In California, I would say that March Madness is ignoring the looming pension crisis, except that madness extends to every other month as well…
Where is income inequality worst in the U.S.? Well, for one thing, in California:
Perhaps no place is inequality more evident than in the rural reaches of California, the nation’s richest agricultural state. The Golden State is now home to 111 billionaires, by far the most of any state; California billionaires personally hold assets worth $485 billion, more than the entire GDP of all but 24 countries in the world. Yet the state also suffers the highest poverty rate in the country (adjusted for housing costs), above 23%, and a leviathan welfare state. As of 2012, with roughly 12% of the population, California accounted for roughly one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients.
With the farm economy increasingly mechanized and industrial growth stifled largely by regulation, many rural Californians particularly Latinos, are downwardly mobile, and doing worse than their parents; native-born Latinos actually have shorter lifespans than their parents, according to a 2011 report. Although unemployment remains high in many of the state’s largest urban counties, the highest unemployment is concentrated in the rural counties of the interior. Fresno was found in one study to have the least well-off Congressional district.
The vast expanse of economic decline in the midst of unprecedented, but very narrow urban luxury has been characterized as “liberal apartheid.” The well-heeled, largely white and Asian coastal denizens live in an economically inaccessible bubble insulated from the largely poor, working-class, heavily Latino communities in the eastern interior of the state.
California also has the nation’s highest poverty rate and the most food stamp recipients, and policymakers have done little to address profligate spending, unfunded pensions, and ever-growing retiree health-care obligations.”
Inland California, from Imperial in the south to Modoc in the north, remains one of the poorest regions in the nation. Though the state unemployment rate fell in February to 8.1 percent, inland unemployment ranges from 9.5 percent in Riverside to 25.9 percent in Colusa. Of the 20 counties in the United States with the largest unemployment rates, 11 are in California.
More on how government at the state and national level is destroying California agriculture in the name of protecting the Delta Smelt.
There’s speculation that California Governor Jerry Brown actually wants to see the illegal, underfunded, and ill-fated “bullet train to nowhere” die, he just doesn’t want to get the blame for killing it.
Telecom company Channell Commercial is relocating from Temecula, California to Rockwell, Texas. “Blaming California for an oppressive business climate for manufacturing growth, Channell said the costs to do business here have made expansion in this state no longer feasible.”
Joaquin Castro to boycott Buc-ees? He should have almost as much luck in Texas boycotting air conditioning and football. Hey, when Castro can offer outstanding fudge and the largest, cleanest restrooms in the state, let me know…
Evidently ObamaCare is just a bottomless well of suck. The news is bad and getting worse, especially for cancer patients and Democrats.
First up: 15 of 19 nationally recognized cancer centers are not in ObamaCare. Let me tell you that this is a big, big deal for cancer patients.
My father is currently battling stage 3 esophageal cancer, and is having surgery next week. (Prognosis at this stage looks very good.) After his initial diagnosis, it took him something like a month to take all the tests and see all the specialists to go over the results of the tests, followed by radiation and chemo (which was every bit as fun as you imagine).
After finding the tumor was still there (but thankfully not metastasized), my father wondered if it might be possible to undertake experimental drug treatments rather than surgery, and I found them the number of MD Anderson‘s cancer study hotline ((800) 392-1611, just in case you need it).
MD Anderson got all their medical stuff, had them come early the next week, and completed all the consultations and tests (including EKG, X-Ray, CAT scan, PET scan) in a single day. Boom, boom, boom, boom.
“it was like night and day.”
Mortality for this type of surgery can be as high as 19%. At MD Anderson? 2%.
Cancer is a scary thing under the best of circumstances; ObamaCare makes it a whole lot scarier, especially when “bending the cost curve” involves eliminating the most effective treatment.
National Democrats are in a near panic — if the media’s highly-attuned panic detectors are any indicator — with a “poisonous” president unable to use his popularity to sway voters, a “screaming siren” warning about mid-term turnout, and Republicans on the offensive on Obamacare. There are a long eight months until November, but Democrats seem unlikely to get much sleep over the interim.
With the health care sign-up period coming to an end this month, Democrats in Congress are looking over at the White House and realizing that the president is not only incapable of saving them, but he looks like a big anchor tied around their necks.
You tears, E. J. Dionne! Let me taste them! “Obama and his party are in danger of allowing the Republicans to set the terms of the 2014 elections.” Along with the usual Dionnean mush about Republicans are uniquely negative, evil, etc. He and Dowd both push the “It’s the evil Koch brothers! Evil I tells ya!” Meme of the Week. He also says to embrace ObamaCare.
That same “embrace Obamacare” advice is also offered up by Bob Shrum, and who are we to gainsay the keen tactical insight garnered from working on eight losing Presidential campaigns?
