Questions Aplenty on Pot Vote
Next November’s election for governor and senator may have to take a back seat to a chance to legalize the sale and use of marijuana in California.
Hey, you can always vote for governor and senator, but the chance to open the market for bud …
Richard Lee, co-author of the legalization initiative, announced Wednesday that his group has collected more than 680,000 signatures, far more than the 433,971 needed to put the measure on the ballot. He plans to submit the signatures next month.
Collecting the signatures was no problem, Lee told Carla Marinucci of the San Francisco Chronicle.
“People were eager to sign,” he said. “We heard they were ripping the petitions out of people’s hands to do it.”
California Office Pool 2010
The late, great New York Times columnist William Safire made a habit of writing a year-end column he called Office Pool. In it, Safire offered, multiple-choice style, a series of possible news events that could take place in the year ahead. At the column’s end, he let you know which ones he thought actually would occur.
Safire’s focus was Washington, though he delved into culture and sports too. Reviving this tradition, here’s the California Office Pool. My picks are at the end. Be sure to make your predictions, and clip n’ save (or bookmark and save) so we can see how we did at the end of 2010.
1. The big, surprise California political controversy of 2010 will erupt over:
A. The California Supreme Court, when Chief Justice Ronald M. George unexpectedly retires, sparking a fight over his successor, and Associate Justice Carlos Moreno becomes a target of the Yes on Prop 8 crowd in the retention election.
B. The Board of Regents, who decide to raise UC tuition another 30 percent.
C. Jerry Brown, who loses liberals when he says, in a gubernatorial debate, that Prop 13 has been good for the state.
D. The late entrance into the governor’s race of an independent gubernatorial candidate, backed by the tea party people, who gains in the polls after raising millions on line.
In This Fight, the Loser is California
The venue that snares the March boxing match between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao will add millions to the host city’s bottom line. Count California cities out. The reason? Taxes.
The Mayweather-Pacquiao fight is one of the most anticipated in the pugilist world in a long time. Looking forward to a big payday, the Staples Center in Los Angeles offered a $20 million site fee to host the event. Not to be outdone, Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, said he would host the event in his new football stadium and pay $25 million for the event.
Before any serious bidding war could take place, Pacquiao’s U.S. business advisor threw cold water on the Staples Center offer. Noting that Paciquino would have to pay millions in taxes to California under the current 10.55% top tax rate, the advisor said the fighter didn’t want to fight in California when there were alternatives in no income tax states like Texas and Nevada.
Steady Work: Chelm and California
Chelm was the mythical village of East European Jews, the subject of Jewish folklore and humor. Irving Howe drew on one of the Chelm tales for the epigraph to his collection of essays published in 1966, Steady Work .
Once in Chelm, the mythical village of the East European Jews, a man was appointed to sit at the village gate and wait for the coming of the Messiah. He complained to the village elders that his pay was too low. ‘You are right’, they said to him, ‘The pay is low. But consider: the work is steady.’
Today, with nearly 2.3 million Californians unemployed, any work is attractive—steady or not. However, even today, the California labor market remains highly volatile, with workers moving in and out of jobs with surprising frequency. In previous posts I have discussed the amazing job creation and destruction numbers for California—even in a month that the unemployment rate moves only slightly, over 200,000 jobs are being created and another 200,000 jobs are being destroyed. Almost equally amazing are the numbers regarding the movement among workers in existing jobs.