California’s Economy Began its Rebound in 2010, but only Grudgingly.
Figures released by the national Bureau of Economic Analysis showed the state’s gross domestic product recovering by 1.8 percent, after adjusting for inflation. This compares to national real economic growth in 2010 of 2.6 percent.
California’s GDP, at just over $1.9 trillion, is still below its 2008 peak. And our anemic recovery shows: 33 states are growing more robustly than California, including most of our key competitors. Construction, finance and nondurable manufacturing continue to be the major private sector economic laggards.
Tell Me a Sad Story and I’ll Tell You One
Anyone interested in storytelling might want to pull up a
chair in the state senate gallery and listen to a battle of stories — about
taxes. Dueling emails are circulating requesting stories of woe from those who
either see the end of the temporary taxes as the road to local budget
devastation or the continuation of those same taxes as hardship for taxpayers.
The storytelling fest started with a request from the office
of senate president pro tem Darrell Steinberg. He wants stories from school and
local law enforcement officials on how they will be devastated if the tax
extensions do not occur. The email read in part: The pro Tem is asking all
Senators to call their Sheriffs and the Superintendents of the school districts
in their Senate districts and get short letters from each of them, describing
the cuts they will have to make, worst case scenario (if the Senate must pass a
budget without continuing existing revenues).
California’s Glengarry Glen Ross
The Secret Knowledge is a book by playwright David
Mamet that was published last week and that is highly relevant to our job
training system and employment world in California.
The
book has nothing in it about WIA funding in California, or individual training
accounts, or management information systems. Its relevancy is how it addresses
the broader meanings of economic growth
and individual freedom in our evolving global economy.
Several
of Mamet’s plays, particularly American Buffalo and Glengarry
Glen Ross depict the harshness of capitalism in America, and particularly
the harshness for individuals at the margins of the market economy. In Glengarry
Glen Ross, Shelley Lavene and George Aaronow are aging men who have no place in the
economy, whose skills have become obsolete, who are portrayed as being
discarded by capitalism.
Locking the Parent Trigger
Cross-posted at CityJournal.
California’s landmark parent-empowerment law, passed last year, is one of the state’s few bright spots in education. But the law is under assault on multiple fronts. The greatest danger comes from state bureaucrats and untrustworthy lawmakers, abetted by teachers’ union lobbyists, who would lock the law’s “parent trigger” by attaching burdensome requirements and obtuse rules. The upshot? Parents may find they’re once again left to fend for themselves against an education establishment heavily invested in preserving its prerogatives.
Under the current law, if at least half of eligible parents at a chronically failing school sign a petition, the local school district must adopt one of a handful of reforms: close the school and let the students enroll in a higher-performing campus nearby; convert the school to an independent charter; fire half the teaching staff and replace the administration; extend school hours and revise the curriculum under a federally recommended turnaround plan; or adopt an “alternative governance” model, which could include anything from establishing a school-site council to handing over the school to the local district superintendent.
While the law’s language may be brief and fairly straightforward, its execution thus far has been anything but.