In California – Toxins in Microbes and Toxic Budgets
This may be a stretch, but has anyone else seen a possible analogy between NASA’s astounding discovery of arsenic gulping microbes and a solution to California’s budget problems? On the eve of Jerry Brown’s budget summit, I read up on the discovery made in California’s own Mono Lake.
Here was something no one expected: life did not contain the assumed six essential elements of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur, carbon and phosphorus. In place of phosphorus was the toxic substance arsenic. Yet, life existed with this new array of elements.
The analogy that jumped to mind: Can California redo the way it budgets changing the assumed rules that have governed the debate for so many years? Can lawmakers take elements that one interest group or another sees as toxic and turn those elements into part of a solution to solve the state’s problems?
Villaraigosa’s game-changing speech
The most significant speech given by a California politician this year was LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s address to a PPIC conference in Sacramento on Tuesday.
Villaraigosa is a former employee of two giant California teachers’ unions. He is one of the state most important Democratic politicians, and certainly its most prominent Latino one — in a state that is Democratic politically and increasingly Latino. And despite all of that, he gave a speech calling out teachers’ unions as the strongest obstacles to education reform.
This one is worth clipping and saving. It could be a career ender for Villaraigosa. Or it could launch him to statewide office later this decade. Either way, you’ll be hearing about this speech again. The full text of Villaraigosa’s speech is below.
California Employment, After the Great Recession
Though the job recovery in California will be a multi-year process, it is not too early to start thinking of what the job world will look like in California after the Great Recession. In this posting, I’d like to start by addressing the structure of jobs we are likely to see in California. In future postings I will address the likely impacts of the Great Recession on other dynamics of California jobs, including our job creation/destruction, movement among jobs, and breakdown of the traditional employer-employee relation.
Over the past 20 years in California we have had numerous ups and downs in our unemployment rate, and three major recessions. Yet, the industry structure has not changed dramatically. In 1990, California had a highly diverse economy, and it continues to have such an economy today. New employment sub-sectors will expand, such as alternative energy, energy conservation, and forms of information technology. But the great majority of jobs will continue to be spread among the 11 sectors that have formed the basis of California employment.
Start Of A Post-Prop. 25 Assembly
Cross-posted at CalWatchdog
Aside from the gaiety and festive mood during the swearing in of the new members of the Assembly on Monday, noticeably absent was acknowledgment of the gravity of California’s precarious financial state. Anyone observing the ceremony would never guess that this was a Legislature with dramatically low approval ratings, and facing the largest fiscal crisis in state history.
As new and old members of the Assembly entered the chambers with husbands, wives, children and friends, some were clearly awestruck with the beautiful surroundings, while others were there already working deals.
The questions on most minds involve conducting state business after passage of Proposition 25, and wondering what the majority party will do about the economic crisis in California.