No wonder Democrats are freaking out. The tanks are converging on their position, crushing all before them, and their commander is telling them to be calm and fire back with their rifle. Those with even half a brain (asking a lot, I know) should remember back to 2010, where supporting Obamacare cost incumbent Democrats an average of 5.2% of the vote. The result was Democrats lost 63 seats in the House. This time it looks like Democrats’ embrace of ObamaCare will cost them the Senate.
Who can blame them for freaking out?
And what better music for a freakout than Austin’s own psychedelic pioneers, the 13th Floor Elevators?
Will Franklin has dug even deeper in to the primary voting statistics and they are, if anything, actually worse than previously reported (which were already plenty bad).
A few examples:
Her vote totals were down in the Rio Grande Valley when compared with Bill White.
Bill White’s two Hispanic opponents in 2010 received 2.83% and 4.95% of the statewide primary vote, compared to Davis Opponent Ray Madrigal pulling in just under 21% despite no fundraising and minimal campaigning.
“Despite Wendy Davis’ massive, hyped, well-funded, all-star staffed voter registration effort with Battleground Texas and millions of dollars from out-of-state, today there are 45,000 fewer Texans registered to vote than in November 2012.”
“In Texas’ 5 most populous counties, there were 12,897 fewer total Democratic votes than in 2010 and 62,469 fewer than in 2002.”
“In a practically uncontested primary, Wendy Davis spent more than Bill White in a contested primary, to achieve poorer primary results.”
The total vote margin Greg Abbott received in Harris County alone is almost double the vote margin Davis earned in the five largest counties she won more votes than Abbott in.
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The California city of Vallejo emerged from bankruptcy just over two years ago, but it is still struggling to pay its bills.
The main culprit: Ballooning pension costs, which will hit more than $14 million this year, a nearly 40% increase from two years ago.
Amid threats of legal action from the state’s pension giant, CalPERS, Vallejo did little during its nearly three-year stint in bankruptcy to stem the growth in its pension bills.
Now when I think about California, I think of a liberal oppressive police state and regulations and taxes and fees. I’d rather go someplace and have my own little place out on the edge of town. I’m a country girl at heart. It makes me happy when I see people in Texas open-carrying. It makes me feel safe. I’m not even a gun owner, but I’d like to see a gun rack in every pickup truck, like my boyfriend had when I was fifteen years old in Florida. An armed society is a polite society.
Republican David Jolly beat Democrat Alex Sink in a special election for Florida’s 13th congressional district. CD13 is a swing district that voted narrowly for Obama in the last two Presidential elections.
One district does not an election make, but a close look at the tea leaves suggests that the outlook for Democrats in 2014 is looking very dim, thanks to the albatross that is ObamaCare:
The Tampa Tribunesays that “David Jolly’s victory Tuesday in the U.S. House District 13 special election represents a clear repudiation of Obamacare.”
Even the Washington Postsays Jolly’s win “illustrated the political toxicity of the law known as Obamacare.”
Well, guess what? seven competitive Senate seats are in states more heavily Republican than the district Jolly just won.
you know what’s less Democrat-friendly territory than this R+1 swing district? The states of West Virginia (R+13), North Carolina (R+3), Louisiana (R+12), South Dakota (R+10), Alaska (R+12). Arkansas (R+14) and Montana (R+7). Those are all currently Democrat-held seats. And there are seven of them.
If last night’s result means that a halfway decent Republican candidate can win on Republican-leaning territory by hammering away at Obamacare… then the odds of the GOP winning the Senate look very, very good.
The message of Sink’s defeat for Democrats? “‘Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
Of course, Trende also wrote not to read too much into the Florida CD13 special election. But he also thought Sink would probably win…
Meanwhile, a service workers union is talking about going on strike due to health care contract changes resulting from ObamaCare:
Culinary members have long enjoyed health care that is fully funded by employers, but the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has increased medical costs to the point that many companies can no longer afford to pay full freight. The hotels want workers to pick up some of Obamacare’s new costs, a demand the Culinary won’t agree to.
Of course, Obamacare is the law because of the Culinary’s political activism. The Culinary and the rest of organized labor poured untold millions of dollars and thousands of volunteer hours into the election campaigns of President Barack Obama and the Democrats who wrote and passed Obamacare, and the unions championed the reboot of American health insurance.
Then they realized Obamacare’s critics were right. The law is wrecking platinum-plated union health plans, not to mention health insurance for tens of millions of people.
You may remember the case of New Rome, Ohio, an infamous speedtrap that existed only to line the pockets of a corrupt family and their friends. The corruption was so bad, Ohio disolved the town on September 9, 2004.
“A state audit of Hampton’s books, released last month, reads like a primer on municipal malfeasance. It found 31 instances in which local rules or state or federal laws were violated in ways large and small.”
The big question seems to be where the ticket money went…
