Vallejo’s Bankruptcy Shows Us What Is Wrong
Vallejo is a poster-child for what is wrong in California’s state and local government finance system. The city of 117,000 in northern California had been flirting with bankruptcy this entire fiscal year, and was finally forced to declare itself bankrupt after months of failed contract negotiations with the city’s two largest employee unions-police and firefighters.
The city was facing a projected $16 million deficit next year on a budget of some $80 million and had already used up its reserves and almost all possible accounting gimmicks just to get to that point. Even though the city undertook major service cuts last year and this year, there was still no room to accommodate the reduction in revenues that this year’s real estate collapse has brought on. And it is not just the economy. How can this be you might ask?
Yahoo-Microsoft merger could provide a true competitor to Google
Billionaire financier Carl Icahn recently launched a proxy battle to oust Yahoo’s board of directors, responsible last month for rejecting a merger deal with Microsoft, in an effort to restart negotiations with the tech giant. Many of those opposed to a Microsoft-Yahoo merger have framed the potential partnership as one that would only benefit Microsoft, whose search technology has struggled since its inception.
Yahoo, however, stands a lot to gain from a partnership with software provider Microsoft, and this becomes apparent when one begins to understand the primary difference between #2-ranked Yahoo and its primary competition, Google. While both companies provide industry-leading search engine technology and other mainstays such as free email systems, they are clearly dissimilar in their primary objectives.
A Nanny State? Not with this budget!
Reporters, academics, lawmakers, and other great thinkers are debating the most complex elements of Governor Schwarzenegger’s May Revise, in particular borrowing against the state lottery or increasing the sales tax to help eliminate the budget deficit.
But there are other aspects of the May Revise that will even more immediately impact lives, and we should be talking about that too.
Under the proposed budget, monthly payments to foster families would drop from $530 to $477. That means that children who already lack a home, a family support system, any sort of constancy, will be devalued once again.
There are already far too few people willing to be foster parents. This budget proposal tells them – and their would-be foster children – that their well-being is worth even less in a budget crisis.