv­e/feminist groups also opposed this initiative for very good reasons of social justice (in a state with 7 million uninsured), dubious patient safety protections, and propriety. Of course, we were branded as pro-life Luddites for disagreeing with the snake oil pitch claiming cures for everyone.
The real fight was in the Republican Party between the religious/­moralistic types and the Big Bucks types. The latter, via George Schultz put the screws to Arnie and got him to endorse the initiative, leading to its passage. The result has been a boondoggle extraordinaire where most of the taxpayer money has gone to erecting buildings. Meanwhile, science has marched right past the need to destroy human embryos in order to create "regenerative" cellular therapies--and the tale of two Californias rolls on. The elite researchers have their siphons in the taxpayer's pocket while social infrastructure collapses. State spending on education and health care is somewhere between Louisiana and Mississippi at the bottom of the ladder.

[tomasedison]

NO NEW TAXES really means lets choke off all government. After 30 years of tax revolt in California what have you got ?

[moonwatcher]

Schwartzeneger wants to close most state parks. Who will that hurt? The rich can get on a airplane and visit exotic places. The rest of us are stuck here. While they stay behind their gated communities, we have to mix it up with the criminals he wants to release. We can watch children with severe health problems die. Poor good students loose their opportunity to go to college. That's all right. The rich will not be taxed. They've got theirs. So much for christian values. In California it is every person for them selves.

[Joseph A. Palermo - Huffpost Blogger]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/california-needs-a-new-co_b_207535.html

[Overd0g2]

Sorry. The stupid government just raised my taxes to historic levels. I'm broke.

[TRex86]

Which government? Where? How? What tax? Surely you jest.

[NickfromCali]

This guy obviously ain't rich.

[usna73]

That is just not enough and by advocating that this can be fixed with "charity" is disingenuous. Don't take it personally. You are probably well intended and a very fine individual.

By your own calculation, the economy ( capitalism on steriods) has misappropriated the needs of that which it is serving.

Rich folks need to pay more taxes. It is as simple as that. It works.

The problem may be that many Califonians are too young to remember the much high marginal tax rates of 50 years ago. America was prospperous and rich people still had wine stores and the Village Pub to frequent.

Dig deeper and take the lead.

[Soulsurfer]

I'm not sure where she pulls her numbers from, but here in Silicon Valley, tens of thousands of engineers are out of work. There's a huge disparity of wealth, and the ultra-rich tech bosses have shipped as many of the good paying jobs overseas as possible, while shipping in thousands of Indians to work as engineers for half the pay citizens rightfully expect. We've gone to college, worked hard and paid a high price for our degrees. We deserve to be PAID. Some of the previous posters have expressed disgust with Californians' obsession with money.....­..........­with the high cost of EVERYTHING here, if you're not rich, everything has to be related to money. The employers are holding on to their profits, and the state government is taxing and wasting money on a tremendous scale, which leaves US in the middle. It ain't no fun.

[Chubbster]

I love that phrase "we deserve...­"

[ECJLA]

Extreme inequality is to the 21st Century what slavery was to the 19th Century. Then, the country was divided between those (such as Abraham Lincoln) who thought slavery was morally wrong and wanted to limit its expansion and/or abolish it, and those (such as the leaders of the Southern states) who thought slavery was morally right and wanted to expand and/or preserve it.

Today, as then, the first step has to be to firmly limit the growth of income and wealth inequality. That is, outlaw immediately any growth in income or wealth inequality beyond what is is today. And then work toward diminution of weath and income inequality until the chasm between rich and poor is significantly lessened.U­ltimately the ratio of wealth and income inequality should be capped somewhere on the order of 100-1.

The above epochal shift in policy and law required to effect this levelling would likely require a Constitutional amendment banning extreme income and wealth inequality, and Congressional implementing legislation, the same way the 13th amendment banned slavery and the badges and incidents thereof.

Now, as then, It will also (likely) require a new political party, and leader comparable to Lincoln, to arise, ready, willing and able to treat extreme inequality as a moral issue tantamount to slavery.

Eric C. Jacobson
Public Interest Lawyer
Culver City, California

[BobABooey]

Where did you get your degree ??

I agree that the corporations and the rich need to carry more of the tax burden but some of what you propose is ludicrous.

[Chubbster]

I'd say ridiculous and deluded.

[lastpost]

Sounds like what you need is someone who will definitely not stop, until the task is done. Only one question, ”When will he start”?

[allensf]

San Francisco is a great illustration of private wealth and aristocracy contrasted with desitute abject poverty. The streets and sidewalks are cracked, potholed, and covered with gum and grafitti. The rich are plentiful here - just don't try and tax them, they wield their political power at the numerous benefits and galas that take place every night at the various bourgeois venues. Meanwhile cars and homes get broken into at a disgusting frequency whle beggars, heroin addicts, and homeless comb the streets searching for the ever disappearing crumbs of a society that is replacing compassion with consumption. Panhandlers get a quarter from about one in 500 people. The other 499 tuck their wine and cheese under their arm and sniffle and scuttle into the fog careful not to look back at the muttering orphan and grimy vagabond schizophrenic that threatens to present them with a cold reminder of the world that shouldn't interfere with their golden condo caucasian oasis in a paradise by the shifting tides of the bay.