A Debate Surprise?
The last scheduled gubernatorial debate goes off tonight with Tom Brokaw as moderator and one wonders if there will be a surprise launched during the debate to topsy-turvy the race.
Meg Whitman needs to make voters believe she can solve the problems of California. That is all they care about. In the end, the vast majority of voters are not so interested in the battle over Whitman’s maid and Brown’s team’s language. Voters want to believe their vote will make a difference in their lives.
California Companies Moving Away or Shifting Work Out Reaches New Record: 158 (for 2010 alone)
In the three weeks since my last tally, I’ve learned about another 14 companies that have left California completely or re-directed capital to build facilities out of state. The names of the 14 and justifications for listing them appear below. Today’s entry builds upon the Sept. 21 entry 144 Companies Shrink from Calif. This Year – Three Times the Total for All of 2009.
In short:
Total for 9-1/2 months of 2010: 158
Total for all of 2009: 51
Five enterprises represent the type of operations coveted by many California politicians — "green" companies — namely DayStar Technologies, Vetrazzo, SMA America LLC, Enfinity Corp., and Power-One. Those companies have opted for Georgia, Arizona, Colorado and an apparently as-yet-undetermined "overseas location."
The Next Health Care Workforce in California
This
past week, the California Workforce Investment Board along with the state
Office of Statewide Health
Planning and Development formed the state Health Workforce Development Council
(HWDC) to map the future of health care employment in the state.
Over
the past decade, health care has been the one sector in California that job
training professionals could always count on to continue to generate jobs. Even
in the past 36 months of this Recession, while other job sectors in California
were shedding jobs at a rapid rate, health care continued to hold its own each month, and
sometimes gain jobs. This job growth is shown in the chart below, compiled from
payroll job data provided by Mr. Spencer Wong of the Employment Development
Department.
Who is Rosy Projections?
Rosy Projections is a powerful player in state government, but when I asked around the Capitol for directions to her office, no one could help me. And I couldn’t find a listing for Ms. Projections in any of the political directories in Sacramento, either.
Still we know Rosy exists, because her fingerprints are all over the state budget.
Let’s see, the budget agreement includes the expectation that the federal government — out of the goodness of its heart — will chip in $5.3 billion dollars to shore up Californians’ profligate spending. Certainly that is proof of Rosy’s influence. And then there are the estimates of future revenue that would only be believed by someone who had just put their life savings into Florida swampland. Surely Rosy had a hand in this, too.