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California Bashing
This archived discussion is "read only". « Previous 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 Next » » Kirk - Arnold Interview: 'no regrets' on taking then-legal steroids .I heard Gov. Arnold is supposed to be interviewed on "This Week With George Stephanopoulos." http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-... Arnold has 'no regrets' on taking then-legal steroids February 27, 2005 SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has acknowledged using steroids during his years as a champion body builder, said he doesn't regret using the performance-enhancing drugs. In an interview to be broadcast today, Schwarzenegger told ABC's George Stephanopoulos, ''I have no regrets about it, because at that time, it was something new that came on the market, and we went to the doctor and did it under doctors' supervision.'' Schwarzenegger has acknowledged taking steroids, but pointed out that they were legal at the time. ''We were experimenting with it. It was a new thing. So you can't roll the clock back and say, 'Now I would change my mind on this,' '' he said, according to an excerpt posted on abcnews.com. The former seven-time Mr. Olympia said he would not encourage drug use because it sent the wrong message to children. But he said he had no problem with athletes taking nutritional supplements and other legal substances to improve their performance. AP I wonder if George asked him about Barry Bonds.... -- posted by Kirk » Kirk - Schwarzenegger Bets It All on `Year of Reform' http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid...Schwarzenegger Bets It All on `Year of Reform': March 1 (Bloomberg) -- Some of us never seem to learn. Some of us thought that the election of a muscle-bound actor as governor of California was an amusing, if slightly creepy, sideshow -- a lampoon of representative government. Some of us thought that the candidate's pose as a populist warrior tilting against his state's ossified power structure was just a dodge. Hard as it may be to believe, it now appears that some of us - - we bow our hoary heads in shame, straining the cobwebs that enshroud them -- were wrong. After George W. Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger is on his way to becoming the most significant U.S. political figure of the first decade of the new century. Whether he will actually rise to that status will likely be determined over the next eight months. In one sense, Schwarzenegger can't help but be influential; governors of California inevitably are. As they never tire of reminding us, they preside over a $1.4 trillion economy, the fifth- largest in the world. For a century, California has seen itself as a laboratory of progressive government and technological innovation. Disastrous Mistakes Yet, more recently that same progressivism and risk-taking has led the state government into disastrous mistakes, and the severity of their consequences is another source of Schwarzenegger's significance. The task he faces in trying to undo the damage is, appropriately enough, Herculean -- even Conan-esque. Last week, Governing magazine's Government Performance Project gave California its lowest rating among the 50 states. That C-minus grade ties the Golden State with Alabama, not the kind of company Californians like to think they deserve. ``People who work in California government love to talk about how their state dwarfs entire countries,'' the report's authors wrote, rather snarkily. ``Well, everybody needs something be proud of. They certainly can't talk about how the state dwarfs anyone in the quality of its management. When it comes to management, California is the dwarf.'' Not His Fault The report was careful to absolve Schwarzenegger's young administration from responsibility for the state's ills. To the contrary, ``in many cases, California is a victim of its initiative process'' -- a legacy of the progressive era that allows voters to micromanage state government according to whatever spasmodic political impulse seizes them. Thanks to Proposition 98, for example, 40 percent of the state's general revenue must be dedicated to elementary and secondary education. Other initiatives have mandated spending that accounts for an additional 30 percent of the budget. Budget writers in the legislature have no flexibility in responding to changing financial pressures or political priorities. Not surprisingly, the state faces chronic deficits. Yet it's unlikely that, even with a free hand, the present legislature would make the hard decisions required for sound budgeting. Even by today's standards, California's political class is unusually sclerotic. Of the state's 153 legislative and congressional seats, none switched party control last November, thanks to the legislature's painstaking gerrymandering. Seizing the Initiative Schwarzenegger's response to this unhappy state of affairs has been to seize the initiative process, a large cause of the state government's dysfunction, and refashion it into the mechanism by which the failure would be reversed. For a special election in November he hopes to submit four initiatives that together would constitute radical, comprehensive political reform. One would require automatic spending cuts when the legislature fails to balance the books. Another would allow school districts to initiate merit pay for teachers -- a direct shot at the teacher unions that have resisted education reform. A third would help unburden the state of its ruinous public-pension obligations. The fourth is the most far-reaching of all. It would empanel an independent committee to redraw boundaries for political districts -- depriving the permanent legislature of its gerrymandering power and reintroducing competition to legislative elections. Square One ``This takes Schwarzenegger back to square one,'' says Bill Whalen, a California political consultant and a research fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. ``It's the message that made him governor in the first place. He's saying if you can light a fire under these guys in Sacramento, you go a long way toward solving the state's other problems.'' Most delicious of all, Schwarzenegger has discovered that among the most prominent opponents of his anti-gerrymandering initiative are fellow Republicans in the state's congressional delegation. The opposition is a reminder of the trans-partisan nature of the permanent political establishment -- and it allows Schwarzenegger to cast himself again as the populist warrior beyond narrow party interest. Can he persuade voters to go along? Last week's Field Poll showed public support for all but one of the proposals hovering about 50 percent. (Merit pay for teachers gets 60 percent support.) ``Redistricting is a hard sell for voters,'' Whalen says. ``It's complicated. They think gerrymandering is a contestant on `Survivor.' ``But remember, this is what Schwarzenegger does best,'' Whalen said. ``It's a matter of getting people's attention. He can simplify things, make them real for people. And when he does, he's very hard to beat.'' If Schwarzenegger wins, he will emerge as a colossus of the U.S. political landscape. And he may even force Democrats to give thanks -- because the foreign-born Republican governor can't run for president in 2008. -- posted by Kirk » Kirk - Beatty speaks up at UC graduation .. [ Kirk's Editor Comment: Someone in the audience should have stood up and shouted "Warren, what is preventing you and all your rich actor friends who got that way from charging excessive fees to see a silly movie from writing a check and sending it to the government to help out? Why drive business like Intel and HP to other countries who appreciate the jobs? Hell, why not put a $2 tax on movies?" What a jerk and shame on UC for using my tax payer money to only present one side of an issue at the graduation. ]
Beatty speaks up at UC graduation The actor and liberal activist takes on the governor in a pointed commencement speech By William Brand, STAFF WRITER BERKELEY - ACTOR Warren Beatty had some harsh advice for actor-turned-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger Saturday: Governing is not a joke, it's not a movie. He said devotion to the people of California is more important than devotion to body building or the wealthy. Speaking at the commencement exercise at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, Beatty said the governor's apparent plan to hold a special election in November is a mistake. What's the rush, he asked. There's an election coming next June, he said. The governor has said he wants voters to approve restrictions on state spending and to limit public employee unions. Beatty, 68, a liberal political activist since John Kennedy's New Frontier of the early 1960s, disagrees. The solution for the budget crisis is simple, Beatty said: Raise taxes for the rich for a short time. That's what Ronald Reagan did and that's what Gov. Pete Wilson did, he said. Beatty, who said he has been both rich and famous for 46 years — since he produced and starred in the film "Bonnie and Clyde" — said a tax hike wouldn't bother him. Beatty said Schwarzenegger needs to listen to his advisers, people like billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who told him that he needs to tax businesses the same as homeowners. Buffett said it won't make business leave California, Beatty said. Instead, Beatty said, the governor protects the rich and turns around and calls for cuts in salaries and benefits to firefighters, nurses, teachers and students. "These are the people who we should be especially interested in protecting," said Beatty, who seriously considered a run for president a few years ago. He told graduates to make their voices heard in coming years through all the new media — Internet to podcasts. "What the wealthy class is doing is buying our attention," he said. "They're buying satellites and cable systems and television and newspapers and magazines. They're buying spokesmodels and financing political candidates. "Money buys access, an obscene amount of access ... and in this din, what passes for truth is in fewer and fewer hands ... until most members of the public are only aroused by entertainment," he said. "There are few things as daunting as an individual trying to protest against the voice of an energetic marketing man, who holds public office, paid and funded by a plutocrat," he said. Beatty also returned to a spat he began with Schwarzenegger during an appearance in Hollywood in March when he said, "a Schwarzenegger Republican is a Bush Republican who calls himself a Schwarzenegger Republican. "I was a little tougher than what has been fashionable in Hollywood," he said. "I said, why not rise to a higher level, rather than mocking them (other officials) by calling them 'girlie men.' "I don't want to be governor, but I could be a lot better governor than he is; there are a whole lot of Democrats and maybe a few Republicans who could do the job better," Beatty said. Beatty attended the commencement with his wife, the actress Annette Bening, and children, Kathlyn, 13, Ben, 11, Isabel, 8, and Ella, 5. Beatty said he was raised a Southern Baptist and learned to follow the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Contact William Brand at bbrand@angnewspapers.com. -- posted by Kirk » honeyoneohone - Re: Beatty speaks up at UC graduation In response to Beatty speaks up at UC graduation posted by Kirk:. I sure agree with the editorial comment...these Hollywood pontificators are enough to gaggamaggot. "Golden Rule" indeed! He wants to pick taxpayers pockets to "do unto others" with--just as you said. He is free to "sell everything and give to the poor" just as Jesus suggested to the rich man who loved his wealth more than he loved the Lord. -- posted by honeyoneohone » bob90245 - VCTXX = 2.67% tax free yield Two weeks ago, I was scanning the LA Times Sunday Business pages. The Tax-free money market funds caught my eye. Vanguard CA Tax-exempt MMF (VCTXX) is yielding 2.67%. For someone like myself in the 25% Federal and 9.3% CA tax bracket, that's equivalent to a 3.92% taxable yield. Tax Equivalent Yield Calculator I don't know any taxable money market fund close to 3.9% yet. Needless to say, I'm making the move to put cash reserves into VCTXX. -- posted by bob90245 » Normxxx - Housing at 'tipping point' California housing at 'tipping point' By UCLA Anderson | 28 September 2005 Forecasting group says state's economy to take a hit once its hot real estate market starts to cool. SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California's housing market is overvalued by up to 45 percent and at a "tipping point" that will end its red-hot growth cycle, the UCLA Anderson Forecast projected Wednesday. California's housing market, one of the strongest and most closely watched in the United States and the engine of the state's economic recovery, is heading toward a "soft landing" that will slow the state's economy, UCLA Anderson Forecast senior economist Christopher Thornberg wrote in a report. The forecasting group said in June that California was facing a housing bubble and predicted it would deflate slowly rather than pop as many analysts have projected. As the state's housing market cools, many of the building and finance jobs it created will start to disappear and consumers, who are currently emboldened by rising home values, will pull back on spending, Thornberg wrote in his latest forecast report. "Our economy is being driven forward primarily by the housing sector, with construction and finance contributing to the recovery in a way not seen before," Thornberg wrote, adding that there are "signs that the housing party is ending." "This is not good news for the state, since other externally oriented sectors that might be able to pick up some of the economic slack in the event of a cooling down of the housing markets have yet to show any signs of solid job growth either, even with solid profits," he wrote. He forecast California's jobless rate would rise to 5.8 percent next year, followed by a rise to 6.4 percent in 2007, from 5.5 percent this year. "It's a soft landing scenario," said Thornberg, who based his estimates on trends in the state's housing market. That market, torrid in recent years in terms of both sales and prices, is poising the state for weak overall growth in 2006 and 2007, according to Thornberg. "When you think about where jobs and income are heading - think real estate," Thornberg wrote, noting that California's housing market is "clearly starting to lose steam." Soaring home prices are forcing new home buyers to take on risky variable-rate, interest-only loans, representing a market "starting to reach a breaking point," Thornberg wrote. Additionally, the market appears to be at a "crossroads" in terms of sales and inventories. Sales in some regions are falling while inventories in some regions are building. "It certainly looks as if we've peaked," Thornberg told Reuters, noting he expects job growth in home building in California to underscore his view. Construction payrolls in the state will expand by 1.3 percent next year and shrink by 1.0 percent in 2007 after growing by 6.3 percent this year, Thornberg predicted. Overall nonfarm payroll growth in California will slow to a rate of 1.2 percent next year and to 0.8 percent in 2007 from an estimated 1.6 percent this year, according to Thornberg.
The content of this message is not to be construed as constituting market or investment advice. It is intended for educational purposes only. Individuals should consult with their own advisors for specific investment advice. -- posted by Normxxx » Kirk - Don't Forget to Vote Today if you are in CA .73 - NO (you can't legislate good parenting. Protect kids from bad parents and let them continue to get help without parental notification. Also, the language is a slippery slope to recognize a fertilized egg or a zygote as a human.) 74 - YES: I don't understand why teachers get Tenure at all... why not pay for performance and if they are crappy, fire them and forget about Tenure. Right now, they only have to "behave" for two years then they can't get fired. It took me 10 years to learn to be a good analog design engineer.... how long does it take to learn to be a good teacher? I'd think decades. 75 through 78 - YES (CA Unions are spending a TON to get no votes. When asked how to pay for everything we can't afford now, they say RAISE TAXES....I guess 9.3% income tax and 8.25% sales tax plus property taxes of roughly $8,000 a year on a Bay Area home are not enough so vote yes if you want to pay more taxes.) 79 & 80 - NO -- posted by Kirk » Singlengle - Re: Don't Forget to Vote Today if you are in CA In response to Don't Forget to Vote Today if you are in CA posted by Kirk:
-- posted by Singlengle » Kirk - Re: Re: Don't Forget to Vote Today if you are in CA .In response to Re: Don't Forget to Vote Today if you are in CA posted by Singlengle: No, a YES vote for 74-77 should slow the rate of increase in taxes. 74-77 are not propositions asking for more money. They are The Governator's propositions that are to place limits on how much can be spent and how much free power unions can have. The unions have raised a TON of money to defeat them. The press, being pretty much leftist, has actually used the amount of money raised to complain about how expensive the election is! -- posted by Kirk » honeyoneohone - Re: Don't Forget to Vote Today if you are in CA In response to Don't Forget to Vote Today if you are in CA posted by Kirk:. Do we really want to get in a "fight" about which way to vote today? I guess not, but I'll remember at the next election to post the correct way for people early in the day. 
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