We’re All ‘Aints’ Now
The current NFL champions are the New Orleans Saints. But thirty
years ago, they were horrible. The team’s play was so embarrassing
that when a local sportscaster recommended fans wear bags over their
heads at home games, thousands responded. The bag-head protesters
became known as the "Aints." The practice of fans wearing bags to
express discontent with especially poor performing sports teams has
now become a custom throughout the United States.
If
the California Legislature were a professional sports franchise,
Californians would be reaching for their bags. They would, that is,
if they could afford to pay the proposed "bag tax."
That’s
right; our embarrassing Legislature is working on another way to cost
average citizens money. Assembly Bill 1998 would punish consumers by
banning lightweight, convenient plastic grocery bags — often reused
at home as trash bags and to carry lunches to school and work — and
require grocers to offer paper bags at a charge of a least a nickel.
The bill allows the charge to go higher. Plastic
bag ban backers say the bag "fee" is not a tax, because shoppers can
bring their own bags and avoid paying. However, San Francisco, which
has a similar ordinance, has not seen a significant increase in
reusable bags, just more consumers using paper bags, according to the
California Grocers Association.
Jerry Brown’s Potential Crippling Blow to California
California is facing nearly The Toughest of Times.
We face historically high unemployment, perennial budget crises and
more. Don’t think it could get any worse? Think again. If Jerry
Brown is elected, in one short stroke, he could deal a potentially
crippling blow to the California economy before it gets a chance to get
back on its feet.
Even for a
committed political observer, volunteer and commentator such as myself,
it seems implausible – but true – that the stakes for elections grow
with each successive election. For
California, the 2010 gubernatorial election unquestionably could be the
most important election ever – and not necessarily for a good reason.
If Jerry Brown is elected, he and his fellow Democrats could deliver a
devastating blow to California.
We well know that California’s unemployment rate is above 12%. We
also know that well over 100,000 people are leaving California on a
yearly basis. Beyond that, California faces an exodus of businesses –
large and small alike. So it can be no surprise that state revenues
have declined nearly $40 billion over the last three years as a result
of the declining taxpayer base.
Another Misguided Effort to Lower UC Standards
The University of California Board of
Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) is at it again, attempting to
slowly erode the high academic standards required for admission to this most
prestigious network of public universities.
For some reason, BOARS is recommending to
the Board of Regents that the school "signal" to applicants to not take the new
SAT test for admission to the UC system. This comes less than two years after
the Board of Regents lowered the admission requirements for UC schools
by eliminating the use of the SAT II Subject Tests and just eight
years after using scarce university resources to help create the new SAT in the
first place.
The available evidence shows
a significant correlation between an applicant’s success on the SAT
and success in the university environment, and since this correlation is
recognized by BOARS, it is unclear why some wish to no longer use it as a
screening tool. If the desired effect was an effort to increase the
number of eligible applicants to the UC system, it is certainly
unnecessary. Applications are already at historic highs.
Lessons of 1937?
Once, long ago, we had the Great Depression, which our history books tell us started with the crash of Wall Street in Fall 1929. Many of us either still remember what the 1930’s were like in this country, or grew up hearing about them from parents and grandparents, at times ad nauseum.
Few in our 24/7, fully-connected, 21stC Media, have either been brave, or honest, enough to call what we’ve been living through since late 2007, (first fully impacting in late Summer 2008 and now coming up on it’s second full year since them) with that name starting with the dreaded D-word: "Depression;" yet, as I have said here repeatedly since Fall 2008, that’s what this is in reality.
Pundits (not pundints, as we hear the word mispronounced too often lately) have stuck a toe in the water by calling our own economic agonies this time around, the Great Recession, but not further. Yet.