Free Republic

I have spent my entire 35 year professional life developing and implementing energy policies vital to our state. So it pains me to now see California taking an unfortunate misstep: embracing participation in the Western Climate Initiative. WCI, developed by seven U.S. states (California is joined by Oregon, Washington, Utah, Montana, New Mexico and Arizona) and several Canadian provinces along the western rim of North America, proposes to combat global warming – independently from their national governments. Herein lays the first reason I oppose the WCI: with the likelihood of federal pre-emption with President Obama and the 111th Congress set...

States, Localities Face Deeper Crisis The Bond Buyer By Lynne Funk October 8, 2008 State and local governments are facing a fiscal crisis that will be far worse than the 2001 recession because sharp declines in income and sales tax collections will lead to more widespread budget cuts in the months ahead, a new Rockefeller Institute of Government report warns. But governments may have to issue more debt as a result of their financial difficulties, according to Don Boyd, the author of the report, titled The Damage is Just Beginning, and other market participants. Boyd said he expects a major...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - With California's cash dwindling and legislators still debating a new budget, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger eliminated 22,000 part-time and temporary state positions Thursday and ordered that 200,000 state workers receive the federal minimum wage. His signing of the executive order had been expected since last week but stood as a stark illustration of the cash problem facing the nation's most populous state. Schwarzenegger apologized to state workers but said he had no choice. "Today I am exercising my executive authority to avoid a full-blown crisis and keep our state moving forward," Schwarzenegger said. "This is not an action...

Los Angeles - California, home to 1 in 9 American schoolchildren, is on the brink of what may be the biggest public education crisis in state history. Facing a $16 billion state budget shortfall, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed $4.8 billion in school-funding cuts, or 10 percent of education spending. In the past week, over 20,000 preliminary pink slips were sent by school districts to teachers and administrators state wide, according to the California Teachers Association. The association estimates another 87,000 (of a total 350,000 public school teachers) could come if Governor Schwarzenegger holds to his budget cut request. Some...

The newspapers are reporting that the fiscal gap is $10 billion. It is actually far more serious than that. The actual figure – according to the LAO – is that the state will spend $14 billion more than it takes in between now and the end of the next fiscal year. The difference is that we will first blow through the $4 billion reserve that the state began the year with. (That reserve, by the way, is already gone.) But the LAO is still predicting that the state’s general fund revenues will grow about 3.5 percent this year. I doubt...

On Tuesday, President Bush announced that the federal budget deficit will be $100 billion lower than initially expected due to higher levels of economic growth. This is the third consecutive year substantial downward revisions were made to the deficit as part of the administration’s mid-year budget review. The president further claimed that the nation is ahead of schedule by one year in its goal to cut the budget deficit in half. On the surface this appears to be good news. Yet the biggest mistake the conservative movement could make is to focus on the budget deficit. The deficit is an...

The fiscal overstretch that will undermine an empire By Niall Ferguson and Laurence Kotlikoff Published: July 14 2003 20:05 | Last Updated: July 14 2003 20:05 Toppling three tyrannies within four years is no mean achievement. Since 1999, despotic rulers in Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq have been ousted as a result of US military intervention. What makes this so remarkable is that it comes little more than a decade after a wave of anxiety about American "overstretch". Many former Cassandras now hail the country as the world's hyperpower - if not a new empire. The irony is that the overstretch...